The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) released its draft Bay Area 2050 Plan on July 8, 2020. Following that milestone, public review and comment over the summer led to modifications and additions that are now being incorporated. These modifications escalated the Plan’s price tag by $668 billion, demonstrating the challenge of building support among the 100 government entities around the Bay. The final Plan Bay Area 2050 is expected to be adopted by the fall of 2021.
The Plan anticipates that the nine-county Bay Area will add 2.5 million new residents and 1.33 million new jobs between 2020 and 2050. The Plan envisions that by 2050 the Bay Area will be affordable, connected, diverse, healthy and vibrant. These aspirations are expressed through thirty-five strategies defined as policies or bundles of investments, clustered under eleven categories:
The ever-active State Senator Scott Wiener has now, Phoenix-like, re-assembled the tenants of his defeated bill, as embodied in at least nine separate replacement measures, each taking its own bite of the apple. These replacements are not well coordinated. They feature overlapping and sometimes contradictory standards and varying ways of handling such critically important terms as “CEQA Exempt,” “transit-oriented,” “percent affordable housing,” “density bonuses,” and “Opportunity Area.”
For the last 8 years BATWG volunteers have worked to improve Bay Area transportation. In the process we’ve come to realize that in the Nine County Greater Bay Area, many of the region’s jurisdictions and large public agencies are failing to deliver effective transportation solutions and that without significant governmental change there is little chance of their doing so in the future.