(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.
This morning, I've been leisurely perusing through The Register. I may not always agree with their opinions (OK, so it's more like ALMOST NEVER, but whatever), but I like their local news and I like their columnists. Well anyways, I was reading Gordon Dillow's column today and I was stopped in my tracks!
I was driving along an open stretch of Pacific Coast Highway the other day, at or just under the posted speed limit of 50 mph, and every hundred yards or so I was passing groups of two or three or a dozen bicyclists pedaling along in the bike lane. And that's when it occurred to me:
I don't want to share the road. More specifically, I don't want to share a high-speed road with bicycle riders – not because it's that big of a problem for me, but because it's too dangerous for them.
Now in case you haven't heard, "Share the Road" is the slogan that's here to encourage motorists to be more aware of bike riders while on the road, and to cooperate with them. Now this sounds like a good idea, but is it really? Or are we just asking for accidents on places like PCH? Gordon Dillow thinks so, and I think he might be onto something.
As noted here a few days back, the California Transportation Commission voted earlier this week to allocate billions more from the recent highway bond to urban projects, including the widening of the 405 through the Sepulveda Pass.
Unfortunately, to do this, the CTC robbed the rural Peter to pay for the urban Paul's freeway widening, and the folks in Mendocino, San Luis Obispo, and Fontana are *pissed*. Mendocino, which lost funding for the Willits bypass on Highway 101, had this to say, from the Ukiah Daily Record:
"This is clearly a blatant display of power politics disguised as a competitive process. There's not any other way of saying it," Dow said, adding that the nine governor-appointed commissioners, not one of whom lives north of the Golden Gate Bridge, acted as if their function was "to bring home the bacon to whatever community they came from," rather than address the entire state's needs.
