Marin Independent Journal Sunday, April 12, 1987

We are the traffic mess

Edward P. Weber, Executive Director, North Bay Transportation Management Association

We are the traffic problem, my friends, and the traffic problem is us. The only factor which prevents us from dealing effectively with this reality is that facing the truth is mistakenly imagined by most of us as less personally convenient than the commute hour traffic jams, which we so strangely endure nearly every working day of our lives.

If you were a visitor to modern America from another galaxy, and you observed this habit humans have of clogging roadways, what would you report back to your people about the social habits of Americans?

“The greatest mystery of this culture,” you might advise your mentors, “is that these otherwise evolved and intelligent beings seem to enjoy spending a major portion of their adulthood alone, waiting in line, encapsulated in steel and glass. They seem a very lonely and isolated breed.”

We don’t really prefer to be lonely and isolated, do we? In fact, we have a need to recapture our sense of neighborhood and community, of belonging to each other, and carefully sharing the wealth and beauty of our uniquely blessed region.

With 40 percent of Marin’s population having lived here less than five years, it’s no wonder that we’re disconnected.

It seems odd that America’s otherwise talented professional urban planners have shown almost no effort to manage traffic generation at the home end. Home, after all, is where the cars live like members of the family. It is also where we make our personal transportation decisions, just as we make other personal economic commitments.

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s “Traffic Mitigation

Guide” does not deal with traffic from the single family homes, condominiums, and apartment complexes where we all live. Yet, is not this the very source of traffic?

Planners in the North Bay are supposed to be seriously dealing with “the traffic problem,” misperceptions of which have several Marin cities in development rnoratoia. Proponents who blame growth for traffic want to halt or cripple residential development so they won’t be further intruded upon by new houses and new neighbors. it’s as if we believed that closing our communities’ doors to those who might otherwise share their talents and families with us, would magically clear the freeway.

Who could seriously believe that a social/economic prejudice would clear the congestion we are creating for ourselves right now?

It would seem to be political poison to tell voters that we must modify our own habits to solve this insidious traffic problem, so it’s very trendy today for planners to blame business for traffic congestion.

The solitary blame for traffic problems falls too easily upon the companies who build and finance our communities, and those who employ us. Such accusations are damaging and harmful to our own economy, and contrary to the purpose of easing traffic.

This falsehood is disrupting the families and incomes of our neighbors and friends — the builders, carpenters, plumbers, electricians and architects whose toil has made it possible for the rest of us to live and work here. Fire, police, and other public employees who make our community safe ironically can’t afford to live here.

Real traffic solutions are now evolving in those communities which are building positive new coalitions of government, business and residents. They are tapping the community’s greatest resource, our own understanding and creativity, to respond to the traffic challenge with innovations, such as local shuttle systems, community ridesharing and transit promotion, and affordable housing.

If we are serious about solving traffic problems, without wasting billions of our own tax dollars to pretend that someone else will ride the bus, we must “re-connect” with each other, and with our neighborhood.

It really is that simple and a lot cheaper than pretending that we can buy our way out.