September 2015
Oakland Favors Bank Over Bus Riders
The city prioritized the demands of a bank over the needs of commuters and eliminated a key bus stop on a busy Broadway line — angering senior citizens, transportation advocates, and AC Transit.
City of Oakland, heeding the demands of an area bank, forced AC Transit to remove a key bus stop at Broadway and 30th Street — one that, according to Wheeler, many elderly residents and people going to appointments at the adjacent medical center had frequently used.
While the elimination of a single bus stop may seem relatively inconsequential, the process that led to the removal of the stop sheds light on the ways in which the City of Oakland at times fails to prioritize public transit and neglects its own pro-transit planning policies, according to advocates. In this case, top city officials ignored the requests of AC Transit and the needs of Line 51 riders and instead caved to the demands of Summit Bank, which did not want a bus stop in front of its business because bank officials expressed fears about having bus riders stand next to the bank's entrance, according to interviews and email records. The loss of the stop was frustrating enough to AC Transit that the agency's general manager sent a letter to city officials expressing dismay about Oakland's decision-making process for bus stop locations.
"This case is just so egregious," said Greg Harper, a longtime AC Transit board member whose district includes the Broadway and 30th stop, in an interview. "Summit Bank prefers that the bus stop not be located in front of the bank. But by all measures of safety and convenience, that's exactly where it belongs. ... This shouldn't stand. A lot of people are going to suffer."
Emails show that high-ranking city officials were insistent that AC Transit accommodate the bank's demands. In one email to multiple AC Transit representatives, Rachel Flynn, the city's director of city planning, wrote: "Summit Bank will fight a bus stop no matter what you offer." Shirley Nelson, the bank's founder, had contacted the city council and Mayor Libby Schaaf and had "brought her entire Board into stopping the bus stop at the bank," Flynn wrote. In that same email, Flynn urged AC Transit to endorse an alternative option.
Critics of the city's actions pointed out that Summit Bank is politically connected. Campaign finance records show that the bank's top executives donated a total of $4,600 to Schaaf's mayoral campaign in 2014. Nelson personally donated $700 to Schaaf, which is the maximum allowed by law.
In an interview, Flynn said that in addition to expressing concerns about a bus stop posing a safety threat to its customers leaving the business with money, Summit Bank officials also told her that they didn't want to lose any street parking. "They felt very, very strongly about it," she said. When I asked Flynn if the city believed the bank's concerns about safety were legitimate, she responded: "I didn't understand it. But that was their argument and we had to take them at their word." The city tried to work out a compromise with Summit Bank, Sprouts, and AC Transit, but the parties could not agree on a location, Flynn said.
Advocates also pointed out that the removal of a bus stop clearly contradicts the goals of the city's Broadway Valdez District Specific Plan, a detailed blueprint for development in the area that the city council adopted last year. The plan stated that the city should collaborate with AC Transit to improve bus service along Broadway and move bus stops to the far-side corners of intersections. Oakland further has a "transit first" policy and a number of other pro-sustainability policies on the books dedicated to improving access to public transit — not reducing it.
"This area is supposed to have robust transit and it doesn't," said Chris Peeples, president of the AC Transit board of directors. Peeples, who had a stroke several years ago and does not walk long distances, noted that his doctor is on 30th Street just off of Broadway and that he now has to walk farther to get to the bus when he's leaving appointments.
It's also backward to have a major new retail site lack a bus stop in one direction — especially considering that this intersection is not directly near a BART station, local activists and environmentalists said. "This really lets down the residents who live in the neighborhood," said Joel Devalcourt, East Bay regional representative of the Greenbelt Alliance, an advocacy group.
Activists said the city's decision to favor a bank over bus riders further illustrates the urgent need for an Oakland Department of Transportation — a new agency that Schaaf proposed earlier this year, but has not yet launched. Unlike San Francisco and other cities, Oakland doesn't have a dedicated transit agency — a problem that makes it easier for a single business to pressure the city to make a decision that clearly ignores best practices of transportation planning, said Liz Brisson, co-founder of Transport Oakland. "This process was wrong," she said. "Oakland must consider transit an integral part of making the city work."
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/oakland-favors-bank-over-bus-riders/Content?oid=4517106
