I’m glad to report that I delivered the petition in person at the SCCRTC meeting on Thursday morning! I intended to hand it to County Supervisor / Transportation Commissioner Zach Friend, but unfortunately Mr. Friend was not in attendance. The petition can be viewed here:
Truth behind traffic pollution failure needed before approving $5.6 billion transportation plan
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/independent-investigation-5
Mr. Friend was the obvious choice as the individual to receive the petition, as he serves as a Director on the board of the Air District as well as serving as a Transportation Commissioner on the RTC. In addition, Cabrillo College is in Mr. Friend’s district: District 2. It was the actions of the Air District and the RTC in 2008 that derailed Cabrillo College’s CO2 reduction plan (that remains derailed today – 6 years later), that also created the RTC “Cash-for-Carpools” Carpool Incentive Program failure that only delivered 0.16% of the traffic pollution reduction goal.
Unfortunately, on Thursday June 26, transportation commissioners ignored this second call for an independent investigation (first call was in 2012) of the RTC traffic pollution reduction failure, and went ahead and approved the $5.6 billion ten-year transportation plan.
But there is some good news: there was free coffee and fruit!
Just kidding – there is much better news than free coffee and fruit:
The tide is turning. The RTC do not have a defense on this. I managed to speak with RTC Executive Director George Dondero for a few moments to ask his thoughts on the petition, and though he was derisive over the petition he did look worried. Mr. Dondero was forced to make a statement to the commissioners at the meeting regarding the petition, a statement that only highlighted the weakness of the RTC’s defense.
There are many reasons why the RTC would hate to have an independent investigation on this. So much so that they are using ridiculous reasoning to dismiss calls for an investigation. The two reasons provided by the Executive Director at the RTC meeting:
Reason 1:
The failure of the RTC traffic pollution reduction program 2008-2014 is not relevant to the $5.6 billion transportation plan because the carpool incentive program has been halted (by Stop Work Order, January 2014), and so is not in the transportation plan.
All the commissioners providing oversight (looking out for the public interest) didn’t object to this reasoning! How crazy is that?
I love analogies (I used to be an analog engineer), so here goes:
It would be like a doctor claiming he was more than capable of performing your heart surgery, but before you go under the knife you find out his most recent patients died. You ask how/why that happened, and the doctor says, “That’s not relevant because they are all dead and no longer my patient. No need to worry about a thing”.
Reason 2:
Mr. Dondero stated, “We have provided extensive information to commissioners on the reasons why the project did not perform” – claiming the RTC have already conducted their own ‘investigation’ into the reasons for the failure, and therefore no independent investigation is needed.
The commissioners were quite happy with this reason as well. Pretty damn weak oversight! Especially since the petition was addressed to the transportation commissioners that are supposed to be providing oversight of RTC staff – and that includes Mr. Dondero. The commissioners did not respond to the petition. It appears they delegated it to Executive Director Mr. Dondero to respond. Maybe the commissioners just show up for the free coffee and fruit?
Back to Mr. Dondero’s reason #2 to reject the call for an investigation:
Yes, the RTC have provided reasons why the traffic pollution reduction project did not perform as expected. But the most important reasons for the failure have been omitted, and many of the reasons that have been provided by the RTC Executive Director are false.
Below you can see a clip of Mr. Dondero attempting to excuse the traffic pollution reduction failure at the RTC meeting on March 6, 2014:
You can also read Mr. Dondero’s response to the Air District’s Stop Work Order attempting to explain the program failure here:
Both Mr. Dondero’s verbal testimony at the RTC meeting on March 6th, and his written response to the Air District contain many false statements which I will be summarizing in a future blog post. If you don’t want to wait that long you can read about the real reasons for this failure here:
Reality check: $120,000 to bogus traffic / pollution reduction; proven program sidelined http://greenstartupstory.com/2013/07/26/zero2realco2program-120k2bogus/
Final point: even if the RTC’s reasoning for the traffic pollution reduction failure was accurate and valid (which it most certainly is not), we need to have confidence in a transportation agency that provides strong evidence of success in traffic pollution reduction. Especially before approving a $5.6 billion transportation plan that the RTC claims:
‘Much effort on this 2014 RTP and the 2035 Metropolitan Transportation Plan has been focused on prioritizing projects that will reduce greenhouse gas emissions primarily from a reduction in vehicle miles traveled (VMT).’
Unfortunately evidence for traffic pollution reduction success does not appear to be important to our transportation commissioners that approved the $5.6 billion plan at the RTC meeting on Thursday. It appears the performance bar for the RTC is set very low indeed. Santa Cruz County needs and deserves better than that – a lot better.
Paul McGrath
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Commute Consultant
RideSpring
