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TRANSACTIONS NEWSLETTER ONLINE

September 2002

Facts and Figures:
Trends in Bay Area Air Quality and Public Transit Spending

What is the Bay Area’s air quality record?
The Bay Area is the cleanest major air basin in California for the current federal one-hour ozone standard of 0.12 parts per million, as well as the new eight-hour federal ozone standard of 0.08 parts per million.

The Bay Area’s success in reducing ozone is clearly evident in the top graph to the right, which shows overall trends since the 1960s — when the federal standard was exceeded on as many as 65 days annually. By comparison, in 2001 the federal standard was not violated on more than one day at any of the region’s monitoring sites. Violations generally are confined to the eastern, inland portions of the Bay Area, such as Concord and Livermore, during hot spells.*

To meet the current federal ozone standard, a monitoring site cannot record more than three violations over three consecutive years.

* The ozone season runs from May through October.


Chart: Bay Area Ozone Trends

Chart: Transit Spending as Percent of Funding in Long-Range Transportation Plan
How do we stack up on transit and highway spending?
Since 1982, the size of the Bay Area’s active transit fleet has grown 18
percent, the number of hours in which transit operations are in service has jumped 32 percent, and transit agencies’ operating budgets (in 2001 dollars) have climbed 36 percent. The 2001 Regional Transportation Plan calls for continued heavy investment in public transit. In fact, over the next 25 years, the Bay Area will devote more of its transportation funds to public transit (77 percent) and less to highway lane additions (4 percent) than any other major urban area in the country (lower graph).

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