Tag: Oakland

TRANSDEF Opposes Alameda County Transportation Tax

TRANSDEF Opposes Alameda County Transportation Tax 08/22/14 Filed in: Climate Change The Transportation Solutions Defense and Education Fund, TRANSDEF, announced its opposition to the proposed 2014 Alameda County Transportation Sales Tax,  which will be Measure BB on the ballot in November. The measure would lock in funding for the next thirty years, precisely the critical time when humanity needs to severely reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), if we are to preserve a climate hospitable to life as we know it. Alameda County, like other transportation agencies, finds it more comfortable and less controversial to continue doing what it has always done: focus its efforts on a network of roads and highways that predominantly…

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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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Oakland Airport Connector–Government at its Worst

Oakland Airport Connector–Government at its Worst 12/12/09 Filed in: MTC | Transportation Planning Guy Span wrote a powerful post on the decision of the BART Board to put itself into serious debt, in the midst of cutting service and not having the funds to replace its cars. Here’s the comment we posted: The BART Board’s decision to proceed is a textbook case of everything that is wrong with transportation decisionmaking in the Bay Area. Because the benefits of this extremely expensive project are so obviously minimal, BART Directors and MTC Commissioners have made their priorities very public. They clearly couldn’t…

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The BART Oakland Airport Connector

The BART Oakland Airport Connector 06/22/09 Filed in: MTC | Transportation Planning TRANSDEF’s statement to the BART Board of Directors on Thursday May 12: I’m David Schonbrunn, President of TRANSDEF, a Bay Area environmental non-profit focused on regional transportation, and BART extensions in particular. This is a historic decision that will tell the world what your Board is really all about. The start is not promising, in that one of your employees is organizing a campaign for this project while on the job, using a BART.gov email address. We believe this is certainly unethical and likely to be illegal. Today’s…

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