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.