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Meltdown of Maze in Bay Area Underscores Importance of Public Transit to Safety, Economy, and Environment of California

By Carli Paine
Transportation Program Director
Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC)

Although the collapse of one of the region's largest freeway interchanges threatened commuters with hours of traffic and overflowing trains this morning, Bay Area transit operators made getting to work and school relatively painless.

Today, more than ever, we can proudly say that public transit keeps us moving. Unfortunately, the very same services that are saving the day are in jeopardy due to deep cuts to public transit in Governor Schwarzenegger’s budget proposal.

As Emily Rusch, an advocate with the California Public Interest Research Group (CALPIRG) put it: “We already know public transit helps to ease traffic congestion and reduces pollution, and today proves that public transit also provides important services in times of emergencies. We cannot afford to lose services to budget cuts."

Public transit is critical to our ability to respond to an emergency. According to Dwayne Marsh, Associate Director at PolicyLink, "Disruptions of our roadway infrastructure--from Hurricane Katrina, to the Bay Bridge collapse, to the current meltdown of the MacArthur Maze illustrate the importance of a robust system of transportation options to ensure our community's resilience. Our region’s safety, economy, and mobility are severely compromised without dependable transit services.”

Although the Governor provided $2.5 million in emergency transit funding today, he has proposed cutting over $1.1 billion from public transit in the state budget for next year. Specific concerns with the current budget proposal for public transit include:

• Governor Schwarzenegger’s January proposal would cut the State Transit Assistance program, the only state program that assists with operating costs, by 70 percent from last year. Only $185 million in state funds would be available to help cover operations.

• Governor Schwarzenegger’s January proposal would use $600 million from Prop 1B bonds to replace redirected transit funds, rather than using Prop 1B to supplement the transit agencies’ budgets, as voters clearly intended when they passed the bond measure. The Governor’s proposed cuts would put many expansion projects on hold.

• Governor Schwarzenegger’s January proposal would make many of the transit funding cuts permanent. For example, he proposes permanently redirecting what’s known as the “spillover,” a funding pot for public transit operations that increases when gas prices are high. By proposing to redirect those funds, the Governor refuses to recognize that when gas prices are high the costs of providing public transit increases, and the demand for more services many systems also experience a jump in riders when it costs more to commute by car.

Even under normal circumstances, commuters depend on transit to keep them moving. Traffic congestion costs Bay Area commuters an average 72 hours in wasted time every year. Without public transit removing additional cars from the roadways, each commuter would spend 50% more time sitting in traffic! Just to maintain the current level of congestion requires 130,000 riders on transit or in carpools every day.

Carli Paine is the Transportation Program Director for the Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC). Before she worked for TALC, she was an Associate City Planner and an Assistant City Planner in the Bay Area. For more information on the proposed cuts and attempts to protect these funds for public transit visit the Transportation and Land Use Coalition site or contact Carli Paine at carli@transcoalition.org.

Posted on May 01, 2007

Comments

This is a typical instance where a crucial intersection is closed under the present roads infrastructure.
It shows that when this occurs there is no easy way out of the situation and the failure of the surrounding roads infrastructure to cope with the traffic jams and gridlock that occur around the cities around the world daily.
With our new intersection designs that can be placed on any and all arterial roads this situation, provided that speed restrictions are flexible as to allow vehicle flow rates to increase when required, it is impossible to have traffic jams and or gridlock. Given that these intersections allow vehicles to enter and exit without stopping even if there is a major impediment at any intersection the traffic can and may divert around the stoppage as the re-route roads around the impediment merely increase the speed of flow to compensate for the additional vehicles.
This traffic chaos cannot happen with Liquid Flow Intersections Traffic Management.

The only limiting factor is the maximum speed any particular road may carry commensurate with safety.

Models of the intersections can be seen on our website www.ubtsc.com.au
With these intersections placed into a cities road infrastructure it is possible to drive across town without stopping at a single intersection.
Jozef Goj CEO UBTSC Pty Ltd

Posted by: Jozef Goj at May 1, 2007 07:46 PM

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