I feel your frustration Darrell. Living in the East Bay for 8 years without a car, I also found myself extremely frustrated when relying on AC transit. From the embarrassment of convincing friends and family to take the bus with me only to have to wait 30 minutes after a bus gets cancelled, to constantly being late to events, and to the absurdity of looking at google maps and seeing driving time of 15 minutes and bus time being an hour, I ended up buying an e-bike and pretty much never taking the bus. Even though riding on the East Bay's disconnected bike infrastructure among dangerous and distracted drivers raised my blood pressure 1000% and I was almost killed by driver ever few months, it was the only way for me to get around reliably without a car.
I'm not sure how we change the governance structure such that the people making transit and funding decisions are more directly accountable to the public. Something like Seamless Bay Area's plan or even just merging AC Transit into BART would help with coordination, but would the decision makers still be too far removed from accountability to the voting public who ride transit? The East Bay cities are all probably too small to have their own systems like SF does, although maybe Oakland could have it's own. Of course a big influx of public money into transit operations would help, but short of finally getting a mega measure on the CA ballot or passing and Prop 15-esque split roll I'm not sure the big money is coming any time soon.
Anyways I live in Vancouver now so I have decent transit finally. But I still visit often and want the East Bay to thrive. If there's some way I can help from afar hit me up.
Great analysis. I’m glad you mentioned UCSF Children’s Oakland. Not only does BART skip past it, there’s not even an AC transit bus stop there! (Relatedly there’s an unprotected crosswalk between the hospital buildings that cars zoom through all the time, endangering families and staff. That whole area is built and maintained by Car Brain.)
I got very minorly (hosted candidates, donated some) involved for the last Oakland city council election. Mostly it was out of frustration that no one seemed to be able to get a hold of a single city council member (including me). It was rather disheartening. In general, my overall takeaway is it's a tiny bit crime (as a pure talking point), a lot of union money/organizing (for very narrow interests), and mostly egos (for higher office).
I personally advocated to my family for living around here vs. SF (ugh), but am honestly feeling similarly now. Transit is a part of it—I try to take AC Transit and BART)—but the bigger portion is it just doesn't feel like anyone has any interest getting anything done.
It's a bit depressing, and I know part of this is that Oakland got worse in "state capacity" since COVID by a lot, but it's hard to deal with day in and day out.
I feel your frustration Darrell. Living in the East Bay for 8 years without a car, I also found myself extremely frustrated when relying on AC transit. From the embarrassment of convincing friends and family to take the bus with me only to have to wait 30 minutes after a bus gets cancelled, to constantly being late to events, and to the absurdity of looking at google maps and seeing driving time of 15 minutes and bus time being an hour, I ended up buying an e-bike and pretty much never taking the bus. Even though riding on the East Bay's disconnected bike infrastructure among dangerous and distracted drivers raised my blood pressure 1000% and I was almost killed by driver ever few months, it was the only way for me to get around reliably without a car.
I'm not sure how we change the governance structure such that the people making transit and funding decisions are more directly accountable to the public. Something like Seamless Bay Area's plan or even just merging AC Transit into BART would help with coordination, but would the decision makers still be too far removed from accountability to the voting public who ride transit? The East Bay cities are all probably too small to have their own systems like SF does, although maybe Oakland could have it's own. Of course a big influx of public money into transit operations would help, but short of finally getting a mega measure on the CA ballot or passing and Prop 15-esque split roll I'm not sure the big money is coming any time soon.
Anyways I live in Vancouver now so I have decent transit finally. But I still visit often and want the East Bay to thrive. If there's some way I can help from afar hit me up.
Great analysis. I’m glad you mentioned UCSF Children’s Oakland. Not only does BART skip past it, there’s not even an AC transit bus stop there! (Relatedly there’s an unprotected crosswalk between the hospital buildings that cars zoom through all the time, endangering families and staff. That whole area is built and maintained by Car Brain.)
I think you should run for office.
I got very minorly (hosted candidates, donated some) involved for the last Oakland city council election. Mostly it was out of frustration that no one seemed to be able to get a hold of a single city council member (including me). It was rather disheartening. In general, my overall takeaway is it's a tiny bit crime (as a pure talking point), a lot of union money/organizing (for very narrow interests), and mostly egos (for higher office).
I personally advocated to my family for living around here vs. SF (ugh), but am honestly feeling similarly now. Transit is a part of it—I try to take AC Transit and BART)—but the bigger portion is it just doesn't feel like anyone has any interest getting anything done.
It's a bit depressing, and I know part of this is that Oakland got worse in "state capacity" since COVID by a lot, but it's hard to deal with day in and day out.