Last Thoughts on the Oakland Airport Connector

The Oakland Airport Connector is going to happen.

Last night, transit advocates came out in full force to the Oakland City Council chambers to argue for Rebecca Kaplan’s and Nancy Nadel’s resolution opposing the OAC.  In spite of admirable (and very entertaining) speeches by Transform, Oakland bloggers, and Oakland residents, the city council voted on a resolution conditionally supporting the OAC if it 1. ensures local hiring practices, 2. includes an intermediate stop, and 3. find a way to reduce the $6 fare.

Having thought it over, I can understand why the council came out in support of the OAC.  The reality is that their decision was not really an outcome of good transportation planning, providing an economic stimulus, or supporting Bart/MTC/OAK.  Council president Jane Brunner’s remarks said it all: Oakland hasn’t had a large-scale infrastructure project in four decades, and the council simply could not refuse the money to build the connector since some (not all) of these funds would go elsewhere.  This decision is a reflection upon the sad state of public works projects in the Bay Area–cities are forced to fight one-another for scarce funding (even with bad, costly projects), and there is no regional perspective whatsoever.  Oakland has been on the losing end of this fight since the 1960s, so why not go for some “free” money now?

Was there anything that transit advocates could have done differently? I don’t think so.  This is a project that Bart, MTC, and Larry Reid of the city council have been committed to building for decades, and the last real opportunity to change the project to BRT was in 2002.  Most city councilmembers supported TransForm’s proposal over the OAC, but it simply wasn’t viewed as practical, since it would take at least another 2-3 years to implement.

Where does this leave Oakland? Who knows.  The true direct and indirect consequences wont come out for months or even years.  Jobs will probably be lost in AC Transit, and it’s looking doubtful that Telegraph-International BRT project will happen (at least in it’s full form).  Moreover, this has put an even bigger strain on the relations between MTC/Bart and Oakland, so MTC/Bart could be done with Oakland projects for a while.

In the end, the Oakland Airport Connector was all about politics.  At 1am on a Tuesday night, the Oakland City Council had no desire to stop the first major fully-funded infrastructure project in the city since the opening of the Bart sytem almost 40 years ago.  There was simply too much political momentum that had built up over the past 20 years to kill this project, even if the benefits and logic behind it had slowly departed on their own 27mph monorail of shame years ago.  I guess that’s just the way it is.