Given the fact that the Berkeley City Council decided not to litigate against the anti-BRT voter initiative — choosing instead to “honor the initiative process” — it was clear that the initiative would indeed be added to the November ballot. That said, I thought I should probably add this update to clarify any potential confusion about the timing, because my previous post about the initiative went live at 8:00 pm, but the Council did not vote to add the initiative to the ballot until about 10:45 pm. During the Council open session, Mayor Bates admitted the initiative had “lots of problems” (therefore appropriate for voters), and both TALC and Friends of BRT stepped up to the plate to denounce the initiative. Meanwhile, one quite confused speaker claimed that giving buses a dedicated lane would cause them to “get stuck,” and that what we really needed was “flexibility.” She suggested that with “flexibility,” AC Transit could run buses every three minutes, while implying that three-minute headways would be impossible with a dedicated bus lane. Just incredible. Anyway, the language will be slightly fine-tuned, but the City Council moved unanimously to add the anti-BRT initiative to the November ballot, as expected.
The next time the hippies in berkeley lecture us on how to live our lives, toss this nonsense in their face.
I for one am sick of people who are quick to talk big about “thinking globally” but when it comes to doing something constructive in their own backyard they backtrack.
I for one will not give a hoot about Berkeley’s transit woes since clearly they don’t and their so called lefty politcos do not either. And the next time they pass some stupid-ass nonbinding “policy intiative” I shall not listen to that either.
I haven’t ridden the 1R in Berkeley so maybe the congestion is terrible but I have ridden it in Oakland and there certainly doesn’t seem to much of a problem
BRT is ok but is there a real problem?
The real AC issue I have is it is to expensive.