The TRANSDEF Smart
Growth Alternative
The
TRANSDEF Smart Growth Alternative demonstrates that a program of Smart
Growth, excellent public transit and market-based pricing
does more to increase accessibility and reduce congestion
than the conventional response to congested highways:
highway widening.
Every four years, MTC is required to
adopt a Regional Transportation Plan (RTP) for the Bay
Area. The RTP identifies how all transportation funds for
the next 20 or 25 years will be spent. Starting back
in 1994, transit activists working together as the Regional
Alliance for Transit (RAFT) urged MTC to reorient its
RTP. They were concerned about the enormously
expensive BART extensions, the continued reliance on
private autos, and the assumption that development would
continue to sprawl at the fringes of the Bay Area,
requiring one car per person. (See our
comment letter on the 1994
RTP.)
MTC stonewalled all criticism of that
RTP, and continued to ignore the public during the 1996,
1998 and 2001 RTPs. In response, TRANSDEF
initiated a series of lawsuits in an attempt to stop MTC
from further degrading the Bay Area. (See
Litigation.) In the settlement of one
suit, MTC agreed to study the TRANSDEF Smart Growth
Alternative in the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) of
its 2005 RTP. MTC released a draft of that plan,
called Transportation 2030, in November, 2004.
In its Smart Growth
Alternative, TRANSDEF was able to test out the ideas it had
advocated for the past decade. The Alternative assumed that
all development between 2005 and 2030 would take place in
already urbanized areas, without any urbanization of
greenfields. Existing neighborhoods were, for the
most part, not affected by this infill development, which
was targeted at failed shopping malls and strip
centers.
The Alternative’s transit
plan was designed to meet the potential demand for transit
service at the lowest cost. A series of new Rapid Bus
lines, additional service on existing bus lines, three
conventional-gauge commuter rail lines and High Speed Rail,
accessing the Bay Area via the Altamont Pass, would provide
substantially more transit service than is affordable under
MTC’s plan.
In contrast to MTC’s policy of never reconsidering its
prior commitments to projects, the Alternative evaluated
the cost-effectiveness of those previously committed
projects that were not already under construction
contract. Finally, the Alternative tested a new way
of responding to traffic congestion: rather than
widening highways (i.e., increasing the supply of
lane-miles) a series of pricing initiatives would reduce
demand for auto travel by encouraging transit use and
making single-occupant auto travel bear more of its costs.
MTC’s analysis showed that
the TRANSDEF Smart Growth Alternative has less traffic
congestion, less air emissions, and preserved more
agricultural, habitat and open space lands than the RTP MTC
adopted. Not only is the Alternative environmentally
superior and more sustainable, it is more beneficial to low
income communities and communities of color, and saved
billions of dollars.
The TRANSDEF Smart Growth Alternative demonstrates that
ending the traditional practice of widening congested
highways saves large amounts of money and leaves a better
environment, when coupled with aggressively implemented
Smart Growth, excellent public transit and market-based
pricing.