By Alec MacDonald
In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) became federal law. Aimed to combat discrimination against the millions of Americans with physical or mental limitations, it gave these individuals greater access to employment, public accommodations (such as libraries, parks, schools, and restaurants), telecommunications, transportation, and a variety of government services. The ADA still stands today as a watershed piece of legislation, but that doesn’t mean it remains the final word in the pursuit of disability rights.
This cause recently took a small step forward here in the Bay Area with the promise of over $1.5 million toward enhancing disability-related transportation in ways that will surpass the standards set by the ADA. It’s a modest sum of money as far as transportation funding allocations go, but the projects it will help complete should make travel easier for people with disabilities — and in a region with more than 700,000 such residents, that’s invaluable.
The money in question comes to the Bay Area through grants coordinated by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) as part of the national New Freedom Program, which is authorized by 2005’s Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for Users. According to the Federal Transit Administration, the goal of the New Freedom Program is “to reduce barriers to transportation services and expand the transportation mobility options available to people with disabilities beyond the requirements of the ADA.”
Last November, MTC invited local governments and public transportation operators to submit project applications in competition for the available $1.5 million-plus. Agency staff and members of its Elderly and Disabled Advisory Committee reviewed the 16 tendered applications, and passed recommendations on to the Programming and Allocations Committee for consideration. Then on February 27, MTC adopted a final list of nine projects to receive funding in grants of varying amounts.
The largest of these grants went to the City of Berkeley toward integrating the Ashby BART Station with the Ed Roberts Campus, a multifaceted disability resource facility scheduled to begin construction this year. Named after a late leader of the disability rights movement, the Ed Roberts Campus is a transit-oriented development that will house the offices of seven partner organizations, along with meeting rooms, a computer lab, a fitness area, a childcare center, and a café. And, thanks to nearly $700,000 from the New Freedom Program, the facility will feature a special helical ramp, a pair of oversized elevators, and an elevator lobby.
Susan Henderson, executive director for one of the campus partner organizations (the Disability Rights Education and Defense Fund), described how these planned amenities exceed ADA specifications. With five-foot-eight-inch by eight-foot-five-inch floors, the elevators will have room for several wheelchairs, which will be able to conveniently roll straight through the carriage using front and back doors. Henderson also mentioned plans to eventually include technology that will automatically recognize wheelchairs, bypassing the need for button pressing. As for the ramp, it will serve as the focal point of the facility’s interior.
“People always think of wheelchair ramps as additions, as opposed to core structures,” said Henderson, who went on to note that without ramps, emergency situations can become all the more perilous for people in wheelchairs. These and many other concerns are anticipated by the “universal design” employed in the planning of the entire Ed Roberts Campus, whose website (www.edrobertscampus.org) defines the term as “making products, communications, and the built environment more usable by as many people as possible at little or no extra cost.”
The grant from the New Freedom Program filled in the final piece of a $36 million construction budget for the facility, and with a groundbreaking scheduled this year, it could be open for use by the beginning of 2010.
MTC awarded the grant on the basis that the project serves the functions of mobility management and improving transit station accessibility, two of several types of activities eligible for funding under the program. Other eligible activities include enhancing paratransit, establishing feeder service to transit systems, conducting rider training programs, purchasing vehicles, providing rider vouchers, and sustaining volunteer driver programs. Nearly all of these activities are represented among the rest of the eight projects receiving grants:
• AC Transit, in conjunction with three other agencies, will complete an inventory of transit resources in the East Bay toward setting up a mobility management structure.
• The City of Benicia will expand the Benicia Breeze Taxi Scrip Program to include destinations in Concord, Martinez, Pleasant Hill, and Walnut Creek.
• The Central Contra Costa Transit Authority will offer maintenance subsidies on vans to be used by community-based organizations for paratransit service.
• The Central Contra Costa Transit Authority will also complete an inventory of transit resources in Contra Costa and the Tri-Valley Area toward setting up a mobility management structure.
• The Contra Costa County Employment and Human Services Department will expand volunteer driver programs.
• The San Mateo County Transit District will furnish Peninsula Ride Connection mobility management services for seniors and people with disabilities in San Mateo County.
• The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will evaluate and further develop a pilot program that translates bus arrival information into speech at bus shelters.
• The Santa Clara Valley Transportation Agency will administer a three-year travel training program.
In total, these projects cover plenty of ground, but they actually represent just the start of New Freedom Program funds flowing to the Bay Area.
MTC’s Christina Atienza, who manages the New Freedom Program for the agency, explained that an additional $5.1 million is in the pipeline, to be distributed in future calls for projects (an exact timetable for this has yet to be determined). These future allocations and the grants listed above do not account for all the New Freedom Program money available to the region, either. Rather, they represent funds intended only for designated large urban areas with populations greater than 200,000 (the Bay Area has five of these, based around Antioch, Concord, San Francisco-Oakland, San Jose, and Santa Rosa).
New Freedom Program dollars are also reserved for designated small urban areas with populations between 50,000 and 200,000 (of which the Bay Area has seven, based around Fairfield, Gilroy-Morgan Hill, Livermore, Napa, Petaluma, Vacaville, and Vallejo), as well as rural areas with populations less than 50,000. The California Department of Transportation, not MTC, is in charge of coordinating the grant assignments in these two types of areas, in a process that encompasses the entire state and takes place along a different schedule. The first round of project applications were due on April 2, and a final project list should be adopted this summer — with the Bay Area targeted to receive roughly one quarter of the $1.1 million available for small urban areas statewide, and an unspecified share of the nearly half a million available for rural areas.
By April Elkjer
“I knew that my last name was going to pay off one day,” said Angela Greene, project manager with Solar Richmond. Greene belongs to a growing corps of green-collar workers — blue-collar or manual labor workers in green business whose services improve the quality of the environment and lower greenhouse gas emissions.
In addition to helping combat global warming, green-collar jobs can address the need for living wages and upward mobility for lower income people. Those who suffer significant barriers to employment — such as adults and at-risk youth with limited labor skills and no high school or college degree, as well as the formerly incarcerated — are afforded the opportunity to join growth industries.
According to a case study conducted in the City of Berkeley by urban studies professor Raquel Rivera Pinderhughes, 73 percent of the green business owners/managers she surveyed stated that there was a shortage of qualified green-collar workers for their sector, with the greatest needs in energy, green building, mechanics, and bike repair.
The Green Jobs Act of 2007 may accommodate such needs. Part of the broader Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, this groundbreaking piece of legislation authorizes $125 million annually for green-collar job training. Those funds should train more than 35,000 people a year for jobs in key trades, such as installing solar panels, weatherizing buildings, creating biofuels, and maintaining wind farms, to name a few.
Of that $125 million, $80 million will be focused on green job re-training; for example, teaching construction workers competency in green construction techniques. Twenty million dollars will be spent on renewable energy and energy efficiency research. And $25 million of this will be allocated for “green pathways out of poverty” — in other words, job training for low-income people in fields like solar power installation and green roofing, as offered through organizations such as Oakland’s Green Job Corps.
Green Job Corps is a collaboration between unions, private companies, community-based organizations, and the City of Oakland to provide local residents with job training and support. It is the result of an initiative by the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights’ Green-Collar Jobs Campaign, which creates opportunities in the green economy for low-income people and people of color through policy advocacy, public outreach, and an employment pipeline.
“Having movements where you have your city officials, your business owners, your education professionals, and community organizations all investing in a type or group of people who haven’t received that support before is empowering and enlightening,” said Nwamaka Agbo, campaign associate for the Ella Baker Center. “And there are efforts popping up all around the nation, like Florida, Massachusetts, and Maryland.”
California, though, is particularly ripe for innovation, as it will be needed in order to meet the goal of AB 32, California’s Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020. This legislation represents the first enforceable statewide program in the U.S. to cap all greenhouse gas emissions from major industries that includes penalties for non-compliance.
Locally, another coalition of three organizations — RichmondBUILDS, Solar Richmond, and Grid Alternatives — recently had low-income trainees install solar panels on a private residence. They were trained through RichmondBUILDS, which is the City of Richmond’s low-income residential assistance and construction training program — now with a solar installation training component added on.
Many graduates of the first class went on to find jobs that paid $20 to $30 an hour. Not bad for a city where the jobless rates range from about 4.1 percent for white non-Hispanic males to as high as 13.7 percent for black males and 20.2 percent for American Indian and Alaskan Natives (according to www.citydata.com).
They are also providing low cost and free solar system installation to low-income homeowners who are the most likely to struggle month to month. Solar panels can save these homeowners up to 70 percent on their utility bills. Solar Richmond has a goal of producing five megawatts of clean, renewable solar power in the city by 2010.
A common misconception about lower-income communities is that they do not care about the environment. Yet while the conversation in these communities might not be about polar bears and Priuses, something like environmental justice, for instance, gets plenty of attention.
Greene — the Solar Richmond project manager with the fitting name — graduated from the RichmondBUILD program and now teaches the skills she acquired to others in her community. Her passion and hope for these types of programs is very high, even as she notes the irony of working on solar installations while in the background an oil refinery releases toxins.
“I am able now to give something back to the community and the environment. It seems to really make a difference to see the passion in other people about saving our earth,” stated Greene. “So now hopefully my children will be able to have grandchildren, and so on and so forth, because we’re taking that initial step right now.”
“It’s not about charity. If we’re really going to turn our planet around, and turn global warming around…we need these guys,” said Michele McGeoy, founder of Solar Richmond. “We’re bringing our resources to the table and they’re bringing their sweat to the table. It’s very exciting.”
By Gail Schickele
Significant reduction of greenhouse gas emissions within 10 years is essential to avoid the most dangerous impacts of global warming, now accepted as one of the most serious threats to our environment, our health, and our economy. Addressing some 100 Bay Area League Day attendees February 22 in Oakland’s Preservation Park, Bruce Riordan of Elmwood Consulting opened the event with comments about how our actions today can have only a limited effect on imminent climate change — which will include a greater number of hot days, shrinking Sierra snow pack, increasing wildfire frequency, and a rise in sea level. How much these things happen depends on how much we do over the next 30 to 40 years.
“Global warming isn’t just a fact, it’s a choice,” Riordan said, pointing out that there are ways to counteract this problem. “We’re a smart region, we’re a smart state, and we can do this. We’re going to have to work together like we never have before.”
Riordan noted that half of Bay Area greenhouse gas emissions come from transportation, with two-thirds from personal cars and trucks, making it necessary to address vehicle miles traveled, vehicle efficiency, and the carbon content of fuels. Total emissions are anticipated to rise even with cleaner fuels and more efficient cars as we drive more each year.
Transportation 2035
The region’s anticipated population growth from 7 to 9 million in the next 25 years will have an enormous bearing on future emissions of particulate matter, smog, and greenhouse gases, as well as on resources consumption, congestion, and health and safety issues. Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) Deputy Executive Director of Policy Therese McMillan discussed Transportation 2035, the regional transportation plan to manage and improve surface transportation and help improve air quality based on changing projections of growth, travel demand, and a forecast of future revenues in the Bay Area.
The 25-year plan sets goals based on the three “E” principles of Economy (safety and maintenance, reliability, freight, and security with a goal to reduce congestion); Environment (clean air and climate protection with a goal to reduce emissions and vehicle miles traveled); and Equity (access and livable communities, with a goal to improve affordability).
“It requires an integrated strategy,” she said. “Infrastructure is not enough.”
Funding Options
“We spend so much money just to maintain our existing system [while] solutions that will really make a difference in reducing emissions are chronically under-funded,” commented Stuart Cohen, executive director of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC). “The Bay Area needs a significant new source of funds dedicated to reducing climate emissions from transportation.”
TALC is sponsoring AB 2744 (Huffman) that would put to a vote the establishment of a climate impact fee of up to 10 cents per gallon on motor vehicle fuel that would raise $7 billion for a Transportation Fund for Climate Protection.
“It needs to be made easier for people to drive less by expanding transportation choices, and we need investment in walkable communities that would include getting kids to walk or ride their bicycles to school,” Cohen said.
Contra Costa Transportation Authority Executive Director Robert McCleary said that climate change is a political, social, and economic reality, but that “surveys suggest mobility may be more important than environment to a significant portion of the populace.” Improving transportation is a consistent number one priority because mobility and flexibility are highly desired commodities. “It’s the [nature of our] economy,” he said. “California is built around the automobile.”
As economic prosperity rises there’s an increasing demand for customized or personalized lifestyles, comfort, and convenience, McCleary argued, tending toward an increase in highway congestion and a slide in transit ridership. “The challenge is balancing competing benefits, interests, and constraints,” he offered.
Cohen disagreed with the idea that people want more mobility. “People want accessibility,” he said. “They want to get to parks, cafes, health clinics. We need to start redefining transportation systems around accessibility.”
Bob Allen, the director of transportation and housing programs at Urban Habitat, noted the importance of public participation and investment in transit at a fair price for low-income communities. “Affordability is a big concern,” he said.
Cohen agreed that involving the public early helps create plans that the community embraces. “Change the planning framework, and density will no longer be a dirty word,” he said. “The design becomes equally important,” he added. “You can get more density when design is right.”
Allen advocated for more work on education. “We’ve got to have the strength and courage to think differently,” he said.
School Commutes, Congestion, and Children’s Safety
In 1969, 50 percent of the kids in the Bay Area walked to school, but today less than a quarter of the trips are made by foot or bicycle, noted Rochelle Wheeler, bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for the Alameda County Transportation Improvement Authority (ACTIA). Given increased obesity and asthma among children and the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, bicycle-friendly and walkable communities are becoming more desirable.
In Alameda County such communities are a growing commodity, with $80 million going to bicycle and pedestrian improvements over the next 20 years as a result of the county’s Measure B half-cent transportation sales tax. Approved in 1986 and reauthorized in 2000, Measure B allocates funds for transit, special transit operations for seniors and people with disabilities, and local street maintenance funds for every city and the county. Over the next 20 years, over $60 million will be distributed to cities and the county for bicycle and pedestrian improvements. City and county agencies must have a locally adopted list of priority bicycle and pedestrian projects in order to receive these funds. Each year, the agencies report to ACTIA on how these funds were spent.
The competitive grant program funds capital projects, programs, and plans of countywide significance. Most education programs have a youth focus. “Youth are our indicator species,” Wheeler said. In the “Cycles of Change” program, 1,400 kids received training in safe biking, bike repair, and how to use bikes in conjunction with transit. Also funded are family bike clinics with organizations such as the East Bay Bicycle Coalition (EBBC). In Berkeley, the largest program to date is the Safe Routes to School program with the aim to increase the number of kids walking and biking to school.
In its last funding cycle, ACTIA (along with TALC and the Alameda County Department of Public Health) funded a $1.3 million program focused on promotion and education. “Investment in infrastructure makes a difference, but combined with promotion and education, you can have more of an impact,” Wheeler observed. The program provides support for 590 school programs aimed at getting children to walk and bike to school and in their community.
Incentives to get people out of their cars may include raising parking fees, subsidized bus passes, and a bike reward program, said Jim Smith, public information officer with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Smith cited ongoing programs in Palo Alto, Milpitas, and Sebastopol.
GOFAST (Gunn Organization For Alternative Safe Transportation) was formed in 2001 in an effort to reduce traffic around Palo Alto’s Gunn High School campus, increase student safety, and promote alternative means of transportation to and from school. A key to the program’s success, he said, was involving the stakeholders — students were involved from the beginning to help develop an incentives program that led to a third more bikers and tripled the carpools, decreasing single drivers by two-thirds. In Milpitas, schools’ attention has been on safe passenger drop off and pick up zones and wider sidewalks. In Sebastopol, a school’s innovative climate challenge program to reduce carbon dioxide is supported by the Air District, which offers a project manual template for other interested high schools.
More Initiatives
Robert Raburn, executive director of EBBC, discussed Safe Routes to Transit funded through Regional Measure 2 (2004) for improvements involving bicycling and walking as cost effective and sustainable ways to increase transit ridership via bike and pedestrian improvements in access including ramps, retrofits, and storage, as well as safety and security. EBBC has led the statewide Bike to Work Day, adoption and funding of a regional bicycle plan by MTC, passage of Alameda County’s Measure B transportation sales tax with a five percent bicycle/pedestrian set-aside, a BART Access Plan, and Safe Routes to Transit.
Chris Augenstein, deputy director of planning for the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority, discussed his agency’s Community Design & Transportation (CDT) Capital Grants Program to help build transit- and pedestrian-friendly infrastructure. It encourages connectivity, innovation, and the use and adaptation of technology and high-quality design to enhance economic vitality and improve livability. Transit initiatives include a Transit Sustainability Policy. “CDT, Safe Routes to Transit, and Safe Routes to School programs address the entire population, from the youngest to the oldest,” he said.
By Leslie Stewart
Bay Area businesses, industries, and agencies which require permits from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District may begin paying a new fee in July to support the Air District’s Climate Protection Program. The new greenhouse gas fee would be calculated based on each permitted facility’s greenhouse gas emissions from stationary sources, and would apply to any facility that emits greenhouse gases, regardless of size.
Greenhouse gases contribute to climate change, also called global warming, by creating changes in the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide has the most significant effect because it is created in large quantities by human activities, it persists for a long time in the atmosphere, and it absorbs heat radiated from the earth’s surfaces. Unlike most compounds previously regulated as air pollutants, carbon dioxide is a concern because of global warming, but not because of toxicity issues. A second compound, methane, is more conducive to warming but is present in much smaller quantities in the atmosphere. There are a number of other compounds, including nitrous oxide and hydrofluorocarbons, which are also included in the Air District list of greenhouse gas emissions that would be considered in calculating the new fee.
The greenhouse gas fee would support the Air District’s Climate Protection Program, adopted in 2005 to address the impact of Bay Area air pollution on climate change. Climate protection activities include creating and maintaining an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, studying emission control options to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at facilities around the region, and coordination with the California Air Resources Board as it implements AB 32, the California Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006.
Because the proceeds of the new fee — estimated at $1.1 million per year — will go to support a specific program of activities, the Air District considers it to be a cost recovery fee, not a “carbon tax.” Carbon taxes and carbon trading systems are greenhouse gas reduction mechanisms that have been used in other parts of the world and are being considered as part of the AB 32 implementation. The Air District fee, like a carbon tax, will be proportional to the contribution each facility makes to greenhouse gas emissions in the region. It will provide a ranking of that contribution and may serve as an incentive for greenhouse gas reduction by affected facilities.
The fee for each permitted facility will be based on the reported emissions during the 12-month period prior to the renewal of the permit. Each emitted greenhouse gas has been assigned a Global Warming Potential value by the Air District, which determines its carbon dioxide equivalent. The proposed fee is 4.2 cents per metric ton of carbon dioxide equivalent (see box below).
The Air District has calculated the estimated greenhouse gas fee for all permitted facilities in the region. Some fees mentioned for facilities include $186,475 per year for the Shell refinery in Martinez, with the highest greenhouse gas emissions in the Bay Area, and $44,507 for the Hanson Permanente Cement Plant in Cupertino. By contrast, small businesses would probably only have to pay a few dollars per year.
Since refineries are some of the largest greenhouse gas emitters in the region, they will pay a significant portion of the new fees. Tupper Hull, director of strategic communications for the Western States Petroleum Association, feels that the Air District fee is premature. “We haven’t seen any evidence it is coordinated in any way with the state plans for AB 32,” he noted. “Our concern is that this proposal would lead to a Balkanization of the process.”
Hull stressed that climate change is a global problem, so fees and incentives need to be applied over a broad area to offer the most options for a market-based approach to solving the problem. “California refineries are very efficient in their use of natural gas because it is a very expensive resource,” Hull said. “Reducing emissions here will be hard, so we need to look at facilities elsewhere where we can reduce emissions and get that global impact.”
The proposed fee would be added to other permit fees when the Air District revises its fee schedule. The changes would be effective July 1, making the fee the first of its type in California.
Emissions from One Gallon of Gas
The basic unit of emissions measurement in calculating the Air District’s fee would be the carbon dioxide equivalent (CDE), whereby one gram of carbon dioxide equals one gram CDE. The Air District’s calculations for Global Warming Potential sets one gram of methane at a value of 25 grams CDE, and one gram of nitrous oxide at a value of 298 grams CDE.
According to the Air District’s fee proposal, the typical emissions from burning a gallon of gasoline is 5,808 grams of carbon dioxide, 0.24 grams of methane, and 0.09 grams of nitrous oxide. Therefore, burning one gallon of gasoline creates 5,841 grams CDE (5,808 grams x 1 CDE + .24 grams x 25 CDE + .09 grams x 298 CDE = 5,841 grams CDE).
Burning 171 gallons of gasoline produces one million grams (one metric ton) of CDE, and would result in a fee of 4.2 cents.
Healthy Communities, Healthy Planet: The 11th Annual Summit of the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC)
Saturday, April 5, 2008
9:30 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
First Unitarian Church 685 14th Street
(between Castro Street and MLK Jr. Way)
Oakland
The 2008 TALC Summit will explore the connections between land use, transportation, and health, bringing together advocates, activists, and practitioners for a day of speakers and participatory sessions to get people working together on building healthier communities.
For more information, visit TALC's Summit registration website.