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Health & Fitness

Planning for Reality: Untruths, or Harsh Realities - You Be the Judge

As many may know I have been fairly outspoken against transit-oriented development and in particular the SMART train which I believe is an inefficient use of our money and fails to achieve stated goals of reducing 101 congestion or greenhouse gas emissions. 

Today (Sunday June 16th) I was accused of making untrue statements by a paid transportation advocate on the community social networking site Nextdoor.com. They stated "None of the bullet items..are true....you are beating a drum and getting people riled up over untruths. You have a echo chamber of disinformation going here, and that is very destructive". 

Below I show the bullets that this advocate challenges and substantiate each one with credible sources.

In some ways I wish what I said was untrue - the facts are just so shocking and what is happening is needlessly destructive. But I feel the need to clear my name and the facts that I stated so others may judge for themselves.

I must note that my profession - I am in marketing for a high tech company - is in no way related to transportation or land use. I do happen to live in a Priority Development Area close to a SMART train station.

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Here are my statements and clear substantiation for others to judge...

1) The train was railroaded through without consideration of express buses,which would have been genuinely smarter, far cheaper, greener (constructing a train is not good for CO2 emissions) and would actually get people to real destinations in one trip without connections. Now express bus commuters risk having their commute time substantially increased as SMART cannibalizes existing transportation funding adding connections and lots of stops 

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I plan to post more on this topic of CO2 emissions. For starters, this graph shows the gap between the fuel efficiency (mpg) of cars per passenger mile compared to transit where cars are already significantly more efficient and emit less CO2 and this gap is widening:

http://tinyurl.com/transit-cars

SMART does not go to "real destinations in one trip". Real destinations IMHO are:
- the major employment center of San Francisco
- the major employment center of San Francisco
- San Francisco airport
- Oakland airport

SMART is already cannibalizing existing transportation funding despite promises that it made. Supervisor Susan Adams stated in this June 2011 Patch article 

“SMART promised it would not take local funds"

...yet Transportation Authority of Marin had to give them $8m to close their funding gap, even though the line was only half the length promised. This funding could have been used by the Transportation Authority of Marin on buses.

An express bus can take riders from Santa Rosa or Petaluma to the financial district very time-efficiently. There is no transit time or wait time switching modes at Larkspur (if the line indeed ever gets there). Unlike SMART the buses don't need to slow down, stop and pick up passengers at stations the length of the line. Also they don't need to wait for others trains to pass (SMART is single track for significant parts of the line). Typically the buses pick up in the origin city then get on 101 until they reach their destination using HOV lanes.

An express bus alternative was dismissed as alternatives in SMART's Draft Environmental Impact Report, Chapter 4 but the financials were not covered in any detail (in fact the financials appear completely absent from thjs report) and analysis seems especially weak. The study somehow derived that the express bus service would have half the ridership of the train (top of page 4-31) yet omits to mention the cost would be a fraction of the train. 

The transit times comparisons presented in table 4.4-3 conveniently cover only parts of the route spanned in their entirety by the trainline and ignore that most commuters will go to SF requiring additional time to transfer and wait for a ferry. This easily eats up the advocated time savings.

It must also be noted that this bus comparison was with the full line length and not the near halved length of the line - even though a train from Cloverdale to Larkspur was promised by voters (70 miles) only a train from Santa Rosa to San Rafael (possibly extended to Larkspur) is being built which is 38 miles in length. No study has ever been conducted comparing this true line length with operating express buses. Any such study would have surely portrayed buses in an even better light as SMART was delivering near half the line length for the same $1.1bn (including bond interest) investment.

Ultimately one would expect to see a table showing that say for a $100m investment buses would have resulted in xx passenger miles per year compared to $1.1bn for the train yy passenger miles per year. No such data exists. This demonstrates a major omission.

Ultimately SMART has been collecting $29m in sales taxes since 2009 which could have been operating express buses for the last 3+ years, yet there's no sign of any train for at least 2 more years.

SMART knows that people have "imagined benefits" of trains and they play to this perception with marketing - hence the unsubstantiated claims of reducing 101 congestion that's actually likely to get worse withe the high density housing the train is connected to, which brings me to my next claim...

2) The train is being used to justify adding thousands of new high density homes adding to traffic and greenhouse gas emissions 

This is detailed in a binding contract between MTC and the city of San Rafael $528k to plan the downtown and Civic Center PDAs as part of the SMART station area plans. It states the following:

 "recipient shall...maximize housing potential" (page 12, item #1) 

"recipient shall encourage high density transit oriented development in the vicinity of the rail stations" (page 6)

- it  obligates the city council to accept the resulting plan (p26, deliverable 12b), payment schedule (p27) where release of grant payments only occurred conditional on council acceptance of the plan (perhaps explaining why the council voted 5-0 to accept despite a council chamber packed to overflowing with community members against the plan). 

This contract was signed on May 3rd 2010 by current councilors Barbara Heller, Damon Connolly and also Greg Brockbank a councilor at the time who is running for council election this November.

Novato was approached by MTC to accept the same station area grants establishing Priority Development Areas. Novato City Council responded to MTC with this letter.

3rd paragraph of page 2 the Novato council letter to MTC states:

"Staff is concerned that the stated purpose and goals of the grant program could be perceived to indicate a prejudice in the outcome of the ongoing community planning/land use discussions."

You will also note that this letter states that on page 3 that:

"MTC/ABAG wants to see 2,200 residential units within 1/2 mile of [all station sites]. "

This would near double the number of units in Hamilton Field (currently 1,215 housing units) and quadruple that at Firemans Fund (477 housing units).

Furthermore evidence that typically 90% of high density housing users use cars to commute and not transit is detailed in this study conducted in Portland by the Cascade Policy Institute (apologies for the large file size, there are lots of photos of high density transit oriented development included showing all the extensive car parking by the "transit-oriented" residents). This proves what a utopian idea transit oriented development really is.

3) The station area plan was heavily opposed by the community, irregardless of input the plan kept coming back from staff higher , denser and with many more units

This is completely explained in detail, with references cited, by my recent San Rafael Patch blog posting.


4) 87% of people prefer living in single family homes (National Association of Realtors survey) yet high density apartments are being advocated 

This is evidenced by a study by this National Association of Realtors study, see slide 4. 80% of respondents prefer single family attached, 7% single family attached = 87%. Total 87%. 

5) SMART has never declared the CO2 emissions of its trains

The figures for CO2 emissions have  never been published. I emailed Farhad and Mayor Phillips (who is on the SMART Board) on April 24th 2013 requesting these figures. I received a response from Mayor Phillips that:

"With all due respect, the voters have already addressed your question of cost/benefit"

If someone can point me to the CO2 emissions of SMART I would be delighted, I cannot point to something that doesn't exist. I don't think voters were provided with the facts, there was a lot of marketing and not a lot of facts in selling SMART.

6) SMART  does not have any valid ridership projections, there is no governance of this project, it is wasting taxpayers money 

The most recent ridership projections are by Dowling & Associaces. Subsequent to release of these numbers, in the June 2011 SMART board meeting the Transportation Authority of Marin meeting notes state... 

“Commissioner [and Marin Supervisor] Arnold noted that although the updated ridership projections don’t seem to match original projections, a joint review of the Dowling report between SMART, MTC and Dowling resulted in agreement that the numbers were incorrect.”

This this is not merely my conjecture. It is the statement of SMART itself, MTC, Dowling (source of the projections) and Supervisor Judy Arnold, Co-Chair of the SMART Board.

Without ridership projections you can't...
- affirm that the train will reduce CO2 emissions per passenger mile (you don't have a denominator for your fraction)
- state that the train will reduce 101 congestion
- produce a valid budget based on ticket revenues

Consequently I stand by my statement "it is wasting taxpayers money".

6) Plan Bay Area diverts money from highways (used 20x compared to transit ) to transit and admits distressed highway miles will increase from 29% to 44% a diminished amount is spent on highways 

Plan Bay Area itself states:

"Plan moves in opposite direction from target; the percentage of distressed state highway lane-miles in the region will rise to 44 percent of the regional highway system by year 2040....the share of distressed lane-miles is expected to increase from 27 percent of the overall Bay Area highway network to 44 percent of the network."

Source: Draft Plan Bay Area, page 105, target 10b:

Summary

I do wish my statements were inaccurate, I feel like I've turned over a rock and found something unpleasant underneath. We all need to be very diligent about how decisions are being made by our representatives and scrutinize how our transportation money is being spent.

Last year was my awakening that my representatives were not serving my interests or the communities but instead had seemingly unquestioningly adopted the mantra of transit oriented development.

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The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?