Hi all,
As you might remember, there was a Transpo WG meeting in November.
As circumstances had it, it was held solely by three of us who have not
regularly attended Transpo meetings in the past, so it was sort of a
fresh look at transpo issues from a different perspective.
With that said, it was a good meeting at which some very solid
recommendations were crafted for this year's TWG objectives.
Here are the basics:
Attending were Micheas Herman, Eric Brooks and Jim Dorenkott.
Main topics of discussion were - Free Muni - Transit Riders' Union -
Other Miscellaneous Transportation Improvement Suggestions
(We did not approve previous minutes because, not being regular members,
we did not have them readily at hand, and had also not attended the
previous meeting.)
FREE MUNI
The first hour of the meeting was held only by myself and Micheas, and
we spent the entire hour hashing out a rough proposal for a practical
and reasonably achievable roll out for a free Muni transit plan. The
proposal was a basic timeline for gradual introduction of free Muni
service until the entire system has become free over the course of a
five (or possibly 10) year plan. Its details were:
(Riders entering during free hours would be given transfers.)
It should be noted that from the -beginning- of this timeline the
Transit Dept. and the Supes/Mayor would be developing and passing a
coinciding funding plan, to pay for the free Muni roll out as it proceeds.
Below is a listed 5 year plan, but the stages of it could be engaged
every two years, instead of every year, if it were to be decided that a
10 year roll out would be more desirable.
1) In the first year of the roll out, make all night owl service routes
free (roughly 1am - 5am) and to reinstate previous owl routes that have
been recently shut down. (The idea here is that the owl routes are a low
revenue generator anyway, and so would be easiest for Muni to swallow
first. The subsequent roll out proceeds in this same fashion, gradually
introducing free Muni to higher ridership times over a 5-10 year
period.) One good way to sell the free Owl routes is to connect them
with the idea of keeping people from driving home under the influence by
giving them free service (like we do during Halloween, etc.).
2) In the second year, the evening non peak hours from 7pm to 1am would
be made free. One potential way to help sell this, is the increased foot
traffic it could bring to local businesses on the transit corridors. (It
is possible that this could increase revenues to the General Fund that
might help make up for increased costs. I'll write more on funding
mechanisms after laying out the timeline.) It is possible at this and in
the next stage, employers and employees who can, will start shifting
work schedules in a way that enables employees to get home from work
(and in the next stage both to and from work) on Muni free.
3) In the third year, the morning/afternoon non peak hours from 10am to
4pm would be made free. (Covered in this schedule would be school
students negating the necessity to carry bus fare to get home. We might
just want to also institute a 'children ride free' policy at this stage.)
4) In the fourth year, the peak evening hours of 4pm to 7pm would be
made free. Again increased traffic to small businesses on transit
corridors might arise.
5) In the fifth and final year, the peak morning hours (the final most
costly ridership block) of 5am to 10am would be made free. (It is
possible that stages 4 and 5 could be reversed to provide more of a
boost to workers earlier. )
6) Once Jim showed up, he suggested the idea of also/or gradually
introducing phased free 'Zones' and/or Lines. In other words, there
could be specific locations at which free entry is allowed, most
importantly where a lot of workers (especially low income workers) need
to get on (Mission, Market, Sunset, Excelsior, etc.). This would cost
more up front, but have the benefit of making the free phase in
immediately popular and tangible to large numbers of riders. We could
also make low ridership -lines- free early on, as we are also making low
ridership time periods free.
Business/Transit Improvement Districts (BTIDs):
After some discussion we also introduced the idea of helping pay for the
last two strategies mentioned in point 6 by establishing
'Business/Transit Improvement Districts'. In other words, in just the
same way that businesses now get together to volunteer to be taxed for
Business and Neighborhood improvement, we could develop a specific
strategy for Business improvement based voluntary 'Pro-Transit' tax
districts. We could go to specific business corridors along transit
lines and pitch them on Business/Transit Improvement taxes that would
basically pay for themselves through the increased revenues that
businesses in the newly formed district can expect due to increased foot
traffic (lots of studying would have to be done to identify and show
likely positive zones where this would work). The actual mechanism would
be that riders are allowed to get on Muni free in any Business/Transit
improvement district. One draw back would be that such a district
wouldn't promote the key benefit for businesses of riders -starting-
their Muni shopping day free, however this could possibly be solved by
making entire corridors -or even specific Muni lines- free. These would
be 'Adopted' by the improvement district members. This idea has the
benefit of providing funding right off the bat, but I expressed my own
feeling that we could be in danger of slowing or crippling the roll out
of free Muni if we are dependent on Improvement Districts to provide the
funding. My call is that the 'time zone' plan should be rolled out as
the primary mechanism and that these improvement districts should only
be plugged in to that plan where it would be a good way to help boost
and logistically encourage the progress of the roll out. In other words
each improvement district would open up -more- free Muni -sooner- than
the time zone roll out plan. This would have to be a very strictly and
carefully legislated overall roll out plan to make sure that it doesn't
cause the plan to wait for BTID funding, but instead works in rhythm and
harmony with it.
Funding:
Besides BTIDs, we didn't focus too much on funding mechanisms. This is
because Supervisor Peskin and others have already started floating ideas
for getting around the fare based funding requirements for Fed and State
matching funds, and that those ideas should be able to be fairly easily
geared up and passed to meet the need. We did specifically float the
ideas of higher fuel taxes and parking fees as part of the strategy,
including fuel taxes on airport and sea/bay port fuels.
However Micheas was very strong on, and repeated the point that, in his
view, it s crucial that we eliminate this mandated rider fare
requirement for Federal and State transit matching funds and that we
might find it very hard to make any progress until that happens. I
expressed my view that this might -never- happen and that we should
proceed with a Muni plan that is specifically designed to free us of our
addictive and incestuous dependence on these matching funds. In other
words, let's just say damn the torpedoes and go for it and tell the Feds
and State where they can stick it. We didn't really resolve which of
these views has more validity and potential utility. However, we by all
means should pursue changing the laws as we also pursue a free Muni roll
out that is not dependent on such changes. If we were to win the law
changes, it would simply make the whole package all the easier.
On this point, Micheas said we have a good relationship with the new
Rep. who just replaced Pombo and that we might be able to get him to
introduce a federal level bill to repeal the rider fare requirement. I
also suggested that we contact Rep. Pete Stark who might be a good
candidate for helping us introduce the law change.
SAN FRANCISCO TRANSIT RIDERS UNION
After Jim arrived, we all had a short but pretty productive discussion
on the SFGP getting very actively involved in starting an SF Transit
Riders Union (I suggested calling it SF TRU.) Jim made the point that
the main reason he came was to talk about pushing for a transit riders
union.
Micheas expressed doubts that helping start an SF transit riders union
would mesh well with the overall basic goal of the SFGP taking on
projects that help do party building while we work on them.
Jim and I replied that in our view the SFGP is impotent to meet its
overall civic and environmental goals in regard to transit until a
strong riders union is established, and that we simply -must- pursue
this coarse. I added that riding Muni has become more and more expensive
and resembling a pseudo-nazi like police state, and that to protect the
poor and personal civil liberties, we likewise, must make a -top-
priority of helping start a riders union.
In order to allay Micheas' doubts and make the move of the SFGP helping
build a union more concrete as -specifically- beneficial to party
building, we suggested the following strategies.
1) SFGP volunteers can, ride the buses and rails, and table at transit
entry points, with the dual purpose of signing up transit riders into
the union while -at the same time- registering them as Green voters
(perhaps if it is legal we could give them free or cheaper union dues by
financially subsidizing each who registers Green). Then we would finish
up giving them info that both promotes GP transit concepts and informs
them on good transit union strategies.
2) A cornerstone of our transit riders' union campaign could be to pass
a charter amendment that would establish a District (and/or proportional
representation) based, fully elected Transit Authority to oversee all
Muni and other public transit in San Francisco. This would tie in very
strongly with point 1 and make the importance of employing a joint
union/registration strategy crystal clear. If successful, this would the
give us at least 11 more public offices in San Francisco for which we
can run Green candidates, which would be a huge potential for party
building and organizing.
In the end, we consensed that the Transpo WG should have a specific near
future meeting on fully fleshing out an SFGP pro Transit Riders Union
strategy.
OTHER PROPOSALS
We also consensed on a couple of other goals for the year as:
1) The SFGP should push for more and stronger concrete additions to
Business/Neighborhood Improvement District plans which specifically
promote 21st century transit goals such as; walkable car free areas,
transit zones as mentioned above, pro-bicycle plans (see point 2 below),
pro car share plans, reduced reliance on parking, and dense housing on
transit corridors.
2) The SFGP should make a specific point of pushing hard enough in the
next year to win a 'Yellow Bike' program for San Francisco. ('Yellow'
bikes are public bicycles that are rented, ridden and then re-racked
(usually at destination) in the same way that City Car Share provides
public auto rentals. City bike programs are successful in various cities
and have the added benefit of potentially setting up a public worker
training program for bike repair and maintenance. (Local jobs for a
greener city.)
That's the extent of what I remember from the meeting. I am certain that
I missed some other discussion points. Micheas, Jim... additions or
corrections?
peace
Eric Brooks
