From sawicky at epinet.org Wed Sep 22 11:56:07 1999
As for alternatives -- which I'm for -- it's not obvious
to me that more ample and free public transit would clear
the roads.
Indeed, putting BART into the SF Bay Area seems to have *encouraged*
sprawl. Now people who work in downtown SF say "I can live in
Livermore, because I can take BART" ...
/jordan
the cut on BART is that it's expansions faciliate sprawl. which it does. the problem is that BART's kingdom building approach, combined with little or no land-use planning, opens up vast stretches of the Bay Area hinterlands to commuters. it actually becomes a sort of welfare to developers and the cities that approve giant projects.
the Metropolitan Transportation Commission is a group of entrenched bureaucrats that actively supports BART and road building, while starving the central transit agencies for funds. the MTC is organized kind of like the senate where counties with little population hold as much power as SF, San Mateo and Alameda, which have a significant portion of the Bay Area residents.