Executive Summary:
I think to be effective you must make written comments, in complete
sentences, and cc your town council and county supervisor. The VTA
public outreach frames the questions in such as way to dodge just
about everything of interest to me.
I was there; (not so) short summary follows:
0. Intro.
I was rather disappointed, so this review will appear that I'm
channelling RM (deja search for Really Mendacious Rescue Muni Richard
Mlynarik ).
Thanks for MOkuzumi & EBradley for the heads up on this meeting.
This meeing was of course not listed on
http://www.vta.org/news/pub_meetings.html
under "news and events".
The hotel was easy to find, the room was hard to find; the concierge
gave me *driving directions* (!) around the hotel parking lot to get
the meeting room.
1. Who and What I saw
It was a drop in session, I chatted with various
know-nothing VTA flunkies[*], who did not takes any notes.
There were no formal vta spoken presentations, and no
itinerary for the two hour meeting, and no group discussion.
I didn't get to hear what other citizens thought. It will
be very easy to summarize public comment as needed, and if
questioned about omitting my concerns, the VTA can say, 'only
one person raised that issue -- you; we report on issues which
affect multiple people' and have plausible deniability for
avoiding any troublesome points raised by the public.
[*] The vta staff name-tags do not identify their staff by title/role.
I would guess that most staff I talked to hold positions as greeters,
hostesses, and community outreach interns. -- not engineers or
managing directors. (Contrast to AC's RTP meeting, where staff are
present based on their knowledge, not their congeniality and
effaciveness.)
A couple of exceptions: I talked to one person who had a good
understanding of the relationship between various agencies,
-- what's decided by city or county or vta .
A second positive exception: a VTA staffer who said she lives in
Oakland and rides the Capitol Corridor, but when she started she
couldn't determine how far it was from the Great America station to a
Tasman light rail station, of if it could be walk (the
train/Lafayette/powerline/bikepath right of way could be a barrier to
walking, hard to tell if you're still in Oakland) which made my point
by example about maps and info on the web being insufficient and
connections between systems being weak.
Generally, the VTA supports everything --
roads/busses/trains/bikes/pedestrians are all good -- and has a
multimillion dollar project of each type in each district (except no
light rail to Palo Alto yet, but maybe to be studied).
There's no mention of motorcycles, or encouraging their use to save
space (esp for parking) and to save fuel.
2a. Caltrain
I asked about Caltrain upgrades and got a 'we have to see where BART
will go/where the baby bullets will go/Santa Clara just added ACE,
we'll have to wait to see how that's working.' non-answer
about what Caltrain enhancements are actually expected.
2b. Dumbarton Rail
There's some money, and a line on a map, but it's not being pushed as
a particular project, unlike many others which have their own handout
summary sheet.
3. Fremont-South Bay Commuter Rail
A handout which presented results of the 1996 measure b
rail projects Orwellian-ly deleted the South-Bay -- Fremont
commuter rail. I asked about it and was told that it would be
studied as part of BART. I asked, 'didn't you already order
a locomotive for this project ? Where's Lisa Ives ?'
and saw the staffer cringe.
Aside: when this project, with budget of ~130 million was put on hold
last year due to in my opinion no willingness to plan for mitigating
safety and environmental concerns, and opportunism to substitute BART,
it was resolved to enhance ACERail and the Amtrak Capitol Corridors.
4. ACERail
>From the aftermath of the Fremont-South Bay unaccountable 'support
ACE' recommendation, I have never found one such enhancement, enacted,
funded, or planned or even proposed. I asked, and the staffer told me
the vta was waiting for ACE to tell them what they wanted to do.
update:
http://www.vta.org/news/vtp2020/transit_misc.html#ACE
Upgrade Altamont Commuter Express (ACE) Purchase additional train
sets for the ACE Commuter Service from San Joaquin and Alameda
Counties to the Santa Clara Valley with VTA's share of matching
funds. This will accommodate an initial increase from three trains
to six trains per day, with later expansion to 12 trains (with
funding from Alameda and San Joaquin Counties) Increase shuttle
service, parking, and other passenger services at the stations
Improve tracks to improve ride quality and speed (with funding
from Alameda and San Joaquin Counties)
I don't see how the VTA is prevented from adding infill shuttle bus
routes, eg to the 10-13 story towers on Fredom Circle (by
Bowers/US-101), or express shuttles to Palo Alto/Bayshore/Menlo Park,
with the funds they have been collecting from the 1996 measure.
The 'support ACE' has been eroded to $20 million over a 30 years plan
(found as item t06 on page 132 of a report with no index (!) and no
contents(!!), -- vta 2020 draft 2000 septemer)
(OK, actual literal contents of this 148 page planning report:
a new plan ...5
influences of growth ...X
Context of vta 2020 goal ...X
Financial Future ...X
)
5. Transit to SJC
The SJC airport peoplemover is planned by airport people, not the vta,
so it will likely use an incompatible rolling stock and prevent through
direct trains, eg from the convention center to the airport with no transfers.
I want to recommend they use existing tasman/1st/capitol trainsets,
grade separated from metro/1st to Santa Clara Caltrain/ace, via
the airport, but that's not a votable item on any questionnaire.
(Better transit to VTA was included in some unspecific poster
displays.)
6. Informatics:
Bus schedules on every stop, vicinity maps at stations
(challenge: exit light rail at the Japantown station,
and find Japantown, San Jose)
Better web access to vta board proceedings in a form I can computer
search, copy and paste, link to, discus or support. etc ,
Nextbus realtime gps/ontime bus info, etc
There's no option to request such info as a commuter right or
apta-certified best practice or whatever.
7. Regional Zoning and development.
My pet issue which should be addressed in long term planning:
separate through traffic from towns.
Having fast roads between and around towns, with slow roads in towns
makes sense. Los Altos, Los Gatos, Tiburon, Niles Fremont and
Pleasanton, California Ave in Palo Alto are examples of designs that
work.
If I'm riding my bike in Pleasanton, I'm not dodging traffic going
from Walnut Creek to Milpitas. If I'm driving from Cupertino to Menlo
Park, I'm not needing to slow down for downtown Los Altos retirees
crossing the street.
Geary and 19th ave in SF, and Stevens Creek in west San Jose/Cupertino,
Fremont Blvd in Fremont are worst case examples. It's insane to put
a major pedestrian area on commuter arterials or expressways. It invites
conflict between people going through the town with no desire to be
slowed down and slow pedestrians.
Instead of using pedestrian safety funds to ruin working roads like
Palo Alto is proposing -- traffic calming on Embarcadero and Oregon
Expressway -- new developments should be planned as pedestrian malls,
like CityWalk in LA or Reston Towne Center in northern Virginia, with
good auto and transit access, but very pedestrian friendly inside.
Such destinations are easy to serve by transit.
But the vta is inviting me to vote or common on 'pedestrian safety -
yes or no' or 'transit fiendly land use' without really defining
such a term, rather than search for some useful policy rule.
My impression is based on the presented material and conversations.
I realize there's more docs, and a benchmarked best practies manual
pending somewhere.
8. Accountability:
If there's something I don't like about the roads, such as limited HOV
hours, it's Caltrans fault. Or if I don't like that there's limited
development near a Caltrain station, it's a town's fault for their
zoning. It's never the VTA's shortcoming.
X. Conclusion
The mail-in card lists 18 topics/projects with checkboxes.
The first one checkbox is for 'Regional Transportation Plan'.
Now, if I check that box and mail it in, what message will
it send to the VTA planners ?
I think to be effective you must make written comments, in complete
sentences, and cc your town council and county supervisor. The VTA
public outreach frames the questions in such as way to dodge just
about everything of interest to me.
That's my perspective, as somebody who lives in Fremont,
works in Santa Clara, plays in Los Gatos, and socializes in
Stanford/Palo Alto, Burlingame, and up in the city,
sometimes all in the same day.
YY
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* anyone go to the RTP meeting in San Jose at the Hyatt? How
many people attended and what was the atmosphere like?
* there were ~20 people at the RTP meeting yesterday in Mountain
View. They had cookies and water (courtesy of Mountain View City
Hall?) as refreshments. There were displays all over the place
regarding 1996 Measure B projects as well as VTP 2020 projects.
Interestingly enough, one of the displays had a Sunnyvale-Saratoga
Road proposed BRT line from Lockheed to the De Anza College area.
They had two forms to fill out. One of which was the RTP comment
form asking which 5 transit/pedestrian/highway/bicycle projects
were most important to me. The other was a generic-like project
comment card, which I have on my website. I turned mine in at the
meeting, but the card does provide the ability to be mailed, with
a stamp, of course. Naturally, I emphasized more frequent express
and limited bus service throughout the county, as well as more
bus service nights and weekends, and Caltrain grade separation/
electrification on these forms and one-on-one with VTA staff.
I emphasized the fact that VTA needs to advertise itself on TV
so that it can have more riders use transit and not drive around.
One of the questions I asked was regarding more express bus service,
one of the items mentioned in 1996 Measure B. The answer I received
of course was that more bus drivers were needed, and they hope to
fill that requirement at the Job Fair on April 28.
To those that went to the RTP meetings - what was your impression?
Eugene Bradley
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