The California High Speed Rail Authority met yesterday in San Francisco. The agenda was packed with many interesting things including a new station area development policy. But the real controversy was about the section between San Jose and San Francisco. I joined hundreds of people during public comment to weigh in on this one small segment.

Over the past few years, a group of high speed rail opponents has been gathering strength in some of the Peninsula communities such as Atherton and Menlo Park, arguing that the train will impact their views, be too noisy, and otherwise ruin their quality of life.

There is certainly a lot of design work to do as the High Speed Rail Authority and Caltrain explore the peninsula segment and figure out how to make “joint operations” work.

But what some of the residents of the Peninsula seem to be asking for is an impossibly expensive project or no project at all. There cannot be a 60-mile subway up and down the Peninsula.

The Bay Area Council penned a strong letter pointing out the flaws with the “build it right or don’t build it at all” approach. If “building it right” means addressing every local impact of the project to the satisfaction of every local resident, there will not be enough money in the world to build this project.

TransForm pointed out at the hearing that the issues with the Peninsula communities stem from the fact that the High Speed Rail Authority made the fundamentally correct decision in 2004 to choose an alignment that re-uses existing track where possible and goes through existing cities. (This was in contrast to a cheaper alternative that went through agricultural lands and skirted many existing cities, relying instead on “greenfield” stations.) Having made the big decision the right way, the Authority now faces the political and design problem of actually bringing the train through all of these already-developed communities. Even though the Peninsula creates design challenges it is absolutely critical that the project goes all the way to San Francisco, where the highest ridership stations in the entire state will be located.

I tried to put this project into some larger context in my remarks. California is already the most populous state in the nation (by far). It will grow from 38 million people today to 50 million people by 2030. The real reason we need high speed rail is to provide an armature or framework for organizing this massive growth. Where the interstate highway system was the infrastructure that enabled the suburbanization of America, high speed rail can enable a re-centering of growth. It is the necessary supporting infrastructure for walkable communities in California.

The real question we are facing is whether we are still capable as a society of actually getting something like this built. In the age of CEQA, in the age when we seem to believe that more public process is always better, in the age when we seem to believe that nothing should happen unless there is consensus, can we actually create a transformative infrastructure? As America tries to learn how to compete with “single vision” nations that do not share our democratic values, the question of how we learn how to actually get things done under our political system looms larger and larger as a central problem to overcome.

With every infrastructure project that SPUR supports we face the dilemma of how to be supportive against the tide of opponents while still working constructively to improve projects and make them as good as they can be. We could not be happier with the “big moves” that the High Speed Rail Authority has made thus far. They have picked the right alignment, one that will reinforce center-oriented growth. Now the task is to get the small moves right to find that elusive balance between more expensive designs that address community concerns and the need to keep the project affordable enough to actually build it.

This is the most important project in California. It is a naïve and impossible wish to “get it right” if right means the ideal design in every community. We need to get it “right-enough” to attract lots of riders away from the automobile and enable a new pattern of growth in the state.

[Photo Credit: Colleen McHugh]

The San Francisco Department of Elections announced on Monday that the Fix Muni Now campaign had submitted enough voter signatures to qualify their Muni reform measure for the ballot.

The Department of Elections conducted a random sample of 2,248 signatures of the total 74,933 submitted and, based on this statistical sampling, determined there were more than the 44,382 signatures required.

The measure, if approved by voters in November, would require the Muni operators union, TWU-250A, to engage in direct negotiations for their wages and benefits, like every other public service union in San Francisco. Currently, operator wages and benefits are guaranteed in the City Charter to be, at a minimum, the second-highest in the country. TWU-250A is the only public service union in the city that has made no concessions during the recession of the past several years, opting instead to collect an automatic raise on July 1st, less than a month after Muni service was cut by ten percent.

By restoring collective bargaining as the method by which wages and benefits are determined, the City of San Francisco will be able to address inefficient operator work rules, which a recent audit by the City Budget Analyst estimates cost the city several million dollars per year.

Are you interested in helping the campaign? Click here to donate to the campaign, or click here to volunteer.

What are the most pressing issues facing California in the next 15 years and how should we deal with them? If only there were one comprehensive PDF document floating around the internet with all the answers.

Policy wonks across the state will now be thrilled to discover the Public Policy Institute of California’s recently released CA2025 report, a “briefing kit” covering California’s most important long-term policy issues. Outlining policies on topics ranging from water to transportation to the economy, the report acts as a kind of handbook for every major policy concern confronting the state today. While one might expect an insufferably dense document, the text is actually quite accessible, the graphics clear and informative. Some might crave more detail and in-depth analysis than CA2025 provides, but the report still serves as an excellent primer for the key issues facing the state, and presents compelling arguments for how our policy makers might tackle them.

[Graph courtesy of PPIC CA2025]

Not so fast says the Atlantic’s James Fallows in a new article on “How America Can Rise Again.” People have argued we were in decline since the earliest days of the republic. His prescription: Focus on maintaining our top universities to foster innovation and open immigration to keep people and ideas flowing into our country. From SPUR’s perspective, we would add – and invest heavily in high speed rail and other infrastructure that enables non-auto mobility.

This past fall, a group of SPUR board members and staff traveled to Washington DC to learn from the urban-planning successes of our nation's capital; today, three members of that group presented their findings at a lunchtime forum.

SPUR Deputy Director Sarah Karlinsky began the discussion with an overview of the Washington urban planning models from Pierre L'Enfant's plan of 1791 to and James McMillan's Plan of 1901 through modern-day endeavors to enliven the long-neglected Southeast waterfront area along the Anacostia.  Regional Planning Director Egon Terplan expanded the geographical scope of the discussion, demonstrating with satellite photography areas in the region where forward-thinking transit-planning decisions brought about transit-oriented development along major corridors and high public transit use.  Terplan focused on the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor in Virginia and Bethesda in Maryland, both tremendous successes in inducing dense development clustered around regional rail service.

Finally, architect and urban historian Rod Freebairn-Smith showed photographs gathered during the trip focused on how security threats affect both civic life and architecture. His photos included many examples of how buildings have been fortified through bollardization and other means, while not marring the storied city or preventing access to national monuments and icons.

How fast do you have to be to outrun rising tides?  According to Will Travis, of the Bay Conservation and Development Commission this is a challenge that the Bay Area faces. Travis informed and entertained a large crowd at a forum at the Urban Center this past Tuesday, covering a wide range of issues including environmental justice, adaption strategies, importance of tidal wetlands, and his thoughts for the future of the bay.

Climate change poses a severe threat to the San Francisco Bay.  Ocean water temperatures will continue to increase, sea levels will inevitably rise, and storms will become more violent. Decreases in the Sierra snowpack will mean less fresh water in the spring and summer months, allowing salt water to travel further up the delta than ever before.

While his prognosis was certainly bleak, Travis offered a wide range of strategies aimed at combating these changes. Some of these strategies included the protection of tidal wetlands, continued compact mixed use development near transit, and planning for future, and not present, conditions. Travis concluded his remarks by quoting hockey legend Wayne Gretzky who said the goal is to "skate not where the puck is, but to where it will be," emphasizing the importance of making sure our plans stay ahead of changing conditions and rising tides.

The newly-released California Budget Challenge lets you choose your priorities for the state while attempting to balance the budget. Users decide on policy options including whether or not to raise income taxes, restructure Proposition 13, or change parole supervision for non-violent offenders. You can send your choices on to your representatives, view pro and con arguments for each choice, and see the choices other Challenge-takers are making. California will have a special election on May 19 with several measures related to the budget.

A new report from the Controller provides comparative information on how much the City and County of SF spends per capita on key services relative to other communities. While making clear that it is not advocating cuts to particular services, it provides an objective set of data points to make appropriate policy decisions. The report also provides information on how certain revenue sources have changed over time. For anyone interested in local budgeting, this is a must read.