Transportation Policy

As we wrote a couple days ago about Jefferson Street, merchants on the commercial street there and throughout the city often assume parking spaces in front of their stores are vital to business, that their customers drive to buy, and that driving customers spend more because they can carry more goods home in their vehicles. 

File the following in the "Can't Believe My President Gets It" category. 

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) main auditorium in Oakland was standing-room-only  Wednesday for an Allocations Committee meeting where the MTC board debated proposals by staff on how to spend the expected stimulus money when President Obama signs the bill into law.  MTC Executive Director Steve Heminger explained the need to get the discussion started even before Washington made anything final because the deadlines for spending the stimulus money are so tight and the MTC doesn't want to return unspent funds.

There was widespread government and public support for a two-way, traffic-calmed Hayes Street between Gough and Franklin at the Board of Supervisors' Land Use and Economic Development Committee meeting today, but there is a fundamental disagreement with the MTA on how to get there.

Advocates are calling for all livable streets supporters who have the time to turn out to the Board of Supervisors' Land Use and Economic Development Committee meeting today at 1pm to voice their support for a two-way Hayes Street, as was called for in the Market and Octavia Plan. 

A $5.5 billion discretionary fund for transit projects is in danger of being handed over to the highway lobby by Senators James Inhofe, Kit Bond, and Max Baucus.  Inhofe you will recall is the former Chair of the Senate Environmental and Public Works (EPW) Committee who boasted in 2005, "I called the threat of catastrophic global warming the 'greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,' a statement that, to put it mildly, was not viewed kindly by environmental extremists and their elitist organizations."

A group of eighteen Assembly members, including Assemblymen Tom Ammiano of San Francisco and Alberto Torrico of Newark, have sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urging more stimulus money for public transit, suggesting the change be made during the markup process before the bill is voted on by the Senate next week.

Transportation consultants and planners associated with the San Francisco Transportation Authority's (TA) ATG working group sent excited bursts of email to each other earlier this month about a new development coming from the state Office of Planning and Research (OPR), the body responsible for writing and amending the CEQA guidelines related to transportation and traffic.  The OPR had adopted much of the spirit of the working group's recommendations and proposed an amendment (PDF) to CEQA guidelines that de-emphasized LOS and indicated that it would be much better to use measures for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reductions such as ATG.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco claims she is committed to public transit and reducing motor vehicle congestion. In a speech to the Regional Plan Association (RPA) last April she said her flagship issues as speaker are energy independence and reducing global warming.