A Regional Decison making Model

Mayoral Tribunal on Transit

The page serves as a prologue to a new yet old Fable we call:

aForum what's new for the Three Brown Mayors on da Bay
MENU Tribunal on Transit click here to get a left frame menu to assist you in navigating this long page faster . Then you can collapse the first one (assuming you have one by entering here via the main page ) by pulling its border to the left with your mouse
Links verified as of May 2001, page originally published May 1999.

For as long as anyone can remember, the San Francisco Bay Area has been without regional leadership, leaving the citizens underrepresented while narrow special interests score massive federal and state funds. The long standing planning bodies are controlled by lobbyists who brazenly sneer at the will of the people. The most outrageous and current example is the MTC (Metropolitan Transportation Commission) refusing to reconsider restoring rail mass transit to the new proposed Bay Bridge span, despite a two thirds vote by the people in the 4 cities most effected
The system of governance for the regions three urban cities of San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose and twelve counties and 99 cities has led to massive congestion of freeways and large scale displacement of working class and minority communities. The world famous Bay Area's booming high-tech economy of the late nineties has created a new jobs to new housing imbalance of well over ten to one. As a direct result, long-distance commuters have clogged roadways at an unprecedented rate and the call for restoring the long dismantled mass transit system grows louder. Yet the Bay Area is unable to act, despite both BART and the Bay Bridge being congested beyond maximum capacity, decision makers are insisting on a design reviled for fraud, seismic instability, aesthetic folly and gaining no additional capacity benefit for its monumental cost. How can Governor Gray Davis support a decision which harms so many for the benefit of the few?

The people did not return 1991-1999 Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris to the Assembly despite his hard fought regional transit victory of preserving the downtown San Francisco Transbay rail transit terminal as the critical linchpin in a new mass transit line-up which is to include high speed rail to a downtown Los Angeles. Instead they elected someone outside the system committed to greater change, the Green Party's Audie Boch whose most high profile media thus far has been taking the train to Sacramento. Since high speed rail competes against air travel, the convenient downtown central hub is critical to adequate usage levels. The dominant opponent to all this recently left the field. Retired San Francisco State Senator and Transit Chair Quentin Kopp has had a much different agenda favoring the outrageously expensive BART subway circling the Bay Area ahead all other options including restoring rail transit to the Bay Bridge to tie into the proposed SF to LA high-speed rail before the voters in the coming year.

The involvement of San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who remains one of the most powerful politicians in Sacramento following his decades long Speakership of that body and mentoring of many key Sacramento politicians will be key since the new Governor Gray Davis has declared himself supporting the controversial proposed bridge on March 11, 1999.

EVERYONE is ON Board Water Transit: on March 30, 1998, the three Metro Mayors, acting as Co-vice chairs and a natural triumvirate for regional political leadership issued their second joint resolution (our 1998 Carnaval-San Francisco resolution being the first) in downtown San Jose to address restoration of the Water Transit Network
Before World War II, the Bay Area communities, with a population of less than 2 million, was served by 170 ferries carrying up to 60 million passengers a year. To make this new plan work, the political needs of 67 separate jurisdictions - including 28 transit providers will have to be considered. However, this time the Democratically controlled state legislature should be friendlier to the needed reform initiative
Task force chair Ron Cowan envisions new low wake ferries traveling at 45 miles per hour like in Hong Kong and Sydney. The first phase of the plan envisions 26 terminals, served by 70 vessels and special airporter hovercrafts for an estimated cost of $680 million. Cowan points out that in addition to economic feasibility and operational flexibility the proposed system "does not demand anything beyond what has already been done in the past in the Bay Area and achieved elsewhere in the world."

RAIL on the ROPES: While the restoration of Bay water transit is on track the rail system dismantled in the 1950s is still on the ropes of its attempted comeback. For whatever reason both the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner have treated the compelling idea with disdain assailing both the concept and the champions. However, the issue is a natural for the new Mayor of Oakland and former governor California Jerry Brown who says . "It is now essential to halt this flawed process before it becomes a monstrous, $1.5 billion mistake that we are forced to live with for the next 150 years."

SF Chronicle\Examiner Opposes Mayors & the People's Vote
The practice advocacy journalism has been across the board with the exception of op-ed pieces by certain players.
Editorial: You Pay the Toll For Mayors' Egos
02/22/1999 - San Francisco Chronicle
Editorial: Battle of the Bay Bridge
02/21/1999 - San Francisco Examiner
garcia.gif (2385 bytes)

03/20/99 -SF Chronicle Columnist Ken Garcia
"But you couldn't tell that to His Eminence, who decided to don his engineering hard hat this week and tell reporters that he thinks the new Bay Bridge design is unsafe. This is based on Brown's own bridge design expertise and the whims of one University of California at Berkeley professor who is outnumbered about 36 to 1 by seismic and engineering experts. According to the engineer its not opinion but mathematics.
"Mayors Grandstand On Bridge - Meddling Browns' complaints are folly" 02/23/1999 - SF Chronicle Occasional Political columnist John King "Next to Jerry Falwell's outing of Tinky-Winky, the weirdest sight these days is the vision of Willie and Jerry Brown, like a pair of political Don Quixotes, tilting at plans to rebuild the eastern half of the Bay Bridge. The farce would be laughable if it didn't involve the single most important structure in the region Even clever SFC page 3 columnist SCOTT OSTLER 2/26/99 checks in with a final line about fear of seismic safety on the Bay Bridge (he always wears his inflatable rubber ducky when crossing. (Herb Caen is turning in his grave, guys)
Columnists Matier & Ross are the ranking local political insiders
02/22/1999 - San Francisco Chronicle "Now some folks -- including a number of engineers and East Bay politicians -- are scratching their heads in amazement that the mayor is willing to scrap two years of planning and tens of millions of dollars in engineering studies for such a boutique undertaking."
Bay Bridge Redesign Plan May Get Stuck in Muck
03/01/1999 - San Francisco Chronicle "Not so fast, Jerry and Willie": Quotes unnamed sources close to California Governor Gray Davis rather creatively.
03/12/1999 Governor says SF & Oakland have to fund changes:
Sorry Phil despite your sanctimonious scolding here and in this

(video) KRON TV-4 RealVideo the Governor's condition of funding is possible by retrofitting the already seismically retrofitted once Bay Bridge again, for $300 million and freeing up taxpayers stuck in traffic, years earlier by using the extra $1.3 billion to jump-start water transit. Matier does say in the video, on prompting, that light rail is included, but how has still not been disclosed by any Chronicle or Examiner reporter and denied by "knowledgeable sources."
Now Is a Time to Build || SFGate.com Special Bay Bridge Page
02/23/1999 - SF Chronicle Only the elected officials who sit on the MTC Board like Oakland Councilwoman Mary King are publicly supporting the continued waste of taxpayer money on the flawed Bay Bridge design despite media coverage which projects otherwise.
04/15/1999 SF Examiner Mayors Willie & Jerry lecture Newspaper editors || 2

Critical Ignored Problems with MTC Bridge Process
Commentary: Design Process Was Flawed From the Start
February 23, 1999 SF Chronicle by Daniel Coman and Rick Feher
bridgemodel-264x264-susp.jpg (20281 bytes) "What the selected proposal does do very well is serve as a bridge between public money and the accounts of private engineering firms represented on the MTC panel....There is no mandate for MTC's chosen design. Rail consideration had to be mandated by a ballot initiative because MTC refused to consider it." . Dan Zoll's feature article in the S.F. Bay Guardian
Commentary: Architecture Critic Allan Temko June 23, 1998 SF Chronicle
Noble Prize winner supports Mayor Jerry Brown's call for an International Juried Design Competition "Indeed, there has been something unkosher about the whole deal between Caltrans and T.Y. Lin International..." T.Y. Lin, professor emeritus at University of California at Berkeley, (who is not associated with the firm using his name) has said publicly, it will be ``a monument to engineering ignorance, if not stupidity.''
Commentary: Oakland Mayor Jerry Brown, 6/23/98/Chronicle
"When we rebuild the eastern span of the Bay Bridge, we must create a spectacular structure that expresses the daring of human ingenuity and symbolizes the splendor of Oakland and the East Bay."
MTC Panel Again Resists Call to Revisit Bay Bridge Decision 02/25/1999 - SF Examiner by Tyche Hendricks It offends me to reopen this,"I'm p-----. " said task force member Angelo Siracusa. (Mr. Siracusa has represented the Bay Area's largest employers for all his career, most prominently as head of the Bay Area Council which is now calling for expedited implementation of water transit on the Bay.)
State Senator. Richard Rainey, R-Walnut Creek, raised the issue that the state contribution of $800 million could disappear. (This is about what is needed for the first phase of the water transit plan.) Alameda Mayor Ralph Appezzato has joined engineering experts to suggest retrofitting the current bridge for $300 million instead of $1.6 billion and end up with a superior structure. (Although how rail and bicycle transit would be accommodated is not clear but that's the case with the existing design as well.)
UC-Berkeley structural engineering Professor Abolhassan Astaneh-Asl graded the design chosen by the task force a D-minus, while the existing bridge earned a B-plus in his estimation. "If you spend $300 million, you can fix (the current span) very safely," he said. "Forget about the southern and northern alignments."

The Mayors Brown moving into the 3rd Millennium
Mayor Willie Brown says Caltran Bridge design unsafe
by Edward Epstein, Chronicle Staff Writer by Eric Brazil of the SF Examiner on 03/17/99 Professor Abolhassan Astaneh, said the conclusions he had reached with respect to the safety of the design accepted by Caltrans were those that "any competent engineer anywhere" would come to after doing the necessary mathematics. "This is not architecture, this is not something in the eyes of the beholder, it's not about alignment," he said. "It's not something you can campaign for. The Association of Structural Engineers of Northern shares the concern."

California Governor Gray Davis has asked Caltrans to study the Bay Bridge debate 02/23/1999 - SF Examiner "On Feb. 11, the two mayors (Brown) joined forces in a letter to Davis endorsing both their requests, and recommending an in-depth study of rail on the bridge, a bicycle-pedestrian path and assurance that construction jobs and contracts would go to local residents and businesses"
Transbay Terminal could get Caltrain 02/27/1999 - SF Examiner By Tyche Hendricks
"The new legislation, authored by Supervisors Leslie Katz and Tom Ammiano, has delighted transit advocates. "I'm thrilled," said BART director Tom Radulovich,a long-time supporter of extending Caltrain to the Transbay Terminal"

Supervisor President Tom Ammiano will be the 1999 Carnaval San Francisco Grand Marshal. Congratulations to the new head of Caltrans;
Jose Medina who represented San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown in the 1998 Carnaval San Francisco Parade and been a prominent supporter of the downtown rail extension and transit village planning.

Water Transit on the move
Report Calls for More Ferries on Bay - Speedy water transit a traffic solution by Carl Nolte, 02/17/1999 - San Francisco Chronicle
Bay's commute of the future? by Eric Brazil
02/09/1999 - SF Examiner Good overview
SF Chronicle Sunday Editorial More Ferries on the Bay
02/21/1999 -Final sentence: "Ferries can play a part in improving the picture though careful planning. Realistic assumptions are needed, too" The Examiner Editorial in the same paper attacked the two Mayors Brown for rejecting the proposed Bay Bridge as did the Chronicle the following day.
SF Examiner Editorial: The Bay to the rescue
02/11/1999 "The powerfully backed group, formed by the Bay Area Council and the Bay Area Economic Forum"
This is hardly the case, while it is true the BAEF has been conducting public meetings about water transit these two groups who operate out of the smae office are controlled by the largest, most entrenched corporations who at one time allowed our rail transit infrastructure to be dismantled for the sake of the automobile industry. The Roger Rabbit story occurred in dozens of Cities across the USA in the 1950's. Water Transit is an outgrowth of former Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris's attempt to provide missing Bay Area leadership though the Mayoral tribunal council with San Francisco and San Jose.
Tear the bridge down 03/25/1999 - SF Examiner
Foster Reed, President of New Albion Records Inc. supports transit $$ for the water ferry system ahead of the bay Bride ..in so many words

Call for Action
It is time for new business groups to step to the forefront at this critical juncture of planning for future generations. The Editorial at least mentions that the plan could produce transit improvements far faster and cheaper the proposed $1.6 billion Bay Bridge. In fact the new Bay Bridge the SF Chronicle and Examiner are championing adds no additional capacity despite our worsening and unacceptable current Bay Bridge congestion.
MTC Bay Bridge Task Force Next Meeting

Dear Governor Gray Davis:
Clearly there is an urgent need to reform the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) which not only shows indifference to the public but to long term planning with a refusal to incorporate major mass transit initiatives like high speed rail into decision making models. High speed rail addresses intrastate commute pressure by competing with busy airports through convenient downtown stations. The downtown Transbay Terminal with its Bay Bridge connecting Real Estate and valuable Real Estate was almost torn down in 1998. In a last ditch effort, East Bay Mayors led by Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris insisted on already allocated Caltrans seismic money being spent on the structure. Caltrans head Jose Medina as a San Francisco Supervisor fought to keep alive the Transbay Terminal as a critical rail connection point. The return of Mayor Willie Brown will hopefully mark a turning point in the political battle. Mayor Brown began his Mayoralty with a visit to the highspeed rail system of France and as a State legislator called BART to the Airport "a white elephant", so his return as a champion of saving the essential Transbay hub has been much applauded, except among those who coveted the downtown acreage under the Bay Bridge connector ramps. (Click the graphic for more info on the high-speed rail initiative.)

State of California
State of California Official Web site

Governor Gray Davis ||
Letter from Modern Transit Society to Governor Gray Davis, 3/17/99

California State Assembly || Member Directory || Find My District
Two key San Francisco Assembly Members are allies of Mayor Willie Brown Assembly member. Carol Migden@assembly.ca.gov ||
Assemblyman Kevin.Shelley@assembly.ca.gov

California State Senate || Senator's Directory ||
Senate Pro Tem John Burton || Post Opinion Senate District 03 encompasses all of Marin County and portions of Sonoma and San Francisco Counties. Long-time ally of Mayor Willie Brown and now in charge of the Senate.
Senator Jackie Speier || Senator.Speier@sen.ca.gov Senate District 08 is comprised of parts of San Francisco and San Mateo Counties. Formerly Quentin Kopp's seat who was the most important player in regional transportation in the nineties.
Senator Don Perata ||mailto:Senator.Perata@sen.ca.gov Senate District 09 includes the cities of Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, Emeryville, Oakland and Piedmont within Alameda County and the cities of El Cerrito, El Sobrante, Richmond and San Pablo within Contra Costa County. Representing the East Bay Cities who saved the transbay terminal and its Bridge Connector Ramps from demolition.

History
Bridge Plan Leaps Hurdle 6/22/98/Chronicle
The MTC ignored pleas for a delay and Mayor Willie Brown vows to block the project
Voters support Rail for the Bay Bridge and the old Key train system by AP's Jim Clifford for 10/22/98 sfgate.com & 11/4/98 || by the Chron's Ed Epstein
The measure passed overwhelmingly despite strong opposition by the Chron/Ex print media (62 % to 38 % in San Francisco, 76 % to 24 % in Berkeley, 81 % to 19 % in Emeryville and 66 % to 34 % in Oakland. The East Bay Mayors, frustrated in their attempts to have MTC listen to their concerns asked the voters to tell MTC to consider restoring rail in their Bridge design.

Key Mass Transit System
The Key transit system which once carried 35 million passengers a year till it was dismantled in an old boy conspiracy very similar to what is now being carried out.(This actually happened in dozens of American cities, see the movie "Roger Rabbit" for L.A.'s version.)
Emeryville Mayor Ken Bukowski responds to Senator Quentin Kopp
Emeryville hopes its' Amtrak hub can someday relink to the Transbay Terminal... Former Senator Kopp says to forget the notion and talk about a bridge that would just carry trains....
Former Senate Transportation Chair Quentin Kopp apparently had few objections about high speed rail terminating in Oakland rather than San Francisco despite the Mayors thinking otherwise.
The Building of the Bay Bridge (1936 Phamplet)
"THE WORLD'S LARGEST BRIDGE FOR AT LEAST A THOUSAND YEARS"

High Speed Rail:
|The New Transit Planning Paradigm
CaHighSpeedRail.ca.gov/ || Links || New Agency Created To Push High-Speed Rail SF Chronicle, Nov. 14, 1997
The recommended route would go through San Jose and up the Peninsula, although some transit advocates have protested that the rail line should be routed to Oakland instead of San Francisco.
TRAC Trainriders Association of California || trains@softcom.net || European High Speed Rail Believes in addition to Governor Gray Davis and Caltran Director Jose medina Assemblyman Jon Longville and , President Pro Tem state Senator John Burton will signal a new era for passenger rail in California
narpRail.org/ || narp@narprail.org
Believes the most important thing you can do is save trains and their right away. at this time Union Pacific is trying to sell its downtown Sacramento train station to a developer
prepared by the CALTrans Rail Program || Home || CalTrans Bridge Page
Amtrak.com/||
AmtrakCalifornia.com Capitol, San Diegan and San Joaquin Corridors ||
Amtrak West San Diegan Corridor || Coast Starlight Los Angeles-Seattle

Building the Triumvirate Bay Mayoral Model for Effective Regional Decision Making

San Francisco / North Bay
Books about the Three Brown Metro Mayors

Mayor Willie L. Brown
City & County of San Francisco

Official Mayor Willie Brown website
mailto: DaMayor@ci.sf.ca.us ||

List City & County Department websites

Mayor Willie Brown is running for reelection in 1999 and plans to take his campaign directly to the people His impatience with declining media standards is now well established although no one gets more column inches than Da Mayor
SPUR.org || Zoning for More Housing || Housing & Parking || info@spur.org
312 Sutter Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94108 415) 781.8726 fax 781-7291 The leading San Francisco Good Government Group has been unable to transition into any regional role. Despite long-standing positions favoring mass transit and village density along transportation corridors they opposed the Mayor's advisory ballot initiative asking MTC to put rail on a new Bay Bridge.
02/23/1999 City frets BART project will shortchange Muni but after receiving assurances about its priorities supports BART's Federal Funding request and borrowing from Bridge Toll Transit Fund. 03/11/1999

Oakland / East Bay

Mayor Jerry Brown
County City of Oakland,
Alameda County

Official Mayor
Jerry Brown website
mailto: JB@oaklandnet.com ||
Oaklandnet.com ||
Key Official Contacts ||
E-mail Directory of City Employees || City Government tel. & fax #'s List

4/12/99 SF Ex Mayor Jerry looking to future at the 100 day mark
Carnaval.com is especially pleased with the Mayor Jerry's emphasis on encouraging cultural celebration and community arts
TheWrightBridge.com
Mayor Jerry Brown would like to see a true International design competition
AC Transit Bike Program
The East Bay's bus system is adding front mounted bike racks to its entire fleet of 700 buses and expects to be 100% by fall 2000. Most of the Transbay bus routes currently support bikes

San Jose / South Bay

Mayor Ron Gonzales
City of San Jose, Santa Clara County

Mayor Ron Gonzalez
mailto: MayorEmail@ci.sj.ca.us

Gonzales previously served for eight years (1989-1996) on the Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors, where he oversaw a $1.8 billion budget and 15,000 employees. He was a recognized leader in his efforts to reduce toxic pollution; improve the regional transportation system; and reduce crime. As Chair of the Board of Supervisors, Gonzales also introduced technology into county government and launched an innovative performance-based budgeting system.
As a two-time Mayor and member of the Sunnyvale City Council, Gonzales introduced governmental efficiency measures that were later recognized in the best-selling book, Reinventing Government.
JointVenture.org || Economic Prosperity Council & Economic Development Roundtable || || 1999 Index || Mission:To enable sustainable growth and retention of Silicon Valley's technology cluster companies and industries. Goals: +Articulate, educate and advocate issues critical to Silicon Valley's sustained economic success +Celebrate and nurture relationships with Silicon Valley's Technology Leadership +Foster continuous improvement in the delivery of government services +Grow and retain a world-class workforce
The Modern Transit Society, Inc. (MTS) || Contact MTS || Links || Site-map
Founded 1971, and today has over 800 members. Two main chapters are in Silicon Valley and Sacramento, the capital of California.

Smart Growth
Increasingly refers to the Alternative to "Sprawl." While Bay Area voters have stopped the growth of sprawl by supporting urban limit lines, the hard part of finding a zones to build housing to satisfy demand has been ignored. With housing and transportation leading concerns, the model found throughout the world is finally enjoying growing support in the Bay Area. Building higher density mixed development along the transit corridors promotes a higher quality of life for all.
At this time only the three metro centers of San Francisco, San Jose and Oakland are encouraging housing to be built at "village" density.)
16th Street BART Plaza || MAIL
A membership organization dedicated to building ecologically and socially healthy cities. Some ways to do this include 1) Revising land use priorities to create compact, diverse, green, safe, pleasant, and vital mixed-use communities near transit nodes. 2) Revising transportation priorities to favor foot, bicycle, cart and transit over autos, and to emphasize "access by proximity." 3) Create decent, affordable, safe, convenient, and racially and economically mixed housing.
Hope floats: High-speed ferries could solve area's traffic woes
02/14/1999 - SF Examiner contributor and former BART commissioner Michael Bernick and Prof. Bob Cervero of UC Berkeley are co-authors of "Transit Villages in the 21st Century" "In other words, ferry-based transit villages."
|| || contact Stuart Cohen || Reports
Comprised of over 30 member organizations to promote policies leading to a Bay Area with intelligent, sustainable land use patterns and an efficient and equitable transportation system.

The VISION Thing
There is small but persistent group of transit advocates in the Bay Area who continue to fight the good fight. They ask why not restore the rail transit lines capable of moving 40,000 people per hour over the bridge for lines for less than the cost of the repair of the 1.5 mile Cypress Freeway or the construction of two BART stations.

BayLink - Getting the Bay Area Moving Again || hosted by David Johnathan Ross Llewellyn
This proposal was the subject of the 1992 Transbay Rail Conference to advance BayLink featuring Senator Quentin Kopp (then chair of Senate Transportation Committee now a Judge in San Mateo County and the major opponent to restoration of rail in the Bay Area), Oakland Mayor Elihu Harris (now Assemblyman), Oakland Assemblywoman Barbara Lee (now Congresswomen who authored a bill to study BayLink, killed by the Q-Man), and many others. A key element is the hub or renovating the San Francisco Transbay Terminal

BART
"BART's new control system may indeed increase capacity, but will that be enough? At the very maximum, with 1,000 people packed in a BART train, with two-minute headways, the very maximum number of people that could be moved is 27,000 passengers per hour.
The existing Transbay Terminal with rail service was designed to move 51,000 passengers per hour back in 1939. That's almost double that absolute maximum BART capacity without any modern devices. We're talking about a new bridge to last 150 years. In another 20 years BART's new system won't be able to handle the demand." Emeryville Mayor Ken Bukowski
BART.org
Bay Area Rapid Transit, serving the greater San Francisco / Oakland area
Coalition for a One-Stop Terminal (COST)
is working to improve CalTrain service, and keep BART from taking all the region's federal transit dollars. COST's main issue has been to increase rider convenience, reduce the cost of the extension by $400 million and stay true to Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991, by making the airport station include Caltrans.

Caltrains
Peninsula Rail 2000 (PR2000) || info@rail2000.org ||. Map of CalTrain's route
CalTrain passenger organization
CalTrain downtown San Francisco extension || More
Since its inception in 1982, Peninsula Rail 2000 has advocated an extension of CalTrain 1.5 miles from its current terminus at Fourth and Townsend to a downtown San Francisco location near Market Street. In addition to taking passengers where they really want to go, the extension would enable all regional transit carriers to connect in one transit center.

Bicycles
Bicyclists are today's best example of thinking globally and acting locally and they generally dislike public investment in automobile transportation.
Bike the Bridge Coalition || Join the Bay Area Bridge Access email forum.

http://cycling.org/lists/ba-bridge-access/|| Archives || How to join a majordomo list ||
Join this active mailing list tracking progress for a bike lane on the Bay Bridge
Neither BART or the Bay Bridge allow bikes during commute hour so what can a biker do?|| Alameda/Oakland/SF Ferry || Bikes on BART || TransitInfo.org
CALTRANS Bike Bay Area Bridge Shuttles & Access
Bay Bridge shuttle goes between MacArthur BART & Transbay Terminal (commute hours only)

Bay Bridge On-Line Resources:
OaklandBridge.com
Send those letters to the Governor's point person on the issue, Jose Medina of Caltrans. A web site devoted to finding a world class design for the monumental span of the past, present and future.

http://www.mtc.ca.gov ||
MTC's Bay Bridge Design Task Force ||TravInfo-Dial 817-1717 || Commuter Corner Links

CalTrans Bridge Page ||
TheWrightBridge.com ||

Sprawl and Transit Oriented Solutions
The Bay Area rarely elects Republicans yet it is more know as a bastion of new thinking. The New Democrats spend as much time bashing traditional Democrats as they do Republicans. They see their competition as libertarian Republicans. At the 1999 California conference, San Jose Mayor Ron Gonzalez and keynote speaker recalled his time as Sunnyvale Mayor in the late eighties when he introduced himself as the only local pro-business Democrat. New Democrats have identified sprawl, which is directly tied to land-use decisions surrounding transit hubs, as a key issue of the future. Here's their take on it.
"The suburbs have become the key battleground in national elections, posing new challenges for Democrats. Issues relating to suburban sprawl will drive the policy agenda in the next century."

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California Transit Links
Bay Area Transit Information
maps and schedules for all San Francisco Bay Area transit operators
The major mass transit issues of the day concern decisions which will be recalled as among the most important of our time and our children's time. These complex issues deserve a true democratic decision making process but there is not likely to be one without greater involvement from people like yourself.

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Links verified as of May 2001, page originally published May 1999.