This past year was the most successful year yet for Transbay Coalition’s work to improve transit, biking, and street safety throughout the Bay Area. Thank YOU for helping make that happen. Whether you donated, volunteered, came to an event, or spoke out for a better transportation system in the region, you made our region a better place.
Your transportation advocacy was part of a movement of thousands of other people in the Transbay Coalition network which collectively won so much in 2024 including:
In the South Bay, we got the “Stevens Creek Steering Committee” to officially recommend that the corridor be redesigned to include bus-only lanes, safer street crossings, and protected bike lanes. Big thanks to our volunteer Harry Neil who spearheaded the effort and to our nineteen coalition allies who spoke out and the over 350 people who signed the petition! Next the recommendation goes to the city councils of San Jose, Santa Clara, and Cupertino as well as the VTA board and the Santa Clara County Supervisors where it’ll need to get approved in order to get built. Help make those victories possible in 2025, sign up to volunteer here and chip in funds that can help with things like printing costs for flyers here.
In the East Bay, we stopped AC Transit’s proposed 20% fare hike which would have hurt all riders, especially low-income riders who have no other transportation option, and pushed more people to drive increasing congestion and emissions. Special thanks to our 15 coalition partner groups who formed up in rapid response to the AC Transit proposal, and to our volunteer Josh Gunter who ran point on the campaign.
In Oakland, we saved 100 bus shelters! At 9am on December 4th we were alerted that Oakland City Staffers were going to present a plan to remove 100 bus shelters throughout the city at a meeting starting at 10am that same day. . Bus shelters are key for making transit more comfortable, welcoming, and accessible and bus shelters have been shown to increase boardings at stops by over 80%, so we, along with our partners at the East Bay Transit Riders Union quickly mobilized people from all across The Town to speak out against the proposal. We got the administration to back down and instead commit to a plan of replacing the outdated shelters with more robust ones. Details on the situation are here. Get involved with the effort to improve bus shelters and benches in your community by signing up here. One reason we’re able to mobilize so big and fast is because we’ve built out a big group of supporters like you around the region, and we’ve invested in outreach tools which help us get the word out quickly. Those tools cost a few hundred dollars a year though, so please donate to help us keep the wheels turning!
On the Federal level, we got two Bay Area Congressmembers to sign on to a bill that would provide $80 billion dollars to run transit in communities across the country. When the “Stronger Communities Through Better Transit Act” was first introduced most Bay Area Congressmembers had already signed on, but a few didn’t. We helped coalition allies and constituents in their districts get heard and in response Representatives Swalwell (Alameda County) and Garamendi (Contra Costa & Solano County) signed on to the bill. With over 150 Congressional Co-Sponsors, the need for transit-funding is getting taken increasingly seriously in Washington. Write to your Congressmember about the importance of funding transit here!
At the state-level, as part of a broad coalition of organizations throughout California, we helped get a new law passed, SB 960, which requires Caltrans to make the streets it controls in our communities “comfortable, convenient, and connected” for pedestrians, bicyclists, and transit users. The most dangerous streets in most California communities are owned and designed by Caltrans and Caltrans has consistently been an impediment to getting bike lanes, pedestrian safety improvements and bus-only lanes built on these roads so SB 960 could help usher in a new era of a collaborative Caltrans when it comes to making our streets places for people rather than speeding cars.
In 2024 we also dove into long-term efforts that will carry into 2025 (and possibly beyond). Throughout the Bay Area, our top priority has been winning the funds needed to prevent all transit agency service cuts and to enable a significant expansion of transit service. BART, Caltrain, Muni, and AC Transit are on the cusp of having to slash service which will result in stranded people, clogged roads, dirtier air, and a slower economy. At the same time, not a single Bay Area transit agency is offering the world-class quality transit service our communities deserve. For the vast majority of the 7.5 million people in the Bay Area, and for the millions of people who visit our region each year, transit is still not the fastest, easiest, and most affordable way to get around. To fix this, Bay Area transit needs funding. That is why the Transbay Coalition is a proud member of the Voices for Public Transportation network working to pass a game-changing regional measure to invest in our transit system so that all Bay Area residents can get around affordably and easily while protecting the climate. For that regional measure to be possible, we need the State Legislature to pass a bill which would allow for such a thing – and to do that, we need the region’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) to send a clear message to the legislature in support of that bill. Which is why we have organized throughout the region to push both the MTC and our state legislators to support transit funding. Lots to do to make that possible! Use the tool here to send a letter to your representatives and speak out.
Also in terms of preventing transit cuts, in Contra Costa County, the communities of Pittsburg and Antioch are on the cusp of losing Amtrak service via the San Joaquins even though the stop is heavily-used and in the heart of downtown Antioch. In 2024 we started working in close coordination with ACCE Antioch to prevent this unjust transit cut and invite you to get involved, sign up here. We helped get the area’s Congressmember and Assemblymember firmly on board with the effort to save the station, organized a “Whistlestop Tour” to celebrate the community and protest the proposed closure, and helped set the stage for long-term agreements between the San Joaquins Joint Power Authority, the City of Antioch, and the City of Pittsburg regarding improvements to the station-area and collaboration to help increase ridership even further. We look forward to continuing to work with ACCE Antioch to prevent this terrible service cut from happening and instead helping increase Amtrak use in the community.
We also kicked-off our effort to get the Capitol Corridor train between San Jose, Hayward, Oakland, Contra Costa County, Solano County, Davis and Sacramento electrified so that service can be faster, more frequent, and more reliable. More to come on that front in 2025!
There were also several elections in the Bay Area in 2024! In order to help get candidates’ stances on transportation issues on the record and help educate voters, we led a “Sustainable Transportation Questionnaire” effort during the March Primary and the November General election. The questionnaire covers issues like traffic violence, mobility justice, climate change, and transit service and we work with partner organizations to develop them as well as get candidate responses out to voters. For the March primary we partnered with five organizations and got responses from 60 candidates across the region, for the General Election we had 18 partner organizations and got 160 candidate responses. You can view both questionnaire projects here and we have co-lead candidate questionnaires on transportation issues each election since 2020. Also as part of voter-education this year, we co-organized a Candidate Forum for the City of Berkeley’s District 4 Special Election in May.
All this organizing and winning throughout the year also got us noticed! We earned the East Bay Young Democrats’ “2024 Organization of the Year” award and at their annual gala they said, “The Transbay Coalition is an organization that embodies the spirit of grassroots advocacy and collective action.”
As part of all that, we hosted a TON of events throughout the year. Some were educational like our Earth Day webinar with environmental groups about the role of transit in tackling climate change, and our May Day webinar with AC Transit workers union ATU 192 and Alameda Labor Council about the labor movement and transit. Other events were socials including a Happy Hour in Hayward with Senator Wahab, AC Transit Directors Syed, Murphy McCalley, BART Director Ames, VTA Director Jain, Hayward Councilmember George Syrop and our Pride Month Happy Hour in Sunnyvale with Queer Silicon Valley and Sunnyvale Councilmember Richard Mehlinger.
Of course, most of our events were a mix of fun and education like our Launch Party to celebrate the new *FREE* water shuttle between Alameda and Oakland’s Jack London Square (thanks to Tommaso Boggia for his leadership on the event!). We also hosted several workshops about the MTC’s “Connected Network Plan” and 2050 Bay Area plans to educate the community about the agency’s plans and get feedback from the community to the agency.
Lastly, we had a giant Transit Month this September. For Transit Month 2024 we hosted:
- A four-part event series on “Gendered Perspectives of Bay Area Transit” which included panelists of transit agency board directors, staffers, and advocates and the annual Rosie Ride ferry trip and tour of the Rosie the Riveter Visitor Center in Richmond
- Caltrain Electrification parties in Millbrae, Mountain View and Sunnyvale
- The Antioch Whistlestop Tour and Celebration train ride from Oakland to Antioch complete with a rally featuring Antioch Mayor Lamar Hernandez-Thorpe, an Assemblymember Grayson, and a tour of historic downtown Antioch
- Transit adventures like “Transit to Trail Across the Golden Gate” transit hike, The “Craft of Transit” crafting on BART ride to the San Jose Fleamarket, the “Caltrain Weekend Morning Cafe Crawl,” “Transit to the Arcade” adventure in San Jose, and supported the “BART & Bike to the Walnut Creek Walnut Festival” and “San Antonio Infill Station Site Visit”
- We also put on the “Imagining East Bay Transit in the year 2124” webinar and in the lead up to the month hosted a “How and Why to host a Bay Area Transit Month” training
2024 was a huge year and we’ve got even bigger plans for 2025 involving more parts of the Bay, and pushing for more improvements big and small. We couldn’t have done it without our network of volunteers, partners, and donors who make it all possible. As an organization with no staff, the only reason we can get so much done is because everyone chips in the way they can and so we welcome your involvement in whatever way that works for you. If you can donate financially which helps us with all sorts of things from printing out flyers to keeping the website up, please do so here. If you are able to help out by donating some of your time or skills please join in the effort by signing up here to get more involved.
And if you have a change you would like to make happen that would help your community be a better place to walk, bike, or take transit – let us know! We are here to help people throughout Alameda, Contra Costa, Solano, Sonoma, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara Counties organize and advocate for transportation changes that make our region more sustainable, welcoming, and equitable for all.
There is a lot of work ahead and we look forward to continuing the push for a better world with you!