What Transit Looked Like in 1993

Recently, I ran across an old 1993 copy of Bart’s “Guide to Public Transportation From Bart” buried in a closet in my house.  I would have been three years old at the time this map was published, so I can’t exactly bring much experience to the table as to what transit was like in 1993.  But, from a 2009 perspective, there’s a lot of interesting stuff in these maps–AC Transit only ran four Transbay routes, Bart still had commuter buses, and transit agencies actually had money and ran a lot more bus routes.  It’s also notable that there is hardly any mention of Caltrain, the Peninsula, and the South Bay.

Check out the links below to big scans of the maps:

San Francisco

Downtown San Francisco

Oakland-Alameda

Richmond-Berkeley

Eastern Contra Costa/Alameda Counties

(For 2009 maps, click here for AC Transit, here for Muni, and here for Bart)

An old Bart commuter bus, probably one of the most underrated Bart programs.

16 years later, how far have we come, and how far do we still have to go?

Bart has spent a whole lot of money on its Dublin-Pleasanton, North Concord/Pittsburg-Bay Point, and SFO/Millbrae extensions, but these extensions have really not had much of an effect on promoting transit-oriented development or improving ridership–the Dublin-Pleasanton station has attracted a decent number of riders, but required a costly 12.5 mile extension for just two stations, North Concord/Martinez, San Bruno, and South San Francisco make up three of the five lowest ridership stations in the Bart system (under 3,000 daily riders), and Millbrae has attracted only 25% (4,150) of its projected 16,500 riders by 2010.  Meanwhile, some of the fastest growing stations in the Bart system in the last decade–MacArthur, Lake Merritt, 16th & Mission, and Balboa Park–have received hardly any investment for much-needed capacity and station access improvements, and Bart’s stations in Downtown San Francisco have continued to be at capacity with no signs of relief.  No infill stations have been built within the gaps in the urban core, and system compatibility has worsened (the guide explains how Bart riders get a 25 cent transfer credit to cover half of most bus agencies 50 cent fare; 16 years later, the transfer credit remains 25 cents while fares have skyrocketed to $2).

It’s interesting to note that after over a decade, Bart is considering getting back into the commuter bus business as a cheaper alternative to the Livermore and eBart extensions.  It seems like Bart is slowly realizing that it can’t just burn money anymore like it has the past 15 years, and in this disastrous financial environment, it is going to have to reconsider some of its worst cost-benefit projects (it might be too late for the OAC, however).  One thing that Bart does have going for itself is the branding, so getting back into the commuter bus business with nice, wifi-enabled buses could really be a great asset for Bay Area transit.

In the end, while transit agencies in 1993 had a lot more money for more bus routes and big extensions, we really didn’t get a whole lot out of the past 16 years.  Nevertheless, we can count on these maps looking a whole lot different 16 years from now in 2025, with high speed rail, Caltrain electrification, East Bay BRT, Geary and Van Ness BRT, Smart, Bart to San Jose (if built by 2025?), and numerous other projects which will better tie in the Peninsula and the South Bay into the rest of the Bay Area.  I think we have also seen a shift in transportation planning from access to performance, given the emphasis now on capturing a greater mode share and improving efficiency versus serving the greatest land area.  While this shift has improved overall service, it hasn’t been great for low-density, transit-dependent, low-income communities (see Richmond’s transit network in 1993 vs. 2009).

Anyway, looking through these maps was an insightful window into the past, and I highly recommend that you check them out.  Enjoy!

A History of Bayview-Hunters Point, Part 3: Redevelopment or Renewal

The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and Candlestick Point will be redeveloped into two new neighborhoods over the next 10-15 years, adding a minimum of 25,000 new residents

Walking down Third Street in Bayview, one cannot help but notice the rapid changes occuring–construction of new apartments and the opening of new businesses line the streets–yet, this is only the beginning for Bayview-Hunters Point.  After decades of disinvestment that left Bayview-Hunters Point an impoverished ghetto, two current projects—the Third Street light rail line and the Hunters Point/Candlestick Point Redevelopment projects—are poised to completely remake the district.

The relatively-new T-Third Muni Metro line along Third St.

Opened in 2007, the T-Third Street Muni Metro line has brought much-needed transit access to Bayview-Hunters Point, re-integrating the district with the rest of the city and inducing residential and commercial development along the corridor.  The T-Third line has provided an excellent opportunity for smart growth and economic revitilization in Bayview and finally shows that City Hall is beginning to take notice of Bayview-Hunters Point.

Condos under construction in Bayview

This process of reintegration and reinvestment will be augmented by the redevelopment of the Hunters Point Shipyard and Candlestick Point stadium area.  Encompassing nearly 3% of San Francisco’s total land area, the Shipyard and stadium redevelopment is projected to bring at least 10,500 new residential units to Bayview-Hunters Point with 1/3 below market rate, likely amounting to 25,000 new residents over the next decade (and potentially more if/when the 49ers move to Santa Clara).  While these projects generally follow sound urbanist and smart growth principles and will expedite the environmental cleanup of the area, many residents view this transformation as the final attempt to push Black and low-income residents out of San Francisco.

Even before the latest redevelopment, San Francisco’s Black population has been decreasing at an alarming rate, a phenomonon that many label the “Black Exodus.”  San Francisco’s Black population has decreased 46% since 1970, from 96,018 to 51,795 (2007 ACS), in large part due to urban renewal, rising cost of living, and the opening of the suburbs to Blacks as housing discrimination decreased.  While cities like Richmond, Oakland, and East Palo Alto, and more recently Vallejo, Pittsburg, Antioch, and Stockton have seen their Black populations soar, San Francisco now has a lower proportion of Blacks than cities with traditionally low Black populations such as Seattle, Portland, and San Diego.  This general trend is also true for Bayview-Hunters Point, which has seen its Black population decrease 22% since 1970, and Blacks currently account for less than half of the population.

Once again, a look at racial trends in Bayview-Hunters Point. Notice the recent decline in the district's Black popluation coupled with a large increase in the Asian/Pacific Islander population.

Some hope still exists in preventing wholescale gentrification and preserving the diversity and Black character of Bayview-Hunters Point.  Recently, Bayview-Hunters Point has been targeted for reindustrialization as “green industries” move into the area–including the recycling, biodiesel, and solar panel industries.  In addition, Hunters View, one of the worst housing projects in Hunters Point, just received 6 million dollars from the Stimulus package to finally be torn down and completely redeveloped, going from 250 public housing units to 800 mixed-income units.  In general, the city has tried to reach out to the community in the redevelopment process and ensure the availability of affordable housing, but these efforts have not healed the anti-government sentiments in the district.

Bayview-Hunters Point is San Francisco's new center for "Green Jobs"

"Were you displaced from Bayview or Fillmore in the 1960s and 1970s? You may qualify for buyers priority" -SF Housing Development Corporation

"No government money of any kind built or maintains this facility" -Community Awareness in Action, conveneintly located next to Bayview Liquors

All in all, this project left me feeling conflicted.  On the one hand, Bayview-Hunters Point could very well add 35,000-45,000 new residents by 2030 in an environmentally-friendly and energy-conscious manner.  On the other hand, it will without question be the most changed district in San Francisco, and gentrification will inevitably occur.  Situations like this pose some of the most complex and conflicting choices for me as someone who supports infill projects and Smart Growth while at the same time wanting to aid neglected low-income communities in economic development while preventing gentrification.  But then again, the only thing that’s been constant in Bayview-Hunters Point the past 100 years is change.  Hopefully, redevelopment will not be as destructive as postwar urban renewal, and finally stabilize the district while allowing it to remain diverse and affordable.  Whether or not this can actually occur is yet to be seen.

Don’t be afraid to read my paper!

A History of Bayview-Hunters Point, Part 2: Crime, Contamination, and Crisis

The decommissioning of the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard in 1974 signified the collapse of the economic monoculture which the Navy had imposed upon Bayview-Hunters Point, resulting in widespread unemployment and poverty.  Unemployment in the district is consistently the highest in San Francisco, peaking at 13.3% in the 1990 census (although I’d speculate that the current figure is even higher).  In addition, in tract 231.03, which contains the Hunters Point housing projects and is 74% Black, unemployment in the 2000 census was a whopping 22.2%, with 53.4% of the population beneath the poverty level and 79.3% classified as “poor or struggling” by having an income less than two times the poverty level.  Even more concerning, this tract has San Francisco’s highest concentration of children, with 44% of the population under 18 (compared with 14.6% in SF as a whole), yet 57.6 of households have no father present.  Granted, Bayview-Hunters Point is an extremely diverse district, with a sizeable base of middle class homeowners, but exploring the Hunters Point housing projects makes you feel like you’re in a Third-World country, even though you’re just minutes away from wealthy districts such as Bernal Heights.

The layers of isolation of the Hunters Point housing projects--steep terrain, lack of traditional street grid, poor sidewalks, and lack of public transportation access--all help to perpetuate the highest rate of unemployment in San Francisco 22% (2000 Census)

A number of wartime housing projects are now abandoned, yet a large number of San Franciscans still remain trapped in this terrible public housing.

Many early attempts were made to encourage reinvestment in Bayview-Hunters Point even before the Shipyard’s closure, but ultimately these measures failed.  In the late 1960s, Mayor Joseph Alioto designated Bayview-Hunters Point to participate in the Model Cities program to develop a community-based redevelopment plan to rehabilitate dilapidated housing projects, create new community facilities, and attract new business to the area.  However, Mayor Alioto failed to obtain adequate funding, and the proposal died.  Similarly, in the early 1980s, Mayor Dianne Feinstein sought to reinvigorate the Naval Shipyard and attract investment to the area by stationing the USS Missouri there and turining it into a tourist attraction, but this plan also failed.  Therefore, San Francisco government provided little assistance to clean up the economic mess that the Navy left behind.

In addition to an economic mess, the Navy left behind an environmental mess that only recently has started to be cleaned up.  The district is littered with toxic waste, including a filthy power plant, one of California’s largest radioactive sites (the National Radiological Defense Laboratory), and of course the highly polluted shipyard.  It’s no coincidence that Bayview-Hunters Point has the highest infant mortality rate in California, as well as an extremely high rate of athsma and cancer.  While these examples of environmental racism were only a small part of my research, it could make up an entire project in itself.

35 years after its closure, the Naval Shipyard remains a contaminated ghost town

As if the unemployment, poverty, disinvestment, and contamination weren’t enough, since the 1980s Bayview-Hunters Point has been overrun with gangs, drugs, and violence.  With extreme isolation and few other opportunities, youth in Bayview-Hunters Point often turn to gangs and crime and cannot escape the culture of poverty and segregation which has consumed the area.  The district has one of the highest crime rates in San Francisco, and despite having less than 5% of San Francisco’s population, the district consistently accounts for 20-30% of San Francisco’s homicides, peaking at 50% in 2004.  A two year gang rivalry in 2000-2001 resulted in 20 homicides alone.

Bayview-Hunters Point has suffered from decades of crime, poverty, and disinvestment.  Yet, demographic changes, combined with redevelopment, are poised to completely change the district.

A History of Bayview-Hunters Point, Part. 1: The Making of San Francisco’s Ghetto

Hunters Point Shipyard during WWII

San Francisco is a city known for its iconic neighborhoods which have been strongly shaped by their residents—the Chinese in Chinatown, Italians in North Beach, Latinos in the Mission, gays in the Castro, and hippies in Haight-Ashbury.  These neighborhoods enjoy thriving business districts built around both strong internal consumer bases and considerable external investment and tourism.  Their success, therefore, has rested upon their ability to forge their own destinies while at the same time integrate themselves into San Francisco’s prosperous and growing economy.  On the other hand, the story of Bayview-Hunters Point is very different from that of these successful neighborhoods, marred by its inability to control the erratic growth and changes of the area.

Bayview-Hunters Point before WWII (1939, right) and after (1947, left)

While Bayview-Hunters Point originally had a diverse, self-sufficient economy of shrimping, shipbuilding, and manufacturing like others districts in San Francisco, its history since 1941 has been driven by the presence of the Naval Shipyard.  The Navy effectively coopted Bayview-Hunters Point to support the wartime demand for battleships, pushing out other industries and creating a economic dependence which still haunts Bayview-Hunters Point today.  As many as 18,000 people worked at the bustling shipyard during the war, and the district’s population swelled from 14,011 in 1940 to 51,406 in 1950 (which included a substantial increase in the areas Black population, from just 7 in 1940 to 11,080 in 1950).  Nevertheless, the wartime economic boom was not sustainable, leading to a slow decline as the Shipyard deindustrialized and ultimately was decomissioned in 1974.

Population Trends in Bayview-Hunters Point and San Francisco

As jobs left Bayview-Hunters Point, the Black population increased dramatically.  While Blacks made up just 21.6% of the area’s population in 1950 (11,080), in 1970 the proportion increased to 69.1% (20,554).  Meanwhile, as Whites moved to more-attractive suburbs, the White population dropped dramatically from 38,822 (75.5%) in 1950 to 7,312 (24.6%) in 1970, to just 3,453 (9.9%) in 2000.  Much of this increase is due to displacement by the urban renewal of the Fillmore District, which essentially bulldozed a thriving Black neighborhood labeled the “Harlem of the West.”  Because of discriminatory housing policies–in which discrimination by banks and realtors (backed by FHA policies) severly limited Black housing choices–Blacks from the Fillmore went to one of the few places that was deemed acceptable: Bayview-Hunters Point (for more on the history of institutional segregation and discrimination, Massey and Denton’s American Aparteid is a great read).  Yet, even after Civil Rights and the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (a considerable failure), much of the same systems of segregation remained in place in the 70s and 80s, concentrating Blacks within the district.

Racial Trends in Bayview-Hunters Point

San Francisco's Black Population (2000 Census).

At the same time, Bayview-Hunters Point became increasingly isolated from the rest of San Francisco.   Apart from the aforementioned housing discrimination, deindustrialization, and ‘White Flight’, Bayview-Hunters Point was cut off by freeway construction (both 101 and 280), poor public transportation, and urban renewal, leading most San Franciscans to never visit the district.  While Bayview-Hunters Point was sustained by the Naval Shipyard and managed to cope with these challenges into the 1960s, the joblessness which resulted from the shipyard’s closure posed an insurmountable challenge to the district.  Like other segregated, jobless Black districts across the nation, Bayview-Hunters Point would become a ghetto.

Coming up, Part 2: Crime, Contamination, and Crisis

A Three-Part History of Bayview-Hunters Point

Recently, I completed a history of Bayview-Hunters Point, historically San Francisco’s forgotten ghetto.  The area’s history mirrors that of Richmond, West Oakland, Marin City, and other wartime industrial boomtowns, and sheds light on the Bay Area’s history of discrimination toward Blacks.  Over the next few days, I will post a three part series which examines the complex history of the area.

Part 1: The Making of San Francisco’s Ghetto

Part 2: Crime, Contamination, and Crisis

Part 3: Redevelopment or Renewal?

Enjoy!