(Just shocking to see Garamendi use the Bay Area as the example here. Worth a read tho. - promoted by Julia Rosen)
California's San Francisco Bay Area, a beacon for the world's most ambitious and entrepreneurial, is in some ways a victim of its own success. Decades of regional growth have created a highway and public transportation infrastructure incapable of meeting the demands of commuters.
"The worsening traffic congestion in the Bay Area is having an increasingly negative impact on the quality of life in the region. The millions of people who commute to work daily lose valuable time, waste gasoline and add to air pollution. Businesses suffer and new enterprises are discouraged from locating in the area, harming the Bay Area economy."
The average Bay Area driver spends 39 hours each year stuck in traffic on a regional freeway. Average time spent idling in traffic will rise to 72 hours per year by 2035 if present trends continue. For a host of reasons - including the needless pollution, wasted fuel, and loss of time at work or with family - minimizing congestion should be a priority for regional leaders. And when possible, enticing commuters into a carpooling arrangement or public transportation should be encouraged.
Fortunately, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the regional transportation authority, with input from Bay Area leaders and activists, has crafted an ambitious regional transit plan: Transportation 2035.
Last night, I went to Gavin Newsom’s town hall at the Rotunda in downtown Oakland. Overall, I wasn’t surprised by the event. He touched on many subjects - health care, education, improving the environment - and his overriding theme for the evening was that while many candidates talk about these issues, he has shown real progress on them. He did fail to mention though that many of the projects he took credit for last night (like universal health care) actually originated in the Board of Supervisors. But that’s pretty typical - he’s a politician and of course is going to take credit for everything he possibly can.
I really appreciated the fact that he took almost an hour of unfiltered questions from the audience. And I could not have been much more pleased when our new AC Transit Director, Joel Young, asked the first question. Joel explained that the state had defunded public transit and asked if Newsom, as governor, would restore public transit funding.
Newsom responded that public transit is so important for the environment and briefly answered, “Yes,” that he would restore the funding. But then instead of explaining why or how, he jumped into a long-winded speech about high speed rail. He started off by saying that he wanted to tell us about a project that he knew not all of us supported because it barely passed. This is a strange thing to say because 63% of Alameda County voters voted in favor of Prop 1A.
He then explained how high speed rail was going to change the state, creating jobs and changing how we thought about and used transportation. He talked about his vision for the “Grand Central Station of the West,” which is what some are calling the Transbay Terminal. Energetically, he explained how this would greatly improve the Bay Area region, making it easy to get from downtown to downtown (Oakland to SF).
And that was it. That was his answer to an AC Transit Director.
I’m happy to announce that a group of East Bay transit advocates that I am a part of have endorsed Elizabeth Echols for Rebecca Kaplan’s vacated At-Large seat on the AC Transit Board of Directors.
When this seat became vacant, leaders of local transit advocacy organizations came together to decide who we thought was best suited to represent bus riders, bicyclists, and pedestrians on the board. We identified seven applicants and invited them to answer our questionnaire, and interviewed six. Our group includes leaders of Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, Friends of BRT, the No on KK Committee, Alameda Transit Advocates, the City of Oakland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley, Livable Berkeley, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, and TransForm.
Going into this endorsement process, I must admit that I was a bit nervous. Rebecca Kaplan was such an effective board member, and I didn’t know if we’d find someone who could match Rebecca’s experience, knowledge, and energy. I was pleasantly surprised by the answers to our questionnaire from all of the candidates and by the new ideas and vision the candidates demonstrated in our interviews. It’s exciting to see so many qualified candidates vying for a position that is so important to me but often gets overlooked by others.
As those of us who have had the wonderful opportunity to live in Berkeley understand, the city isn't always as liberal as it's cracked up to be. The city consistently fought against affordable housing, homeless shelters - it even threatened to stop BART from being built unless it was built underground (a battle Berkeley finally won).
In these instances Berkeley has shown that it is no different from other parts of California that oppose progressive urbanism. Homeowners who are convinced that they can maintain a 1950s style urban landscape even in the face of population pressure, housing costs, and environmental/energy crises tend to dominate public discussions about urban change, and insist that their views be privileged over all others. This is true in supposedly liberal, progressive Berkeley, as much as it is in the San Fernando Valley or - dare I say it - Orange County.
That's what AC Transit is proposing for its busiest route in the East Bay, the 15-mile-long stretch from Bay Fair BART Station in San Leandro to downtown Berkeley.
The $400 million bus rapid transit project would look a lot like light rail, with elevated stops in the middle of the street and dedicated lanes free of cars. Buses would run every 10 minutes and sail through intersections.
But the project may hit a roadblock in Berkeley, where some neighbors and merchants are lobbying furiously against it, saying it would worsen traffic and be the death knell for the beleaguered Telegraph Avenue shopping district.
And if Berkeley rejects the plan, the entire project is imperiled - which leaves some people in town wondering how one of the region's most green-thinking cities could say no to public transit.
