Honorable Members of the BART Board of Directors
300 Lakeside Drive
Oakland CA 94612

Dear Members of the BART Board:

The Bay Area Transportation Working Group calls upon the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit District Board of Directors to not increase fares for the upcoming fiscal year.

As a coalition of transportation experts with decades of collective experience working on large projects and with transit operators, including virtually all the major operators in the Bay Area, we are well aware that BART is facing numerous challenges and is in the constant position of all transit operators of not having sufficient funds to do everything that everyone would have to have done; however, a fare increase would be highly inappropriate at this time for the following reasons: Continue reading →

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? Continue reading →

Updated Excerpts from BATWG Letter sent to the BART Board on May 8 2019:

Unfortunately, no matter how many times the mantra is repeated, there are no credible metrics to support the notion that building housing near a rail or bus stop would materially affect either traffic flow or transit ridership.

To those who claim otherwise, ask them for backup statistics. Ask them how many of today’s Bay Area commute trips are transit trips (actually about 15%). Ask about the 75% of trips that are NOT commute trips, much less transit commute trips. Ask how many of the thousands of families slated to crowd into transit-oriented housing are expected to give up their automobiles. Ask for statistics showing how many non-commuters taking their kids to preschool or to a distant soccer match, or buying groceries, or running errands, or rushing a sick relative to a hospital, or heading to the gym or the hair stylist, etc., are expected to spend the 3 to 5 hours and make the 4 to 10 transfers required to make these trips by train and bus. Continue reading →

Mayor Garcetti’s plan may or may not gain traction. But at least he’s taken a strong stand.

It’s called leadership.

Excerpts from Sammy Roth’s May 6, 2019 article in the Los Angeles Times

Los Angeles sets dramatic new goals………

Los Angeles — Mayor Eric Garcetti unveiled a sweeping plan for a more sustainable Los Angeles on Monday, calling for dramatic changes to the car culture, built environment and air quality of America’s second-largest city. Continue reading →

This article appeared in the SF Examiner on April 7, 2019

Photograph Provided by Livable California

Sacramento’s CASA approach to solving the housing crisis is all wrong. What follows shows how the state’s hastily put together program would damage the Bay Area. Prodded by eager residential builders who want free rein, the state legislators have ignored the rapacious high-tech moguls who build their empires and make their billions with nary a thought given to external adverse effects. As things stand large and powerful entities are continuing to entice high paid, hi-tech talent to flood into the Bay Area, overwhelming its housing stock and its roadways in the process. These huge corporations and their billionaire insiders should be called upon to pay for the housing and transportation agonies they are causing.

And then there are the false premises upon which CASA is being sold. Here are four: Continue reading →