On June 21, 2019, pursuant to State Senator Steve Glazer’s SB1488, Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Harriet Richardson from among three candidates selected by the BART Board to be BART’s first Inspector General (IG). The job calls for the IG to oversee and report upon BART activities and expenditures. What BART apparently didn’t anticipate was that Ms. Richardson would actually attempt to do her job. But the cat was soon out of the bag.
On July 7, 2022 the Alameda County Grand Jury released scathing 8-page report on how BART was treating its State-appointed IG, detailing how BART’s management and Board of Directors have aggressively interfered with, resisted and undermined the work of the IG. Anyone whose watches how BART goes through money will well understands the need for an independent BART IG. So what’s next? Will things get better?
The Pandemic has hit. Travel habits have changed. Advances in technology have made it easier to do more with less commuting and other travel. Transit has been dramatically affected by all this. Yet so far there is little evidence that the large Bay Area transit agencies and MTC are adequately heeding the warning signs. Based upon the broadly based surveys of the Bay Area Council, the meticulous economic research of Stanford Professor of Economics Nicholas Bloom, the conclusions of acclaimed transportation consultant Alan Pisarski, and other findings, the handwriting is on the wall. We now have a better idea of how the changes brought on by the pandemic are affecting and will continue to affect transportation, housing and societal norms.
BATWG has followed AB455 ever since the bill came to our attention last January and on June 21, 2022 sent Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks and Senator Scott Wiener a letter on the subject. From the outset we have been supportive of its general objective but felt and still feel that the entire East Bay bus service needs work, not just the Bridge. Here are highlights:
Bay Area Transportation Working Group 