The Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Transit in the San Francisco Bay Area

Richard W. Lee, PhD, AICP
Richard Lee is a lecturer in the Urban and Regional Planning Department at San José State University and a Principal with Transportation Choices for Sustainable Communities. He has been an MTI Research Associate for over 25 years and has over 35 years of experience as a transportation consultant and academic. He holds an MS in Civil Engineering, an MCP, and a PhD in City and Regional Planning, all from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Lee’s research has focused on regional transit coordination and quantitative analysis of the efficacy of various policies in promoting transit and active transportation modes. His consulting experience includes management of regional transportation plans, corridor studies, general plan studies, highspeed rail and transit projects, as well as a wide variety of traffic impact, travel demand management, and transportation policy studies. He has taught transportation planning and conducted research at several universities, including Massey University in New Zealand; University of California, Los Angeles; Cal Poly San Luis Obispo; UC Berkeley; and San José State University.

David Reinke, MS, MRP
Mr. David Reinke is a transportation engineer/economist with over 40 years of experience in travel demand modeling, transportation economics, survey design and management, database management, and software engineering. He has worked on a number of leading-edge projects in travel demand and economics, including development of activity-based travel demand models, development of discrete-choice travel forecasting models, the development of microsimulation-based models for analysis of congestion pricing alternatives, and applications of economic methods to transportation policy analysis. His areas of expertise include policy analysis, advanced statistical methods, machine learning methods, economic analysis, survey design and management, and applications of advanced computational techniques to transportation. He is currently a Research Associate with the Mineta Transportation Institute where he has worked on studies of transit equity and transportation economics. David currently co-chairs the Education and Outreach Subcommittee for the Committee on Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Computing Applications (AED50) at the Transportation Research Board (TRB) and is a past member of TRB committees on Statistics, Economics, and Travel Behavior and Values. He is also a member of the IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Society.

Christopher Ferrell, PhD
Dr. Ferrell began his career in 1995 as a planner for the MTC. He completed his doctoral studies in City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley in 2005 and worked as a consultant with Dowling Associates, Inc. for 10 years before leaving to help form CFA Consultants in 2010. He is currently a principal, board member, and the executive director of Transportation Choices for Sustainable Communities Research and Policy Institute, a 501(c)(3) non-profit. He has been the principal investigator for eight research projects for the Mineta Transportation Institute, where he has been a Research Associate since 2005. His research focuses on the relationships between transportation and land use, livability, travel behavior, transportation policy, and planning-related institutional structures. His research experience includes the study of multimodal transit and freeway corridors, the best practices for building successful transit-oriented development, the effects of transit-oriented development on surrounding property values, the effects of neighborhood crimes on transportation mode choice, and a set of methods, metrics, and strategies for evaluating transit corridor livability. As a practitioner, he has planned mixed-use, infill, and transit-oriented development projects; analyzed the impacts of specific and general plans; planned and implemented intelligent transportation systems; and developed bicycle and pedestrian plans. He has taught several quantitative methods classes in San José State University’s Urban Planning Department and a course in transportation and land use in the City and Regional Planning Department at the University of California, Berkeley.

Charles R. Rivasplata, PhD, MTPS
Charles Rivasplata is a senior lecturer in the Urban and Regional Planning Department at San José State University, and is a lecturer in the Environmental Studies Department at University of California, Santa Cruz. He currently teaches courses in regional and sustainable transportation planning, urban sustainability planning, introductory urban planning and urban geography. In addition, he is a principal at Transportation Choices for Sustainable Communities, a small nonprofit organization; and is a Mineta Transportation Institute (MTI) Research Associate—he has served as the principal investigator on three projects. His research interests include sustainable transportation planning, multimodal transportation planning, transit planning, transit integration, transit regulation, impacts of transit privatization, regional governance, transport for vulnerable populations, and travel demand management (TDM). He holds an MA in Latin American Studies, an MS in Civil Engineering, and an MCP in City and Regional Planning, all from the University of California, Berkeley; and a PhD in Transportation Policy from the University of California, Davis. His doctoral dissertation explored the impacts of Labour Party policy reforms on public transport integration and coordination in the metropolitan areas of Britain. For 28 years, he was a transportation planner in the San Francisco Planning Department and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), involved in the regulation of downtown buildings with TDM requirements; transportation policy development (General Plan and area plans), project review as it concerns transportation policy, and interagency coordination.

John M. Eells, MCP
John Eells is a transportation planner with 44 years of experience preparing comprehensive transportation plans and developing sustainable transportation projects at the local and regional level. John’s experience includes two years in the Legislative Analyst Office in the California State Legislature, five years with the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), seven years as the Transportation Planning Coordinator for Marin County, and thirty years as a consultant. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Master’s degree in City Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. John has assisted in the preparation of Regional Transportation Plans for Sacramento and Lake Tahoe and reviewed Regional Transportation Plans throughout California for conformance with State greenhouse gas reduction requirements for the California Attorney General’s Office. He participated in a joint effort by Caltrans and the California Council on Science and Technology to develop a proposal for a new California Center for Transportation Innovation to coordinate transportation research activities in California. John has also managed major multi-modal transportation studies, evaluated the feasibility of proposed ferry services, and worked on the implementation of several rail transit projects including the Sacramento Light Rail project, the ACE Commuter Rail Service from Stockton to San José, the SMART Commuter Rail Service from Cloverdale to Larkspur, proposed AMTRAK service from Oakland to Reno, and the proposed high speed Maglev Service from Los Angeles to Las Vegas.

Luana Chen
Luana Chen is transportation planner for the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) and a graduate student in the Urban and Regional Planning program at San José State University. She received her Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and Political Science: Public Service from the University of California, Davis in 2019. Her research interests include transportation and land use planning topics with attention to equity and sustainability. Her career goals involve contributing to a better-connected, equitable, and sustainable multi-modal transportation network for the San Francisco Bay Area.