May 4, 2018
Mayor Farrell and Supervisors,
Save Muni urges the Board of Supervisors to take the unprecedented step of rejecting the MTA’s 2019-2020 budget and returning it to the MTA for adjustment.
We believe that staffing and budget increases for this one department are not warranted given the limits placed on other city department… Continue reading
To encourage more transit use the non-automotive alternative must be fast, comfortable and efficient. For this to happen the agencies listed below must coordinate their services for the benefit of Bay Area transit users. Sometimes one hears from local officials that getting the agencies to work together is impossible. BATWG rejects this defeatist idea. Regionally coordinated transit services have been achieved elsewhere and can be done here as well.
In an economically dynamic region like the Bay Area the ability to get around is paramount. Yet in recent years the movement of people and goods in this region has been slowing down. The highway backups have been getting worse and the hours of delay longer. Urban traffic congestion has been getting ever more constrictive.
In the past 25 years there have been many opportunities to deal effectively with regional gridlock. These opportunities have been largely ignored. Instead, billions of dollars of scarce transportation resources have been lavished on backward-looking highway expansions and ill-conceived parochial and pet projects, mostly of small consequence.
1.) Oakland – Become more involved in rail and highway freight movement. Continue to focus on Oakland’s lack of traffic signal synchronization, Oakland’s highly deficient street rebuilding program and Oakland’s costly and often counterproductive street “improvement” programs. Identify one-way streets that could be returned to two-way traffic. (All)
2.) San Francisco – Support SaveMuni in its attempts to accelerate the construction of the downtown Caltrain extension. Continue to oppose ill-conceived and wasteful pet projects. Continue to advocate for improved public transit in San Francisco. (Cauthen/Feinbaum)
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is a troubled organization. Dan Borenstein’s excellent column (Opinion, Nov. 1) exposed some of the issues, but there’s more:
As Borenstein indicated, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) carves out a piece of the assets that pass through its hands to fund its own extensive administrative operation. But how do 200 MTC staff members occupy their time? Certainly it’s not to plan regionally. If it were, the Bay Area wouldn’t have the unenviable distinction of being the third-most congested metropolitan area in the country. Nor would its per-capita public transit ridership be declining as its per-capita automotive travel rises.
As BATWG has reported previously, in the Bay Region transportation projects often advance based strictly on politics. Totally absent from the mix are sound engineering and competent financial analysis. The Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) is a case in point. Here’s a preliminary report:
The capital cost of the OAC was $484 million. In order to provide a valid comparison between costs and revenues, we annualized the capitol cost of the project. Say you borrowed $484 million at 3.0% interest and were required to pay it back in 30 years. To do this you would need to send your lender a check for $24.7 million every year for 30 years. In other words a 30 year series of payments of $24.7 million a year is equivalent to an initial investment of $484 million at 3%.
Bay Area Transportation Working Group 