RTA roads plan debate in S. Tucson Wed. 5:30pm
TUCSON -- Check out a great debate on the proposed RTA transportation plan and tax this Wednesday May 3, 5:30-6:45pm.Sponsored and moderated by the Santa Rita Park Neighborhood Association, it will be at the Sam Lena Library on S. 6th Av. in South Tucson.
Proposed widening of 22nd St. through neighborhoods south of downtown is likely to be a major topic.
Hear both pro and con arguments to help you prepare for the May 16 county-wide vote.
Comments
Public transit is revolutionized in this plan--there is more money spent on buses ($432 million) in this plan than there was in my bus-heavy Citizens Transportation Initiative that the big money killed in November 2003 (Light Rail was only 22% of that one; buses were 40%).
We need this plan and we need it now. I haven't yet met an opponent who was dependent on transit. That's why PCIC, the Tucson Planning Council for the Homeless, the Pima Area Labor Federation, disabled groups, and other advocates for the poor are fighting so hard for its passage.
The road projects are required by law to be designed by the neighbors and small businesses through which the roads will pass. Daniel, you already got commitments for every one of the demands your neighborhood asked for as part of the 22nd widening, and you will end up with a much safer, more neighborhood friendly road to live next to if this passes. If it doesn't, they will widen it anyway in the future, by cobbling together enough money for the asphalt and not the ped crossings.
I live with my backyard on a major six-lane arterial roadway right now--Speedway. it has been improved to include continuous bike lanes and sidewalks, ped crossings every 1/4 mile, landscaping, continuous medians for safety, and contains thriving small businesses all along. Changing today's dangerous, congested Grant and 22nd into a Speedway is a vast improvement on our central city quality of life.
Voting "no" will not stop growth. If that was true, growth would have ended around 1970. Voting no will simply make us all hurt that much more, especially those less fortunate among us.
And does anyone believe that our societal response to decreasing oil supplies will be everyone using public transit and bikes? We need those options to be boosted dramatically, which this plan will do, but the majority of people will still drive in cars, powered by alternative sources of fuel, which will still need roads.
And don't believe for a moment that any other future plan is going to have more public transit, less road widenings, and a fairer distribution of projects. This is the product of four years of unprecedented community dialogue, and, yes, compromise. There is a tremendous diversity of opinion in this region, and any communitywide plan will of necessity have parts that some people will not like.
But this plan has more stuff that more people will like than any other plan seen previously or that we will see in the future. Yes, the money is backing the plan, but that was alwasy the intent--get the money to back a progressive plan so that the money won't kill it.
Look at the breadth of support at http://www.yes1and2.org/how-this-plan-helps/endorsements and see what I'm talking about. It is incredibly hard to assemble these groups who often fight each other around one plan.
We all have the right to vote no. But I believe it is irresponsible to vote no without an alternative option that can reasonably be said to pass. We need to fix our transportation system now, for the sake of all of us. This is the plan we can all agree on, right and left.
And for very different reasons. The bulk of the opposition to this plan is cranky old Republican men who are against government and taxes and the environment anyway, and will vote no on anything that does not include a freeway. It will be irredeemably tragic if we progressives on the left help them get their way by increasing their numbers.
Sorry, you misread me if you think I don't believe in public transit. But I don't believe in insisting on a plan that will not pass in this regional political climate. I believe in actually accomplishing something good to give us real alternatives instead of refusing to talk to the folks who have the money and power to kill off anything truly good for the community. That's not selling your soul, that's fighting for real gains. Click's car dealer buddies think he sold his soul to us alt-modes people!
And I do believe that we can get transit ridership up to 40-50% of daily trips up from that current figure of 3%, but that will take many years and a whole lot more investment in public transit. It's absurd to say that I don't believe in transit because I don't believe it is realistic or desirable that 100% of trips will be on transit ever.
We will have cars. They will be more environmentally friendly, and we can reduce the need for trips using better urban planning, but trying to force people into cars by dropping any investment in maintaining our current system would have disastrous effects on our economy and environment, and would overwhelm our current inadequate public transit system.
And your argument about the modern streetcar being inadequate--are you really saying that we have to have it all or nothing? This is a phase one light rail, folks, and there are already progressive developers talking about privately funding phase two--serving the southside and airport-- so that we end up with a 13-mile system when it opens. But that cannot happen unless we take the first step.
And that step is much harder when central city people like Ken O'Day and others poke fun at a "$100-million trolley to Ree-oh Noo-ay-vo" using the worst of the far-right libertarian anti-transit arguments to kill it. That's sellling your soul to the car dealers right there.
If we progressives can't get together to support high-capacity electric-powered non-polluting rail transit to help us grow more compactly, reducing the pressure to sprawl, we will not be able to support the hard choices it will take to survive in the upcoming ages after oil as global warming takes effect.
It is impossible to argue that this plan does not revolutionize alt modes. It doubles bus frequency, has $70 million in new express routes, extended night and weekend hours, two new bus routes to the currently un-served SE side, neighborhood circulators, $109 million in disabled transit, 550 lane miles in bikeways, 200 miles of sidewalks, the EP&SW greenway, completion of the riverwalk pathway network, and much much more.
If this fails, the next plan, whenever it comes, will not be the plan of the progressives. It will be the freeway plan, with only enough transit to satisfy court orders. I'll be fighting that one, with a tremendous amount of regret in my heart that we had a chance to come together on something that helps everyone without destroying what we love about Tucson.
Luckily, there is still time to recognize that going to bed with Kromko and the Libertarians and their anti-government, anti-tax, anti-community, anti-environment message will cause massive regrets when you wake up in the morning. They're the same folks who fought the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. That's selling one's soul.
I think what they mean by selling one's soul is compromising with certain "moneyed interests" that have nothing to do with public welfare. And when you lump Kromko and the Libertarians together as the only substantial part of those giving the "no vote", you are dismissing a large number of dissenting progressives that don't like the compromise.
When the Green Party considered question 1 and 2, I provided my perspective as a small business owner on Broadway that received no notice of our potential displacement. The details of this story ultimately demonstrate a problem with credibility and trust for the RTA. It's also an issue of social and economic justice.
The other potentially more devastating issue bumping heads with other greens is the mandatory expansion of 3 roads to 8 lanes wide. These sections of street to be widened are what many wise, cranky older folks recognize as the trend towards more congestion and urban sprawl. Many suspect this road expansion is precisely why developers and auto moguls are pumping money into the process of shoving this plan down our throats.
So the decision involves carefully examining the need for compromise now over the need for patience and a lot more work. Ultimately, the whole mechanism through which these plans are developed may need to be dismantled - especially when those entities not working in the public's interest can make or break a good or bad plan by throwing money around. This may not be easy. But if it's something that has to happen, so be it.
Broadway will expanded to 6 lanes, plus two more dedicate bus lanes, just like it is along the rest of its width. This will allow us to run bus rapid transit in dedicated lanes down the center of Broadway with stations in the center like rubber-tired light rail all the way from Downtown to Houghton, in a bid to increase transit ridership among commuters who have a choice.
That is hardly car-sprawl-inducing.
And I can take plenty of criticism, Jeneiene, in fact I take it almost every night that I am in the community debating, and I have received anonymous threatening phone calls on my home phone as well on a number of occasions. It's all part of being in the public arena.
But I have the right to speak out when someone accuses me of selling my soul.
I was not attempting to ridicule or bully you by simply raising the fact that the coalition looking to kill this plan is primarily two groups of people who hate each other's politics in almost every other way.
The fact that Ken and others are cynically using right-wing anti-government, anti-transit, anti-tax arguments in their public appearances shows that they are willing to do anything to kill this plan, and unwilling to help build the consensus it will take to create any other plan in the future. This scorched-earth policy poisons the well for any other attempts at community problem-solving over water, sprawl, public health, education, and all our other problems because it spits on the idea that we can come together with our government and create something good.
I'm glad you have faith that there will be better plans, but it will take more than that. It will take hard work, and, yes, compromise with people we might not agree with. Because we do not live in a monoculture where everyone believes the same thing, and there is any one truth.
Look at the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan. Not only does it preserve open space, it defines where developers can develop, too. They got what they wanted, and so did we environmentalists. Were you opposed to that plan because the developers supported it?
This transportation plan is a result of such a process as the one you say you are waiting for, and as such, deserves all of our support. Then we can work to make the next plan even better to build on our successes.
I hope in your review of my previous comments you can see that I did not in any case bully or ridicule you or call you names, I simply disagreed and made my case. I have a huge amount of respect for you and your ideas. You have every right to disagree with me, but not to tell me that I am a shifty liberal faux-progressive who has sold his soul because I believe in working with people I disagree with for a result that benefits us all.
And talk to Carolyn Campbell and the Sky Island Alliance to get a different view of how this plan advances the environmental agenda.
And please tell me how more cars emitting more pollution while idling at more congested intersections as our public transit system continues its decay helps advance anyone's environmental or social agenda.
Despite the (at least) surface-level concerns I have with the "big money" supporters, in the end they too are after quality of life, because people won't so happily buy new cars nor new homes if congestion, air quality, and access to amenities is poor. The challenge there, however, is in the differing definitions of quality of life. And that too is where the base ideological differences come in, differences that realistically cannot be resolved.
To conclude: This one's tough! but so also will every other proposed plan be tough.
Thanks for providing some insight concerning the number of lanes for expansion. Could you please clarify the number of total car and noncar lanes for the roads slated for expansion? We're having trouble finding this (or possibly interpreting this) in written sources for the RTA plan.
Also, what assurances could you provide to people concerned about whether all parties fulfill the promises of the plan without later subverting the process.