Why such anger over Bus Rapid Transit?

Recently comments about BRT have been all over our little Oakland list servers, in the press and the subject of a lot of public meetings. A lot of the writers moved quickly to attacking the people proposing or opposing BRT and I got a lot of flack just for asking questions and expressing doubts and wondering why we are doing this at all instead of just beefing up our bus routes.

I went on to V. Smooth’s http://www.abetteroakland.com/ and asked 5 questions.

1. How does it work together with BART and the rest of regional transit?
2. How do we get people out of their cars and ridership up?
3. What is the effect on the route residents and businesses?
4. How do we keep it funded when transit is facing serious cutbacks?
5. Why are some people so strongly opposed to it?

In response I got all kinds of flame mail telling me that I was in favor or “autotopia”, that I know nothing about transit and planning, that I need to answer their multi point argument when they ignored my 5 questions, that I should consider not owning a car, that BART is really like (and I got different answers here ranging from white flight to something in New Jersey) so I do not understand how BART fits in and basically got blasted every which way. Looking over the other posts I saw that the overt decided critics of BRT were accused of a lot of things, mostly of being liars.

Among other things I am a bike riding Green and I made the mistake to take offence and the bigger mistake to answer them. A friend reminded me of how intolerant many of the young posters on that site are and I quickly found better things to do.

So was there any surprise when we saw that OP-Ed from the Berkeley Daily Planet comparing BRT supporters to Stalinists? Bad choice of words since most of us Americans have never lived either in a Stalinist State or worked with a large Stalinist political party in a multi party state. I have done both and think I know what the writer meant. The main thing I took away from that OP-Ed is that AC Transit has had this idea for years and years and after all the public “consultations” there have been few, if any, modifications of the plan despite some very active opposition.

There are other BRD opponents who are very angry themselves and have responded with much of the same personal attacks on the BRD supporters. Most of what we hear in the way of BRT support is coming from folk who stand something to gain, but there is also much popular support for the idea coming from residents and some business owners.

So I asked a good friend and political comrade what the fuss was about and got the same kind of answers with much more respect and some willingness to address my 5 questions. Transit is one of those areas where we do not always listen to the NIMBY arguments. But don’t people have a right to oppose changes to their neighborhood they do not want? Her and I agreed that people have a right to be left alone sometimes.

So why all the anger in the public discussion other than the fact that disdain and harsh fundamentalism has become part of how we talk in public in our country? We sure give ourselves to judge others harshly. Do we have some kind of political road rage?

I think the anger comes from a lack of trust and not feeling like part of the process.

I would have to say that we do have some kind of political road rage and I blame it on the disconnect between the community and the elected officials. We ARE supposed to have elected people to look into and argue these issues for us. Shouldn’t our council members read this stuff over and make their recommendations to us?

The disconnect comes from not feeling like they are our representatives. Where are the BART, AC Transit and City Council members of 3 cities when the local community feels that they do not want a project on their street?

With districts drawn all over the place lumping different communities together and cutting others into parts we have some people who need much cash to get elected but do not feel like “my” member of council. This is Gerrymandering, it gets them elected, but it does not make anyone feel like they have a member of council on their side.

With AC Transit and BART boards having districts that no-one knows and the different transit agencies have so much overlap and lack of coordination who knows who is on these boards? Who knows who is good and who wants what? No wonder so many seats are unopposed at election time. Our right to be represented is there except for getting lost in the confusion and endless little turf wars.

We do not have elected neighborhood committees either.

When these elected officials go out and make bad decisions that do not connect to the communities they serve you get hard feelings and lack of trust.

You will find hard feelings like this all across our political discussions. Today I was looking at harsh words being exchanged over teacher’s salaries. Last week I was listening to it over parking.

I am not for BRT that does not address my 5 original questions, but those may not be so hard to address. Frankly I am not sure it is a good or bad idea yet. I suggest we cool it over Bus Rapid Transit and look at the way transit works, and is paid for, in our region and state. Whatever plans we do, we do not need any more plans that fail.


On the other hand, I do have my mind up about democracy and civil public discourse.
The public needs channel for their voice that they can trust.