TransForm in the News
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April 27, 2012
More than 100 Californians from around the state are attending the Transportation Choices Summit and Advocacy Day on May 1 and 2, organized by the non-profit group TransForm and co-hosted by Move San Diego. The message they wish to send is simple. Californians need real transportation choices: safe, abundant and affordable options for walking, biking and transit.
“Our economy, environment and quality of life depend on it,” said Elyse Lowe, executive director for Move San Diego. “We must improve transportation options for our region’s current residents and to accommodate the next generation of San Diegans to come.”
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April 27, 2012
“This plan represents a big step in making bus service significantly better in the East Bay,” said Marta Lindsey, communications director for TransForm. “But it’s also a big step for the entire Bay Area, as it will showcase what’s possible: faster, more reliable, and more frequent buses – plus a better experience for riders all-around and at an incredible value.”
Marta noted that East Bay BRT has the highest cost-efficiency rating from the Federal Transit Administration of any public transportation project in the nation currently competing for federal funds.
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April 26, 2012
The Oakland-based transit advocacy group TransForm has amassed about 150 advocates to descend on the capitol for its two-day Transportation Choices Summit, the first known event of its kind, where they will meet with state representatives and urge them to prioritize walking, bicycling, and transit.
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April 26, 2012
Joel Ramos, community planner for the Transform public transit advocacy group, said the project should become a model in the Bay Area for using bus rapid transit to relieve traffic congestion and accommodate development along busy corridors.
"Our cities are growing," Ramos said. "It's going to be very difficult to accommodate future growth with our existing transportation system."
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February 16, 2012
Sen. Barbara Boxer seems to have achieved the impossible by crafting a transportation bill that is overcoming partisan gridlock in the U.S. Senate. Recently, the Senate voted 85-11 to advance Boxer's transportation bill, MAP-21, to a floor vote that is expected to be scheduled when Congress returns to Washington on Feb. 27.
We are proud of the senator for her leadership in drafting MAP-21, which makes smart investments in transportation improvement and repair projects.
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February 3, 2012
TransForm, a non-profit advocacy group in the Bay Area, recently developed the GreenTRIP program, an incentive program for multifamily infill development designed to help reduce car use. This is pretty interesting stuff for those of us who practice smart growth because most everything in an infill development – from design, to feasibility, to use – can revolve around the amount, placement, and cost of parking.
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January 26, 2012
Joel Ramos of the TransForm transit advocacy group, one of about 30 speakers at the meeting, said the plan is too explicit in allocating money to Livermore BART rather than considering alternative transit.
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January 24, 2012
"When you don't have enough money to take care of your existing systems, it doesn't make sense to make them bigger," said Jeff Hobson, deputy director of TransForm, a transit advocacy group. "This draft plan doesn't cut it, but it's not too late for the Alameda County Transportation Commission to get it right."
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January 21, 2012
“When you’ve got a house where the roof is failing, you don’t take out your savings and build an addition,” said Jeff Hobson, deputy director for TransForm, a transit advocacy group. “We feel like it’s nutty to go ahead and plan for more multi-billion-dollar extensions.”
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January 3, 2012
"None of the problems with this project have gone away just because they have broken ground," John Knox-White of TransForm, a transportation watchdog group, told the Oakland Tribune. "This was a political pet project that was pushed through because many people had been working on something that looked like this for a long time."
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December 5, 2011No longer is a speedier commute the primary way to assess the benefits of 90 of the most expensive transportation projects being considered in the Bay Area over the next 25 years.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission is looking at factors often ignored when assessing whether it is financially worthwhile to pay millions to widen highways and expand trains. Road fatalities and injuries, emissions reductions, the cost of owning and operating a car and even the health effects of physical inactivity are being considered in the Project Performance Assessment study now under way....
"This is groundbreaking analysis that could call into question some of the biggest transportation projects," said Stuart Cohen of TransForm, an Oakland-based public transportation advocacy group. "For projects that have a score under 1, or lead to greenhouse gas increases, it will -- and should -- bring on intense scrutiny."
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November 1, 2011This is not a one-size-fits-all program. Innovations in transportation amenities, tailored to the community, can help justify lower parking requirements. Those in turn will lower development costs, reducetraffic, and help the environment — read “healthier, more affordable communities.”
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October 26, 2011
"We are talking about authorizing a $6 billion project, one of the largest transportation projects in the history of the Bay Area, yet many important questions remain unanswered," said John Knox White, project manger for Transform, an Oakland-based transportation advocacy group. "If we do it right, we can end up with a world-class transportation system. But the commission's current approach won't do that."
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September 17, 2011
Oaklandish, on Broadway and 14th, was offering tacos in parking spaces in front of the shop, and passers-by could get a bicycle-powered smoothie—mixed in a pedal-driven blender—at the TransForm parklet on 14th Street.
TransForm Deputy Director Jeff Hobson hopped on the bicycle to give a demonstration; as he pedaled the blender blades whirred audibly. “At 12:30 there will be smoothies out here,” he said. “Bicycle-powered smoothies.”
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September 4, 2011
"The thing we would love to see is a comprehensive plan that will offer people transit options and increase carpooling and vanpooling," said Stuart Cohen, Transform's director. "Instead what we're seeing is an emphasis on expanding the (highway) system."