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.

Today, the attention of the blogoaksphere has turned to the open seat on the AC Transit Board. The largest bus-only transit agency in the United States will appoint a member to replace Oakland City Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, and transit activists as well as other concerned leaders are weighing in. I am proud to report that East Bay transit advocates have conducted an endorsement process, and chosen Elizabeth Echols (PDF) as the best candidate to replace Ms. Kaplan.

Last year I asked a respected community leader to apply for this seat. After seriously considering it, he declined due to other commitments to important causes. Since I did not know any of the candidates personally or from their work as transit advocates, I felt it was important for transit activists to have a role in the process of choosing our new transit director. In January I invited several leaders of different transit advocacy groups to meet and discuss the open AC Transit seat. We decided that, instead of putting forth one of our own as a candidate, we would offer our joint endorsement.

We put together a detailed questionnaire and sent it to the candidates that we had heard about (including three of the four finalists). The questionnaire was created with input from leaders of every East Bay transit advocacy group: Walk Oakland Bike Oakland, Friends of BRT, the No on KK Committee, Alameda Transit Advocates, the City of Oakland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Bicycle-Friendly Berkeley, Livable Berkeley, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition, and TransForm. (I am on the Oakland BPAC and was on the No on KK campaign committee.)

We scheduled interviews with the respondents and talked to them about their qualifications, their vision and priorities for the agency, and followed-up on some of their answers to our questions. I attended all but one interview, and found them incredibly informative. The candidates explained different facets of the challenges facing AC Transit: one explained exactly how the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s totally ass-backwards financing priorities screw AC Transit (apparently they think bus stops are just as useful to the regional transportation infrastructure as new desks for administrators), another had a very in-depth understanding of the position of the drivers and mechanics (they are concerned about working conditions, and understand the agency’s financial pressures), and another related his experiences as a rider advocate and how the agency works with community groups (rather well, in his opinion, as long they know about a project).

Walking to our endorsement meeting in transit-proximate Old Oakland, I didn’t know who would be our consensus choice. There are many strong candidates. But one offered the combination of experience, new ideas, and appropriate priorities that appealed to everyone at the table: Alameda County Democratic Central Committeemember Elizabeth Echols. A former Google executive who served on the technology cluster of the Obama-Biden Transition Team, she has a fresh perspective on the agency, new ideas about improving service using technology and data, but also a solid grasp of the importance of service reliability to attracting and maintaining an expanded ridership base. Her energy and political connections will allow her to help the agency get approval for the best Bus Rapid Transit system in the next few months, and help her work with regional, state and federal officials to improve the agency’s long-term financial health. I am pleased to be one of many local transit advocates to endorse her candidacy, and I am confident she is able to help guide AC Transit through its troubling financial times without sacrificing the needs of both “choice riders” and the transit-dependent.

It is no secret that there are many qualified individuals applying for this seat. When the Board voted on its four finalists, a former Boardmember who had applied was not among them – that’s a clear signal that the agency is extremely pleased with the quality of those who want to join the Board. With the overwhelming electoral victories racked up by AC Transit last November (78% voted no on Berkeley’s anti-BRT measure KK, and 72% of the district’s voters backed a parcel tax to make up for last year’s state budget cuts), and the caliber of those vying to lead it through a recession, it is clear that AC Transit is on the right track. All transit advocates are pleased by these developments, and the phrase “embarrassment of riches” to describe the selection of a new Boardmember has been used by more than one observer. This is a far cry from six years ago, when Rebecca Kaplan was the only well-qualified applicant for this open seat. Though transit advocates will be satisfied with any of the four finalists to represent us on the East Bay’s largest and most important transportation agency, Elizabeth Echols is the best choice, and we hope that Board will agree.

For a list of all five blogs that today endorsed Ms. Echols, see A Better Oakland’s Elizabeth Echols for AC Transit

A new year presents the opportunity to dream and hope for the new. It may seem that this is not the best moment to hope for new transit service: not only will a slipping economy mean less sales-tax revenue from which to fund local transit, but one state budget-balancing idea includes stripping local transit agencies of operating subsidies in order to jump-start the construction of High Speed Rail. This rests on a calculus that High-Speed Rail will create construction jobs, while transit service merely takes people to their existing jobs. From this government-centric perspective, efficiency and broadly-shared benefits lose to glamorous and expensive new projects. Similarly, BART wants to cut existing service while still building new stations in suburbs where ridership is likely to be low. But the East Bay is about to see enormous transit improvements that are incredibly cost-effective, and a less-cost-effective project is getting another chance.

The handful of choke points connecting Alameda to Oakland’s transportation system have long bedeviled planners. Car access is considered adequate, and only a new bike/ped/transit crossing is being studied, with options to be presented to Oakland and Alameda later this year. However, the need to fit a large Coast Guard ship on the estuary is a major physical barrier to building a bridge. A drawbridge would be useless to buses because it would introduce delays, and building a tall crossing would be prohibitively expensive. But Alameda has figured out how to create reliable transit service with just a bucket of paint: bus queue-jump lanes leading to the Posey Tube. By prioritizing buses over private traffic through the tube, buses avoid a significant bottleneck and restore reliability, at basically zero cost to the public. The lanes should be painted soon.

Though not quite free, Bus Rapid Transit is extraordinarily low-cost transit service that can accommodate tens of thousands of daily riders in its eight-mile corridor for only $250m, all of which has been secured. The Measure KK vote in Berkeley shows that the general public strongly supports Bus Rapid Transit, which confirms my personal experience: everyone I tell about it immediately grasps the concept and the benefit of bus-only lanes, and very few grumble that rail would be better or that cars deserve every last inch of asphalt. The project qualifies for the Federal Small Starts program because of its cost-effectiveness (a metric often not met by rail projects), and all funding has been secured including a generous allotment for overruns. Such a large transportation benefit for little cost, though perhaps uninteresting to state-level politicians, is the perfect project for a recession.

Ironically, as BRT proves its popularity and its cost-effectiveness becomes more valuable, several developments may have made an Oakland streetcar idea more feasible. Unveiled in 2001,  the multi-jurisdictional Long-Range Investment Study looked at BART to Jack London Square, improved transit connection to Alameda, and various Rapid Transit options (BRT, LRT, and a streetcar). Ultimately most ideas were found to be expensive or otherwise infeasible. Out of this study only the aforementioned transit plans are progressing. A MacArthur BART-Downtown-JLS-O29 streetcar circulator was found to be very expensive and have no identifiable funding source, and a cheaper “rubber-tire trolley” suggested by Councilmember Nancy Nadel was not studied. Yet, in the five years since a Congestion Management Agency meeting I attended in 2003 where those conclusions were reached, several funding sources for a downtown streetcar may have presented themselves.

Without radically rejiggering the Central District Redevelopment Area’s spending formula (which provides the vast majority of funds for citywide affordable housing projects), there is no obvious financing mechanism for a downtown streetcar. The City Center and Lake Merritt office districts alone could not bear the costs, and those property owners would be unlikely to see great benefit in shipping their tenants off to Jack London Square for lunch. But the Jack London Square II project is building a substantial amount of office space, and if O29 is approved soon, there will be thousands of new residents needing new transit service. But the real clincher is the Conley Report proposal for a Mid-Broadway large-scale retail district. Since there’s no BART station between 20th and 40th Streets, and the city will be hard-pressed to fund thousands of parking spaces to support new retailers, new transit service will also be needed at the other end of the proposed streetcar route, up Broadway to the MacArthur BART station. With a mix of new retail, office and residential large-scale development along the proposed streetcar line, the prospects for its funding are much brighter, especially as it combines transportation with economic development, and is a large infrastructure project that would create jobs.

As promised in her inauguration speech, Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan will tomorrow present an urgent proposal to the Oakland City Council Rules Committee. She will ask that Oakland add actual infrastructure projects to its federal stimulus request which was woefully lacking when drawn up by the mayor, and adopt a strategy for lobbying Congress to get as many projects funded as possible. Transportation projects are expected to get additional attention, from implementing the Bicycle Master Plan to repaving every street and sidewalk in the city. Even though simple and cost-effective transit solutions are becoming more apparent, with the opportunities presented at the federal and local level (from Obama’s stimulus to Oakland’s retail revitalization plan), new transportation improvements are getting a fresh look and perhaps a fresh start.

Last Tuesday, voters set a course for Oakland’s future. Certain races have something to tell engaged Oaklanders about voters’ wishes, the effectiveness of different kinds of campaigns, and about the current and future policymaking boards that govern our city and our transit service. The passage of Measure OO (and failure of Measure NN), Rebecca Kaplan’s big victory over Kerry Hamill, and a host of pro-transit votes, were the key choices facing voters this cycle.

Measure OO vs the rest of the budget

My only disappointment in the local ballot measures was the narrow passage of Measure OO, also known as Kids First 2. As I wrote at the time, Measure OO did not meet the ballot deadline and the City Council was not under a legal obligation to place the measure on the November ballot. They may have been compelled to call a special election for it, but of course that would have been a better bet than the November election. Now the city is going to do a special election anyway, and they’ll be under great pressure to compromise with Kids First and give them at least some money from the strapped budget.

This potentially gigantic hit to the city budget is the City Council’s fault for not doing a special election in the first place or placing a competing measure on the ballot (not a compromise, a measure that would just do what the Council already did but trump KF2, a common legislative tactic). Now OO is in a good position, even though it wasn’t the voters’ highest priority on Election Day. Measure NN, to raise taxes to pay for police, received thousands more votes yet is a failure. Neither NN nor OO did much of a campaign: a friend of mine received a four-page glossy mailer promoting NN after Election Day, and its slogan sounded like it was translated from an Asian language (“Get Involved! Today Oakland!”). OO sent a mailer only to poll voters, and the No on OO campaign sent a mailer only to absentee voters. In such a low-energy election, the Council’s actions framing the ballot would have been decisive.

Kaplan vs. Hamill

I think a lot of Rebecca Kaplan’s big victory can be attributed to her preparation for the job of running Oakland. Ms. Kaplan outperformed Kerry Hamill at endorsement interviews and forums, and won allies in blogs and among the politically-involved people who judge endorsement interviews. This election may not prove the power of local opinion-makers, but their almost-unanimous backing of Ms. Kaplan certainly undercut the support Ms. Hamill had from elected officials. In the end, Ms. Kaplan’s impressive endorsement list made her a very safe choice for the average voter.

Of course, more voters were exposed to Rebecca Kaplan’s supporters because Kerry Hamill just didn’t do nearly enough to win the seat. She admits she only had the money to wage half a campaign, and couldn’t mobilize enough volunteers to match Kaplan’s access to the Democratic Party Headquarters. I never received mail or a call from Ms. Hamill at anytime in this year-long campaign.

Elections are not necessarily about issues, but Rebecca Kaplan did identify and articulate some priorities that are attractive to certain interest groups, like supporting dense transit-oriented development, implementing the Conley Report, sprucing up downtown, and improving public transportation and bicycling. These things can mean different things to different people: condo developers as well as medicinal marijuana dispensaries see opportunities in a more successful downtown; labor unions and businesses like her call to increase revenue with more business; and with a holistic view of transportation, there really is something for everyone.

As one wag observed, Kerry Hamill’s defeat shows that Don Perata cannot install a puppet on the City Council by not campaigning or raising money for her. It also reinforces how difficult it is to run a come-from-behind campaign in Oakland. Alone in the booth, if they had no other information, voters decided that an AC Transit Board Member was more qualified than a School Board member to be promoted to the City Council, and frankly, they’re right. Voters also endorsed AC Transit’s performance more directly on down-ballot questions.

BRT vs KK, Peeples vs Roy, Measure VV

Voters in Berkeley overwhelmingly defeated a measure that was framed as a way to stop Bus Rapid Transit service on Telegraph. A far larger majority shot down the anti-bus measure than endorsed Tom Bates or the winning incumbents and new councilmembers. 77% is almost unheard-of, and is such a sweeping majority that it cannot be interpreted as anything but a strong rejection of NIMBYism, at least as it applies to transit improvements.

I draw several conclusions from the vote. First, it shows that the angry and active minority of citizens who do not agree with most City Council decisions are not representative of many voters (Tom Bates’ reelection is more evidence of this). Second, the tactics and arguments of proponents, mainly to do with the alleged harm of Bus Rapid Transit, fell flat. I really don’t know whether most people read the Berkeley Daily Planet, but either they don’t or they don’t agree with its editorial direction. The rest of the media is fairly hostile to BRT as well, but voters clearly are not. Finally, the No on KK campaign (which I was a part of) did an excellent job shaping a simple message, getting the support of local leaders, and communicating with voters in many media. But the margin was totally unexpected, and can’t be interpreted as anything but that voters want the Berkeley City Council to move forward with BRT.

Chris Peeples also won a huge margin in his reelection effort against Joyce Roy, who had made some noise in the media. She wrote a strongly populist ballot statement criticizing AC Transit for everything imaginable, but failed to convince more than 35% of the voters. The successful passage of an additional parcel tax to compensate for state cuts to AC Transit’s funding was another endorsement of AC Transit’s recent direction.

Tomorrow, Berkeley voters will cast votes either for or against Smart Growth. From the candidates to the ballot measure, Bus Rapid Transit and transit-oriented development are the key issues facing Berkeley. Older divisions between progressives and moderates have fallen by the wayside, while anti-growth activists have expanded their opposition from development to transit service.

Berkeley Mayor: Bates vs. Dean

This rematch of the 2002 race confuses some local observers. Tom Bates, the progressive candidate traditionally aligned with Berkeley Citizens Action, has the endorsement of the Chamber of Commerce, the Berkeley Democratic Club, and many people working the real estate industry, while moderate Shirley Dean finds herself with the support of the Berkeley Daily Planet (called “the most liberal newspaper in the Bay Area,” by the Express) and neighborhood activists. The candidates have not necessary changed positions, but the divisive issue in Berkeley has changed. When Mr. Bates, his wife Loni Hancock, and Shirley Dean were at loggerheads in the 1980s and 1990s, it was mostly about rent control. Now, that is no longer an important issue in Berkeley.

In 1990, the Searle court decision led the Rent Stabilization Board to raise rents dramatically (up to 45%) and compelled it to follow a survey of operating costs when determining rent increases. Landlords no longer seriously contest Rent Board elections, and combined with vacancy decontrol in 1996, rent control faded as Berkeley’s hot-button issue. Ms. Dean’s two terms as mayor (1994 – 2002) encompassed this period.

What now separates Tom Bates from Shirley Dean is support for non-car-oriented transportation improvements and transit-oriented development, which together constitute Smart Growth. Ms. Dean strongly opposes Bus Rapid Transit and supports Measure KK (below). At an endorsement interview I saw her say that “we have to realize that four-story buildings ruin the quality of life for the entire neighborhood,” and suggested that the shadows cast by mid-rise buildings would make it harder for people to grow their own food. Tom Bates supports high-density development in downtown Berkeley and fairly dense development along transit corridors, and is open to Bus Rapid Transit.

If I lived in Berkeley (God forbid) in 2002, I would have voted for Ms. Dean. Her priority, and decent track record, of downtown revitalization appealed to me, and regular readers know that I generally side with more moderate politicians. But Tom Bates has made some very persuasive criticisms of her record. He is right to point out that the Council was more divided and less productive under her watch than his, and that the same neighborhood activists who criticize him were just as angry in 1990s. Of course, downtown Berkeley has gone downhill, which means that Ms. Dean’s downtown policies weren’t sustainable. But the clear distinction between the two is their contrasting policies on Smart Growth. It’s not that they have switched sides, but that the issues have changed. Urban business is increasingly aligned with the environmental movement, both stressing infill growth to combat their mutual enemy, suburban sprawl. Mr. Bates and a broad consensus on the City Council increasingly subscribe to this position, with Dean and neighborhood activists (and Berkeley’s always prominent fringe, like Zachary Running Wolf) firmly placed on a different side.

Berkeley Council District 4: Doran vs. Arreguin

Jesse Arreguin has gathered some impressive endorsements in his quest to succeed Councilmember Dona Spring, despite his age (24) and lack of elective experience (as explained above, the Rent Stabilization Board is not an important agency any more). Terry Doran, his opponent, was School Board President, and both have served on the Zoning Adjustments Board and Downtown Area Planning Advisory Commission. In their endorsement interviews and votes on the ZAC and DAPAC, Smart Growth is a key distinction between them.

On the DAPAC, Mr. Arreguin opposed “tall buildings” while Mr. Doran supported them. Mr. Arreguin bases his anti-high-rise position on old fashioned class warfare, while Mr. Doran stresses the need for increased tax revenue, transit ridership, and a built-in customer base for downtown businesses. Jesse Arreguin, despite being a former student and a supposed environmentalist, is iffy on Bus Rapid Transit (he opposes key elements of the plan) while Terry Doran strongly supports it. Finally, there is a key vote on the ZAC that put them on opposite sides: the Trader Joe’s on MLK. Mr. Arreguin voted against it and Mr. Doran for it. In Oakland, that would be the end of the contest right there, but Berkeley voters may be looking at other things, such as political affiliations and key supporters.

Mr. Arreguin works for Councilmember Kriss Worthington, who find himself the odd man out in Berkeley’s new political alignment: with no support from NIMBYs yet never pro-business or pro-growth, Worthington is the only Councilmember who didn’t endorse a mayoral candidate. His unexpectedly poor showing in the Assembly primary in June suggests that his support for Arreguin may not be terribly helpful. Former School Board President Terry Doran enjoys the support of Bates and most of the City Council. I’m not in a position to judge their respective campaigns (I really don’t like Mr. Arreguin’s slogan, Viva Jesse – is he running for King?), but transit and transit-oriented development are the issues. Tomorrow will show how downtown Berkeley, more or less Ground Zero for Smart Growth in Berkeley, feels about their future.

Berkeley Measures: KK and LL

Berkeley is infamous for an anti-development Preservation Ordinance that allows a great deal of protection for “landmarks” that are deemed so by an irrational process. Thus, tumbledown cottages, retaining walls, and even surface parking lots have been saved from demolition by developers, and the City of Berkeley has more official landmarks than San Francisco and Oakland put together (though the Oakland Heritage Alliance has proposed drastically expanding protections for “historic” buildings as part of the Zoning Update). Berkeley’s process does not comply with state law and makes development in Berkeley very difficult. Measure LL is a referendum on the City Council’s decision to update the Landmarks Preservation Ordinance to make it less arbitrary and to bring it into compliance with state law. A previous attempt to preserve the LPO failed two years ago; this is now the NIMBYs last stand to keep their most powerful anti-development weapon.

Measure KK, whose key supporters overlap with those against the LPO update, would delay or disrupt plans for a regional Bus Rapid Transit network by submitting it to a vote of the electorate. Eric at TransBay Blog has an excellent summary of what’s at stake and the serious problems with this measure. In its context alongside Measure LL and as a key distinction between mayoral and Council candidates, Measure KK represents another facet of the explicit Smart Growth divisions facings Berkeley voters. In Oakland, those who oppose dense development still support transportation improvements (and it’s important to note that no organized group in Oakland is opposed to tall buildings in most of downtown); in Berkeley, Smart Growth is on the ballot in its entirety.