TCM 2 Public Hearing
comments on the proposed amendment to the 2001 Regional Transportation Plan
---o0o---
Taken before CYNTHIA T. WALLIS
Certified Shorthand Reporter
State of California
CSR No. 12369
October 11, 2002
A P P E A R A N C E S
Metropolitan Transportation Commissioners
James P Spering, Solano County and Cities
Sharon J. Brown, Cities of Contra Costa County
Jon Rubin, San Francisco Mayor's Appointee
Stephen Kinsey, Marin County and Cities
Pamela Torliatt, Association of Bay Area Governments
Sue Lempert, Cities of San Mateo County
Barbara Kaufman, San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission
Mark DeSaulnier, Contra Costa County
Scott Haggerty, Alameda County
Metropolitan Transportation Commission Staff
Ann Flemer, Deputy Director/Operations
Therese McMillan, Deputy Director/Policy
Steve Heminger, Executive Director
Janice Richards, Secretary
Doug Kimsey
(Proceedings started at 9:38 a.m.)
RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS
MR. SPERING: Good morning. Do we now have a quorum now, is that correct, Janice? Okay.
This is the public hearing on TCM 2. This is the first of two public hearings to take comments on the proposed amendment to the 2001 Regional Transportation Plan, the RTP, for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. The RTP is the first area's 25-year transportation investment plan.
The proposed RTP amendment is in response to the U.S. District Court's recent order that requires MTC to incorporate a section into the 2001 RTP specifying how it will achieve a 15 percent regional transit ridership increase between 1983 and 2006.
The draft amendment report has been prepared by staff and has been available for public review at the MTC/ABAG library, public libraries can be -- and can be viewed on the MTC web page.
MTC will take written comments on the proposed RTP amendment until Wednesday, November 13th at 5:00 p.m.
After considering public comments, MTC is scheduled to adopt the RTP amendment at the Commission's regularly scheduled meeting on November 20th, 2002, recently scheduled in the City of San Pablo.
(MOST OF A PRESENTATION BY STAFF EXCISED HERE)
...In summary, the conclusion of this report is that the implementation of the 2001 RTP is projected to result in the achievement of the ridership increase target by 2006, and that a TIP amendment is not needed to obtain the projected ridership increase by that time.
This concludes my presentation Mr. Chair.
MR. SPERING: Thank you Doug. With that I would like to open the public hearing, and our first speaker is David Schonbrunn. David, would you come forward, please. And after David Schonbrunn will be Harvey Goldberg. So, Harvey, if you could get ready.
MR. SCHONBRUNN: I'm David Schonbrunn, president of Transdef. We were the first organization to file a notice of intent to sue on the failure to implement TCM 2, and we're pleased that the court acted with it's order and I'm here to say that the amendment as written here is a joke.
First, I would like to start by reminding you that this is hearing is illegitimate. The Commission or your Committee cannot - can only conduct business after it's called to order by the Chair and a quorum is found present. Neither of these has occurred. This hearing is taking place in a bureaucratic no-man's land.
Second, I would like to draw your attention to the manner in which these hearings are conducted. It is insultingly obvious that the purpose of the hearing is to fulfill a requirement, a federal requirement, easily distinguishable from a desire to actually learn something from the public.
If you're curious as to why your public involvement is not working, and why you keep getting sued, you need to look no further than this hearing -than how this hearing is being conducted. You have erected very high walls around you agency, and then conduct these hearings where you -- wherein you pretend to listen. If you want things to change, the best way to accomplish this would be to treat the public humanly.
Having lost the TCM 2 case, your staff has compiled a juvenile response that says your agency doesn't have to change how it conducts business. This is far worse than sticking your heads in the sand. This is bearing yourselves entirely.
I sent your executive director a letter on Monday describing the numerous failures in the RTP amendment and asking him to withdraw it so that it could follow your interagency consultation procedures properly and be seen by the interagency -- by the federal agencies prior to public release. I've provided the secretary with a copy of that the and ask that it be made part of my comments today.
Rather than recite the specific criticisms, I need to call your attention to the conflict between the court order and the amendment. It does not demonstrate attainment of the ridership target by showing the specific ridership increase from each new project. It, in fact, claims this is not technically possible. On the other hand, MTC refuses to run it's model because it doesn't have to do that other than every three years. That's the claim made in the -- in the document. Well, the reality is you can't establish a ridership increase without rerunning the model because all the assumptions that went into the 2001 RTP model run are changed. Transit fares are increased, transit service is being cut miserably, TDA funds are coming in way below expectations.
And so, what's in the model, even with the seven percent reduction, is completely irrelevant to current conditions. So, your - your proposed amendment proves nothing.
MR. SPERING: Thank you David. I appreciate it. Harvey Goldberg. Harvey. After Harvey - Bruce, I...
(REMARKS MADE BY FIVE INDIVIDUALS EXCISED HERE)
MR. SPERING: Anyone else that we've overlooked? Seeing no other hands or cards turned in, I'm now closing the public hearing. Our next public hearing will be on November 8 at 9:30 a.m. in this auditorium, and it will be on the RTP amendment. There is no further comments. This hearing is closed.
(The proceedings were concluded at 10:00 a.m.)
CERTIFICATE OF REPORTER
I, CYNTHIA T. WALLIS, hereby certify that said proceedings were taken in shorthand by me, a Certified Shorthand Reporter of the State of California, and were thereafter transcribed by computer-aided transcription, and that the foregoing transcript constitutes a full, true and correct report of said proceedings which took place.
That I am a disinterested person in the said action. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 21st day of October 2002.
CYNTHIA T. WALLIS
CSR No. 12369
EMERICK AND FINCH (925) 831-9029
####
TCM 2 Public Hearing
comments on the proposed amendment to the 2001 Regional Transportation Plan
---o0o---
Taken before CYNTHIA T. WALLIS
Certified Shorthand Reporter
State of California
CSR No. 12369
November 8, 2002
A P P E A R A N C E S
Metropolitan Transportation Commissioners
James Spering, Solano County and Cities
Keith Axtell, USHUD
Lenka Culik, CARO
Sue Lempert, Cities of San Mateo County
Mark DeSaulinger, Contra Costa County
Jon Rubin, San Francisco Mayor's Appointee
Pamela Torliatt, Association of Bay Area Governments
Metropolitan Transportation Commission Staff
Ann Flemer. Deputy Director/Operations
Therese McMillan, Deputy Director/Policy
Steve Heminger, Executive Director
Janice Richard, Secretary
Doug Kimsey
(Proceedings started at 9:39 a.m.)
RECORD OF PROCEEDINGS
MR. SPERING: Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. I would like to call this meeting to order. This is the second of two public hearings to take comments on the proposed amendment to the 2001 Regional Transportation Plan (the RTP) for the nine-county. San Francisco Bay Area. The RTP is the Bay Area's 25-year transportation investment plan.
The proposed RTP amendment is in response to the U.S. District Court's recent order that requires MTC to incorporate a section into the 2001 RTP specifying how it will achieve a 15 percent regional ridership increase between 1983 and 2006.
The draft amendment report has been prepared by staff and has been available for public review at the MTC/ABAG library, public libraries and can be viewed on the MTC web page.
If you haven't already done so, please fill out one of the blue speaker cards and give it to Janice. She's sitting right over here, and she'll bring them up here to the front. (Indicating.)
Staff will have a brief presentation on the proposed amendments, and then I will take public testimony in the order that I received the blue speaker
cards and ask if everyone could please keep their comments to three minutes so we can get through the public hearing. With that, Chris or...
MR. KIMSEY: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Doug Kimsey MTC Staff. The federal clean air act requires regions to...
(STAFF REPORT AND TESTIMONY OF THREE INDIVIDUALS EXCISED HERE)
MR. SPERING: Thank you. David Schonbrunn. David.
MR. SCHOBRUNN: Good morning, Commissioners. David Schonbrunn president of Transdef. I'd like to note first for the record that there is no committee convened here right know. There's no committee that's been called to order, no role has been taken. Therefore, no official business is occurring at this moment.
Having said that, when I first reviewed the draft RTP amendment, I found it to be profoundly flawed. I sent off a letter to your executive director and suggested that the appropriate course of action would be to withdraw this document because of its deep flaws. That obviously has not occurred. So I'm here today to speak to you as individual commissioners.
As you know this commission has been through quite a series of battles, and this has come to the point where your staff is about to take you over the cliff. This is a moment where you as individuals need to exercise your responsibilities as independent commissioners to read the court order and to read the draft amendment and compare them. The draft amendment is so obviously not in compliance with the court order that it would be an insult to the court to submit the document as it currently exist. In our written comments will be provide extensive notations of the methodological failings, but in particular there is a lack of care that's been taken in this. That is just out and out insulting.
Your planning director came up with a projection of the decrease in ridership when he submitted an affidavit or rather a declaration in our court case in April of this year. Following that time there have been a series of decreases in -- excuse me, increases in fares and decreases in service by many of the operators in this region. The fact that this draft amendment did not even address this dramatic change in circumstance is again outrageous and unprofessional. I ask you as individual commissioners to review these materials and ask yourself is this really how we want to present ourselves in federal court. Thank you very much.
MR. SPERING: Thank you, David. Susan Britton. Susan.
MS. BRITTON: I'm Susan Britton. I'm an attorney with Earth Justice. And for the record, we are representing a coalition of environmental and community groups brought this lawsuit that culminated in the judge's order requiring amendment of the RTP.
We have numerous concerns with the amendment as it is currently drafted. In the first place we don't believe that the amendment conforms to the letter of the judge's order, and I'll give a few examples. My colleague Kirsten Tobey is going to explain some of the methodological flaws that we think exist.
As to the letter of the judge's order, the judge -- the July order defines that MTC must provide for each project identified in the RTP amendment, among other things, implementation schedule and expected ridership gains. The amendment provides the year that the project will be completed rather than an implementation schedule, and an estimate annual ridership rather than expected ridership gains.
In order to fully comply with the judge's order MTC must provide a full timetable for a project implementation, including the project start milestones and project completion. MTC also must clarify what the total annual ridership increase will be for each project rather than providing an ambiguous and undefined total ridership figure for each project.
Those are our general concerns only as they go to the letter of what the judge's order says, and Kirsten next will explain some of your methodological concerns. Thanks.
MR. SPERING: Okay. Kirsten Tobey, you're up.
MS. TOBEY: Thank you. I'm Kirsten Tobey. I'm a research associate with Earth Justice.
Our analysis shows that the ridership estimate methodology that was used in the RTP amendment needs to be much more thoroughly explained, supported and substantiated and, if necessary, MTC must re-run an updated traveled van model in order to substantiate this prediction of the TCM2 target.
I have four main points about the methodology. First, the ridership projection provided in the RTP amendment is based on outdated assumptions from the 2001 RTP and fails to account for the detrimental affects of the recent cuts in service and increases in fares among several of the -- or most of the major transit operators in the Bay Area. It also fails to account for the impacts of the recent economic downturn. Some of which have been explained on the -- or described on the chart handed out today showing a continuing decrease in ridership.
Second, most notable is VTAs recent announcement that it will go bankrupt in less than three years if drastic funding changes are not adopted. This is surely going to impact achievement of the TCM2 target by the deadline particularly since five of the projects on table one in the RTP amendment are VTA projects. Well, we don't expect MTC to anticipate all future events such as this. We do expect MTC to provide a planning cushion that will ensure attainment of TCM2 despite the absent flows of the economy.
Third, in projecting ridership beyond fiscal year 2001, MTCs off model adjustment projects that ridership will begin to increase immediately at the same rate it grew between 1998 and 2001 which was one of the most dramatic economic booms in our recent history. The highest projection seems to be just a straight line based on an interpellation between current and projected ridership levels in 2025 drawn from the 2001 RTP. In the low estimate uses a modified travel demand forecast but MTC provides no explanation of what forecast that was or what was the basis of the assumptions used in that forecast, which projects a trend of steadily increasing ridership. Again starting immediately. MTC acknowledges again on this chart that ridership is not increasing and it will not begin increasing immediately. It's actually going down and trajectory is arguably going to be going down for another year or two at least.
Therefore, if substantiated explanations cannot be furnished for these ambiguous projections, MTC should re-run a new model to project ridership in 2006 using updated economic inputs and incorporating a planning cushion.
Finally, we have concerns about several of the individual projects and their ridership gains listed in table one which we'll address more fully in our written comments. Thank you.
(TESTIMONY FROM TWO INDIVIDUALS EXCISED HERE)
MR. SPERING: Thank you, Bill. Is there anyone else in the audience that would like to speak at the public hearing? If there is no further public comment, 1m closing the public hearing. MTC will take written comments on the proposed RTP amendment until Wednesday November 13th at 5:00 p.m.
After considering public comments MTC is scheduled to adopt the RTP amendment at the commissions regular scheduled meeting on November 20th, 2002 currently scheduled in the city of San Pablo. And with that this public hearing is closed.
(The proceedings were concluded at 10:08 a.m.)
CERTIFICATE OF REPORTER
I, CYNTHIA T. WALLIS, hereby certify that said proceedings were taken in shorthand by me, a Certified Shorthand Reporter of the State of California, and were thereafter transcribed by computer-aided transcription, and that the foregoing transcript constitutes a full, true and correct report of said proceedings which took place.
That I am a disinterested person in the said action. IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this 18th day of November 2002.
CYNTHIA T. WALLIS
CSR No. 12369
EMERICK AND FINCH (925) 831-9029