Scooting Along the San Francisco Bay Front in a Water Taxi

View the full episode transcript

Views of the water are a central part of living in the San Francisco Bay Area. Whether it’s driving over a San Francisco hill only to be met by a sweeping view out towards the Bay Bridge and Alcatraz, cycling up Hawk Hill on the Marin headlands, or walking the wetlands that border much of the shoreline — the bay is always there. But unless you are one of the lucky few who commute by ferry or own a boat, chances are good many of us don’t spend that much time out on the water itself. Which is a bit of a shame, really.

A Bay Curious listener named Lee Kempf was showing some visitors around San Francisco and noticed yellow boats buzzing along the Embarcadero. She wondered, “Does San Francisco finally have a water taxi service? If so, is it a trial run, or is it here to stay? Is it private or municipal?”

On a sunny February day, I met up with Captain Tom of the San Francisco Water Taxi company at Pier 15, near the Exploratorium. He’s the head captain of the water taxi business, which has been operating for eight years but is still a little under the radar. It’s a private service but operates with the permission of the San Francisco Port.

I hop in the 29-foot-long boat, painted a cheery yellow with the classic taxi black and white checkerboard along the side, and grab a seat. Captain Tom says the taxi has a capacity for six passengers, but it’s spacious. We fire up the engine and head north to pick up some folks who’ve scheduled a ride.

As we skim along the bayfront, I appreciate a view that I don’t get that often — looking at downtown San Francisco from the water. We passed Coit Tower, piers with buildings that have graffiti I’d never seen before, a decommissioned submarine, real fishing boats and lots of aquatic life. It’s fun to see Alcatraz and Angel islands in the distance, to watch the different types of boats navigate around one another and feel the wind in my hair.

We slow down to pull into the harbor at Pier 39 and pass the looming hull of the SS Jeremiah O’Brien, a World War II Liberty Ship that you can board and explore. From the water, it is humongous. With a little toot of the horn, we go around the seawall and glide into a berth where we meet Jill and her son Reed, who are visiting from Maryland.

“I didn’t really know what I was signing up for, but I’m game,” Jill said. The pair are escaping frigid East Coast temperatures for a week of vacation, and they seem impressed with the views of the city from the water.

“It’s a nice way to ride and see without the traffic,” Jill said. “I’m not complaining about the traffic. It’s a city. But [when] you’re not familiar with the streets, to see and drive is extra, so this is nice.”

The nitty gritty

“I wanted to do something people could really enjoy,” San Francisco Water Taxi Owner David Thomas said. He had a great experience with a similar service in Baltimore and thought San Francisco should have a low-cost service that gets people out on the water.

“Slowly but surely, people find out,” he said. “It’s the best-kept secret in the bay.”

The water taxi has six locations along the Embarcadero. The service operates by appointment or when a patron calls for a ride. It’s not like a bus or train operating on a set schedule. The most northern stop along the bayfront is Hyde Street Pier, near Ghirardelli Square. It also stops at Pier 39, a popular tourist destination, and Pier 15 at the Exploratorium Museum. They used to stop Pier 1.5, a public dock next to the Ferry Building, but it was damaged during the winter storms of 2023 and is currently undergoing repairs. For a few extra dollars, the taxi will also take riders south of the Bay Bridge to Pier 40 and Oracle Baseball Park, as well as Pier 52 at Chase Basketball Center.

This story is part two in the Bay Curious transportation episode. Listen to the entire episode below.

All rides north of the Bay Bridge cost $10, but a hop-on-hop-off fare is available for $15, which allows a rider to use the service all day. Kids under 15 are $5, and kids under 5 years old are free. Thomas also said chances are good any kids on board will get the chance to drive the boat, too. They also have a promotion called Mutt Mondays — passengers with dogs get to ride for free.

“There are some weird dogs and weird dog owners out there, and they make our day,” Thomas said.

Both tourists and locals ride the taxi, in part because it’s a way of getting out on the bay at a lower cost than chartering a tour boat.

“We’re surprised to see how much people love coming back,” Thomas said. “A lot of people are locals that figured out that by paying 10 bucks they can take their friends out on [what would be a] $50 or $60 tour.”

The service has been around for eight years, Thomas said, but it took a hit during COVID-19. More recently, interest in water travel, especially for commuting, has picked back up. He’s exploring more cross-bay and southern routes, although it’s hard to find a price point that works for everyone, he said. Partnering with electric boats could be one solution, but he said the technology is still too expensive and limited.

“If we could get one at the right price,” Thomas said he’d be interested but doesn’t expect that to happen for another ten years or so.

And pro tip: If you head to Angel Island but miss the last ferry home, call the San Francisco Water Taxi, and they’ll come and rescue you.

Episode Transcript

Olivia Allen-Price: Every weekday morning, millions of us Bay Area residents get out of our cozy beds … and embark on mystifying migration unlike any other on planet Earth.

Music reminiscent of a nature documentary begins

Paul Lancour (in scene): All right heading out the door. It is 7:00 on the nose. The sun will not rise for another 20 minutes or so.

Olivia Allen-Price: This is Paul Lancour, one of my colleagues at KQED.

Paul Lancour (in scene): Leaving my home in Novato. I’m going to make the short drive to the downtown Novato SMART train.

Olivia Allen-Price: He’s setting off on a daily ritual so many of us humans make. Not for food or water exactly, like you might expect from the rest of the animal kingdom, but … for work.

Music shift to hurried 1950s-era productivity music

Olivia Allen-Price: I’m talking about our daily commute, of course. Today, we’ve asked Paul to trade in his daily commute by car into KQED’s offices in San Francisco for a public transit bonanza. Along the way, he’ll be riding the somewhat-new SMART train through Marin County. SMART stands for Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, by the way.

Olivia Allen-Price: Why are we sending him on this mission? To answer this question from a listener…

Brian Auger: My name is Brian Auger. My question is has the North Bay SMART train had any actual impact on relieving traffic on Highway 101?

Olivia Allen-Price: We’ll be checking in with Paul throughout the episode as he makes his way to the KQED offices to deliver the answer for Brian … but along the way, we’ll answer two other commuter questions. Listener Laurel Hetchinova thinks drivers have gotten a little out of control recently.

Music ends

Laurel Hetchinova: Are drivers around here maybe more aggressive lately, or is it maybe just me?

Olivia Allen-Price: Her question won a recent Bay Curious public voting round. And then finally, is there an antidote to all this commuting misery floating on the Bay?

Lee: Hi, This is Lee from Berkeley. Does San Francisco finally have a water taxi service? 

Olivia Allen-Price: We’ve got a full episode of good stuff just ahead on Bay Curious. I’m Olivia Allen-Price. And oh, it looks like Paul has made it to the Novato Downtown SMART train station…

Train bell and ambi of the train station fades in

Paul Lancour (in scene): (Beep!) That’s me tapping into the fare station here. Train departing at 7:33.

Voice over speaker on train says: Next station, Larkspur.

Olivia Allen-Price: And he’s off! Stay with us.

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Olivia Allen-Price: We’re tackling some of your transit questions today as Paul makes his journey from his Novato home to KQED’s offices in San Francisco. Looks like his ride on the SMART train is complete, and he’s onto the next leg of his journey an hour and a half after it began.

Paul Lancour (in scene): On the Larkspur ferry getting ready to depart at 8:29. What a lovely morning. Certainly beats sitting in traffic.

Sound of ferry boat pulling away from dock

Olivia Allen-Price: We’ll learn soon if the SMART train is making a dent in traffic on Highway 101. But one thing we know Paul won’t be contending with today is aggressive drivers.

Curious music begins

Olivia Allen-Price: Our listener, Laurel, feels like the roadways here have gotten spicier than they once were…

Laurel Hetchinova: It feels kind of like every time we go out, there are, I don’t know, maybe like half a dozen going 90 to 100 and just weaving in between everybody else. And I remember that it was kind of like that during the initial weeks of shelter-in-place when fewer cars were out on the road but it feels like it’s still happening even though traffic’s back to normal.

Olivia Allen-Price: To help us figure out what’s what, we’ve got Dan Brekke in the studio today. He’s the reporter and editor of In-transit KQED’s daily blog about how we get around. Welcome, Dan.

Dan Brekke: Hi, Olivia.

Olivia Allen-Price: First off, Dan, can you tell us why the pandemic was such a watershed moment on our streets and highways?

Dan Brekke: Well, our reality changed overnight from having very crowded roads to much less crowded roads. And so that invited a different kind of behavior. Especially a lot more speeding than we’d ever seen before.

Olivia Allen-Price: I’m with Laurel. It seems like a lot of dangerous behaviors that picked up during the pandemic and then just have never went away.

Dan Brekke: And it turns out there’s a little survey data out there that backs up our impressions. There’s a place at UC Berkeley called the Safe Transportation Research and Education Center, or SafeTREC, and they participate in a yearly survey on what drivers feel they’re seeing on the road. And one of the questions that the survey asks is, “Since the onset of the Covid 19 pandemic, what is the biggest change in behaviors you have noticed from drivers?” And statewide the most common answer was aggressive driving and road rage, with speeding coming in a close second. So for a lot of folks, at the very least, we’re perceiving that these things are getting worse.

Olivia Allen-Price: Okay. But let’s look at reality. Does the California Highway Patrol have any kind of data to support or refute what so many of us are seeing?

Dan Brekke: The officer I talked to at the Golden Gate division of the CHP, Andrew Barkley, said that anecdotally, and this is where the CHP comes down, it’s anecdotal evidence. people are seeing it more.

Andrew Barkley: I don’t have any true scientifically backed answer to say, this is exactly what’s happening.

Dan Brekke: I think the most dramatic piece of evidence that is out there is from the first year of the pandemic. I think most of us would agree driving over 100 miles an hour is a pretty serious breach of driving etiquette and probably unsafe. When the pandemic happened, the number of citations doubled from 2019, the full year before the pandemic, to 2020, the year that shelter-at-home orders were in force. So, you know, that number has gone down since 2020, but it hasn’t gone back to where it was before the pandemic started. So that’s, you know, one indicator, objective indicator, of wilder behavior on the road.

Olivia Allen-Price: Got it. So speed is up. But what about reckless driving? Is California Highway Patrol handing out more tickets for that?

Andrew Barkley: You hear us referring to reckless driving. Typically, we are referring to three specific violations, and it’s normally a combination of speed, following too close and unsafe lane change.

Dan Brekke: It’s interesting that the number of those citations is lower for the most part, than it was the last year before the pandemic. So what do we make of that? It isn’t necessarily that people are driving more carefully. It could be that there’s less enforcement. We really don’t know.

Olivia Allen-Price: Driving, we are perceiving it’s getting worse, that’s definitely universal. There are a couple of indicators we are at least speeding a lot more than before the pandemic. But everything kind of looks flat, but we cannot put too much weight into any of this because the big question, of course, is enforcement, which is a moving variable.

Dan Brekke: Look, there are some other things you can point to. Traffic deaths went up a lot in 2020 and 2021, and continued going up in 2022. They seem to have eased off, declined slightly in California last year, 2023. But the higher number of traffic fatalities, especially in 2020 and 2021, with lower amounts of traffic, points frankly, to speeding. The number of people killed in crashes where speeding was the primary crash factor, as the CHP puts it, was up 16% in California from 2020 to 2021. So, I mean, that’s objective evidence that there’s actual behavior happening that’s leading to some of these things that we’re seeing and that we perceive.

Olivia Allen-Price: All right. Well, Dan Brekkie, editor, reporter, traffic whiz for In Transit, KQED’s relatively new transit blog. Thank you for joining us.

Dan Brekke: You’re welcome.

Synthy piano music

Olivia Allen-Price: Let’s check in on Paul, who, last we heard, was on the ferry from Larkspur…

Sound of downtown San Francisco street

Paul Lancour (in scene): Well I’ve arrived. I’m in San Francisco. 10 minutes after 9. So 2 hours and 10 minutes after leaving my house. I’m here! The problem is my office is over in the Mission/Potrero Area, miles away from where I am now. So, the journey continues I’m on my way to BART…

Sound of BART train whirring into the station

Olivia Allen-Price: Oh boy, well at least he got to enjoy that scenic ferry ride. I think that ferry riders are probably the happiest bunch of commuters in the region. There’s even a bar on board!

Olivia Allen-Price: But the ferries aren’t the only boats offering transportation on the water.

Lee: Last fall I noticed tiny yellow boats along the San Francisco shoreline a couple of times.

Olivia Allen-Price: Most of the time there’s just one of these bright yellow speed boats roaming along the Embarcadero. They’re easy to spot because they have a cute little black and white checkerboard trim, just like you’d see on a retro car taxi. We sent Bay Curious producer Katrina Schwartz out to learn more about this boutique transit option.

Captain Tom shouting to passersby: $10 Water Taxi Ride! Save yourself a long boring walk! 

Katrina Schwartz: I meet Captain Tom of the San Francisco Water Taxi Company along the Embarcadero at Pier 15. The little yellow boat is pulled up at the Exploratorium…near a small sign that says “Water Taxi.”

Captain Tom: Best 10 bucks you’ll spend all day!

Katrina Schwartz: The water taxis come when you call…or you can make an appointment. There’s no set schedule.

Captain Tom: Big step, watch your head

Katrina Schwartz: One step down, and I’m on the small boat with three bench seats and two captain’s chairs up front. There’s a top to help protect passengers from sun and spray.

Captain Tom: The water taxi operates out of Pier 39.

Katrina Schwartz: They make six different stops at popular places along the San Francisco bay front.

Captain Tom: Starting from Hyde Street Pier.

Katrina Schwartz: Near Ghirardelli Square.

Captain Tom: To Pier 39.

Katrina Schwartz: A popular tourist destination. As well as Pier 15 at the Exploratorium museum,

Captain Tom: Pier 1.5, next to the Ferry Building, which is temporarily closed for repairs.

Katrina Schwartz: And they go south of the Bay Bridge for a few extra bucks.

Captain Tom: Pier 40 and Oracle Baseball Park and Pier 52 at Chase Basketball Center.

Katrina Schwartz: Rides north of the bridge cost 10 dollars each … or you can pay fifteen to get a hop-on, hop-off fare to ride all day.

Captain Tom: Quick safety chat. Life vests are under the white seats…

Katrina Schwartz: After the safety chat we set off north in the 29-foot yellow boat to pick up some passengers at Pier 39. I’m sitting in the co-pilot seat, which swivels, so I’ve got great views…and there are three bench seats behind me.

Ambi of boat speeding up

Captain Tom: I saw an ad on Craigslist. And I went from part-time to full-time, to managing the business in three months.

Katrina Schwartz: Captain Tom says the water taxi business took a hit during COVID, but it’s gradually picking back up.

Captain Tom: So you’ve got Angel Island over there, which is an old immigration island. Alcatraz straight ahead.

Katrina Schwartz: We slow down as we pull into the harbor at Pier 39, a massive liberty ship from WWII, the Jeremiah O’Brien, towering above us.

Honk horn

Katrina Schwartz: The folks we’re picking up, Jill and her son Reed from Maryland, scheduled their ride. They’re waiting by the water taxi sign at Pier 39.

Jill: I didn’t really know what I was signing up for, but I’m game.

Katrina Schwartz: They’re visiting to get away from frigid East Coast temperatures. And today, San Francisco is showing off with a beautiful, warm, sunny day.

Katrina Schwartz to Reed and Jill (in scene): So what did you guys think, worth ten bucks?

Reed: Yeah, definitely like the view.

Jill: It’s a nice way to ride and see without the traffic. I’m not complaining about the traffic, it’s a city. But you’re not familiar with the streets, so to see and drive is extra!

Katrina Schwartz: They’re headed to the Exploratorium for some science fun and then eating and shopping at the Ferry Building before they head back north in the water taxi.

Captain Tom to Jill and Reed (in scene): So we’ll plan on something around 3? So just call me when you get a better idea of your plans. I should be back in the area.

Katrina Schwartz: Since most of the water taxi stops are along the Embarcadero, I thought most of the passengers would be tourists, like Jill. But Captain Tom says it’s actually a 50-50 split with locals.

Captain Tom: People will go for walks and they’ll walk out the Embarcadero and then and, especially with their dogs, and they’ll get to up Hyde Street Pier and they’ll just get tired and they don’t want to walk home, you know, another hour, especially if it’s late on a Sunday.

Katrina Schwartz: The taxi will also pick you up if you miss the last ferry off Angel Island or want to head over to Tiburon.

Captain Tom: If you haven’t gotten out on San Francisco Bay, you’re missing one of the best things about San Francisco.

Katrina Schwartz: Captain Tom says there’s a lot of interest in water taxis for commuting, and they’re exploring more cross-bay and southern routes, but gas is expensive and their boats only seat six passengers. It’s hard to find a price point that works for everyone.

Captain Tom: So we could definitely do it if we could just find a, you know, the right, cost effective way to do it. And I think electric boats will advance that.

Katrina Schwartz: He says they’re exploring some options.

Captain Tom: I think it’ll be a really exciting time period for water travel in the next couple of years.

Katrina Schwartz: Captain Tom lets me off at Pier 52 near the Chase Center and sets off to pick up his next fare. But not before reminding me about Mutt Mondays…

Captain Tom: On Mondays, if you bring your dog, you ride for free.

Horn toot + water lapping sounds

Bass guitar music begins

Olivia Allen-Price: That was Bay Curious producer Katrina Schwartz. Paul’s journey to the KQED offices continues as he rides up the BART escalator.

Paul Lancour (in scene): 9:33 and I have arrived 16th and Mission. Completing the latest leg in my journey. And I see a Muni bus coming, so I think that’s how I’m going to complete my transit adventure today. Take the 22 Fillmore and take it over to Bryant Street.

Sound of bus hydraulic system engaging as it lowers to the curb

Olivia Allen-Price: A short bus ride later. A quick walk to the station. Into the studio. Paul, welcome! You made it. What the epic journey! What’s the final count on how many modes of transit you took today?

Paul Lancour (in studio): Well let’s see, I drove my car to the station, took the train, to the ferry, to BART, to the bus.

Olivia Allen-Price: And you walked to the ferry…

Paul Lancour: There was some walking in there as well. So I guess that would be six modes of transportation.

Olivia Allen-Price: Wow. Quite the feat. Well, this is all in service of answering listener Brian’s question about whether the SMART Train, which connects Sonoma and Marin counties, has improved traffic along the 101 corridor through that section. Many of the drivers on that stretch of road, like you, are trying to get to San Francisco for work.

Paul Lancour: That’s right, it’s a commute I make just about every day. And I find anecdotally it’s just about as bad as it’s ever been. Driving usually takes me an hour and fifteen minutes to get to work. Today, taking public transit most of the way, took two hours and 40-some minutes. So I think this really illustrates one of the challenges of the SMART train, and it’s true for all of public transit, for that matter, that if you need to transfer and use a few different agencies, it gets less time efficient.

Olivia Allen-Price: The SMART train is pretty new, so for folks who aren’t familiar – where does the train go?

Paul Lancour: Yeah, so SMART opened its first stations back in 2017 and has been gradually expanding its service since then. The plan is to build it out so it connects Cloverdale in the north to Larkspur in the South where the current terminus is.

Olivia Allen-Price: Well, let’s get to Brian’s question. Just how many people are opting for the train over driving?

Paul Lancour: Well it’s kinda hard to say precisely because commute patterns have changed so much since the pandemic. CalTrans says there is 40% less traffic on 101 between Larkspur and Sonoma Airport Blvd than there was in 2019. But that’s all times of the day, all days of the week, most likely a result of hybrid work environment as well. Eddy Cumins is the SMART General Manager and he did some of his own calculations.

Eddy Cumins: So calendar year 2023. SMART carried over 750,000 riders. The average trip length of those riders is 22.2 miles. So if you do that math, that equates to 16.6 million passenger miles on the train.

Olivia Allen-Price: That sounds like a lot!

Paul Lancour: It does, but you have to put that in perspective. Caltrans says the total vehicle miles traveled between Larkspur and Airport Blvd in a year is more than 1.8 billion. So SMART represents only the tiniest fraction of that.

Olivia Allen-Price: So, is the answer here that SMART is not making a very big dent in traffic.

Paul Lancour: That is the answer, yes. Not yet. But SMART has only been around for a few years, and they’re still building it out. By contrast, BART has been around since the 70s, and its route has impacted all sorts of things – development around the trains, where offices get built, where other busses or trains link up. These systems tend to get more useful with time. And I should add, SMART is the only Bay Area transit system that saw an increase in riders after the pandemic. That’s in part because they’ve been working hard to change how they offer service to meet the community’s needs better, as Eddy Cummins told us…

Eddy Cumins: We noticed a significant increase in bicycle boardings. And so one of the things we did is, we had some flip seats on the side of the train. We removed those seats in order to create additional bicycle parking.

Paul Lancour: Yes, and on my commute, I did meet passengers like Jason who brought their bike on the train.

Paul Lancour to Jason (in scene): Jason, where you coming from?

Jason to Paul (in scene): Cotati.

Paul Lancour to Jason (in scene): And it looks like you took your bike.

Jason to Paul (in scene): Yes, about a 10-minute ride from my house to a SMART station. This morning I’m going to ride from the end of the train into San Francisco. So a little over an hour. I drove in last Thursday, and it took me about 2.5 hours in traffic. And this is going to take me two hours. So, yeah, it’s definitely less stressful than driving to sit around just, you know, read your phone, get some work done or something. You get to be productive.

Paul Lancour: When I met him, Jason was actually going to ride from Larkspur into the city, so he was getting his workout for the day as well. And another thing SMART has done to cater to community needs is make it free for school children taking field trips.

Eddy Cumins: There was a field trip last week and the kids all wrote us letters thanking the smart train. And so that’s beautiful.

Paul Lancour: They also kept reduced-price fares. It’s just a dollar fifty per zone. And they’ve altered the schedule to meet community needs.

Olivia Allen-Price: So who is the SMART train working for, like, right now?

Paul Lancour: Well, on the car I was on today, I met all kinds of folks. I was able to get a seat, but it was pretty busy. I met kids who are going to school, people commuting within Marin County. And it’s really pretty nice. People generally seem to find it to be a pleasant ride.

Groovy music begins

Olivia Allen-Price: Paul, you’ve been a very intrepid reporter to take on this long commute. Thank you for bringing us those answers.

laughing

Paul Lancour: Yeah, absolutely my pleasure. I think I’d better start heading home soon if I want to make it before dusk.

Olivia Allen-Price: Good luck.

Olivia Allen-Price: Bay Curious is made in San Francisco at member-supported KQED. Our show is produced by Katrina Schwartz, Christopher Beale and me, Olivia Allen-Price. Thanks as always to our support crew: Jen Chien, Katie Sprenger, Cesar Saldana, Maha Sanad, Xorje Oliveras, Dan Brekke, Paul Lancour, Holly Kernan and the whole KQED Family. Drive safe! Try a boat or a train! And uh … have a great week!