Everyone wants transit?
In April John Ellis,
Transportation Planner for Marin from 1985-1992, spoke at a Mill Valley Library
public meeting on the difficulties of bringing a rail transit system to the
North Bay. If you are a true environmentalist, tired of congested 101 or think
a party train back and forth to Yosemite would be more fun than lashing chains
to tires, his remarks may be informative.
“For years there was little or no involvement
by Marin environmentalists in the 101 Corridor planning effort,”Ellis said.
After the plan for transit Tax was completed, they came out against the Transit
Tax….Marin is the only California county with a sales tax for trains that has
ever lost!
The
Marin Conservation League may be the only environmental organization in the
world against transit because they believe it is growth-induced.”
“Sonoma’s elected officials only wanted to
widen the freeway even though their public opinion surveys
showed the public was 4 to 1 in favor of trains. The elected officials kept
saying the public was wrong. The result was a compromise. Light rail in Marin
and cheaper commuter diesel rail in Sonoma. Unfortunately one week after the
light/rail commuter rail compromise was adopted by the 101 Corridor Action
Committee, the elected officials in Sonoma abandoned the train all together.”
“What happened in Marin?” an audience member
fresh to Marin politics asked.
“The Marin Light Rail got tagged by the Marin
environmentalists as the 'Little train to nowhere.’ Yet the majority of the
cars on the freeway between Novato and San Rafael are going to San Rafael. The
environmentalists were very successful in creating a tremendous fear that the
train would turn Marin into Hong Kong or Tokyo. The train would overwhelm all,
negate all local land use plans, and destroy all common sense.
“What
this tells us is that reality can be irrelevant. Perception is what counts. If
by being hysterical, you can dominate the campaign by fear— you can win...”
“What
kind of grassroots work was done for the train?”
“Not
enough. The business community and transit advocates were outgunned. The
environmentalists, or Nimbys, depending on your perspective, know how to run a
campaign. The anti-train slogans stuck. Surveys showed that voters clearly
remembered their slogans.
“What
many define as environmental — like slowing global warming or preventing the
ozone hole from spreading — is of little concern to Marin’s environmental
movement. Marin’s environmentalists are focused primarily on stopping local
growth.”
“Could
workshops to educate the community on the need for transit work?”
“I
am not optimistic about this, because the Marin Sierra Club, Audubon Society
and Conservation League can deliver the votes against transit solutions,
painting them as growth inducing.
So
how do we get environmentally beneficial rail in the North Bay?
“Unfortunately, Marin may be a preview of
California’s future. Marin’s growth hysteria will probably spread to other
parts of the state. Developers and proponents of rail plans must be prepared to
handle growth, so it is not detrimental to those who are already here. The
battle has become a conflict between the haves and the have-nots. Growth per se is not causing the deterioration
in the quality of life as much as the inability of the infrastructure to keep
up...
“The 50’s and 60 s were the heyday of
infrastructure development. We built the world’s finest highway system. Now it
is crumbling all at the same time. A full 95% of the gas taxes Californians are
paying is being used for highway maintenance, and the system is still falling
apart... Our highway system is broke. It would take 1,000 years of today’s
revenues to build what we have today.
“Some talk about using Federal money to extend
BART to the North Bay. Unfortunately, the entire federal rail budget would not
be enough to get BART from San Francisco to Sausalito.”
“What
has the Marin experience taught you?”
“Local
politics is more difficult than I expected. To reach a political consensus is
tremendously difficult. In school you can develop ‘overlays to locate
constraints and analyze the overlays to determine where you can build. But in
real life there are tremendous controversies and nebulous solutions.
“I’ve
been in the public sector for 15 years, and its ability to deliver has declined
dramatically. I want to make something beneficial happen in my lifetime.. If
that means working with private visionaries, that’s what I’ll do.”