Redistricting is one of my biggest passions and California's redistricting situation is no exception. I have published three maps for California's Congressional redistricting and the most recent one is here: http://racesandredistricting.b... On May 20th, I decided to share my thoughts with them because the commission would be holding a public comment meeting in Santa Rosa. Although California is keeping all 53 of its congressional districts, slow population growth increases the likelihood that the Bay Area will lose a district. Some proposals say that Marin County should be combined with San Francisco and as a Marinite, I like San Francisco but we do not belong in the same district. We belong with Sonoma County instead.
As I drove north to Santa Rosa, I looked at the traffic on the highway. This further highlighted my argument that Marin County and Sonoma County were communities of interest in the way they shared commuting issues. San Francisco did not have these same issues. I was not surprised to hear three people mention the traffic in their public comments about how the similar traffic issues connect Marin County and Sonoma together.
On September 15, 2010, life as Shing Ma "Steve" Li knew it ended suddenly. On that warm summer morning about a month and half ago, two men knocked on the door of his San Francisco apartment. Inside, 20-year-old Steve was getting ready for a full day of classes at the City College of San Francisco. He could not have imagined that within the next couple hours he would be arrested and detained as a fugitive criminal. In the ensuing two days, Immigration Customs and Enforcement (ICE) processed Steve and his mother and sent them to their detention facility in Sacramento. Several weeks later, he was moved to the ICE detention center in Florence, Arizona, where he now awaits deportation.
Steve had no idea of his family's status. Though he was born in Lima, Peru on July 3, 1990, Steve grew up right here in San Francisco. He attended Francisco Middle School and graduated from George Washington High School in 2008. Of ethnic Chinese dissent, Steve's family arrived in San Francisco in 2002 after escaping from hardships in Peru. His parents came to America hoping for a fresh start. Steve was currently enrolled at the City College of San Francisco and was preparing to transfer to San Francisco State University where he planned on studying to become a nurse.
Sadly, Steve could have been spared this awful situation if Congress had passed the Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors Act, also known as the DREAM Act. This bill provides relief for certain inadmissible or deportable alien students who arrived in the U.S. as children, who graduate from US high schools, who are of good moral character, and have been in the country continuously for at least five years prior to the bill's enactment. Qualifying students have the opportunity to earn conditional permanent residency if they complete two years in the military or two years of schooling at a four-year institution of higher learning.
The DREAM Act will get another vote later this year, as an amendment to the National Defense Reauthorization Act. The DREAM Act has bipartisan co-sponsors, and majority of the Senate has voted for it in the past. We hope and pray that Congress will pass the DREAM Act this year.
I was Steve's professor at City College of San Francisco, and along with Steve's other teachers and friends, we are writing to everyone we know to publicize Steve's unjust detention, to educate people about the DREAM Act, and to try to forestall Steve's deportation in the hope that the DREAM Act will be passed through Congress this year.
The SF Chronicle reports that PG&E planned to fix part of the pipeline that exploded in San Bruno - but last year delayed the fix to spend the money elsewhere. The big question is, did that delay happen so PG&E could spend $46 million to try and undermine local democracy in their attempt to pass Prop 16?
Pacific Gas and Electric Co. asked state regulators three years ago for permission to spend $4.87 million to replace a portion of the same natural gas pipeline that ruptured last week and set a San Bruno neighborhood on fire....
Neither project has come to fruition. The South San Francisco project was moved down the priority list and the money spent elsewhere, and the southern project is still pending approval from state regulators. And now some observers wonder if the utility missed a chance to spot flaws in the pipeline that could have contributed to the Sept. 9 explosion, which killed four people, left three missing and destroyed 37 homes.
As the article explains, PG&E's deferred maintenance policies are nothing new:
In one infamous case, a 1998 report from the California Public Utilities Commission found that the utility had taken $77.6 million that was supposed to be spent trimming trees near power lines - a vital step in wildfire prevention - and used it to boost corporate profits instead.
So what might have PG&E wanted to do with its money instead of repairing a pipeline that was known to be among the most dangerous in the country, desperately in need of repair?
Well, it was in late 2009 when PG&E leadership decided to spend millions of dollars to pass Prop 16, which would limit local democracy in order to preserve PG&E's monopoly. PG&E executives warned shareholders to expect a loss in 2010 because of spending on Prop 16, which would indicate that it may well have been a factor in PG&E's decision to defer maintenance on the pipeline that later exploded.
Once again, as I explained recently, this shows why we should not leave important infrastructure like this in the hands of private corporations. It needs to be publicly owned and operated to be effective and safe, because corporations will always have the incentive to spend to protect their profits and their market position instead of provide safe services to the public.
As early as 2007, Pacific Gas & Electric Company officials considered a portion of the gas main that ruptured and triggered the deadly San Bruno blaze on Thursday to be at "unacceptably" high risk for failure, according to documents obtained by The Bay Citizen.
The documents raise new questions about the extent of PG&E's responsibility for the biggest disaster in the utility's 105-year history in California.
The utility company had planned to repair by 2013 a 7,481-foot long section of pipe, which it deemed-based on internal risk assessments made in 2007 - one of PG&E's "top 100 highest risk line sections."
The obvious question is "why 2013?" If the pipeline was so dangerous - among the top 7% most dangerous pipelines in the nation, according to the AP - then you'd think PG&E would have moved more quickly to replace it.
But that wasn't done. Apparently, PG&E had other priorities, which included spending $46 million in a failed effort to limit local democracy and protect their monopoly with Proposition 16.
Others are asking the same question, including Christine Pelosi:
These are funds that could have been used to repair what the utility's own survey said was a high risk pipeline on the SF peninsula. So why make the decision for politics not pipelines? If the spending decisions were not related, why not? At the very least, PG&E should have a moratorium on political spending until they compensate the San Bruno victims and fix the pipelines.
"Ratepayer say on utility pay" is a good start, but this tragedy should force us to ask an even more fundamental question: Wouldn't we be better off with PG&E under public ownership?
We keep hearing from the right, and from even neoliberal Democrats, that the private sector can do things better than the public sector, and so we should turn over things currently handled by government to the private sector.
Yet what we see in PG&E's case is that they would rather protect their monopoly rather than provide safe and efficient service. $46 million would have bought a lot of new pipeline and paid the training and labor costs of the technicians who would install it. This is typical of the private sector, where capturing rents and using their wealth to fend off competition is preferred to innovation and providing quality services.
The public sector can always do a better job providing for these core services, and indeed many municipalities, such as Seattle, have publicly owned electric and gas utilities that haven't had these problems.
But the private sector and their neoliberal allies in both parties long ago learned that the income streams currently going to public services - and the competition to corporate wealth and power posed by those services - can be undermined if government is defunded. Without proper funds, government services quickly deteriorate in quality, and the public becomes susceptible to an argument that the private sector can do things better. As more money and services are then handed over to the private sector, the public sector enters a downward spiral, with worse service quality that fuels calls for further cuts and privatization, causing further service problems and reinforcing the loop.
This tragedy isn't just the result of a leak in a gas line, or of bad practices at PG&E - but of the entire concept of letting the private sector own and operate the basic infrastructure and services of a modern society. It's time we addressed that root cause, to ensure this tragedy doesn't happen again.
As the death toll climbs from the tragic natural gas explosion in San Bruno, news is emerging that residents in the area knew about the leak and reported it to PG&E - as far back as three weeks ago. After a cursory glance around the neighborhood, however, PG&E apparently did nothing to address the leak. Shoshana Walte and Gerry Shih of Bay Citizen have the story:
"They already knew about the leak and they didn't do anything," said Alex Monroy, who lives on Claremont Drive, not far from where a broken gas main burst into flames early Thursday evening, scorching everything around it....
Tim Gutierrez, another resident, told CBS 5 that he smelled a gas-like odor for several days before the accident. He said representatives of PG&E searched the neighborhood looking for a leak.
"A little later they took off and that was it," said Gutierrez.
He said shortly afterwards, he believed that he smelled the same odor emanating from a sewer.
This is a pretty stunning report. If it's true that PG&E failed to properly investigate and stop the leak, then they're almost certainly liable for the mayhem that the explosion has caused.
It also would call into question the priorities of PG&E's leadership, which spent a whopping $46 million in their failed attempt to pass Prop 16, which would have undermined local government efforts to provide renewable energy to their residents. The CPUC has announced an investigation, and part of it should examine whether PG&E has cut back on maintenance and field crews in order to pad their profits and fund their ballot initiative campaign.
PG&E clearly has a lot to answer for in this disaster.
UPDATE:PG&E's stock is falling fast as investors worry about the company's liability for this disaster. I'd sell too if I owned any stock.
A new report out on job creation in March showed that 162,000 jobs were created last month, more than any other month in the past three years.
Yet recovery is incomplete until everyone who wants a job has a job. Throughout California, most communities are still facing double digit unemployment rates, and the district I represent - the 10th Congressional District - is no exception. We've survived the worst of the Bush recession, but we have a long tough road ahead.
That's why this Saturday, I am hosting a jobs resources fair at Diablo Valley College in Pleasant Hill (321 Golf Club Road at the DVC Cafeteria). More than 40 organizations and employers will be on hand to help unemployed residents develop the skills necessary to find a job.
More information, including how to RSVP, is over the flip...
STATE SEN. Mark Leno has represented the Marin/Sonoma 3rd District for only a short time, but might be interested in trading in that seat for the mayor's job in San Francisco. There are many variables that could get in the way.
Twenty-five thousand jobs and $2.3 billion dollars. That's what California stands to lose if Toyota follows through with its plan to shut down the New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc. (NUMMI), plant in Fremont at the end of the month, according to a study released today by a Blue Ribbon Commission. The Commission, appointed by State Treasurer Bill Lockyer, was tasked with assessing the economic, social, and environmental costs of Toyota's planned closure of the state's only auto assembly plant.
UC Berkeley Professor Harley Shaiken, chair of the Blue Ribbon Commission:
NUMMI is in the heart of Toyota's most important U.S. market, NUMMI has Toyota's most skilled and experienced workforce in the country - one that has consistently won industry acclaim for quality - and California is at the cutting edge of both technological innovation and the green future the company wants to lead. NUMMI and its highly experienced and skilled workers should be valued by Toyota as a key asset for the company as it struggles to reestablish its reputation for quality and green innovation.
The Commission's report validates what we already know -- there are no good reasons for closing NUMMI and many good ones for keeping it open.
For more than 25 years, thousands of workers in northern California have committed their lives to producing high-quality Toyotas at the Bay Area's New United Motor Manufacturing Inc (NUMMI) auto plant, and hundreds of thousands of car-buying Californians have made Toyota the #1 car company in the state. So when Toyota announced last year that it plans to close down the NUMMI plant on April 1, 2010, the company dealt an undeserved punch in the gut to California's workers and consumers, not to mention our state's already faltering economy.
Toyota's plan to close down NUMMI is the latest in a string of remarkably poor management decisions from the Japanese automaker, which is still in the hot seat after the recent rash of recalls of millions of Toyota vehicles worldwide. As the company struggles to regain consumer confidence, Toyota has absolutely nothing to gain by closing the plant, and both Toyota and California have just about everything to lose.
The BART board apparently decided that a "train" that will require switching of cables halfway through the line, is an excellent use of nearly half a billion dollars.
I would describe my indignant response, but TransForm, a transit advocacy has done it pretty well for me in a press release today:
In a historic vote today, the BART Board voted to approved a huge boondoggle called the Oakland Airport Connector that will likely be the most expensive project per new passenger built in the Bay Area.
Oddly, BART is announcing the creation of a "swift" project. The Connector will travel at an average speed of just over 23 mph. Which is swift for some cyclists, some dogs and the rare Olympic sprinter, but not for a "automated fixed guideway" system, actually a slow cable car.
The project will:
* Cost $492 million dollars just to add 600 riders (if you believe their outdated ridership projections). General Manager Dugger confirmed that BART is assuming 4,350 riders in 2020, not the 10K that BART has presented recently. That is just 600 more than they would have had with AirBART service. Wow, 600 riders for nearly half a billion dollars.
* Have vehicles stop for 10-20 seconds in the middle of the journey while vehicles switch ropes and restart (not even the cable cars in SF stop to switch cables! Think of the last time you were on a rail vehicle that stopped halfway through the trip for no apparent reason!) I guess that's what happens when you take the lowest bidder and they are a ski lift operator.
It was confirmed at the meeting that this very short connector has a projected fare of $6 each way on top of your BART ticket, despite BART's insistence that this was not necessarily the case. Transit advocates throughout the region are enjoying BART's "swift" decision. (TransForm)
This is a ridiculous waste of money. That money could be spent in any number of more intelligent ways: improving service, expanding service outwards, whatever, you name it. But $492 million for a few miles that is already well served by AirBART?
Hey, did you notice that there are a few financial issues facing the state? Even the Department of Transportation and the toll authorities are feeling the pinch. So, this shouldn't really surprise anybody:
Bay Area bridge managers today proposed raising car tolls from $4 to $5 on six bridges, charging different tolls at different times on the Bay Bridge, and ending the free ride for carpools on all seven state bridges in the region.
Preparing to introduce the Bay Area motorists to congestion pricing, staff of the Bay Area Toll Authority recommend raising the toll to $6 on the Bay Bridge during weekday rush hours, while leaving the toll at $4 during other weekday hours. On weekends, the Bay Bridge toll would be $5 at all times. (CoCo Times)
It's good to see that the Bridge Authorities are going to start using congestion pricing, it will go at least part of the way towards reducing some of the traffic nightmares on the bridges. However, I think the bigger news is snuck in there: the end of free rides for carpools.
In the East Bay, the casual carpool system has been an institution for many years. There's a whole etiquette of the casual carpool, how to get a ride, how to give a ride, how to behave during the casual carpool. It's been a really good way to encourage people out of their cars, but that ends if the carpool free ride ends.
We need to work very, very hard to find ways to reduce the number of cars on the roads and bridges of the Bay Area. So, yes, we need to push people toward BART and the busses, but that alone will not be enough. It is really too bad that the carpool system looks set to end.
California needs a knight in shining armor to deliver it from the forces of budget shortfalls, program cuts, and sub-15% legislative approval ratings.
At first, I thought our hope was Gavin Newsom, but his departure from the Governor's race leaves a handful of candidates on both sides that seem inherently opposed to doing the one thing that could save this state: raising revenue.
So, who is going to carry the baton? Where is our saving grace, and when will he/she hurry their butt up and save us from sinking further and further into debt and depression?
One person who could posthumanly save the State of California is Saul Alinsky. Deemed by many as the "father of community organizing", Alinsky helped organize the Back of the Yards area of Chicago introduced to the national stage by Sinclair's "The Jungle".
Alinsky passed away in 1972 (in Carmel-By-The-Sea), but his revolutionary tactics for mobilizing the masses have time and time again generated the true catalyst for change: Friction. Given the current economic situation in this state, Lord knows we need something.
The Bay Area Council, a business coalition from the...um...Bay Area, has announced that they will drop $2 million into the Repair California efforts that they have been pushing for the last few years. Their efforts to get a constitutional convention may, or may not, result in a ballot measure effort for the November 2010 election. Maybe.
Repair California, a coalition preparing two Constitutional Convention initiatives for the November 2010 ballot, will receive $2 million from its chief sponsor, the Bay Area Council.
Steven Hill, a coalition member and director of the political reform program at the New America Foundation, made the announcement a few minutes ago at a constitutional reform convention in Sacramento. It represents about half of what the group estimates it will need to run a successful initiative campaign.
Hill also outlined some of of the details of the planned initiatives, which he said will be filed with the state in the next 10 days.
The first initiative authorizes the voters to call a Constitutional Convention, an act restricted under current law to the Legislature. The second measure convenes a convention limited to the review of governance issues. Its recommended reforms would come back to voters in subsequent elections. (CoCo Times)
But the real question is how the delegates are allocated. And as of right now, it appears that they will be allocated at the County Supervisor level. Every county gets one, and another for each 250K of population, with some provisions made for the 1mil+ cities. If it's a winner take all thing, where a 3-2 Republican lean appoint all of the delegates, we're looking at a heavily Republican convention. Even if there is some proportionate representation in the bigger counties, it's hard to see how it gets anywhere near the big Democratic advantage we see in the Legislature.
Obviously this is unacceptable. On one level, how could progressives support something with such a big thumb on the scale for conservatives. On the other, law-side, how does the BAC plan on getting around the legal precedent striking down representation based upon counties. It violates the one man-one vote principle.
There is still time to change the proposed language, but if this is the plan, I for one will not be supporting it.
I had my bluetooth headphones on as I was at the gym this morning, and I got a text message just before 7am. It's not really a common occurrence, so I go over and check it out. And sure enough, it was the alert-sf message announcing that the Bay Bridge had reopened at 7am.
Cars led by a phalanx of California Highway Patrol officers began crossing less than two hours after the reopening time that Caltrans originally set when it closed the bridge Thursday evening to remove a section of the eastern span and install a temporary detour. And traffic resumed well ahead of the 5 a.m. Wednesday reopening that Caltrans scheduled Monday, after the crack in the steel link, called an eyebar, had been discovered over the weekend.
"Through the night, the crews have worked nonstop - for almost 70 hours - and were able to complete repair work on the damaged eyebar beam," Caltrans Director Randy Iwasaki said at a hastily called news conference on Yerba Buena Island at 6:10 a.m. "The bridge has been inspected, and it's safer than it was when we closed it." (SF Gate 9/8/09)
Sometimes you just luck into something, and that appears to be the case here. Had this inspection taken place some other time, the Bridge would have had to be shut down immediately to be repaired. The crews were able to make the fix while the detour was being installed, so really, we only lost a few additional hours.
However, given that CalTrans had stated that the Bridge was going to be closed all day, BART is still vastly overcrowded as are the other various bridges across the Bay. Apparently the San Mateo Bridge had extended delays this morning.
Nonetheless, thanks to the CalTrans crews who made the process relatively smooth this weekend.
Inspectors discovered a crack in a crucial component of the east span of the Bay Bridge on Saturday that could jeopardize the planned Tuesday morning reopening of the bridge. The flaw was found in a chainlike steel link that helps hold up the eastern portion of the bridge. The link is almost 2 inches thick and was cracked halfway through, said Ken Brown, senior bridge engineer.
"The crack is significant enough to have closed the bridge on its own," Caltrans spokesman Bart Ney announced at a news briefing late Saturday night. "We have to make this repair before we reopen the bridge." (SF Chronicle 9/6/09)
We should hear more about the details of the repairs today and into tomorrow. If it's not open, there will be some very upset commuters Tuesday morning as thousands of people count on the Bay Bridge to get where they need to be. While it's better safe than sorry, the local economy sure didn't need extra inconveniences.
The last major auto plant in California has closed today. NUMMI, a joint project between GM and Toyota, was eventually shifted entirely to Toyota when GM pulled out of the deal. Toyota has decided that it does not need the plant on its own.
Toyota Motor Corp. has decided to close its auto plant in the Bay Area city of Fremont early next year, eliminating about 4,700 jobs and bringing large-scale automobile production in California to an end.
Executives of New United Motor Manufacturing Inc., the joint venture Toyota set up with General Motors Corp. in 1984 to operate the sprawling assembly plant, told its workforce this morning that the plant would shut down in March, according to a union member who attended the meeting. (LA Times 8/27/09)
Other than a few small auto parts plants and minor facilities, like Tesla's new facility in the bay area, the auto industry has almost completely left California. Now, we were never a huge auto manufacturing state relative to our size, but this is a landmark. However, it is symbolic of our ailing manufacturing sector.
If California is to really recover from the last 3 boom-bust cycles, we are going to need to build a truly balanced economy. We can't build it on real estate or computer programmers alone, we need it all. And a key part of that is a vibrant manufacturing sector.
Now, some of this will come with the "green jobs" expansion, but green jobs alone probably won't provide California enough of a manufacturing sector to really create a balanced economy. One would suppose that this is why politicians like John Garamendi were falling all over one another to get NUMMI to stay. They realize that this is a very real issue.
In order to create real meaningful manufacturing sector jobs, we'll need to provide companies with what we have always done well here in California: providing a qualified and abundant workforce and a good infrastructure. However, with the recent budget cuts, we are growing increasingly in danger of falling behind in both areas.
The way to really build a solid manufacturing sector isn't to engage in the race to the bottom that some states engage in, but rather to provide an excellent value with excellent resources. California can do that, but we can't keep slashing and burning through our state government and expect to stay competitive.
As we mentioned last week, the possible BART strike always had a way out. And yesterday, the good folks at the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555 and the BART Board reached a deal that seems more likely to win approval from 1555's members.
The two sides announced the deal less than six hours before train operators and station agents had planned to walk out and shut down the regional commuter rail system.
These are tough times for all involved, so it's not surprising that the unions took a hit in this contract. They had to give up over $100 million in labor costs. However, there must be balance between labor costs, management costs, and ensuring quality service on the trains. You can't just look at one leg of that stool. BART had been using some less than friendly labor tactics during this dispute, and as Gavin Newsom pointed out, the rhetoric did get a smidge heated.
On a somewhat related note, why is everybody running to BART Board Vice-Chairman James Fang for quotes on this? As Greg Dewar pointed out, James Fang is a Republican from San Francisco who uses lies and half-truths to get re-elected. (It's a non-partisan position.) In a district that is overwhelmingly progressive, Fang has somehow managed to win re-election. And, toss in the fact that he managed to both delay the implementation of the TransLink Card on BART and waste money on a test of a cell phone payment system, this dude really, really needs to go. There will be another strong challenge in 2010, and hopefully, this time San Francisco's highest ranking Republican (kind of funny, huh?) will be tossed out of office and quit wasting BART's money.
If you live in the Bay Area, get ready for some traffic headaches. BART is speeding into the station, but the train might stay there for a while:
BART train operators and station agents vowed to strike after regular service ends at midnight Sunday, which effectively would shut down the regional rail agency and force hundreds of thousands of Bay Area commuters to find alternate ways to travel Monday morning.
The decision by union leadership came after the BART Board of Directors voted unanimously Thursday to unilaterally impose a one-year contract on workers represented by Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555.
"At this point we have no choice but to initiate a work action," said Jesse Hunt, president of the union local that represents about 900 of BART's 3,200 workers.(SF Chronicle 8/14/09)
There was a settlement a week ago, but the contract was defeated by 1555's members. The union leadership itself wasn't particularly thrilled with the contract, which kind of makes it difficult to sell it your membership. The big hangup appears to be the length of the contract, four years. The workers understand that they are going to take a hit this year, but they don't particularly appreciate the fact that they have to take it for such a long period of time before they have the offer to renegotiate.
However, 1555 is open to further negotiations, and there are rumors that something could be sorted out over the weekend. With luck, we'll avoid any long-term BART closure and a fair contract deal can be reached. A strike would toss the entire Bay Area into a fair bit of chaos.
Disclosure: I am working on a part time, short term basis for TransForm on the Oakland Airport Connector campaign. However, the thoughts expressed in my posts on this subject are my own and should not be construed to be those of TransForm.
The fight to stop the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) has not been easy, and as you can see from the list of posts at the bottom of this post, it has been a long one. But it’s not over yet. The Oakland Public Works Committee will be voting on the project on Tuesday, September 15th, and the issue will likely go to full Council after that. BART will also be voting on the project again in the coming months.
We’ve showed up at every meeting, generated hundreds of emails and phone calls, and expressed our concerns about the project to the press. But now it’s time for something much simpler. We’ve set up a petition asking BART, the Oakland City Council and the region’s transportation funding agencies to review the significant changes that have occurred in this project immediately and to halt movement forward until alternatives are studied.
Until September, this petition is the best way to voice our concern about the OAC so please do the following:
After a ton of negotiations, BART and their two largest unions agreed to a deal last Friday.
A 27-hour bargaining session finally led to a tentative contract between BART and three of its five unions Friday, ending nearly four months of negotiations and the threat of a commute-crippling strike.
Three of BART's unions tentatively settled on four-year contracts that will save the transit district $100 million over the life of the contracts. BART officials had demanded that amount of savings to help relieve a projected $310 million deficit.
Representatives from BART and the unions declined to reveal details, saying they wanted to present them to their members first. But they include changes in work rules and caps on benefits, among other concessions. Union officials said the proposals would "keep the trains running" without any layoffs or pay cuts. (SF Chronicle 8/1/09)
However, the unions will still need to ratify these deals, but from indications from union leaders, that will happen. That being said, BART still faces huge problems. In June, ridership was down a whopping 9 percent in June, year over year. This shouldn't surprise all that many people, as the recession has trimmed the number of commuters. Yet in terms of BART's bottom line, it is huge. It could take $27 Million out of their annual $642 million operating budget.
Fare increases have taken effect, but that isn't sufficient to stem the tide of red ink. And then of course, the lower costs of parking these days in some garages combined with those higher BART fares might encourage some to drive to work. This, to put it mildly, would be bad.
So yes, the $100 million of concessions from the unions was important for BART's continued health. But, there is a lot of work left to do to reduce costs, or we'll see more fare hikes in the future.
