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By Alec MacDonald
At any given moment in the Bay Area, millions of people are on the go — hopping a bus to work, riding the rails to a weekend getaway, braving traffic to pursue an errand, traversing the waterways by ferry, pumping pedals for fun and fitness, or just enjoying a leisurely stroll to nowhere in particular. When they take advantage of the region’s vast transportation network, however, these travelers probably don’t consider all that goes into managing this massive and complex system. That’s a little too heavy on the brain; getting there might be half the fun, but not if you have to think about it too hard.
Yet someone has to put their mind to these issues if the system is to continue ably serving the countless users who depend on it every day. Fortunately, a dedicated set of advocates in this region and across the state have been leveraging their powers — cognitive and otherwise — to help keep the Bay Area’s mobility options varied and attractive.
This has been especially evident over the past two-plus years during the development of the latest Regional Transportation Plan (or RTP, this year dubbed Transportation 2035: Change in Motion). The plan lays out how an anticipated $218 billion from federal, state, and local sources will be spent on transportation throughout the nine Bay Area counties over the next 25 years, and while the responsibility for drawing up this blueprint lies with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), a large and diverse group of stakeholders participated in the process as well.
Residents, business owners, community representatives, and a host of different nonprofits interfaced with MTC and its partners — Caltrans, the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, the Bay Conservation and Development Commission, county congestion management agencies — to cultivate ideas and construct solutions for the region’s transportation needs. Hundreds of people turned out to give comment at an extended series of RTP meetings, workshops, and focus groups, and thousands more weighed in remotely through telephone and Internet surveys.
No one who joined in this protracted conversation would claim it went smoothly the whole way, and most would not likely avow 100 percent satisfaction with the results, either; to expect otherwise on both fronts seems less than realistic for a project of this scope. Nonetheless, the formal adoption of the new RTP at MTC’s April 22 convening appeared to be a solid endorsement for the notion that government and activists can collaborate productively.
As Carli Paine of TransForm told the commissioners that day, “I’m here today to thank you for conducting the Regional Transportation Plan in a way that many advocates had been asking this agency to do for many years. We want to acknowledge that you broke with past tradition by setting out goals and establishing a vision and establishing targets for the plan at the initial steps.”
The transportation program director for the Oakland-based organization was referring to the fact that MTC did not approach this RTP with the conventional first step of focusing on budget figures, but instead started from a big picture conception for what the Bay Area’s transportation network should look like in the year 2035. Through the lens of economy, environment, and equity, the agency offered up an image of a future in which access, safety, connectivity, and choice would characterize a system buttressed with technological innovations and ecological protections, ultimately leading to a higher quality of life across the region. Adding quantifiable specificity to this image, MTC set benchmarks for reducing vehicle miles traveled, roadway congestion, harmful emissions, collisions and their accompanying fatalities, and transportation and housing costs for low-income families.
“It’s been extremely rewarding to watch the Commission set goals and targets for what we want to achieve as a region, and start measuring the projects and programs that we’re funding based on those goals and targets,” testified Stephanie Reyes, policy director for the open space conservation group Greenbelt Alliance, adding that “we’re really blazing a new trail here.”
Not everyone in the room shared the same optimism, however, as demonstrated in Bob Allen’s comments to the Commission on behalf of environmental justice proponent Urban Habitat, where he serves as director for transportation and housing. “Beginning with a vision is a really important step,” he acknowledged, but went on to declare that “moving closer to what we need as a region is simply not enough… in terms of dealing with climate change and the challenges we’re facing.”
In making this point, Allen referred to the demands of the California legislature’s recently passed Senate Bill 375 (Steinberg) and the state’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, both of which seek to curb greenhouse gases. Achieving these reductions looks to be a tall order — no one is disagreeing on that front. Language in the RTP draft concedes that more work will be necessary, admitting the plan “comes up short of the mark” and represents “but a beginning. Further actions — involving policies, operating initiatives, institutional arrangements, additional investments and new legal authority — must be taken to move the Bay Area further along the path to change.”
Naturally, MTC will be spearheading these efforts, as it is the agency’s duty dictated by law. Yet right there alongside it, every step of the way, a multitude of concerned citizens will be shouldering the load as well, making their voices heard and hoping to exert a little democratic leverage in shaping the region. It wouldn’t be a very vibrant Bay Area otherwise.
The finalized version of Transportation 2035: Change in Motion is due to be published in the near future. In the meantime, for printed copies of the draft plan, contact the MTC-ABAG Library via email at library@mtc.ca.gov or by phone at (510) 817-5836.