[PEN-L:8198] Re: Re: California Green Party Assembly Representive requests help

[Eugene Coyle <eugenecoyle@xxxxxxx>]

There is an organization in Washington, D. C., the Surface Transportation
Policy Project that is the source that Audie Bock should reach.  sorry, i
don't have a phone number.  The federal highway money is now tied to provide a
small bit for transit.  There are groups in the Bay Area that work on transit
issues, including Urban Habitat, located in the Presidio in San Francisco,
(415) 561-3333.  Cameron Yee is the person there.

    I find the post by Brad De Long, below, astonishing.  First, don't
freeways knock down massive amounts of urban housing?  Including splitting
what were nice neighorhoods in Oakland and Berkeley?  And aren't new freeway
lanes now being promoted by the highway lobby as car pool and bus lanes -- but
are simply highway widening?  Ever read about how the South Bronx was
destroyed Brad?  Freeways.  Or do you think it was rent control that did
that?  Busses ARE mass transit, of course, and I'm glad to see you approve of
them.  There is a big move in LA to spend more on busses and less on the
subway --- but that's a fight within mass transit, not against it.

    The Bay Area supported mass transit in the past -- and yes, rail -- at
much lower population densities than we now have.  Berkeley itself was a
streetcar community -- ever driven through the Solano tunnel?  Trains ran on
the Bay Bridge until at least the mid 1950s.  Old rail lines cover much of the
area, including communter lines in the East Bay and Marin county =-- where, we
are told, the current density can't support them.

And aren't freeways massively subsidized

Brad De Long wrote:

> >Audie Bock, the new Green Assembly representative from Cal. has a
> >question for us.  She asked, about transit issues. She quotes: "I have
> >the impression that mass transit and highway planning are treated as two
> >separate and distinct issues.  I believe that when planning our highways
> >in California we could incorporate mass transit. What is the economic
> >feasibility of providing genuine mass transit throughout California?
> >Should we, as legislators view these items as interrelated from an
> >economic standpoint?"
> >
> >--
> >
> >Michael Perelman
> >Economics Department
> >California State University
> >michael@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> >Chico, CA 95929
> >530-898-5321
> >fax 530-898-5901
>
> How willing is she to promote the tear-down of blocks of bungalows in
> Berkeley and their replacement with five-story apartment buildings, or to
> promote the tear-down of large houses in Palo Alto and their replacement
> with townhouses?
>
> Mass transit seems to require much higher densities than we have at present
> in California--even largely-urban California, outside of a very few
> regions. And the currently chi-chi forms of mass transit--light rail a la
> BART--appear, as best I can judge, to suck down huge amounts of money that
> could be better spent on more busses and bus lanes.
>
> But it's not my field. And land-use and transit planning is genuinely very
> hard...
>
> Brad DeLong
>
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
> "Now 'in the long run' this [way of summarizing the quantity theory of
> money] is probably true.... But this long run is a misleading guide to
> current affairs. **In the long run** we are all dead.  Economists set
> themselves too easy, too useless a task if in tempestuous seasons they can
> only tell us that when the storm is long past the ocean is flat again."
>
> --J.M. Keynes
> -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
> J. Bradford De Long; Professor of Economics, U.C. Berkeley;
> Co-Editor, Journal of Economic Perspectives.
> Dept. of Economics, U.C. Berkeley, #3880
> Berkeley, CA 94720-3880
> (510) 643-4027; (925) 283-2709 phones
> (510) 642-6615; (925) 283-3897 faxes
> http://econ161.berkeley.edu/
> <delong@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>