From: fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu (Aaron Priven)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: Re: Taxes, Development, and Transit
Date: 12 Sep 92 06:15:58 GMT
Organization: University of California, Santa Cruz (College Eight)
NNTP-Posting-Host: am.ucsc.edu


In article <18r3f5INN3ip@agate.berkeley.edu> lazzaro@boom.CS.Berkeley.EDU (John Lazzaro) writes:
>In article <18qe6aINNdkj@darkstar.UCSC.EDU> fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu (Aaron Priven) writes:
>>
>>Providing the infrastructure
>>that allows high-density development to exist is precisely what SCCTD
>>should be doing.
>
>In general I agree with the statement, but I don't know how much sense
>it makes for Santa Clara County. Growth is dying in this region, and

I question that.  Although the current recession has hurt Silicon
Valley even worse than other parts of California, and the loss of
defense industries will continue to hurt the South Bay, I don't believe
whether the growth of California will really cease in the long term.
Even if the computer and defense industries continue a decline, 
business from the north Bay Area will seep down into the South Bay if
the price of office space will support it.

For a hundred and fifty years people have come to California in large
numbers.  Although for the past couple of years more people have left
California for the rest of the United States than have migrated here
from there, immigration continues from the rest of the world.
California grows.  It's almost a part of the definition.

>unlike places like Oakland, San Francisco, and Berkeley, there isn't a
>lot of high-density places that could be redeveloped and served by
>transit (like SOMA and the Financial district, downtown Oakland, and
>downtown Berkeley were developed and redeveloped, aided by the
>presence of BART). Designing a transit system to serve the South Bay
>is a lot more practical than re-designing the South Bay to fit a
>transit system ...

I think you've missed the point a bit.  Cities like Oakland, Berkeley,
and San Francisco were shaped the way they are *by public
transportation* -- by the streetcars that were the predominant form of
transit in the early part of this century.  They have not changed
because they were adapted to the use of automobiles (by parking lots
and garages).  Transit allows and encourages the creation of
high-density areas.  Of course, this can be fought.  Many BART stations
effectively fight this tendency by placing large areas of parking lot
around the station, or placing stations in the medians of freeways,
making pedestrian access difficult.  I am sorry to find that this is
also true of the light rail in Santa Clara (I had to go down to Santa
Cruz today so I looked at the Almaden part of the light rail).

I could understand designing a transit system for the South Bay as
it is now if it were possible to do so.  But low density development
*cannot* be served economically by transit.  THAT is the reason that
SCCTD has low farebox recovery.  To reduce car usage necessitates
rebuilding the South Bay.  This can and must be done in stages.  
I've written before about my vision of the Bay Area, as a large strips
of "transit village" surrounded by the now-existing low density
development (which would, I hope, be mostly phased out).  This is my
personal idea of what should happen, and I don't expect everyone to
share it, but I think whatever the form it is necessary for us to
reduce automobile usage and increase the density of development, for
many reasons -- some environmental, some because I believe that
low density development reduces the contact between people and thus
increases the chances of misunderstanding and conflict.

If I were going to pick a place to start -- a place to begin
transforming the South Bay from what it is now to a real *city* -- as
opposed to a "suburban fabric" connected by arterial roads -- I
wouldn't have picked the current route of the Light Rail.  I would
indeed have chosen places that already have high density.  In Santa
Clara County, of course, these are hard to come by; and they did pick
downtown San Jose as the most important point.  I would think downtown
Los Gatos or Mountain View (which now, again, is being chosen) would
have been better as original choices.  But you pick high-density end
points not so much to serve traffic going between them as to create
endpoints for initial travel *before* development actually occurs.
The low-density points in between, with luck and skill, get developed
afterwards, and you have an entire corridor.  Then you fan out into
other corridors and develop those places.  Unfortunately,
transportation and city planning in the Bay Area aren't connected.
Transit planning is connected to road planning, and the two have
totally different requirements for placement.  (The freeway's a half
mile down?  so what, a half mile isn't much to drive.  The transit
station's a half mile down?  ugh, forget it, I'll go take the
freeway.) Meanwhile city planning is in the charge of the wealthy
"neighborhoods" whose main concern seems to be making sure property
taxes on their houses don't go up by increasing the usage of their
lands.

 =Aaron=

-- 
Aaron Priven, fuzzface@cats.ucsc.edu
  Bring in the workers, and bring up the rails;
  We're gonna lay down the tracks, and tear up the trails. 
  Open her heart, let the life-blood flow,
  Gotta get on our way 'cause we're movin' too slow.
    -- Gordon Lightfoot, "Canadian Railroad Trilogy"
Newsgroups: ba.transportation