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.

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).

While merchants are a vital and valuable part of the community, their perspective on transportation is not as well-rounded as one might assume, and, as has happened before, many merchants have taken a position contrary to the best interests of their customers. The claim that higher meter fees and longer hours are hurting business is not borne out by a careful examination of the evidence.

Some merchants argue that the new meter fees have had a direct and immediate impact on their livelihoods. They claim very frightening downturns in their business: in Grand Lake, a salon claims to suffer a one-fifth fall in revenue, a bakery says sales are down 25%, and Alan Michaan of the Theater says his sales are off by half. They attribute these huge declines in their revenue to a $.50/hr parking meter fee increase, as well as a two-hour increase in the hours of operation.

This is hard to believe for two reasons. First, it usually takes consumers a fair amount of time to change their behavior in response to price signals. For example, car driving has continued to fall after gas prices came off their 2008 highs. A less inspiring example is that consumer habit is a major barrier to establishing new retail districts in Oakland. So it seems unlikely that one trip to Grand Lake, paying more than expected for parking, would result in an immediate and drastic change in consumer habits.

Second, fifty cents an hour is not very much money. Dinners in Oakland for two often cost over $50. $4 more in evening meter fees, which many customers expect because of dining experiences in San Francisco and elsewhere, is about the same as sales tax. If $4 is crippling to one’s transportation budget, then the extra cost of driving to a restaurant with dedicated parking in Walnut Creek or Lafayette would be hurtful too (and of course there are establishments within Oakland with off-street parking). Despite what some merchants imply, street parking is not free or unlimited in Emeryville, Berkeley, Lafayette or Walnut Creek. Daytime customers who may be buying the apocryphal spool of thread are paying an extra fifty cents an hour more, which does not justify a substantially longer and less convenient trip. It’s really hard to believe that Oakland charging drivers an extra dollar would have a substantial and immediate impact on store receipts.

So what is going on? Are the merchants lying? No, they’re not, although I will point out that merchants’ business statements are held to a far lower standard than that applied to larger enterprises. It’s true that business is bad for Oakland merchants. But is that really a surprise? Merchants should have been prepared for a hot, difficult summer, given that the recession is (hopefully) hitting its bottom, and there is usually a summertime decrease in local business. Rebutting one neighborhood’s example, City Homestead writes:

It’s critical to know how much, if any, business the commercial districts are losing that’s directly attributable to the parking fees and not to the economy overall. (I’ll add that in Grand Lake’s case, my read as a neighborhood resident is that business has been down for months—it’s not a new thing. We’ve lost a number of businesses, and most of them closed well before the increased fees kicked in, so I’m wary of attributing too much to a drop in July business.)

So there are other explanations for a painful business downturn. A source reports that one large and well-known Oakland restaurant has suffered, since July, a 40% decline in business. This restaurant enjoys free dedicated parking. So it may not be true that recent decline in business can be attributed to increased parking fees.

Even the upset merchants themselves date their decline in business to before the meter fees were increased. Several say that business has declined since the beginning of July, when the Master Fee Schedule was passed. But the fees didn’t come into effect until July 11; it was only two days later that Michaan began his protest. While many merchants believe they benefit from cheaper parking for their customers, it is far from clear that meter fees have had a real business impact.

Some merchants are asking the City Council to believe that customers cannot afford an extra dollar for shopping or four dollars for dining, that they have drastically changed their weekly routines, and did so immediately after a Council meeting at which Alan Michaan was the only person to speak against the fees. It doesn’t make sense. There isn’t enough evidence that higher meter fees and longer hours are actually reducing business receipts for the Council to reopen the budget process. Merchants’ assumptions need to be challenged: is cheap street parking really that important to Oakland retailers? In conclusion, please enjoy a choose-your-own-adventure story inspired by Paramount Theater Boardmember Clinton Killian’s Oakbook op-ed.

It’s a bright and breezy summer Saturday. You’re half of a hot couple and you want to roll your Prius to Ozumo at 7pm, but are sensitive to parking problems. You could spend $10 on the valet, $2 on the meter, or go somewhere else. Emeryville’s meters are cheaper, but they run all night, so if you linger over langoustine at Town Hall you’ll lose more than a Jefferson. PF Chang’s at Bay Street will let you park for free for two hours, but mediocre fried rice doesn’t really go with your outfit. You could cruise all the way over to Lafayette, enjoying some Lady GaGa on the way, but Yankee Pier may not be your scene, gas just keeps going up, and all that time in the car is time you’re not admiring your date. If you’re determined to pinch pennies, you can take your high-heeled, clutch-toting companion to the Sinaloa truck on First Avenue, where there’s free parking and the lengua tacos with pickled carrots are cheaper than Ozumo’s tender toro. What do you do?

The classy answer is to go to Ozumo and pay the valet, or cough up the $2 and walk a block. I dare say that’s your date’s opinion too.

Next Thursday (June 18), the Oakland City Council Rules Committee will hear a request from Councilmember Nancy Nadel to agendize a discussion of the proposed Oakland Airport Connector project. Ms. Nadel will request the connector be discussed at the Public Works Committee, which she chairs, and that the project then be forwarded to the full Council. The project is being sold to the region as a great investment in Oakland, yet Oakland’s elected officials have not had an opportunity to examine it in eight years, and the project has changed substantially since then. Nevertheless, transit advocates expect a fight over whether Oakland should even have a discussion.

A lot is at stake for Oakland. On one hand, project supporters claim that it will improve the Oakland Airport area, attracting more airline passengers and perhaps more businesses to Airport and surrounding area. For the reality-based community, however, there are enormous costs to the City of Oakland to moving ahead with the project. ACTIA funds that would otherwise go to East Oakland bike/ped/transit improvements, such as a mooted transit village at the Coliseum BART station, would be lost. The Port of Oakland will have to use funds that would otherwise go to airport renovation and expansion. Regional stimulus funds would go to this instead of to shoring up AC Transit and BART service. And the City of Oakland will lose the opportunity to improve transit service that would serve the workers and businesses in the Hegenberger Corridor, since the RFP for the Airport Connector does not include any intermediate stops. Many of these problems are a result of changes to the project, and many former supporters are now opponents.

A half-billion-dollar regional investment in Oakland should clearly merit some review by the Oakland City Council. However, transit advocates expect Councilmember Larry Reid, who represents the Airport and is on the Rules Committee, to resist allowing a public hearing on the project. He has claimed several times, most recently this morning at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission committee hearing, that six of the eight councilmembers support the project. If that’s true, why wouldn’t he welcome a public hearing and the opportunity for the Council as a body to weigh in? Supporters of the Oakland Airport Connector, mainly BART and MTC staff, have been resisting any review of alternatives to the project (today MTC Director Steve Heminger said it was “too late” to look at alternatives, even though they’ve been mooted for years). BART staff have repeatedly lied to decision-makers about the specifics of the project, for example telling the Port Commission about local hire and project labor agreements that are mysteriously missing from the RFP, or providing outdated ridership projections to the MTC. A well-placed City Hall source tells me that when Council staff contacted BART about having a public hearing on the project, BART said they would rather meet privately with each councilmember. Clearly Airport Connector supporters don’t think they have the truth on their side.

So, what do you think? If you agree that Oakland’s elected official should weigh in on the project, with public comment, please send an email to the members of the Rules Committee, especially Council President Jane Brunner (addresses below). If you think projects should be decided without the input of relevant elected officials, well, then you are probably quite thrilled with the direction of Bay Area transportation spending, and you don’t need to do anything. Without Oakland’s elected officials having a public hearing, the citizens of Oakland have no formal voice in the process. The Oakland City Council needs to step up to plate and make the decisions they were elected to, on behalf of the city. Please advocate for your chance to have a voice.

Rules Committee (meeting on Thursday, June 18)

Council President Jane Brunner, North Oakland: jbrunner at oaklandnet dot com

Jean Quan, Montclair-Laurel: jquan at oaklandnet dot com

Ignacio de la Fuente, Fruitvale-Glenview-Jingletown: idelafuente at oaklandnet dot com