The discussion about the bus goes round and round
After almost a year, the Otis bus stop issue has finally made its very circular way back to the City Council. If you will remember City staff was proposing to place a bus stop in front of Lum Elementary in order to better serve the neighborhood. Of course, as with any issue in Alameda nothing is ever as simple as, “bus stop? sounds like a plan!” Ensuing outcry, bus stop pulled, alternatives examine, ensuring outcry over alternatives, a decision was made, an appeal was made to the City Council, City Council shunted it back to the Transportation Commission and so the process began again. And here we are, right in the place where we started, which is to place the bus stops on Otis at Sandcreek and Otis at Willow. There’s some other stuff about rerouting the bus line or cutting some levels of service (such as to Encinal High during school hours), but no one really cares about that, right?
The motion made by Councilmember Matarrese to approve the first six recommendations minus the recommendation number four made by staff, but of course this is contingent on finding funding for the improvement on Shoreline, as well as figuring out the route time. So basically everything will stay the same until the money is found to do something different. Let’s see who ends up getting the short end of the stick in Alameda’s own version of Sim City Rush Hour. Will it be the riders who might possibly see one whole bus removed from the line in order to make up time and therefore left with less frequency, so that if they miss one bus then they will be waiting and additionally long time for the next one? Or will it be the riders who will see a reduction in the reliability of the timing of the bus because the schedule is so tight, so that they maybe waiting longer for the bus because they aren’t sure if it will be on time or not.
I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.
Lauren Distortion says: If you will remember City staff was proposing to place a bus stop in front of Lum Elementary in order to better serve the neighborhood.
No, that’s simply not true. Everybody in the neighborhood was against it, except for Susan Decker, who doesn’t live in the neighborhood. City Staff/AC Transit wants it there to save runtime only… and bypass the people who DO want bus service on Shoreline Drive.
Everyone agrees that it’s a dangerous situation in front of Lum, including John Knox White. It’s in the Transit Commission’s report (but they wanted to stick it there anyway.)
Thankfully, common sense prevailed late last night.
Comment by Jack B. — January 16, 2008 @ 8:24 am
Jack, a clarification to your comment (attributed to me). The TC agreed that there are safety concerns on Otis, but were equally clear in their feeling that they were not bus-stop related.
The problems of safety that were brought to both the TC and the CC were about driver behavior, not buses pulling into a bus stop once a day. Thus the commission recommended addressing the safety issues that had been identified and implementing the bus stop, which was unrelated to the raised concerns.
I’m not putting this out to argue your safety concerns, which I know that you have, I’m simply clarifying the position that was voted on at the TC.
Comment by John Knox White — January 16, 2008 @ 1:01 pm
Clarification accepted. But to us… it’s all the very same situation.
I do appreciate that you have been openly communicative on the matter.
Comment by Jack B. — January 16, 2008 @ 1:33 pm
Jack,
I think there is something critical here in the way of communication. You made an attribution, which suits you, you feel, but JKW felt compelled to clarify. You are being civil and expressing appreciation for his effort, even though apparently you are essentially indifferent to Johns parsing of detail.
I see the difference in what you wrote and what JKW says and I agree twith John’s statement and think the difference is important.
I recently had a long chat with somebody I’ll describe as deeply invested in Measure A and it’s history. In simplest terms, this person is unambiguously in “the other camp”. There were many, many points in this discussion where I felt like these specific differentiations were crucial in terms of what I consider an acceptable version of fact and what my counterpart wanted to emphasize.
I’m frustrated that in so many ways, most of us share common concerns we can agree on, and then….people make loose attributions and that leads to rumor mongering and “creative interpretations”, and next thing you know we are at each other’s throats saying you slandered me first!
Detractors of bloggers Do and Knox White can claim a lot of critical things, but as with John’s clarification #2, I give them a high degree of credit and defend them for being precise in stating their views and in analyzing other’s statements. I am equally critical when people are overly off handed. In Alameda, the most extreme example of of the latter I can thing of is Pat Bail on Don Robert’s.
In order to get along we need to be accountable and, in order to facilitate that, we need to be clear and pay attention to things per #2.
Comment by Mark I — January 16, 2008 @ 3:53 pm
Off-hand, I think it many more in this fair city who must plead guilty to the accusation of extreme extemporaneousness, Mark I.
Comment by Jack Richard — January 16, 2008 @ 5:03 pm