Stop, Drop and Roll

06 August 2007 | Alameda Community | John Knox White

Friday night, at Rythmix Cultural Works, I had the opportunity to listening in on some great conversations about issues around town. (It’s not as creepy as it sounds, I was in the discussion group, not craning my neck to overhear something being discussed, and I just kept my mouth uncharacteristically closed). The conversation ranged from Leaf-blowers, Beltline park space, Target, traffic, schools and traffic.

Each of these topics was interesting, if not due to the information being discussed, then because of the opinions being expressed. On each of these issues, I found myself thinking about them all weekend. Starting with the traffic conversation.

The issue was Island Drive and Doolittle and the traffic bottleneck that is caused for about 20 minutes on many mornings. The folks involved in the conversation were all willing to agree that school traffic, specifically parents driving kids to Lincoln Middle and Earhart Elementary schools appears to be the major factor in this congestion, and offered as evidence was the fact that the congestion has disappeared now that summer is here.

But it wasn’t these facts that were interesting, or the fact that people with different viewpoints were all willing to accept them as givens in the discussion. It was agreed that if we could convince parents to carpool and let their kids walk/bike to school, this congestion might diminish or even disappear. And then someone chimed in with (warning paraphrase ahead!) “But people aren’t going to change their behavior so it’s ridiculous to think that they will.”

As proof, and it’s pretty compelling, this speaker offered 30-years of Alameda-to-Richmond commuting, in which the number of single occupancy cars has increased, not decreased. All this despite many regional attempts to convince people to carpool or ride transit.

And this is the point I have thinked on all weekend.

In order for this line of thinking to be correct, that there’s nothing we can do about how people get around there are a number of things we have to accept as given. First, that all transportation options are equally convenient and available. Second, that once a behavior is set, it will never change. Third that there are no external factors that might change this balance. Fourth, that every decision that we make is the right one. And lastly (though I’m sure there are more, having five points allows me to conveniently have a week’s worth of posting), that the world is somehow different today than it was 30 years ago.

Today’s point: “That all transportation options are equally convenient and available.”

This is probably the easiest to discuss, because I’ll put money on the fact that if you ask anyone, bus/BART rider or not, whether transit is better today than it was 15 years ago, everyone will say “worse” and point to the well publicized transit service cuts of the past 10 years. Available bus service in Alameda is less than it once was, BART is running at reduced capacity (and the impending state budget is going to cause them to jettison their plans to run all trains every 15 minutes).

But beyond that, it’s important to realize that over the last 50 years, less than 1% of transportation spending has been spent on public transit. Considering that transit usage is much greater than 1% of all trips, it’s not surprising that driving continues to be the preferred mode for almost all trips.

Of course, you can look at the commute to San Francisco across the bay and the fact that 1/3 of the trips are made via transit to see that if there are competitive options, people will use them.

The fact is, there are not transportation options that are equal, our state, regional, and local funding has historically been geared towards roadways and driving. This is a growing subsidy that encourages the behavior of driving. It’s as much social engineering as suggesting that there are other models for funding and encouragement.

The Bay Area is better than most when it comes to expending its transportation dollars. But it’s going to take more than a few years of transit heavier spending to help create an atmosphere where all options are “equal.”