By Rick Longinotti
Our community sorely needs a transportation justice agenda. The impracticality of getting to work, school and amenities without a car has created a large cost burden on our community, not to mention making second-class citizens of people who don’t drive. According to the Housing + Transportation Index, the average household in Santa Cruz spends 18% of its income on transportation on top of 34% spent on housing. The average household in San Francisco spends 9% of income on transportation and 28% on housing.
Here are ideas toward making our transportation more equitable:
• 1. Make streets safe for bicyclists and pedestrians
Many people are inhibited from bicycling to work or school with good reason. Santa Cruz County ranks third out of 58 California counties in the rate of injuries to bicyclists and 11th in the rate of injuries to pedestrians according to the state Office of Traffic Safety. In 2019, Santa Cruz adopted the Vision Zero goal of zero serious injuries from collisions by 2030. Yet four years later the city has not taken the first step, which is to create a Vision Zero Action Plan.
• 2. Improve bus service
Metro won’t provide the kind of service that can compete with cars without more money. San Francisco taxes parking, including at University of California, with revenue going to Muni. The Transit Impact Fee paid by developers also funds Muni. In our county, Traffic Impact Fees go to auto-centric projects such as widening intersections.
In recent years, auto trips to UCSC have grown faster than enrollment. We can learn from the experience of Santa Clara County, which requires Stanford to limit auto trips to campus to 2001 levels. If UCSC refuses to limit auto trips, Santa Cruz can apply its parking tax to UCSC to fund more transit service.
We need to give buses priority on our streets, such as bus-only lanes and signal lights that turn green when buses approach. Unfortunately, the state denied a Regional Transportation Commission (RTC) grant application for signal prioritization, bus shelters, and boarding platforms on Soquel Drive. The application should have been a slam-dunk at the state, but the application included funding auxiliary lanes on Highway 1.
The draft environmental impact report for the auxiliary lanes found that the lanes would result in increased congestion in the northbound peak commute, and short-lived congestion relief in the southbound peak commute. These results don’t meet state funding guidelines for effective congestion relief. Nevertheless, RTC staff report that they will re-introduce the grant application, putting Metro at risk of another failure. A solution would be to designate the auxiliary lanes as bus-only lanes.
• 3. Housing near jobs and UCSC
The city and county of Santa Cruz are negotiating with UCSC toward a settlement of a lawsuit over UCSC’s plan to expand to 28,000 students. UCSC says its goal is housing 100% of additional students, but has not made a legally binding commitment to peg enrollment growth to housing construction. Any settlement should hold UCSC to this commitment.
Regarding funding for affordable housing, San Francisco could be an inspiration for our community. In 2019, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act. This allows nonprofits the first right to purchase buildings for sale. Once a nonprofit owns it, the deed restricts rents to affordable levels for the life of the building.
• 4. Locate development on transit corridors
This planning maxim was ignored in the Kaiser proposal (recently withdrawn) to put a large office building and 730-space garage in a transit desert.
On Aug. 26 the public is invited to the Transportation Justice Conference, at the Unitarian Church, 6401 Freedom Blvd. in Aptos. Speakers from the Bay Area will join local advocates to address the topics: Prioritize Transit; Safe Streets; and Transit Oriented Development Without Displacement. For more information and to pre-register, see CampaignforSustainableTransportation.org.
Rick Longinotti is chair of the Campaign for Sustainable Transportation.
