For much of the meeting, I was standing in the corner of the room where Dugger and James Fang and Carol Ward Allen et al. were sitting, and the cronyism was palpable, as union officials and politicians and other movers and shakers came up to greet the BART officials, and they all literally patted one another on the back. Given their cheerful, smug mood before the meeting even started, it was obvious that they knew that the fix was in. I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised, but somehow I thought that in this case the MTC might actually make the right decision becaose of the combination of (a) a flagrantly lousy project to begin with and (b) the FTA’s extremely explicit warning in its Jan. 15th letter.

What I found most galling, perhaps, was that none of the speakers supporting the OAC even attempted to claim that it would actually provide any benefits to passengers. There was vague talk about how it would be a “legacy” handed down to future generations, and how it would somehow miraculously transform Oakland into a “world-class city,” but I don’t think even Dugger tried to argue that it would make a trip to the airport any easier (it certainly won’t make it cheaper either). If job-creation is the only real rationale for a project, then you might as well build something that doesn’t replicate an existing service at double the cost. It’s so infuriating!

(My blood starts to boil whenever I start writing about this, so I better go think about something else for a while…)