Planning For Reality: How Plan Bay Area Imposes an Unrealistic Future Vision on Marin

Planning has been overrun by dogma seemingly developed for a parallel universe unconstrained by the daily realities and constraints that we all face. Under the guise of “transit oriented development” and sometimes misconstrued as “sustainability” a future is being planned for us that is devoid of acknowledging the reality of travel, work and family life. This future is now being imposed on Marin in the form of Plan Bay Area. How We Should Live Americans want to live in single family homes with yards and privacy – we vote for this with our wallets and it’s reflected in the actual properties that are built. However, in the planners reality we will all want to live in small apartments, in walkable communities, near transit. Ignoring Transportation Realities

Many Americans face practicalities such as needing to drop kids off on the way to work, swinging by the grocery store on the way home, picking up large or heavy items from furniture or electronics stores. We have found the practical means of achieving this is the car which gets us from A to B to C efficiently. The planners would have us take transit, switching from trains to buses to walking, perhaps doubling or tripling the travel time. Alternatively they would seem to expect working mothers to put their family of three school kids, including a kindergartner on bikes and cycle down busy roads to school. The planners also seem to forget that we are working harder and need to spend ever more hours at work; or they conveniently disregard the small but growing number of telecommuters. Because getting people to switch to transit is their single-minded goal. Cars are the Devil's Form of Transport In this world that the planners have created we are meant to think of driving cars as a mortal sin and cars are from the devil himself. In surveys we might sometimes say that we take transit when we actually drive. We are being trained to think that cars are bad, and we need to go to confession if we don’t take transit. It doesn’t seem to matter that cars are becoming more and more environmentally friendly, that they help seniors and disable people get around effectively. The "Hide the Ball" Emissions Game Meanwhile trains and buses are “greenwashed” past voters, while actual CO2 figures aren’t released (the figures for the SMART train to this day remain undisclosed). If transits CO2 emissions figures were released and based on realistic ridership projections people might discover that cars actually emit less CO2 per passenger mile than transit.  That would be bad for planners trying to convert us to their preferred reality. Planning has become dominated by a small but vocal group who worship at the shrine of “transit oriented development”. Failing to fall in line with this group’s thinking can get you labeled a “sprawler” or even of late a racist. This religion is now being enacted in a plan for the future of our region – Plan Bay Area.  A plan where this school of planning thinking now manifests into a reality imposed upon planners in all cities and counties across the region. A plan that ignores people’s preferred and often only practical transport mode – cars. Rather than reducing CO2 emissions period the plan only requires a reduction of CO2 for cars; transit which may likely increase CO2 emissions gets a free pass. Instead of truly valid goals such as maintaining or increasing commute radiuses the plan makes expensive subsidized attempts to move us all from single family homes (again, another sin for which we need to confess) to small apartments near transit – yes, near freeways, railroad crossings, diesel particulates, ozone…

Failure to abide by the transit oriented development doctrine that will be enacted by Plan Bay Area results in the withholding of city and county transit funds and housing grants. Next: What would happen if your town fell out driving commute distance of San Francisco, Oakland and Silicon Valley?