Category: Transportation Planning

Joint Statement by AC Transit and BART

Joint Statement by AC Transit and BART 08/26/13 Filed in: Transportation Planning Former AC Transit and BART director Roy Nakadegawa passed away last Friday morning, August 23, 2013, at his home in Berkeley. Mr. Nakadegawa had been suffering from congestive heart failure for some time. Mr. Nakadegawa served on the AC Transit Board for 20 years, from 1972 to 1992. He then served on the BART Board for 12 years from 1992 to 2004. After he left the BART Board, he joined the Board of TRANSDEF (Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund), a non-profit environmental organization created by transit activists…

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We Lost One of the Greats: Roy Nakadegawa

We Lost One of the Greats: Roy Nakadegawa 08/26/13 Filed in: Transportation Planning Roy Nakadegawa was a founding Board member of TRANSDEF. He contributed his vast experience in public transit and his financial support to our small non-profit’s efforts to focus Bay Area transportation planning on cost-effectiveness. Our goal was public transit investments that benefit many more residents. Roy agreed to put himself forward, along with fellow former BART Director Sherman Lewis, as a named plaintiff in a suit brought by TRANSDEF to stop MTC from moving funds from the proposed Dumbarton Rail Project to the BART Warm Springs project. TRANSDEF vehemently opposed this billion dollar wasteful project. In agreeing to do so, Roy truly walked his…

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An Excellent Overview of Regional Planning

An Excellent Overview of Regional Planning 05/26/13 Filed in: Transportation Planning | MTC | Climate Change Environmental advocate Peter Lydon wrote these comments on MTC’s Plan Bay Area, which capture the essence of regional planning: Framework Independently of anything the regional agencies do, the nine-county Bay Area is growing in population and getting wealthier, so, inevitably, it is changing. That means that the region is in transition. The aspect that concerns us is a needed transition from the present land use/mobility system to a new one. The old, existing system is based on the single-family house, the personal automobile and…

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TRANSDEF Comments on Plan Bay Area

TRANSDEF Comments on Plan Bay Area 05/15/13 Filed in: Transportation Planning | MTC | Climate Change TRANSDEF filed comments on the Bay Area’s Draft Sustainable Communities Strategy today. By a fascinating coincidence, U.S. PIRG released its study today, called A New Direction, which is directly relevant to how to approach a regional transportation plan. This study points out the transportation planning consequences of the emerging pattern of millennials driving less. These documents are available here. Tags: CEQA, RTP

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RTP Submission by TAM

RTP Submission by TAM 10/27/11 Filed in: Transportation Planning | Climate Change TRANSDEF’s Comments to the Transportation Authority of Marin”s Regional Transportation Plan Discussion, 10-27-11 You have the authority to set a very new direction for transportation in this county. But you would never know it by reading the staff report. Judging by the report, this agenda item appears to be just another routine item. The whole point of this agenda item last month had been to ask you what weight to give to each of the RTP candidate priority criteria. But that focus has been buried. It isn’t at…

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Testimony on Central Subway

Testimony on Central Subway 10/27/11 Filed in: Transportation Planning Testimony Before the S. F. Supes Audit Comm. 10/27/11 Hearing on Civil Grand Jury Report on Central Subway Supervisors, We are transit advocates, working primarily at the regional and statewide level. We have opposed the Central Subway for years, because instead of being a well- designed cost-effective transportation project, it is primarily a political payoff. The Grand Jury deserves the thanks of all San Franciscans for their willingness to dive into an incredibly dense thicket of details and their courage to call a spade a spade. Their report is a proud…

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Joint Policy Committee Blinks

Joint Policy Committee Blinks 05/20/11 Filed in: MTC | Transportation Planning David Schonbrunn’s remarks: At its last Commission meeting, MTC made a major policy decision that will strongly constrain the ability of the RTP to accomplish regional goals. They voted on whether to hold previously selected projects to the same standard of regional effectiveness as new submissions. This vote on a committed projects policy told the world that MTC really doesn’t care about achieving results, and that it is only interested in the politics of transportation dollars. Every member of the Commission did the calculation: if it comes down to the regional…

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Massive Counter-Attack Ends Brief Spring at MTC

  Massive Counter-Attack Ends Brief Spring at MTC 04/27/11 Filed in: MTC | Transportation Planning In a blow to the very heart of the region’s transportation planning process, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission voted today to preserve the longstanding dominance of local politics in the allocation of funds for transportation projects in the Bay Area. The shortage of funds due to the economic crisis had led MTC staff to propose a revision to the Commission’s Committed Projects Policy, so as to enable the MTC’s Regional Transportation Plan to be more effective. In the past, the policy essentially cemented in previous project…

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Clean Air Plan Adopted

Clean Air Plan Adopted 09/15/10 Filed in: Climate Change | Transportation Planning The Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) adopted its 2010 Clean Air Plan for the Bay Area. The plan is the first in the nation to offer a  comprehensive approach to reducing all significant air pollutants, instead of treating them separately, as has been standard practice. TRANSDEF applauds the District for its excellent and innovative work. Upon noticing that the Clean Air Plan would result in excessive particulate matter in the air, TRANSDEF’s President David Schonbrunn spoke to the Board of Directors and suggested that a mitigation be adopted to reduce the source of growing particulate pollution: motor vehicles. The Board unanimously…

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MTC Shows its True Colors-OAC

MTC Shows its True Colors-OAC 09/08/10 Filed in: MTC | Transportation Planning MTC’s Programming and Allocations Committee met to once again take the heat in deciding whether to provide additional funding for the BART Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), a truly execrable project. This project, which had died after the Federal Transit Administration pulled the plug on $70 million in stimulus funding, showed itself to have many lives, and many functionaries willing to bend institutional rules to raise it from the dead. MTC violated its own rules in bypassing a required vote by its Commissioners, and was caught at it. Large…

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