Save and Conserve

When that bridge connecting two major Interstates in the Bay Area burned down last Sunday, a lot of people initially figured that commuters would be looking at hours of extra time spent finding new routes on over-stuffed roads. As if the normal grind of a stop and go commute isn't bad enough, imagine what happens when a key link in the chain breaks. Can't blame people for assuming the worst.

But that's not what happened this week.

SFist was on the scene early Monday morning with this report:

Reports are that traffic into the maze was light, as probably everyone who commutes over the Bay Bridge, their dogs, and their fish knows what happened. It's still early yet so we'll see what happens tonight and until the overpass gets fixed.

Californian officials turned to the public transportation system, and a lot of the people who normally drive to work opted for mass transit. Nice story, in my opinion. A lot of people making a lot of smart decisions, all of which added up to a pleasant surprise: there were no horrible traffic snarls and commute times were actually lower than the norm:

Traffic congestion was down Monday and Tuesday. The amount of time drivers were stuck in traffic moving slower than 60 mph was down 8 percent around the entire Bay Area, according to Caltrans data. Congestion on Oakland freeways, meanwhile, was down by more than 50 percent, the data showed.

The transit system managed to set a ridership record:

BART ridership, meanwhile, spiked dramatically, hitting an all-time record on Tuesday. The number of BART commuters was up 10.4 percent Tuesday and 5.2 percent Wednesday morning; no figure was available for Monday, when fares were waived.

You can see in that limited amount of data, however, that the amount of extra people riding BART was already declining by Wednesday. That's unfortunate. This not-so-little behavioral experiment, necessitated by a freak accident that melted a steel overpass (ie disaster), was a perfect case study on the relationship between mass transit usage in a major metropolitan area and car-based commute times. Just 5 or 10 percent more people riding BART eased commute times significantly. It's shockingly obvious that mass transit is the answer to many of our issues in this country.

Not only does it get people to work faster on average, it means less consumption of gas and less spewing of emissions. With the repair on the overpass looking to take longer than originally thought, let's hope those NoCals keep making smart decisions. Maybe the whole country will learn something from this, put on the thinking caps, and figure out how to make mass transit a better, more enticing option.