Supposing the first two sentences of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address had read like this?
“Four score and seven _________ our
______________forth____________ on ____________,
a new _________ in
Liberty, and dedicated to the
____________that all
_______________. Now we are
________ in a great _______,
____________that nation, or any
nation_________, can long endure.”
With such gaps, the Gettysburg Address would never have become one of the most enduring and beloved axioms in human history. The damage done to the Gettysburg Address by the above omissions is analogous to the damage done by the decades-old gaps in the Bay Area’s network of trains and buses. There is no better way to illustrate the dismal effect on travelers and public mobility of these gaps than to simply list them: Continue reading
The following critique responds to the presentation made to the BART & VTA Partnership “Special Committee meeting at BART’s Oakland Headquarters on May 31, 2019. Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority’s (VTA) is proceeding with its 16 mile long, two-phased extension of BART from the current Warms Springs terminal all the way through San Jose to a future terminal station in Santa Clara. Phase I, covering the first 10 miles of the project will be constructed mostly on viaduct and include the Milpitas and Berryessa Stations. Phase II will proceed from Berryessa for six miles in mostly subway and include the Alum Rock, Downtown San Jose, Diridon and Santa Clara stations. Phase II is where things really get expensive. According to the EIR, the total cost of Phase II is projected to be $4.7 billion. It is anticipated that five of the six miles of this phase will be tunneled 65 feet below street grade (equivalent to the height of a six story building) and that diameter of the hole needed for the entire 5 miles is 55 feet 10 inches. This raises several questions: 
How and why did the commutes get so long? How did the Bay Area become the first or second most congested region in the country? Was this because of a regional problem or a local problem or both? What accounts for the repeated “disconnects” between the regional results of expensive studies laboriously vetted and discussed and what actually gets financed and built? Why did more than $100 billion in state, federal and Bridge toll funds pass through the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s (MTC’s) hands over the last half century and yet do so little to either reduce congestion or strengthen the Region’s public transit systems? Was the current transportation malaise inevitable? Could it have been avoided? What steps can be taken to make things better? Does it make sense to place the Region’s future housing and transportation under a single super-agency controlled by MTC? 