San Francisco County Transportation Authority
Moving the City

Our final goal area asks how we can make transportation investment and policy changes that improve the environment, in particular focused on reducing emissions created at the tailpipe of automobiles. For this scenario, we ask, what it would take to achieve San Francisco's greenhouse gas emission reductions targets. This target, to reduce on-road mobile transportation emissions to 56% below 1990 levels by 2035, is based on local ordinance (81-08), which sets a target to reduce emissions economy-wide to 80% below 1990 levels by 2050 (that's the amount climate scientists say we need to achieve worldwide to stabilize the climate/prevent major sea level rise, extreme heat events, and other impacts).

For this scenario, we evaluated:

• Increases in the penetration of electric vehicles into San Francisco's private vehicle fleet (9–16% of vehicles are electric vehicles in 2035)
• Local road pricing (a $6 peak period toll in downtown San Francisco)
• Transit network expansion (including new designated transit lanes and rail extensions; (See a map of representative transit projects.)
• Employer subsidized transit passes and additional transportation demand management (TDM)
• Mandatory transit passes in new development and additional TDM including carshare
• Bicycle improvements including a network of cycletracks (protected, separated bike lanes)
• Personalized outreach to encourage non-auto trips
• School TDM (both Safe Routes to School type investments, and outreach/tools to facilitate school carpool, schoolpools, both at primary and secondary schools)

Despite how aggressive this scenario was, it did not get us close to our goals, so we also conducted an even more aggressive sensitivity test, that includes a regional roadway pricing strategy that doubles the auto operating cost, and that assumes an even more aggressive electric vehicle penetration rate (up to a 25% penetration rate). Figure 1 below shows the performance of both the scenario and the aggressive sensitivity test. While the scenario achieves a 30-40% reduction from the trend, that still leaves a 1.1-1.3 metric ton gap and comes with a price tag of about $10 Billion; the aggressive sensitivity test gets us a 65-85% reduction from the trend, leaving a 0.3 to 0.7 metric ton gap.

It's important to note that each strategy analyzed comes with tradeoffs in terms of performance, cost-effectiveness, political acceptability, and co-benefits. We will consider these tradeoffs in greater detail in the next phase of analysis. One important tradeoff to mention here is that while electric vehicles are very effective in terms of amount of GHGs they could reduce, they do not contribute to the co-benefits that the other strategies focused on reducing vehicle travel do (reduced congestion, increased livability, etc.). They also raise important, and relatively uncharted, questions about what the public sector role vs. the private sector role should be in accelerating penetration of electric vehicles.

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