As V Smoothe pointed out earlier today, there’s no shortage of policies about improved transportation and land use, from the General Plan to various downtown and transit-first plans. However, the Council does not stand up for those plans when confronted with a dozen upset NIMBYs or business owners – from downtown zoning to development in Temescal to parking issues, the Council almost always backs off of its stated commitments to the environment in deference to Oakland’s ingrained car-first suburban mentality. This attitude extends to City Planning and Redevelopment staff, who are obsessed with building parking while limiting high-rise development. While City planners trudge out proposal after proposal designed to set land-use backwards, City transportation planners are divided among different departments and shockingly understaffed, City needs come last regionally, and important transportation decisions are made without any public review. But the ECAP offers the opportunity to institutionalize better transportation and more progressive land-use planning.

Radical change is necessary. Oakland simply cannot continue down the current path of transportation planning. From city planners using community gardens as a flimsy cover for a pro-parking lot agenda to Building Services seizing Measure DD’s widened sidewalks to provide parking for the Lake Chalet, Oakland’s transportation decision-making is a disaster apparent to even the most unconcerned citizen. Everyone who goes out on the town in Uptown has to navigate past Pican’s rude fence (approved administratively by City Planning), deal with an utter lack of parking or transit signage (thanks to the Redevelopment Agency), and step gingerly over rotting sidewalks while crossing potholed streets devoid of bike lanes, during a traffic signal that appears to be timed to kill pedestrians. And this is our showcase downtown district?

A reading of data behind the Energy and Climate Action Plan puts the focus clearly on transportation. With few clear policy demands beyond setting aggressive goals, the Climate Action Coalition is calling for a Transportation Commission to ensure action on these important issues. With the overwhelming majority of our emissions coming from cars, even small changes to mode-share will make huge differences in emissions. This requires not just a commitment, but real follow-through, and institutional changes to allow public and consistent transportation decision-making. A Transportation Commission with real authority would go a long way, but leadership is necessary too. We need elected leadership on land-use so that developers aren’t forced out of our transit corridors by Oakland’s band of increasingly aggressive NIMBYs, we need a unified (and informed) voice on regional transportation funding boards, and we need articulate and risk-taking leaders who are willing to get yelled at in order to create a better future for Oakland. Can Oakland have the leadership we need in order to create a greener, healthier, and more prosperous city? Collectively, that’s our decision.

Oakland is one of the few California cities where Councilmembers can run for reelection indefinitely. Of the ten largest cities in California, only Oakland and Sacramento are without term limits for the City Council. In the other eight cities, incumbency is not an issue. But in Oakland, the advantages of incumbency are overwhelming: the last time a full-term Councilmember was defeated for reelection was in 1996, and half of our City Council has been elected to serve sixteen years or more. Oakland’s notable lack of term limits and the built-in advantages of incumbency aren’t the only factors producing stagnant leadership. Strict campaign-finance regulations also favor incumbents because incumbents have more access to loopholes than challengers, while challengers have passionate supporters who are more likely to give the maximum contribution.

The most significant loophole enjoyed by incumbents under Oakland’s campaign-finance rules is the ability to roll over debt from one campaign to the next without triggering self-financing penalties, which is very unfair. Incumbents also tend to do better securing matching funds than their challengers, and it is a rare day when a City Council challenger has access to ballot measure committees or other funds that are allowed to sidestep City regulation. But there is another key reason why incumbents benefit more from campaign donation limits than challengers: passion.

It takes a lot of passion to challenge a sitting City Councilmember. As much as people are dissatisfied with the City Council and City leadership in general, it is an uphill climb to unseat an incumbent. Councilmembers can punish their political enemies with unfavorable legislation, and though Councilmembers are not supposed to decide the character of individual development projects, the recipients of public contracts, where parking meters are located, or which parks get renovated, the fact is that they usually do decide these matters. Any community member with interests before the City is taking a huge risk when challenging an incumbent, and recent history bears this out. Nancy Nadel’s tight reelection campaign in 2008 featured a mailer attacking her opponents as real-estate speculators, yet property developers gave her more money than they gave her challengers, because most of them couldn’t risk her wrath. Those who are willing to jeopardize their interests to help Oakland achieve better leadership must be very passionate, and are therefore more likely to contribute the maximum amount of resources allowed.

The report prepared by Ethics Commission staff is flawed (PDF) but contains the information necessary to prove this point. Dan Purnell, Executive Director of the Ethics Commission, was quietly criticized on Monday for making errors of omission on an ethics matter that appear to favor Councilmember Jean Quan. For the Commission’s discussion of campaign-finance changes (which are opposed by Ms. Quan), Mr. Purnell, in his reports of past campaign donations and spending, wrongly includes City-provided matching funds in donation totals without noting so, making it appear that maximum-contribution donations are a much lower percentage of overall contributions than in reality. However, one can still see that Sean Sullivan received a higher percentage of his overall contributions in maximum increments than did Ms. Nadel. With incumbents enjoying a stranglehold over their seats, it makes sense to give challengers more of an opportunity to make their voices heard, and since raising donation limits benefits challengers more than incumbents, this aids the democratic process.

But that’s only one side of the equation. Low donation limits disproportionately benefit incumbents because their supporters tend to be less passionate, and because they have loopholes they can exploit that challengers cannot. But Oakland also has spending limits, and there are good reasons to think that IRV will increase campaign budgets. If those budgets are unduly constrained, rather than limiting the money in politics, money will just go around the candidates, weakening democracy and leaving candidates more beholden to special interests.

City Attorney John Russo makes a good case that Instant Runoff Voting should trigger an increase to campaign limits. Consolidating two elections into one necessarily lengthens the election season, increasing campaign expenses. More importantly, holding elections in November instead of June means that there are many more voters to capture (higher turnout is of course the main selling point of IRV). Ms. Quan said publicly that “you don’t need twice as many mailers” in a November election, but you have to send mailers to twice as many people. Failing to increase expenditure limits when campaign costs go up doesn’t take money out of politics, it takes control away from candidates.

Because, of course, money won’t leave politics. California cities are constrained in their ability to impose taxes, so there is less money in local campaigns because there is less at stake, compared to other states where many millions of dollars are spent on middling mayoral elections. But since there are still dollars at stake in election results, from businesses seeking permits to nonprofits seeking public funding, interests will spend money on campaigns regardless of what the Public Ethics Commission declares. If candidates cannot collect and spend these dollars, they will go to unregulated independent efforts. Thus spending limits don’t decrease money in politics, and can reduce candidates’ control over campaigns, encouraging negative campaigning.

Whatever high-minded goals avowed by campaign reform advocates are undermined by unseemly politicking over these decisions, with mayoral candidate Jean Quan exhorting her supporters to oppose raising campaign limits with the explicit goal of helping her campaign vis-a-vis Don Perata. But Mr. Perata controls an unregulated campaign account, and if there is money on his side, it will find a way into the election through independent expenditures. Mayoral campaign aside, Oakland desperately needs to level the playing field for challengers to our unusually entrenched City Council. Because of loopholes more available to incumbents, because of the real need for more spending due to higher turnout, and because of the passion of challengers’ supporters, loosening campaign-finance limits will aid grassroots democracy more than strict limits.

The US Supreme Court ruling that corporate bodies are entitled to free speech rights jeopardizes state and local regulations since the First Amendment applies to states. In Oakland, a judge ruled in 2006 that Political Action Committees could directly advocate for and against candidates, a ruling that was exploited by supporters of both Aimee Allison and Pat Kernighan during that year’s Council runoff. Between the likelihood of high independent expenditures and the consolidated elections in November, the Council may consider lifting donation and expenditure limits for local elections. There’s also talk of eliminating matching funds, for several reasons including the expense, that they’re not available for at-large elections, and a feeling that these funds mostly help incumbents who are more adept at exploiting campaign rules they wrote themselves. Lifting donation and expenditure limits would certainly be a boon for challengers, who compared to incumbents tend to have fewer but more passionate supporters, and who need to spend more to overcome an incumbent’s name recognition. One City Council seat up for election this November will have no incumbent, and so may be a test of a new campaign atmosphere in Oakland.

Having established herself as a serious mayoral contender, Councilmember Jean Quan cannot run for reelection, creating this rare open seat. The Montclair-Laurel District 4 seat has the highest voter turnout in the city, making it likely the most expensive of the three Council elections this November. Now that candidates are talking to potential supporters, many wonder who Ms. Quan will choose as her successor. According to several sources, Ms. Quan has introduced her husband, Alameda County Medical Center Trustree Dr. Floyd Huen, to some influential players as a Council candidate for District 4. With her husband perhaps running, Ms. Quan has motive to make things difficult for those seeking her seat. Other possible contenders include: Jill Broadhurst, an active volunteer in Montclair; Melanie Shelby, a former at-large Council candidate who recently returned to Oakland from Washington DC; Scott Jackson, an Assistant District Attorney who had considered running for Mayor; Libby Schaaf, a personal friend of mine who is a life-long civic leader native to D4; and Clinton Killian, the former at-large Council candidate and Paramount Boardmember. Though the filing period isn’t until August, Ms. Broadhurst has already announced she’s running and it’s likely others will announce by mid-Spring. Oakland may be in for a long, hot election.

Jean Quan is now Vice Mayor Quan, as of January 19th. Last year, when Jane Brunner upset Ignacio de la Fuente’s plans to remain Council President, Mr. de la Fuente was given the Vice Mayor position as a consolation prize. This wasn’t merely a title, though – at the time there was speculation that Dellums would resign as Mayor to take a position in DC or even as an ambassador, elevating Mr. de la Fuente to Mayor. Since Ms. Quan’s mayoral ambitions do not enjoy the support of Ms. Brunner or Mr. de la Fuente, her ascension to Vice Mayor is a clear signal that they do not expect Mayor Dellums to go anywhere. Recently joined by Green Party member and free-parking advocate Don Macleay, Vice Mayor Quan and former State Senator Don Perata are running active if low-key campaigns ten months in advance of election day. The campaign won’t get going in full force until Mayor Dellums formally announces he’s not running for reelection, freeing his loyalists and others who hold him in esteem to escape the sidelines. If the Mayor has any sympathy for overextended activists, he will wait until the summer.

Closing the library over the holidays was criminal: it was in total contradiction to an important educational goal of the library system. When students aren’t in school, the library allows them to continue or catch up on their studies, and eases the burden on their parents. We didn’t need a Chronicle article to tell us how awful it was to have this vital public service completely closed exactly when it was most needed. The library furloughs are in addition to losing a day of branch library service every week, an 18% cut. Some Councilmembers like to say that they were able to balance last year’s budget without closing libraries: in fact, the libraries are now closed a lot, and of course the budget isn’t balanced.

For most people, the library (along with senior centers, rec centers and parks) is their primary use of the service side of Oakland City government (as opposed to the enforcement side). But for many others, losing access to various city services is a major hassle. Like other active citizens, I often contact Code Enforcement, the Planning Department, and Council staff. Professionally, I use city services, whether it’s the permit desk, the business license department, the bike/ped program, the facade improvement program, or Business Attraction. Removing 5% of city service hours has a commensurate impact on the private sector, and of course the City’s sclerotic bureaucracy can’t easily adjust to odd schedules.

Because Oakland’s budget problems are only going to get worse, short-term fixes like furloughs deprive citizens of needed services without providing a long-term budget solution. The City unions prefer furloughs to pay cuts because furloughs are theoretically temporary and don’t affect baseline pay, and because they want the public to feel their pain. But the public deserves access to services, not painful closures. If the City is going to downsize services, we should reduce the nature and breadth of services, not cut service hours. Students shouldn’t be punished because the City can’t afford its payroll, the highest in the nation according to the US Census. Oakland has a part-time City Council, but we deserve a full-time City.

The term “Complete Street” is used to refer to a street that is improved for all modes of transit: motorized, bicycle, and pedestrian. In Oakland, the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans and their associated policies provide compliance with the CA Complete Streets Act of 2008, but there are no concrete plans to add bike lanes or substantial pedestrian improvements to the entirety of Telegraph Avenue and International Blvd. The BRT plan drawn up by Oakland planners and engineers, formally if confusingly known as Oakland’s Locally Preferred Alternative, would make far-reaching and large-scale improvements to those streets, an opportunity unique in the city today.

Oakland’s Bicycle Master Plan outlines a Bicycle Network, streets in the city that should have some level of bicycle facility installed, ranging from fully-fledged bike lanes to just signage. While the Bicycle Master Plan has an Environmental Impact Report associated with it, city staff can’t remove car lanes or parking spaces without Council permission, which is a huge barrier because of the Council’s limited meeting time. In practice, the City’s Bike/Ped Program installs bike lanes when the opportunity arises, like when a street that’s on the BMP is being repaved for cars. This approach is extremely cost-effective, but frustrates cyclists who must use a patchwork of incomplete bicycle facilities. BRT installing bike lanes on Telegraph and International is a unique opportunity to create an entire 17-mile bike route in one fell swoop. But there’s another reason BRT is uniquely beneficial to bicyclists: without BRT, there would be no bike lane on Telegraph at all. Oakland’s 1999 Bicycle Master Plan EIR was successfully challenged in court, and the 2007 Bicycle Master Plan had to abandon bike lanes on Telegraph (using instead the Webster-Shafter route). Oakland’s transportation planners took advantage of the opportunity afforded by BRT to rethink Telegraph, and brought this much-desired bike lane back from the dead.

Oakland’s Pedestrian Master Plan is more of a statement of policy and establishment of best design practices than a map of areas to be improved. The Pedestrian Route Map, in the words of the plan, is “a long-term planning tool for targeting pedestrian improvements,” with no dedicated funding source. Much like bike lanes, pedestrian improvements are installed in a piecemeal fashion, based on grant funding, a private development’s mitigations, or a Redevelopment Agency district-improvement project. The BRT plan will upgrade pedestrian facilities along the entire length of the system, with widened sidewalks, more crosswalks, and even additional traffic signals. To anyone who has had to cross Telegraph Avenue at night, the need for these improvements is apparent.

Oakland’s portion of the 17-mile East Bay Bus Rapid Transit line is proposed to include dedicated bus and bike lanes across its entire length accompanied by significant pedestrian improvements, creating what could be the longest complete street in California. It’s not actually one street, of course: it’s two streets, and the middle portion (downtown) will not have dedicated bus lanes because buses already occupy most of the roadway during commute hours. That caveat aside, the BRT plan promises to be a radical improvement to an extraordinarily long transit corridor, potentially serving 40% of the city’s population.

So who loses out? After all, there’s only so much horizontal right-of-way. It’s not necessarily drivers who will feel the pinch of losing significant street space to sidewalk bulbouts, bike lanes, and bus lanes. Few portions of Telegraph suffer significant traffic delay, and the Grove-Shafter freeway parallels the route, giving drivers another option. Telegraph’s traffic problems are generally at the avenue’s destination points, where people are most likely to switch from driving to using reliable transit. It’s parkers who are going to see the hit, as the plan takes out more street-side parking than expected. But this is a solvable problem: at worst, AC Transit will install additional parking rather than allow the project to founder. International Blvd’s choke points are accommodated by also using E 12th St for portions of the route. Oakland’s plan appears to be pulling off what was once unthinkable: a major complete-street improvement that’s a radical boon to livability, without draining City coffers or drawing drivers’ ire.

Oakland’s plan, of course, is still unfinished. The City is sponsoring a series of public meetings on the project, with the opportunity to give detailed input on specific streetscape choices along the entire route. If you live, work, or hang out near the BRT route and would like to delve into nitty-gritty details like stop locations, I recommend that you visit the meeting in the neighborhood of your interest. In addition to five neighborhood meetings, there’s a meeting at City Hall for general discussion. With resuscitated Telegraph Avenue bike lanes, significant pedestrian improvements, and dedicated transit lanes, the East Bay BRT plan is Oakland’s best chance for the foreseeable future to make a citywide livability improvement on a grand scale.

You can find more information, including dates and locations of public meetings on the BRT LPA, at OaklandBRT.com.

Update: Oakland’s portion of the BRT system is 11 miles.

I wrote last month about the many problems confronting Oakland’s transportation planning process. With civic leaders pushing new ballparks, my thoughts turned to the transportation aspects of planning a major entertainment destination. Two of the announced sites were West of Jack London Square, including a site called Jack London North that has stirred significant interest (and is the most popular plan in a poll at Oakland Local). But it poses some serious transportation access problems, including being certainly outside of what can be considered reasonable walking distance from BART (as is AT&T Park in San Francisco, of course). Without an up-to-date downtown transportation plan or even summary information, it’s hard to blame decision-makers for not knowing the transportation context of grand plans. But what is really striking is how important many downtown plans consider ferry service to be, from Jack London Square developments to the proposed shuttle service, yet those making the plans clearly are unaware of the ferry’s serious shortcomings, including the likelihood that Oakland will lose its ferry service in five years.

All the information below can be found in WETA’s Transition Plan.

The City of Alameda, in partnership with the Port of Oakland and Alameda County (ACTIA), provides a commuter ferry to San Francisco called the Alameda – Oakland Ferry. Its operations are contracted to Blue & Gold Fleets, using two publicly-owned ferries. Alameda, like many other cities, subsidizes this transit service out of its General Fund, and the Port of Oakland also contributes a significant sum yearly out of general revenues, for a total subsidy of about four million dollars. Next year, the new Water Emergency Transit Authority will take over operating the service, but WETA is only committed to maintain current service for five years. So here’s the problem: the Port doesn’t want to keep paying, and WETA wants to expand service to South San Francisco, which will require increased subsidy. With Port and City budgets squeezed, the future of ferry service is very much up in the air.

The present state of ferry service is also a big problem. Everyone seems to assume that people use the ferry, but the truth is that almost nobody rides it. Ridership declined ten percent from 1997 to 2008, and has dropped 15% in the current fiscal year. The ferry’s maximum roundtrip capacity is only 2328 passengers a day,* and average daily ridership is a pitiful 640 people**, with two-thirds of commuters coming from Alameda (though most weekend trips originate in Oakland). Because Jack London Square and Alameda are so far from BART, and SF’s Ferry Terminal is in a major job center, there are several thousand people that could use the ferry to commute, but they don’t. The ferry is slow, expensive, and frankly, unpleasant to ride. There’s no signage, no ferry employees outside of the ferry itself, no waiting area, the ferries’ interiors are shabby, and the snacks and alcohol bar is woefully underutilized. On top of that, tickets are expensive. And what kind of “emergency” transit closes during a rainstorm? Unless WETA addresses these problems, ferry ridership can’t increase significantly enough for the ferry to be a real transit option.

If City officials are going to say that Jack London Square’s ferry pier is a transportation option, or attempt to make any plans including it, Oakland must determine the future of the ferry. The City should ask the Port and Alameda to explain their plans for ferry subsidy over the next ten years. Oakland should tell WETA in no uncertain terms that if they want Oakland to commit to long-term funding, WETA’s multimillion-dollar planned investments in Berkeley and South San Francisco should be matched by investments in Oakland. To determine how much of a commitment public agencies should make, Oakland should also find out what plans WETA has for increasing ferry ridership, because current levels don’t justify a continued subsidy. Local leaders are making plans based around a ferry service that is clearly failing, with no plan to improve it or to ensure it doesn’t disappear. Burdened by a chaotic and unfocused transportation bureaucracy and decision-making structure, it’s unclear who is keeping an eye on Oakland’s transit infrastructure, even as it slips away.

** 466,818 trips in FY 2007-2008, divided by 365 days, divided by two trips/person, means an average of only 640 people rode the ferry each day during that period. Remember, this includes Alameda as well as Oakland; Alameda passengers represent about 2/3s of the riders, so the Jack London Square ferry terminal is only serving about 220 people on an average day.

Last week I wrote about the problems with Oakland’s transportation decision-making process. Existing problems include not only a lack of planning for future investment, but flawed approaches to oversight of public and private transportation projects for compliance with city goals, poor coordination with other cities and agencies, and an almost incoherent division of transportation responsibilities both within the bureaucracy and at the City Council level. A Transportation Commission is floated as one solution to that problem. Before thinking about what a Transportation Commission or other changes to transportation decision-making would look like in Oakland, it’s instructive to look at other cities’ approaches. I examined the transportation structures of a dozen West Coast cities, and Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan’s office shared their research on Transportation Commissions with me.

Rather than list all of the cities and their different approaches to transportation decision-making, I will summarize three different models of transportation decision-making and use representative examples. Many cities have advisory-only transportation commissions with no real power and a limited or unclear mandate for review, much like Oakland and its Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (which I chair). Some cities have Transportation Commissions with some real power, and City Council Committees that unify transportation policymaking. And two cities, Los Angeles and San Francisco, have powerful independent transportation authorities with a clear mandate and substantial, though appealable, authority.

Advisory-only transportation committees

Berkeley, Portland, and Seattle all have advisory-only committees. All three cities have both Pedestrian and Bicycle Advisory Committees, with varying levels of oversight mandates. Portland and Seattle have regional transportation authorities, and don’t have city-level Transportation Commissions. Berkeley has a Transportation Commission, but its only role is advisory, and it doesn’t have a clear mandate (for example, the Planning Commission, not the Transportation Commission, reviewed both Bus Rapid Transit and the new ferry service). Berkeley’s City Council has no committees beyond Rules, so there’s no transportation committee; Seattle’s Council coordinates its transportation policy message to regional agencies with a Council Committee; and Portland has a very different governing structure than California cities. None of these cities encourage its transportation commissions to examine private development projects. All in all, these cities do not have a very different approach to transportation decision-making than Oakland.

Some independent transportation authority

Alameda, Long Beach, and San Diego are examples of a middle ground between advisory-only and authoritative Transportation Commissions. In San Diego, the Land Use and Housing Committee of the City Council hears all transportation-related issues, including parking and encroachments, making it easier to have a coherent policy. The city does not enjoy a Transportation Commission, or even a bike or ped advisory committee, but does have a Community Planning Advisory Committee and an Airports Advisory Committee, with substantial oversight over some aspects of transportation. Long Beach doesn’t have City Council Committees, but has an independent Public Transportation Commission that oversees its city-run bus system (Oakland, by the way, does have a city-run bus system, and is planning to expand it, yet has no transit authority figure).

Alameda’s Transportation Commission not only has a clear mandate to review transportation policy and the transportation aspects of major projects (and Environmental Impact Reports), but serves as the public appeal board for decisions made by the Department of Public Works. In Oakland, the Planning Director’s decisions are appealable to the Planning Commission, but other internal decisions are either unappealable or only appealable directly to the full City Council. By providing a venue to appeal decisions on minor encroachments, for example, the Alameda Transportation Commission relieves the City Council of some time-consuming tasks, while reinforcing the unity of the transportation decision-making. The Alameda Transportation Commission, however, has multiple vacancies, and Alameda does not seem to be doing a great job with transit planning (though at least they have some ideas!).

Transportation commissions with real power

Los Angeles and San Francisco have institutional structures devoted to transportation. The LA City Council has a Transportation Committee, and San Francisco has an independent Metropolitan Transportation Authority with significant power. Los Angeles operates a Department of Transportation (LADOT), unifying all transportation-related service in one organization, as does San Francisco, whose MTA arose from a combined Department of Public Transit Parking and Traffic and MUNI in 1999. LADOT has an advisory committee roughly equivalent to a Transportation Commission, with significant authority over transportation decision-making, including ambulance licenses, off-street parking, transportation planning, and encroachments; In SF, all such decisions are made by Mayor-appointed SFMTA. Both LADOT and SF have separate Taxi Commissions. The LA City Council and SF Board of Supervisors maintain ultimate authority over transportation decisions but rarely get involved on non-budget issues.

Conclusion

It is apparent that there are several models for expanding and unifying transportation decision-making with an independent body. For City Councils, the LA and San Diego model of placing all transportation issues in one committee seems to work well. But there is a huge difference between the SFMTA, whose decisions are hardly ever appealed to the Board of Supervisors, and the Alameda Transportation Commission, which is clearly subservient to the City Council and doesn’t have much budgetary authority. LADOT’s Board of Transportation Commissioners are invested with similar powers to the SFMTA, yet their decisions are more explicitly subject to City Council review.

The virtue of creating an independent authority would be to tap expertise in the community while relieving the Council of some of its more mundane duties, like examining encroachments. The BPAC is meant to advise city staff, yet has no mandate over anything but the bike-ped program so has to resort to wheedling to hear private or redevelopment projects. The LA Commission is structured to advise staff, but in reality has similar powers to the SFMTA, which is meant to be the final word. Both the Alameda and Berkeley Commissions are mandated to merely advise the Council, yet Alameda’s Commission has real power and unified authority while Berkeley’s has neither. Other cities vary in their Transportation Commission’s bureaucratic placement (ie, advising staff versus advising the Council), power and mandate, and scope of authority. Oakland has many models to examine when planning its own Transportation Commission, but which one is best?

The lack of coordination on transportation extends to the City Council level. Transportation issues are split up among different Council Committees, making it harder to have a coordinated policy: parking fees are at Finance, investments and most policies go to Development, most right-of-way issues go to Public Works, and taxi regulation goes to Public Safety. Meanwhile, Oakland’s representatives on major transit agencies are scattershot: Rebecca Kaplan is our representative to ACTIA (the County’s main funding agency for transportation), Jane Brunner is our representative to the MTC-ABAG Joint Policy Committee, and CM Reid is Oakland’s voice on the Congestion Management Agency, which is the County’s transportation planning authority. A casual observer of transit issues will know that these three Councilmembers don’t see eye-to-eye on transit issues.

Though Oakland’s economy and cityscape is defined by transportation more than any other factor, the city has ignored transportation planning and has no coordinated or formalized means of addressing a whole host of transportation issues, from parking ratios for new buildings to bus stop locations. There is absolutely no planning whatsoever for transit improvements, and, frankly, CM Reid seems to be intent on preventing Oakland from making any transit investments now that he has approval for the Airport Connector, using his positions on the Congestion Management Agency and the Bus Rapid Transit Steering Committee to undermine BRT without doing anything that his bus-dependent constituents would even notice. In 2006, the Mayor’s Transportation Task Force recommended (PDF) creating a Transportation Commission “to develop. implement, and prioritize transportation strategies,” yet this idea was only half-formed and didn’t address many of the problems outlined above.

Can these problems be addressed with a Transportation Commission? Does the City Council have to restructure its own appointments and committee system in order to address transportation issues? Do City agencies need to be reorganized in order to create a Transportation Department, or can the Task Force’s suggestion of a “go-to person” and a working group be sufficient? Do you agree that the issues outlined above are real problems, or is Oakland doing just fine transportation-wise? Like almost everything else that came out of the Mayor’s Task Forces, the Transportation Commission idea has gone nowhere, but if the idea is worthwhile, there may be an opportunity to revive it. But that begins with identifying the problem. In this case, the problem may be bigger than the proposed solution.

UPDATE: I added a link to the Transportation Task Force report (PDF).

Safeway on Claremont Environmental Impact Report

At a contentious meeting last week, the Planning Commission listened to public input on what should be studied as part of Safeway’s Environmental Impact Report for expanding their store at Claremont and College. Dozens of neighbors lined up to say that they don’t want outsiders coming to their neighborhood to do grocery shopping, and that somehow Rockridge’s small-shop character is best enhanced by a gigantic surface parking lot at a prominent intersection.

You can write a letter to Planning Staff and the Commission outlining what you think should be studied. If you support the new store, you could emphasize that the pedestrian impacts of the no-build option are important to study, and that study of land-use issues or impacts on all of North Oakland (as requested by some neighbors) is unnecessary. If you oppose the project, feel free to think of the craziest thing you can imagine, and ask that it be studied. You can find contact info for comment on the Planning Commission’s November 18 agenda (PDF).

Toll increase on Bay Area bridges

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission burns through billions like it’s monopoly money, and though constantly short-changing public transportation, can’t even manage its pet highway projects well. Thus, the MTC is facing a severe deficit for the seismic strengthening of many bridges, including the Bay Bridge. True to form, rather than look for more efficient solutions, the MTC just wants more money. Currently the Bay Area Toll Authority, which is more or less the same as the MTC, is seeking public comment on a toll rise for state-run bridges (eg, not the Golden Gate Bridge or Fruitvale Bridge). This would be the first toll increase in almost twenty years that would not be endorsed by voters and would not include funds for improving public transit. On the other hand, the MTC is considering congestion pricing, which is very efficient. Comments can be addressed to the Bay Area Toll Authority before Dec 21. And if you’d like to know more about why these toll increases are needed, consider donating to McSweeney’s Bay Bridge seismic retrofit investigation, pitched on Spot.us.

AC Transit Service Changes

V Smoothe has been covering AC Transit’s service changes extensively for several months, and today writes that the final adjustment plan, released last week, is a triumph for careful consideration of public input, providing a model for other agencies. By contrast, BART slashed off-peak service 25% without even a ridership survey, and the Oakland City Council tries their darnedest not to implement inevitable service cuts. Be that as it may, the final service adjustment plan is out, and it’s open for comment. Highlights include improving service along the 51 corridor by splitting the line in two at Rockridge (which I do not like at all), and expanding service to educational destinations in the East Hills, including new service to Skyline High School, the Oakland Zoo, and the Chabot Space and Science Center. You can provide comment online, or in person at a meeting on December 1.

Union Pacific Railroad Right-of-Way Feasibility Study

Union Pacific Railroad is in negotiations to sell its “Oakland Subdivision” right-of-way to Alameda County, which would use a portion of it to recreate passenger rail connections on the Dumbarton Bridge, in South County. Union Pacific would like to sell the entire subdivision, though, and so the County is looking at possible changes to the use of part of the subdivision, which in Oakland mostly runs below the BART tracks along San Leandro St. The main thrust of the study is to make bicycle and pedestrian paths, though I don’t find the underside of BART tracks to be very scenic. In any event, it’s an interesting idea, and planners are looking for public comment. They are particularly interested in whether bicyclists would prefer Class I (grade-separated) or Class II (on-street) bike lanes as part of the project. Check out the study and leave your comments, at Alameda County Public Works (it’s the first item under Community Updates).

City staff are presenting this important, and hopefully long-term, planning policy during an uncertain climate. Though many development projects are on hold, others are in progress, and downtown is seeing an uptick in retail businesses. Inclusionary Zoning, a controversial policy that has been a touchstone in Oakland’s development politics for a decade, is in legal limbo after a Los Angeles developer successfully challenged an affordability mandate as a violation of Costa-Hawkins, the state law that banned vacancy control and restricted rent control to pre-1980 buildings. With the State Supreme Court declining to hear an appeal of what is being called the Palmer decision, it seems like a major potential barrier to new development is no longer an option.

On Monday, the Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board will be discussing the citywide rezoning as well, but within their subject area. If you’re interested in how rezoning may impact historic preservation, check out the agenda and the staff report. There are three opportunities to attend meetings about rezoning, so a student of Oakland’s future has no excuse but to attend!