Transportation Planning Archives - Page 2 of 16

Stopping NCRA from tearing up its RR tracks

March 18, 2021 April 1, 2021

A Bay Area environmental group is seeking to save the rail tracks in Mendocino and Humboldt Counties from being torn out. The Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, TRANSDEF, sent a letter to the North Coast Railroad Authority demanding that the NCRA Board rescind the action it took last month. TRANSDEF asserted that the Board had no legal authority to direct its staff to begin the process of abandoning the railroad and turning it into a trail, in a process called railbanking. Railbanking means tearing out the tracks while claiming that the railroad can be restored in the future. North…

Lawsuit charging CCTA with misrepresenting Measure J benefits is now fully briefed

July 29, 2020 August 3, 2020

After Appellant Michael Arata filed his Reply Brief and Motion for Judicial Notice, the case is now fully briefed. Previously, Contra Costa County had filed its Opposition Brief, and Contra Costa Transportation Authority had filed its Opposition Brief and Appendix. The Opening Brief, Motion for Judicial Notice, and a description of the case can be found here.

Comments to Caltrans on SB 743 implementation

June 15, 2020 June 24, 2020

With the new SB 743 requirement to use VMT as the metric for evaluating transportation impacts under CEQA, Caltrans has reached out for comments on its draft documents. Those documents imply that Caltrans pretty much expects life after SB 743 to be similar to life before it. Caltrans expects to keep on widening highways, which will increase VMT due, in part, to the phenomenon of induced demand. TRANSDEF’s comments stress a broader perspective: the entire mission of Caltrans must change in response to the recognition that the State’s largest obstacle to achieving its climate change targets is the ever-increasing amount…

Lawsuit charges CCTA with misrepresenting Measure J benefits

June 5, 2020 June 24, 2020

After its role in drafting the ballot arguments opposed to Contra Costa Transportation Authority’s (CCTA’s) Measure J on the March 2020 ballot, TRANSDEF became concerned about the misleading language of the question on the ballot. Working with our attorney, we sent multiple letters to the County Registrar of Voters, the Board of Supervisors, and Contra Costa County Counsel. The second set of letters was sent after we discovered that County Counsel had modified her Impartial Analysis of the measure, taking out the first paragraph reference to the proposed sales tax being an additional tax. We decided that this was an…

State losing its war on carbon

March 2, 2020 March 2, 2020

Dan Walters had it partly right in his piece “State losing its war on carbon” in explaining why the transportation sector’s greenhouse gas emissions are going up instead of going down as planned. Yes, it’s true that “So far, Californians aren’t buying what their politicians are selling” when it comes to buying electric vehicles and increasing their use of transit. Those numbers are disappointing… But the problem is much bigger than that: The public keeps driving more (as measured in Vehicle Miles Traveled, or VMT) because suburban development makes its residents dependent on the automobile. With a large percentage of…

East Bay Times hits a homer

March 1, 2020 March 1, 2020

In its second editorial about Measure J, the East Bay Times hits at the failure of County Counsel to provide a legally mandated Impartial Analysis that is, in fact, impartial.

Measure J greenwashing exposed

February 24, 2020 February 27, 2020

Measure J was discussed in a powerful article in the East Bay Times, with the sub-heading “Critics charge tax measure is ‘greenwashing’ in car-centric county.”

Update: Lawsuit challenges claims made by Measure J

February 18, 2020 February 27, 2020

A lawsuit was filed on December 30, 2019, seeking to have the ballot letter designation, the ballot question and the Impartial Analysis modified before the Voter Guide for Contra Costa County is printed. The suit was granted priority status, because it is an election matter. A hearing was held Monday, January 6 on the merits of the suit. The court dismissed the suit, asserting it had been filed two days late, after the 10-day inspection period had passed. Petitioner filed a Motion for Reconsideration, and sought an early hearing date, which was denied. Petitioner then filed a Notice of Appeal,…

TRANSDEF opinion piece in Chronicle

February 13, 2020 February 27, 2020

The Chronicle gave TRANSDEF the opportunity to go into detail as to why Measure J in Contra Costa won’t do enough to keep congestion from getting much worse:

Chronicle endorses J

February 1, 2020 February 1, 2020

The San Francisco Chronicle printed its endorsement of Measure J on January 29. While TRANSDEF was disappointed, we were pleased that the newspaper gave serious coverage to our rationale to oppose the tax: to avoid creating institutional momentum for decades of further sprawl development that will result in impassable highways. We believe that future development needs to be within walking distance of frequent transit, a model that doesn’t work in widely dispersed neighborhoods.

Category: Transportation Planning