SANDAG and MTS: Part of the Good Ol’ Boys Club The candidates were asked how they’d make the city more transit-friendly, and encourage development geared toward transit usage. Alvarez said he’d change the culture at the San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) — the county’s transportation planning agency — and the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS), which operates transit functions in the city.Neither group is interested in a progressive, transit-focused future, Alvarez said. “Everybody’s heard of the good old boys,” he said. “They’ve controlled our region for a long time. This plays in with MTS, and with SANDAG. And I sit on those two boards, and I can tell you from MTS’s perspective, they don’t see themselves as a part of that solution. They see themselves as a quasi-private corporation, and until we change the leadership and who we elect to those boards, the mentality is not going to change. “The same thing goes with SANDAG, where it’s not about transit first, it’s about how do we build more roads to connect to the suburban areas of this county, to get developers to build more so we can make more profit. It’s a really easy thing to follow here. There has not been a commitment to do transit first.” Alvarez said some of his Council colleagues were at least partly to blame. “Unfortunately people like to say these aren’t partisan issues, but the Council last year, on a split partisan vote, sent a message to SANDAG saying transit first, because we believe — some of us believe — that that’s future development of San Diego, that’s how we’ll grow, that’s how we must grow, in order to be sustainable.” Faulconer was one of those votes against the transit-first message to SANDAG. He said SANDAG should pursue a balance of all transportation options.
Posted on: Sat, 26 Oct 2013 15:25:20 +0000
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