They didn’t have a neutral person moderate as opposed to one of the participants in the debate?

If you live on the Santa Clara Ave. corridor, which supports the city’s most frequent local bus line (Line 51) and its most frequent transbay line (Line O), the bus really is practical for non-commute trips. The buses are heavily used throughout the day, on weekends as well as on weekdays. We are able to use the service for errands within town, such as trips to Pagano’s or the businesses on Webster St. During the day the frequency of Line 51 is high enough that we can simply go to the stop and wait, without bothering to check a schedule.

New low-density neighborhoods like the developments on Bay Farm Island simply do not support that level of service. If it were not for the fact that the bus that serves Bay Farm (Line 50) has other major destinations on either side of the area, Bay Farm itself would support only a barely usable baseline level of bus service. The area is beautiful and great for recreational walking and biking, but destinations are far enough apart to make these options far less attractive for commuting or errands.

No amount of density is going to eliminate car use, even if that were the goal. I walk, bike, and take the bus, but I’m not an anti-car zealot. Our household has a car and we plan to keep it. However, we greatly prefer to have other travel options. Even the relatively small difference in density between Bay Farm Island and central Alameda greatly affects the non-automotive day-to-day travel choices available to neighborhood residents.

One argument for true mixed development and compact housing is to offer people a choice, not provide an either/or, either you only drive or you only walk/bike/transit. One does not need to be anti-car to be pro-alternative transportation. Because I think, when given the option and the availability of services within a reasonable distance, most people (not all) would rather not take their cars to get coffee.

I don’t know Howard but I suspect he is merely pointing out that the If-You-Build-Density-They-Will-Walk/Bus model is naive. People drive excessively & wastefully and it would take Manhattan or Nob Hill density to change that.

I personally would prefer frequent & reliably speedy public transit for any and all uses. I personally dislike driving short errands, so I try not to. But the reality is that public transit in Alameda is geared toward a commute to/from SF during normal business hours. It has very little utility beyond that and that is why people still drive for nearly any other function.

And that reality is why people see through the more density = less traffic fallacy, because they know the reality, however unfortunate and un-progressive it is.

Mr. Howard started his presentation by asking who, besides a handful of folks he recognized and called out by name, had actually arrived by bus. When no hands went up, he pointed out that of course none of us took the bus; all of us drove our cars. When some members of the audience asked about walking, Mr. Howard generously amended his question, asking who—with the exception of those he called out by name, of course—had walked to the event. A number of hands went up, and Mr. Howard moved on to the next topic without comment.

As one of the aberrant individuals who was called out by name, I couldn’t help but feel that the gist of Mr. Howard’s line of questioning was, “Who—besides these well-known crazy people, of course—would ever do anything but drive a car to an event like this?” Maybe I’m just being overly sensitive, but I find it hard to take the “Greening Alameda Point” proposal seriously when the man who calls himself its editor seems to revel in thinly veiled mockery of some of its basic tenets, such as pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly design. If a tape of the Measure A debate is ever posted on the Internet, perhaps those who were not there can judge for themselves.