The Metropolitan Transportation Commission has been in the midst of preparing Transportation 2035, which is the recent update to the Regional Transportation Plan; the draft of the plan and its environmental impact report have since been made available. The RTP provides a guide as to how the Bay Area will spend $226 billion of transportation funding that it is expected will become available over the next twenty-five years. It is a multifaceted plan that allocates many different types of funds to operations and maintenance, system efficiency, and expansion of both transit and roads. In light of this draft plan release, I have been working on a new feature for this blog, which is basically a one-stop overview of some important and interesting parts of the RTP. The feature attempts to strike a balance between breadth and depth, which means that it is rather long. Then again, $226 billion is a lot of money, and much more still could be said about the plan. But I hope that this provides a convenient snapshot of what MTC’s vision for the Bay Area is.
For now, the Transportation 2035 feature can only be viewed by clicking this link. Later this week, I hope to make a few small improvements to the site navigation, so that this and other features will be easier to find without digging through archives of posts.
And finally, for those who are interested: next week, MTC will offer the public a brief opportunity to comment in person on the RTP in a workshop. The main public workshop is on Tuesday, January 27, 2009 at the S.F. State downtown campus (835 Market Street, Room 609, San Francisco, 7:00-9:00 pm). There is a second opportunity for public hearing on Wednesday, January 28, 2009 at the commission meeting (Lawrence D. Dahms Auditorium, 101 8th Street, Oakland, 10:05 am). Enthusiastic reception of and response to public commentary has never exactly been MTC’s strong suit, but I would still like to encourage those who would like to attend to make their voice heard.
Transbay Blog 
I really appreciate this insight. I’ve previously perused the MTC’s 2035 page (and informercialesque video) but I couldn’t glean anything substantive and lost interest.
Posted by Josh | 21 January 2009, 7:05 pmMy pleasure, Josh. I think it’s easy for one’s eyes to kind of glaze over with this RTP business, since it comes down to lots of numbers and projections. The idea here was to extract the essence of it that I think most people would find interesting, so hopefully someone is finding it to be a bearable read!
Posted by Eric | 21 January 2009, 8:28 pmAbsolutely! FWIW the only thing I took from my false start was a sense that the MTC was trying to lower expectations. To paraphrase:
‘$226B sounds like a lot of money, but we’ve already allocated most of it. Tell us only in the most general terms how you’d like us to spend the remainder. But remember, it’s an ineffective sum!’
Posted by Josh | 22 January 2009, 1:31 pmThanks, this is incredibly helpful. And, while it is an effort to read, it’s important to pay attention to the long-term developments, which is true for all policymaking.
Posted by Heart | 25 January 2009, 11:52 am