NOTE: “Goodbye to the Key Route System” Video provided by Bob Franklin, BART director and music video director. Vocals by Mel Leroy, lyrics by Judith Offer with Joyce Whitelaw on piano and Lynn Parker on drums.
A week ago, I prompted people to wax nostalgic about the Key System on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its death. I still find it curious in this day of controversial transit subsidies that a private urban transit system could survive for the first half the last century. Maybe it’s because it was built and operated by a developer and, as transit and smart-growth devotees now preach, housing, business and transit need to be compatible.
Some of you wanted to talk about just that: The kind of housing density that helps transit work, starting with apartments and condominiums. Looking back at development pre-World War II, when the Key System was thriving, it tended to be much denser. Then the GIs came home with spending money, bought cars and the era of the white- Read the rest of this entry »
In the end, while every other major population center in the state is to be served by the mythical beast known as high-speed rail, Oakland is stuck with actual rail.
And it’s all Jerry Brown’s fault.
Yes, it was our newly minted attorney general who gave the California High-Speed Rail Authority the legal opinion that they didn’t need to actually vote to deep-six the idea of running their 200 mph (recently downgraded by 20 mph) trains past Tracy, Livermore, Dublin, Pleasanton and those other communities that suffer from a gross lack of transportation alternatives.
It’s not really Jerry Brown, or even the attorney on his staff who actually figured out the legal niceties that dictated the HSRA board’s lack of action. This decade-in-the-making battle was over three years ago, when the board made its initial decision to go with the Pacheco Pass.
It was the East Bay against San Francisco and San Jose, and that’s a tough battle to win. But since then, it’s become clear that Read the rest of this entry »
I was delighted to see that our very own news organization did a story on construction workers commuting from places like Fresno (weekly) and Chico (daily) into San Francisco to help build One Rincon Hill and other monuments to the divide between Bay Area haves and have-much-less-than-it-costs-to-live-heres.
In the piece by Anrica Deb, one of our student correspondents from the U.C. Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, I found my doppleganger of sorts in an ironworker named Elvis, a.k.a. John Saenz:
“There’s no one north of Santa Rosa,” said the new father, who keeps a picture of his 7-month-old daughter on the inside of his hard hat. Saenz owns a house outside Healdsburg, 70 miles Read the rest of this entry »
Just when it seemed the establishment was solidly behind the Pacheco Pass through largely undeveloped parts of Santa Clara County, along comes our new member of Congress to once again buck the conventional wisdom.
Now it’s not a major departure for one who represents long-suffering Tracy commuters who must slog daily down I-580 or endure the twists, turns and delays of the ACE commuter choo-choo.
Not me. Don’t live near a BART station and the BART lots are always full when I drive to one.
You can take the bus to BART.
No. The bus stop is too far from my house. I’d spend 20 minutes just walking there. Then I have to wait for the bus. By that time, I could be at work already.
You could ride your bike to BART.
It’s hilly where I live. I’d get all sweaty. And besides, BART doesn’t allow me to take my bike during rush hour. Any other ideas?
Yes. Keep driving and pay a carbon tax of 23 cents a gallon, pay a rush-hour toll to get into the city and a peak-hour parking surcharge when you get to work.
Behind every successful public service, there was an idea. That idea led to a proposal and that proposal led to a big bureaucracy that, whatever its faults, got the job accomplished.
Such is the case with the Bay Area Rapid Transit District, which was born by an act of the California legislature and governor on June 4, 1957.
So you want to know what your transportation tax dollars are paying for?
For starters, lunch.
NOTE: While it’s not uncommon for public agencies to foot the bill for lunch at informational briefing for officials and the press, the host of this particular one, Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty, informed me on April 13 that he had paid for this lunch himself, and this item had made him look stupid. You can read my apology here (link pending).
I had a lovely grilled salmon with asparagus at Stacie’s at Waterford in Dublin, which was just close enough from the Dublin/Pleasanton BART station that I was able to bike there without breaking a sweat.
Now, before you start objecting, you should know that the asparagus was perfectly ripe and cooked just to the point where you needed a knife to cut it, but you didn’t need to chew it for 20 minutes. No cheese sandwiches on this blog.
You should also know that it was for a good cause, and I have no doubt that when my editor reads this, he will insist that I either Read the rest of this entry »
Responding to my rather light-hearted story was an angry commuter named David, who I assume commutes on Interstate 580 through the Livermore Valley. He seemed to find Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty’s angst over 2 p.m. traffic on 580 to show the Metropolitan Transportation Commission member (and this reporter, by extension) to be out of touch:
Did I read your article correctly where you stated that Sup. Haggerty left Oakland at 1:45 expecting to be in Livermore for a 2 PM event, “after leaving Oakland at 1:45″? Is this guy Read the rest of this entry »
The town of Willits, about halfway from San Francisco to Eureka, has waited decades for a U.S. 101 bypass. In recent years, it’s scrounged enough money to do environmental impact studies and pretty much all it needs now is another $170 million — half of the project’s cost — to make it happen.
That money may come from the $20 billion transportation bond voters approved Nov. 7 in California’s Proposition 1B. Caltrans has recommended the project over the objections of Read the rest of this entry »
For those of you who followed the tease at the end of my story on how Proposition 1B funds should be doled out (or not) to rural projects like the Willits bypass in Mendocino County, here’s a bonus.
There was a lot left unsaid in the story, probably because I like to wax poetic when discussing the Corridor Mobility Improvement Account and because there’s a lot of history behind the sorry state of California highways.
I was delighted to see that our very own news 
Just when it seemed the establishment was solidly behind the Pacheco Pass through largely undeveloped parts of Santa Clara County, along comes our new member of Congress to once again buck the conventional wisdom.
For those of you who followed the tease at the end of my