Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty to Head Regional Transportation Agency

OAKLAND, CA — Alameda County Supervisor Scott Haggerty today assumed the driver’s seat on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) after his fellow commissioners unanimously elected him as chair at their regularly scheduled monthly meeting. At the same time, Commissioners unanimously elected San Mateo County Supervisor Adrienne J. Tissier to ride shotgun as MTC’s vice chair. Both officers will serve a two-year term.

Representing District 1 on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors since January 1997, Haggerty was first appointed to MTC in late 2000, and twice has been reappointed to the Commission by his peers on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors. At MTC, Haggerty has served for the past two years as the Commission’s vice chair.

Beyond the Board of Supervisors and MTC, Haggerty is a member and former chair of the Altamont Commuter Express Joint Powers Authority, the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency, the Alameda County Transportation Improvement Authority and the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Haggerty, who was raised in Fremont and now lives with his family in Dublin, also is a member and former president of the Association of Bay Area Governments and the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Authority, and serves as a member of the Livermore-Amador Valley Transit Authority, which operates the Wheels bus system. At the national level, Haggerty represents Alameda County at the National Association of Counties and recently was appointed to chair NaCo’s Transportation Steering Committee.

At the top of Haggerty’s agenda at MTC is prompt implementation of the Transportation 2035 Plan, on which the Commission is scheduled to vote next month. Among the cornerstones of the long-range plan are a proposed 800-mile network of high-occupancy toll (HOT) lanes and the Regional Transit Expansion Program, which the Commission adopted as Resolution 3434 in 2001 and updated in 2006.

“My goals include making long-needed improvements in major travel corridors, and expanding and enhancing transit service,” explained Haggerty. “Whether it was the $4.50 a gallon gas prices last summer, three-day closures of the Bay Bridge or the aftermath of the Loma Prieta earthquake, we’ve learned time and again that transit is absolutely critical to regional mobility. With high-speed rail destined to become a reality, it’s imperative that we expand BART, upgrade ACE and have other local and regional transit services in place to maximize connectivity and complement the statewide system. Such ambitious plans require that we work closely with our local, state and federal partners to develop a strategy for a comprehensive, long-term and stable source of funding to sustain the region’s existing and future transportation system.”

Tissier, who was appointed to MTC in early 2006 by her colleagues on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, has been chairing the Commission’s Programming and Allocations Committee while also serving on three other standing committees. As vice chair, Tissier plans to maintain a focus on ensuring mobility for senior and disabled residents, enhancing regional disaster preparedness, speeding project delivery, preserving state and federal funding flows, and protecting the environment.

“Whether it’s ensuring older driver safety or taming traffic congestion,” noted Tissier, “these are issues that have been close to my heart for years.”

Tissier served as a city councilmember in Daly City from 1996 through 2004 and was elected to the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors in March 2004, taking her seat in January 2005. Tissier keynoted MTC’s 2005 Regional Summit on Older Drivers and has spearheaded a series of popular Older Driver Traffic Safety Seminars in San Mateo County that offer a half-day of classroom instruction engineered to help older drivers stay on the road for as long as possible and as safely as possible.

MTC is the transportation planning, funding and coordinating agency for the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area.

Contacts:

John Goodwin: (415) 778-5262

Randy Rentschler: (415) 778-6780