During these times of budget strife, good news can be hard to find. After scouring the media, I’ll say that it can be extremely hard to find.  Nonetheless, I was interested in the story of a car-free development proposed in Hayward:

Quarry Village is a proposed 1,000-unit neighborhood that would fill a former quarry near Cal State East Bay and 1 1/2 miles from the Hayward BART Station. It’s the brainchild of Sherman Lewis, a professor emeritus in political science at Cal State East Bay who created a nonprofit organization to promote the idea with local officials, investors and developers.

According to Lewis, 69, people would rent or buy eco-friendly, garage-free homes in the densely built community with interconnected pathways. Residents would receive transit passes with the cost of their home but could pay separately for one of just 100 parking spaces.

A village square would feature a grocery store and other services. Shuttles would ferry passengers to the campus and BART. (SF Chronicle)

The project is a looong way from even getting approval, let alone breaking ground.  However, Lewis has some commitments from potential owners, and the City of Hayward seems to be amenable to the idea of this development. And given its proximity to public transit, this very well could be a feasible project.

If we are to move into a future that responds to the nature of our sensitive environment and the demands of the modern economy, this kind of development will have to become the new suburbia. This project will be an interesting case study as we move forward with sustainable planning.

Incidentally, if you know of something that would be a good fit for my new California Good News features, drop me an email.

This happened a couple days ago, but as it’s crucial that the clean-truck program at two of the nation’s busiest ports go forward, I think it’s significant:

A federal court judge in Los Angeles on Monday tentatively denied a trucking association’s bid to block a landmark clean-truck program at the nation’s busiest port complex.

After a 40-minute hearing, U.S. District Judge Christina Snyder said she would probably allow the program to move forward, despite objections from truckers.

“The balance of hardships and the public interest tip decidedly in favor of denying the injunction,” she said in court.

Under the program, the adjacent ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach would upgrade their aging fleet of about 16,800 mostly dilapidated rigs that produce much of the diesel pollution in Southern California.

Though the American Trucking Association is opposing the bill and filed the attempted injunction, the clean-ports program was borne of a true blue-green alliance between labor and environmental groups, which is the next level of how we’re going to fight climate change in this country and build millions of new green-collar jobs.  The courts are now on the record as saying that reducing greenhouse gas emissions are in the public interest.  And the ATA is being a little coy here – a good number of the trucking firms are already upgrading, so their injunction effort was meant to satisfy a few big corporations.  It didn’t work.  

The second exciting development is SB 375, which for the first time links emissions to urban planning, and could easily become a model for the nation.  We have to make sure it’s signed into law, of course, but if and when it is, it will represent a great leap forward for the environment, live/work issues, quality of life, and traffic reduction.

The measure, known as SB375, aims to give existing and new high-density centers where people live, work and shop top priority in receiving local, state and federal transportation funds. The idea is that such developments check sprawl and ease commutes, in turn cutting the car pollution wafting through the Golden State.

Authored by Sen. Darrell Steinberg (D-Sacramento), the bill reflects California’s push to slash its greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent by 2020. Sponsors say the measure is part of a much-needed growth policy for a state whose population is expected to swell to 50 million from the current 38 million in two decades.

“Many places across the country have realized that if you just build spread-out developments, with the expectation that everyone will have to drive for everything, it should be no surprise when the result is excessive burning of gasoline,” said David Goldberg, spokesman for Smart Growth America, a Washington D.C.-based nonprofit group that helps cities and towns plan more workable, environmentally friendly growth.

“SB375 breaks new ground, because it specifically links that pattern of development to excess driving and what we need to do to address climate change,” he said.

Instead of trying to capture more resources every time there’s an energy shortage, we can reorganize our lives to maximize existing resources while making our lifestyles far less stressful and more pleasant.  It’s the solution that works on all fronts.

The budget madness is super-depressing, but these developments are cause for optimism.

After a raucous meeting in downtown LA, where FIFTEEN HUNDRED bus riders converged to protest, the Metropolitan Transit Authority nevertheless approved sweeping fare increases for bus and rail riders, though not as high as their initial plans.  But it’s a significant increase, with rates going up around 50% for most riders over the next two years.  The meeting included fiery exchanges, not only between the citizens giving testimony, but between the LA County Board of Supervisors and the Mayor (all of whom sit on the MTA Board of Directors).

The decision by the MTA’s Board of Directors marks a stinging defeat for Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who had tried to broker a compromise that would have raised most fares only 5% a year. But the board roundly rejected the mayor’s proposal, saying it would leave the agency with a deep operating deficit and would delay future rail projects […]

Villaraigosa was hoping to bring the board together on a compromise that would soften the blow for riders. Instead, he drew strong criticism from Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who called the mayor’s stance disingenuous.

During a heated exchange, Yaroslavsky said Villaraigosa had indicated that he would support a fare increase in a closed session last summer after the MTA board agreed to a new contract with bus drivers and mechanics.

A visibly angry Villaraigosa shot back, accusing Yaroslavsky of mischaracterizing private conversations and then lashing out at the supervisor for sitting in his office while the mayor was in Sacramento on Wednesday trying to get more transportation funding.

Villaraigosa then said Yaroslavsky didn’t have the courage to propose his own fare increases, calling him a “sheep who walks in wolf’s clothing.”

over…

For the record, the Mayor’s final proposal would have included lots of borrowing to deal with the MTA’s major operating deficit (sounds like Schwarzonomics to me). 

The problem is that state and federal funding for mass transit continue to stagnate while California continues to build more roads.  And it’s evident why this happens when you hear the median income for Los Angeles’ bus and rail riders:

An MTA survey showed that the median household income of rail riders is $22,000 a year, compared with $12,000 for bus riders.

That’s well below the poverty line for bus riders.  Those people don’t have lobbyists in Sacramento or Washington.  They don’t throw fundraisers in their homes for Presidential candidates.  They have their own voice, and they used it in force yesterday (1,500 people at a municipal meeting is astounding), but in the end it didn’t matter.

As I’ve said before, a budget is a moral document.  What you prioritize for spending suggests what you value in society.  In a time freighted with the threat of global warming, we should be prioritizing mass transit and smart growth extremely, not making it harder for the people already using mass transit to afford it.

Steve Lopez has a great column about this rate hike, a compromise that will do nothing in the long term.

I shouldn’t pin all the blame on the MTA, even though it’s tempting after the defeat of Villaraigosa’s proposal had him sniping with fellow board member Zev Yaroslavsky to the benefit of no one. State and federal officials are culprits in the collective failure to support transit, despite the growing social and economic cost of congestion and pollution-related illness. Where’s bold, creative leadership when you need it?

Would the option of a few high-speed toll lanes for Los Angeles motorists raise enough money to buy the buses the MTA needs?

Is it time to mandate that large companies offer transit vouchers to employees and eliminate free parking?

Does the efficiency of smaller transit systems in Santa Monica, Culver City and the foothill cities suggest that the MTA should be broken into smaller regional agencies?

Is it time to increase the 18-cent federal gas tax or use more of it to fund transit?

Should developers get bigger incentives for building near transit centers? […]

It’s time for the MTA board and the Southern California Assn. of Governments to lead a discussion on these kinds of solutions and fight for their support here, in Sacramento and Washington. As it is, they’re on a slow bus to nowhere.

Bus fares is an issue that typically has very little impact on politicians whose voters aren’t typically riding them.  But it should.  Urban planning is one of the most important issues of the 21st century, and how we go about it will affect the very health of this planet.  There will be resistance, and when nobody speaks for the bus rider, not just by borrowing to keep fares down but by prioritizing a sea change in how we transport ourselves, the resisters will win.  And the working poor will lose.