The San Francisco-Oakland metro area has the second highest public transportation trips per capita in the country, far outpacing every other metro area with the exception, not surprisingly, of the New York metro area. Our city and Oakland have excellent transit bones. The routes are there, the infrastructure is there, the desire of the riding public to use transit is there, and the incentive is there in light of growing population and road/highway gridlock. Now, we just need the political will to invest in these systems aggressively to shore them up - theyre old and over-capacity - and to dramatically (and I mean dramatically) expand their capacity and efficiency. The Bay Area is going to grow by 2 million people by 2040, yet San Francisco and other Bay Area jurisdictions are acting as if we can treat transit like a nice amenity. Its not an amenity. Its critical to the economy and life of our city and our region. Investing in transit must be a high priority and not an after-thought. The fact that if a few Muni light rail vehicles break down or have accidents (as occurred this past week), we dont even have replacement vehicles for them is a sad statement about City Halls long-time apathetic treatment of transit investment. This fall. The voters will have several opportunities to start ending this apathy, by passing the first-ever Muni capital bond as well as the measure Im sponsoring to tie transit funding to population growth. And, Alameda County will have a sales tax on the ballot dedicated to transportation. Lets win and move our city and region forward!
Posted on: Mon, 04 Aug 2014 14:00:01 +0000