NAOMI PEASE/YH

Cities must embrace mass transit

Last week, every major newspaper in northern California ran cover stories on Senator Dianne Feinstein's call for the construction of a fourth bridge connecting the East Bay to the San Francisco Peninsula. The mayors of San Francisco and Oakland, both progressive advocates of mass transit and veterans of the left wing of the state Democratic Party, immediately praised the senator's proposal. The idea of a fourth bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland five to 10 miles south of the current 10-lane Bay Bridge is nothing new. It's been proposed several times over the last 50 years. But the astronomical job growth in the Silicon Valley has put thousands of new cars on the road each day. There is clearly a need to move people from their homes in Contra Costa and Alameda Counties to their jobs in Santa Clara County.

Feinstein's bridge proposal is not only shortsighted—it's counterproductive. Providing a way to allow more people to drive to work is no answer. Building new roads simply connects existing roads, all of which are, and will continue to be, congested. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link; no matter how many congested "links" you relieve by building a new freeway, commuters will always find themselves a new bottleneck.

The only effective solution to congested roadways during commuting hours is a huge increase in mass transit. Rail—subway, light rail, and commuter rail in particular—is the only mode of mass transit that people who can afford cars are willing to ride. Whether fair or not, buses are perceived as transit for people who do not have cars, but trains can be portrayed as a preferable alternative to driving. Rail is an area in which the East is far ahead of the rest of the country. Older, more densely populated areas such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia have established rail infrastructures, whereas West Coast cities like San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Denver have had to start from scratch. Building rail systems has proven difficult, expensive, and often unpopular. But it needs to be done now, or in 30 years our major cities will be entirely paved over, and traffic will be as bad as ever.

It's shortsighted to see a mass transit system merely as a transportation network. Transportation is one of the most important elements of daily life; therefore, we need to look at it as part of the life of a community. Two elements are necessary in order to make a "lifestyle" mass transit system work. First, the trains and light railcars need to go to the places where people live. Many areas of major cities are already well served by rail transit, but others are not. Local and state governments should take a logical approach to extending tracks into neighborhoods and towns that don't have them.

New lines are only part of the solution, however. Concentrating people—both homes and workplaces—around rail lines is the most critical part of a successful solution. It's also the hardest one because people don't like to be told where to live and work. Nonetheless, offices have outgrown traditional downtown centers, and instead of building new downtown centers in metropolitan areas to accommodate growth, suburban office "campuses" have become the wave of the future. Downtown San Francisco and Oakland are now easy places to commute to via rail, and traffic in these areas isn't particularly bad. But the Bay Area's hi-tech growth is almost entirely in low-density, suburban office parks in the South Bay, which are spread out, inaccessible by train, and plagued by horrible traffic. If only this growth could be channeled into skyscrapers in a few downtown pockets, it would be easy to build effective rail service to the area.

The same applies to where people live. Since World War II, the government has encouraged residency in single-family homes, and American culture teaches us that large lots represent the "homestead" ideal. It's also hard to get anywhere without a car. There's nothing wrong with suburbs, but they need to be more dense and centered around easy access to mass transit.

It's fine to use cars for recreation and travel. Anytime there's not bad traffic, there's no problem with driving. If we can simply eliminate the car as a commuting vehicle, the improvements in the environment, in the character of our metropolitan areas, and our lifestyles will be immeasurable.

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