(Cross-posted at Living in the O.)

Last night, I went to Gavin Newsom’s town hall at the Rotunda in downtown Oakland. Overall, I wasn’t surprised by the event. He touched on many subjects – health care, education, improving the environment – and his overriding theme for the evening was that while many candidates talk about these issues, he has shown real progress on them. He did fail to mention though that many of the projects he took credit for last night (like universal health care) actually originated in the Board of Supervisors. But that’s pretty typical – he’s a politician and of course is going to take credit for everything he possibly can.

I really appreciated the fact that he took almost an hour of unfiltered questions from the audience. And I could not have been much more pleased when our new AC Transit Director, Joel Young, asked the first question. Joel explained that the state had defunded public transit and asked if Newsom, as governor, would restore public transit funding.

Newsom responded that public transit is so important for the environment and briefly answered, “Yes,” that he would restore the funding. But then instead of explaining why or how, he jumped into a long-winded speech about high speed rail. He started off by saying that he wanted to tell us about a project that he knew not all of us supported because it barely passed. This is a strange thing to say because 63% of Alameda County voters voted in favor of Prop 1A.

He then explained how high speed rail was going to change the state, creating jobs and changing how we thought about and used transportation. He talked about his vision for the “Grand Central Station of the West,” which is what some are calling the Transbay Terminal. Energetically, he explained how this would greatly improve the Bay Area region, making it easy to get from downtown to downtown (Oakland to SF).

And that was it. That was his answer to an AC Transit Director.

Now I’m very supportive of high speed rail (though I think it was a failure to choose the Pacheco alignment over the Altamont alignment), and I endorsed Prop 1A. But high speed rail won’t do us much good if our local transit agencies crumble. Getting from downtown to downtown might be made easier, but most of us don’t live downtown so if AC Transit cuts lines that would get us there, this “Grand Central Station” won’t be much help to us, will it?

As you might have read in the Chronicle yesterday, AC Transit will be voting tomorrow on fare increases, and soon after that will consider service cuts. And it’s not just AC Transit. More than 80 local transit agencies nationwide are facing fare increases and/or service cuts. At the same time, ridership is increasing, in the East Bay, the Bay Area, and beyond.

What I’m looking for in a candidate for governor is someone who not only understands and is committed to the big, sexy transit projects like high speed rail, but for someone who shares the same commitment to funding and improving our local transit agencies. I want to find a candidate who gets excited talking about buses and who understands the need to solve this problem (PDF, via A Better Oakland). Last night, Newsom failed to prove that he is that candidate so, for now, I’ll continue my search.

(If you’d like to read about the other topics Newsom covered, check out a diary at Daily Kos by a friend I sat with last night.)

 (Cross posted at Living in the O.)

I’m happy to announce that a group of East Bay transit advocates that I am a part of have endorsed Elizabeth Echols for Rebecca Kaplan’s vacated At-Large seat on the AC Transit Board of Directors.

When this seat became vacant, leaders of local transit advocacy organizations came together to decide who we thought was best suited to represent bus riders, bicyclists, and pedestrians on the board. We identified seven applicants and invited them to answer our questionnaire, and interviewed six. Our group includes leaders of 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.

Going into this endorsement process, I must admit that I was a bit nervous. Rebecca Kaplan was such an effective board member, and I didn’t know if we’d find someone who could match Rebecca’s experience, knowledge, and energy. I was pleasantly surprised by the answers to our questionnaire from all of the candidates and by the new ideas and vision the candidates demonstrated in our interviews. It’s exciting to see so many qualified candidates vying for a position that is so important to me but often gets overlooked by others.

Ultimately though, Elizabeth Echols stood out among the group of applicants. She has a clear vision for the agency, but is also open to learning more from the transit and bike/ped community.

She also has an absurd amount of experience that makes her particularly well-suited for this position. Her work on the Obama presidential transition team and in the Clinton White House has prepared her for working with the federal government and managing fast-paced projects. Her experience in information technology, particularly in her work as Director of Policy for Google, has led to her focus on technological innovation. Specifically, she plans to improve AC Transit’s online trip planning and enhance real time trip planning for riders via expanded use of bus shelter signs and cell phone alerts.

Beyond what you can find on paper in her resume and endorsement letters, Elizabeth is energetic and clearly committed to moving AC Transit forward. When I was preparing to write this blog post, I thought about my first encounters with Elizabeth. She was the Co-Chair of the Oakland United Democratic Campaign (UDC) in 2008, and the UDC office was always filled with incredible energy and dozens (and on election day, hundreds) of volunteers. Every time I phoned there for Rebecca Kaplan or No on 8, I saw Elizabeth running around, making sure everything was functioning smoothly at the office. I didn’t know her at the time, but I knew immediately that she was someone I wanted to know and someone I’d work with in the future.

Now I’m hoping I’ll get the opportunity to work with her as an AC Transit Board member. If she can bring the energy she brought to the Oakland UDC to AC Transit, the agency will have a bright future.

For more about our endorsement process and a surprisingly detailed overview of all of the SEVENTEEN candidates who applied for the seat, head to A Better Oakland.

And for other takes on why we endorsed Echols, check out Stop, Drop and Roll, John Knox White’s Alameda based blog, the Friends of BRT blog, and A Better Oakland.

As those of us who have had the wonderful opportunity to live in Berkeley understand, the city isn’t always as liberal as it’s cracked up to be. The city consistently fought against affordable housing, homeless shelters – it even threatened to stop BART from being built unless it was built underground (a battle Berkeley finally won).

In these instances Berkeley has shown that it is no different from other parts of California that oppose progressive urbanism. Homeowners who are convinced that they can maintain a 1950s style urban landscape even in the face of population pressure, housing costs, and environmental/energy crises tend to dominate public discussions about urban change, and insist that their views be privileged over all others. This is true in supposedly liberal, progressive Berkeley, as much as it is in the San Fernando Valley or – dare I say it – Orange County.

It’s from that regressive mindset that, as today’s San Francisco Chronicle reports, a proposed bus rapid transit project is being blocked by Berkeley residents.

That’s what AC Transit is proposing for its busiest route in the East Bay, the 15-mile-long stretch from Bay Fair BART Station in San Leandro to downtown Berkeley.

The $400 million bus rapid transit project would look a lot like light rail, with elevated stops in the middle of the street and dedicated lanes free of cars. Buses would run every 10 minutes and sail through intersections.

But the project may hit a roadblock in Berkeley, where some neighbors and merchants are lobbying furiously against it, saying it would worsen traffic and be the death knell for the beleaguered Telegraph Avenue shopping district.

And if Berkeley rejects the plan, the entire project is imperiled – which leaves some people in town wondering how one of the region’s most green-thinking cities could say no to public transit.

There’s more…

The article quotes some locals opposed to this visionary project:

“It’s a gigantic waste of money,” said Mary Oram, a longtime Berkeley resident who lives south of the UC campus.

“To me, it looks like they’re preparing for light rail. Light rail is wonderful if you’re in the middle of nowhere, but we already have BART just a few blocks away. It doesn’t make any sense to me.”

Oram and other opponents said AC Transit buses aren’t brimming with passengers through Berkeley, while merchants worry that customers will shop elsewhere, deterred by the traffic or lack of parking if the city decides to eliminate parking along Telegraph to create an additional lane for cars.

I don’t think this person really understands much about public transportation. Light rail is NOT terribly useful “in the middle of nowhere” – instead its best use is actually in densely populated urban areas. Like Berkeley.

And yes, BART is “a few blocks away” but it serves a totally different corridor. The AC Transit line that connects Bay Fair BART to Downtown Berkeley BART is already one of the system’s most popular lines, largely because it serves corridors BART does not. Anyone who has traveled along International Boulevard / East 14th Street, or Telegraph Avenue, is well aware of how isolated they are from the BART system.

More important is the effect on Telegraph Avenue. The Southside neighborhood in Berkeley has fallen on hard times of late – imagine my shock when last weekend I discovered that Cody’s had closed! – and part of this is in fact because it’s not terribly easy to get to. Driving down Telegraph is already very difficult, and parking is nearly impossible to find, especially on a busy weekend.

Mass transit, such as bus rapid transit (BRT) is directly designed to address these problems. By providing dedicated lanes, it allows the system to avoid traffic. That in turn allows it to be quick and reliable. And that is what attracts riders, who above all else prize those factors when deciding to use public transportation.

Ultimately, cities like Berkeley need to embrace this if they are to have a meaningful impact on climate change, on energy independence. The views of Berkeley residents who oppose these projects are shaped by their faith that the 1950s can last forever – that California’s urban landscape can continue to be dominated by low density, by traffic, by cars. This is simply not the case, and one would assume that of all places, Berkeley would understand that better than others.

Sadly, Berkeley doesn’t seem to understand it. If density’s main problem is traffic, wouldn’t a BRT system be a sensible method of cutting down traffic? Doesn’t Berkeley need to lead the way in the state, becoming a model to other cities in the fight against climate change?

As long as a small but powerful group of homeowners continues to get their way, imposing their unrealistic belief that the 1950s are still viable and desirable, cities like Berkeley will continue to struggle to break free of the auto-dependent lifestyle, will have an uphill battle in trying to bring in alternative forms of transit. And if Berkeley cannot be convinced to join the 21st century – how are we to convince the rest of California to do the same?

I’ll give the last word to a Berkeley urban planner who understands the importance of this issue:

“The City of Berkeley would have to be out of its mind to turn down a multi-million-dollar investment in public transit,” said Robert Wrenn, a city transportation commissioner and proponent of the rapid bus plan.

“We’d be the complete laughing stock. It would be a great embarrassment to the city.”