In what ended up being a big coincidence, I was planning on writing about issues of public notice and involvement with major Public Works projects, including the Transportation Commission, last week. Then the department managed to prove my point exceedingly well by chopping down 21 apparently healthy trees on Park Streetwithout telling anyone about it in any meaningful way.
But this wasn’t a one-time occurrence, it’s a part of a large pattern that kicked into high gear about three years ago and continues unabated. One only need to look at the ongoing canceling of the Transportation Commission and what staff feel is necessary to agendize for them, to see that there is virtually no proactive outreach on transportation planning in this city.
Case in point, the Alameda Countywide Transportation Plan (CWTP or “CountyPlan”), which is the long range planning document for Alameda County. It is updated once every four years and ends up prioritizing regional funding for the county. If you’re not in the County Plan, your project’s going to have a hard time getting funding.
This year’s County Plan is extremely important. The Alameda County Transportation Commission (ACTC, pronounced Acka Tacka in Australian) is looking to extend the Measure B sales tax and double it. Which means that the current ½ cent sales tax will become a 1-cent sales tax and it will be collected for longer. The County Plan is the document that is being used to decide which projects are specifically called out for funding in this tax measure.
On February 25, ACTC released a call for projects to include in the CountyPlan, these were due on April 12. This process was not a surprise, the development of the County Plan is a quadrennial event, and there had been a lot of discussion at the County ACTAC (a staff advisory group that Alameda(City) Public Works employees sit on). Specifically, the proposed Call for Projects was in the ACTAC’s December 2010 update, and their January 2011 update. Meaning there was nearly five months of notification about issue.
Despite the knowledge that this call for projects was coming and that it was going to have a tight turn time, and that it was a significant event, Public Works put together a list of projects worth nearly $200 million that never saw the light of day until after it was submitted and the deadline for submittal had passed.
So you might think that this list would be a kitchen sink of projects culled from the high priority lists of the City’s transportation plans. Say, $125 million for a West End bike/ped/transit bridge as identified in the Estuary Crossing feasibility study. But you’d be wrong. While there are some priority projects on the list, the submittals include projects that come out of nowhere, including a $90+ million to upgrade the Fruitvale Bridge to Lifeline status AND rehab the rail bridge for some reason at an additional cost of $50 million, and a $4 million park-and-ride project that highlights bus routes that no longer exist as a reason for being built. The park-and-ride was a project that the Transportation Commission, years ago, suggested was not a great transit project with tiny transportation benefits, and that was before the Line 19 disappeared.
No community transportation groups were consulted on whether or not the proposed projects met the needs of pedestrians, cyclists or transit riders. The lack of discussion at the Transportation Commission or the City Council meant that City Staff made significant financial policy decisions that will affect Alameda transportation funding for the next 25 years (the length of the Measure B reauthorization). And now it’s too late.
It’s time to insist on transparency in the planning of public projects and put the public back in public works. Sign the tree petition and support the call for public involvement and accountability.