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Executive Director's Report

Report to the Commission and the ABAG Executive Board: October 24, 2018

AMPO Annual Meeting

September 26-28, San Antonio

I gave a “farewell address” of sorts to my peers at the annual meeting of the Association of Metropolitan Planning Organizations (AMPO).  [Presentation]

Transbay Transit Center Peer Review

October 4, San Francisco

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf wrote a joint letter to me requesting that MTC conduct an independent peer review of “the cause of the cracked beams and the plans to make repairs” at the new transit center.  We quickly assembled a panel of six nationally-recognized experts in steel structures, fracture mechanics, and metallurgy.  The panel held its first face-to-face meeting on October 15th.  We expect the peer review panel will be at work for the next several weeks.

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National Estuary Program Annual Meeting

October 4-5, San Francisco

We were pleased to host the annual meeting of the National Estuary Program here at the Bay Area Metro Center. Attendees included the counterparts of our San Francisco Estuary Partnership hailing from the various bays and estuaries around the coasts of the country.

United Nations IPCC Report

October 6, Incheon, Korea

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released perhaps its most alarming report, concluding that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius “would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society.” According to the panel, global warming is likely to achieve that benchmark between the years 2030 and 2050 if it continues at its current rate. Here is a condensed summary for policymakers.

CASA Legislative Briefing

October 15, Sacramento

Randy Rentschler and I joined CASA Co-chairs Michael Covarrubias and Leslye Corsiglia for a status report to Senate Transportation and Housing Committee Chair Jim Beall and Senate Local Government Committee Chair Mike McGuire.

CASA Technical Committee

October 17, San Francisco

This month’s meeting of the CASA Technical Committee featured a lively discussion of 11 of the 17 planks of the proposed CASA Compact, including a presentation by Ken Kirkey and me about potential options for raising new revenue to implement the three goals of Protection, Preservation, and Production activities to house the Bay Area. The CASA Steering Committee will receive a similar briefing at its meeting on October 24th. As a reminder, we plan to present an in-depth information item on the latest CASA developments to the ABAG Executive Board meeting on November 15th and to an MTC Commission workshop on November 28th.

Fisher Center for Real Estate Economics

October 18-19, Monterey

I joined CASA Co-chair Michael Covarrubias and CASA Consultant Carol Galante of UC Berkeley for a panel discussion on the CASA process, which has generated interest in the real estate community throughout the state.

Metro Governance Seminar

October 23, Berkeley

I joined several urban scholars and government officials from Zurich at a seminar hosted by UC Berkeley on the differing governance models for metropolitan areas in Europe and the United States.

Horizon Transformative Project Finalists Announced

Earlier this month, MTC/ABAG invited experts from across the region to serve on a “jury” to review the 500+ transformative projects submitted as part of the Horizon long-range planning process. The Transformative Projects process allowed the public to participate in the project ideation process for the first time. The jury ultimately selected six projects submitted by the public, including an optimized express lane network, bus rapid transit on all bridges, a SMART extension to Richmond, a rebuild of the Interstate 80 corridor, the construction of bicycle superhighways, and the completion of the Bay Trail, as the most transformative capacity-increasing projects. They also selected six operational strategies, including integrated transit fares, free transit services, higher-occupancy HOV/T lanes, demand-based tolls, reversible lanes on congested corridors, and freight delivery regulations, to study further. These ideas, alongside the megaprojects submitted by public agencies from across the region, will be evaluated in the Horizon/Plan Bay Area 2050 Project Performance Assessment. Performance results will be published in the second half of 2019.

Map of the Month

Where People Show up to Vote — and Where They Don't

This map is a different take on red and blue America.  In this new analysis by the Washington Post, the colors represent voter turnout levels by county for the 2016 presidential election (red is lower turnout, blue is higher).  The analysis shows that there is great variation by state and by county, with turnout in the 2016 election ranging from less than 40 percent of the citizen voting age population in Hawaii to nearly 70 percent in Maine and Minnesota. The variation is even more pronounced at the county level, with turnout in the election ranging from less than 20 percent in some Georgia counties, for instance, to nearly 100 percent in pockets of Arizona, Texas and Colorado. California’s rates follow geography, with turnouts higher along the coast (including the Bay Area), and lower as you move inland and south.