Every time I go to one of these meetings, all sorts of people are like “What about putting a streetcar on Broadway?” and “Maybe you wouldn’t need to build more square feet of parking garages than of retail space if you had a streetcar!” and “Why is there no streetcar in any of those drawings. I think it would be better with a streetcar!” And every time it comes up, the consultant responds immediately with the same robotic answer. A streetcar, he informs us, is outside the scope of this study. Fair enough. But telling people that a streetcar is outside the scope definitely doesn’t seem to be enough to get them to shut up about it, since, like I said, it keeps coming up over and over and over again.

These streetcar obsessed mobs will no doubt be delighted to learn that they may soon get an opportunity to go to lots of meetings where they can sit around and talk about how much they love streetcars without having anyone tell them to shut up.

How can this be, you ask? Well, the City of Oakland is applying for a grant (PDF) from Caltrans to study doing a Broadway streetcar.

What is this grant? What would it pay for?

The grant would come from Caltrans’s Community Based Transportation Planning program, which also funded that HarriOak Transportation Plan that’s been going on for the last year. What would be involved in the plan? Here’s the description from the agenda report (PDF):

The Broadway Streetcar and Transit Improvement Plan will be a planning effort that assesses the advantages and disadvantages, and the feasibility of a streetcar line on Broadway. The study will produce a conceptual-level plan for a streetcar and other transit and pedestrian upgrades along Broadway that will improve livability and spur economic development. The plan will include schematics that show how the project would affect the “look and feel” of the Broadway corridor.

Transportation and urban design consultants will analyze several aspects of the proposed streetcar service – including dedicated versus shared lanes, median platform stops versus sidewalk stops, proposed locations for the maintenance and storage yard(s), and different route alignments. Consultants will also help to facilitate stakeholder collaboration and consensus building through community meetings.

Neat, huh?

Why would we want a streetcar on Broadway anyway?

Again, from the report (PDF):

Transit service that connects Jack London Square with the neighborhoods north of Interstate 880 along the Broadway corridor would link up several important Oakland commercial districts. While various AC Transit lines serve Broadway, no single line travels from Jack London Square to Grand Avenue and northward. A Broadway streetcar that connects the waterfront to the MacArthur BART station would help support the new development at Jack London Square, further energize the Uptown restaurant and entertainment scenes, and spur future development on vacant and underutilized lots in the Upper Broadway district.

There are, of course, arguments against building a streetcar. For example, at the most recent Specific Plan public meeting, one speaker noted that fixed guideway transit systems are inherently inflexible, and therefore, inferior to a bus in the event that there is a hostage situation somewhere along the route. A bus could just turn off on a side street and avoid the hostage situation. But if we had a streetcar, there would be no way to avoid the hostage situation and riders would be screwed!

There are also sane reasons to not be over the moon about streetcars. For one thing, they’re usually ridiculously slow. Personally, I have this crazy belief that transportation investment should be about actually moving people from place to place, ideally, relatively quickly. So I tend to not get that excited about shiny showpiece transit that exists mostly for tourists to gawk at and goes slower than walking.

On the other hand, I’m smart enough to know when I’m outnumbered beyond hope and it’s just not worth fighting. People love streetcars, there really isn’t any point in arguing with them. And Jack London Square desperately needs some kind of real connection with the rest of downtown, so if planning a streetcar is the way to get the City to look seriously at that need, well, I’m not going to argue.

Hooray! We’re getting a streetcar!

Um, not quite yet. First we have to actually get the streetcar planning grant. Then we hold lots and lots of meetings and do the plan. Then, if we still want a streetcar, we have to figure out a way to pay for it. Rail is expensive! Funding to build the thing, as with everything, will be an obstacle, but perhaps not as big of one as people might imagine. Possible funding sources include the FTA’s Urban Circulator grant program, redevelopment funds, and a variety of regional funding sources distributed by the MTC. There have been cases in other cities where property owners along planned streetcar routes have kicked down some cash to help build it, but if I were Oakland, I would not be holding my breath waiting for that to happen here.

In any case, there’s money out there for capital investment in transportation. And it’s not like a streetcar is going to cost half a billion dollars or something. The more important question with respect to a streetcar is who would pay to run the thing once it’s finished, and where that money is going to come from.

Of course, those are issues that will be addressed during the planning process (assuming, of course, that we get the grant and there is one). For now, all we can do is wait and daydream.

You may have read about this proposal yesterday on FutureOakland or maybe earlier in Jean Quan’s hysterical newsletter.

Campaign contribution and expenditure limits in Oakland

In short, the City Attorney has proposed that the existing Oakland campaign contribution and expenditure limits be doubled (PDF). The way it works right now is that you can either spend as much money as you want, but only take $100 donations, or you can agree to voluntarily spending limits and accept donations of up to $700 from individuals. Basically everyone takes the spending limits. Currently, the spending limit for the Mayoral race is $379,000.

Campaign contribution limits are by no means unique to Oakland. They exist at in State and Federal races, and many other cities have decided to impose contribution limits in their local races as well. An attachment to the report on this issue to the Ethics Commission lists the existing limits in other California cities (PDF), as does Jean Quan in her blog and newsletter. (Quan’s “comparative” list, BTW, conveniently only lists the cities that have lower limits than Oakland and omits those that have higher ones, like Santa Ana ($1,000), Anaheim ($1,700), Fresno ($3,600), and Sacramento ($3,000), Glendale ($1,000), as well as those that have no limits, like Bakersfield, Riverside, Stockton, Modesto, and San Bernadino.)

Why would we raise the limit?

Under our old election system, these limits applied separately in both the primary and general elections. That is, if you gave someone the maximum donation for their primary campaign, and the race happened to go into a runoff (as was the case with the 2008 At-large City Council election), you could give them the maximum donation again for their runoff campaign. This was because there were two elections, even though it was only for one office.

Now that we’re doing Ranked Choice Voting, we will no longer have two (or the potential for two) elections for municipal offices, only a single election in November. The City Attorney reasons (PDF) that since there will now only be one election where there used to be two, that single election should have the same total limits as used to exist for both elections combined. Additionally, the City Attorney argues that the extra money will allow candidates to educate voters about Ranked Choice Voting, which will be new to them in November.

Why wouldn’t we raise the limit?

Ethics Commission staff does not agree with this rationale (PDF), and notes that most local elections do not go to a runoff. The report further notes that it is the County, not individual candidates, that bears the responsibility of educating residents about the new voting system.

Another attachment to the staff report features 22 letters received about the proposal (PDF). One is in favor and 21 are against. Here is a sampling of what the letter writers have to say:

Is American turning into a country where only the rich can run for office and get elected? Are we turning into Great Britain before the American Revolution or France before the French Revolution? American was founded on the premise that anyone could run for office and become a representative of the people. With the rise of campaign donation limits it is obvious that only special interest will have great influence in who gets elected. This is a travesty of the American political system and it should be halted.

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I strongly oppose this. Lower limits help us stay more honest and make it more likely that the election is actually based on issues and qualifications. And the availability of extra funds to make higher donations to a campaign suggests to me that unethically high prices have been charged for services or products somewhere. Wouldn’t we all rather make our own decision about who (and what) to contribute our hard-earned money to than to have it made for us by Microsoft, or Sun, or Mechanics Bank, or an insurance company?

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These should be REDUCED NOT INCREASED. What are they thinking

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Being that I had a long term interest in Oakland, in a large part for its key value in keeping the wheels of commerce in the Bay Area running as best as possible for the benefit of the entire Bay Area as the key shipping port for Central and Northern California. Preamble: I beg your indulgence to describe two Campaign Finance options. Preamble: Presidential Candidate Obama once supported construction of a transcontinental high speed Freight-Only railway for common use of all rail lines. Given the absolute need to avoid, or duplicate, same-level road crossings (they kill over 300 a year), very costly tunnels and bridges, to keep the rails level and the new ability to optimize paths using the latest airplane and satellite GPS data and computer technology. It is my opinion that this project will be done, as soon as possible, possibly to put people back to work, all across the nation.

…

Option A. Make a new Finance Office of the Ethics Commission the recipient of all donation above some limit, for example, a Private Business could give X00s Dollars to one, or more Council Members up to the new allowed limit that you will set. And, the same donor may contribute YOOs Dollars to the new Ethics Commission Finance Office, without any limits, to be evenly divided among current Council Members running for re-election….

I guess the last one should get some credit for thinking outside of the box?

Basically, all the objections are premised on the idea that we need to keep money out of elections in order to preserve a level playing field and that low contribution limits accomplish that.

Why it doesn’t matter

So here’s the thing about money. There are always going to be people who have a lot of money. And here’s the thing about money and politics. Some of those people are always going to want to spend their piles of money to influence elections. And they are going to find a way to do it, no matter what you try to do to stop it. You just can’t. I’m sorry. But you can’t. And if you think that you’re going to keep money out of elections by imposing strict contribution limits, well, you’re delusional.

We have watched this play out on the State level, where individual contributions to a candidate are limited but independent expenditures on behalf of a candidate are not (so long as these expenditures are not coordinated with the campaign). We will soon watch it play out across the Country.

The result of contribution limits is not to reduce the amount of money spent on elections. Far from it. All that happens is a shift in where money gets spent. The candidate’s campaign becomes less important and the independent expenditures become more so. If you tell people who have lot of money to spend and want to spend it that they can’t give it to a candidate’s campaign, they will find another way to spend it to further their purposes. Sometimes these efforts may be inept and counterproductive, like those ridiculous and terrifying SAFE neighborhoods NOW signs that Oakland Jobs PAC plastered all over town to promote Kerry Hamill’s City Council campaign in 2008, or the “homocide” mailer, also promoting Kerry Hamill and also courtesy of Oakland Jobs PAC in 2008, or that horrifying chalk body outline mailer OakPAC sent out bashing Nancy Nadel the same year. But whether or not these expenditures effectively communicate their message is besides the point. It’s still money.

What you can do about it

So how do you combat the influence of people who have lots of money? Well, you give your own.

I don’t make a lot of money by any stretch of the imagination. $700 is a huge amount to me, and I’m not the sort of person who can just whip out the checkbook and drop seven hundred, or hell, even a hundred dollars without feeling it. But I maxed out my contributions to one local campaign last election cycle and I can say without a moment of hesitation that I would have given more if I had been allowed to. And I intend to do so again in 2010. Knowing that elections were on the way, I have spent the last year and a half slowly putting some money from every single paycheck away into a little personal donation pool so that I will have the ability to help the candidates who I want to see win.

I completely realize I’m way more invested in these things than the average person, and I obviously don’t expect every struggling Oaklander to save up for eighteen months so they can make hefty contributions to local campaigns. My point is simply that if you really want to give, you can do it, even if your means are limited.

So that’s my advice. Whatever happens with the Ethics Commission tonight and perhaps ultimately the City Council with respect to contribution limits, there’s going to be a ton of money in the Mayoral race. You can’t stop that. I’m sorry, I wish that weren’t the case, but it just is. You don’t like it? Too bad, you can’t change it. You want to do something about it? Give.

I remember vividly a message I received from someone working on a local campaign a few years ago after I had made my second donation. I had previously given the candidate $50, and then like a month or so later, as the election was drawing closer, I starting feeling really bad about the long odds they were up against, so I coughed up (not without difficulty) another $50. Within minutes, I got the following e-mail:

on behalf of the [redacted] campaign, I wish you would stop contributing money. For gosh sakes, we have people in [super rich neighborhood] living in 3 million dollar homes who only contribute $25 or take a sign.

That was just so sad to me. People in Oakland complain and complain and complain all the time about how frustrated they are with their entrenched, dysfunctional government, yet they don’t seem to be willing to do what it takes to change it. You want new leadership? Newsflash: campaigns cost money. Mailers are expensive. Door hangers are expensive. Walk pieces are expensive. Office space is expensive. It takes money to run. It just does. You can hate it all you want. I hate it. But hating it doesn’t change anything and neither does whining.

I’m not saying everyone needs to run around giving everybody the max or even close to it. And I’m not going to tell you who you should give to. But if you care about these things (and I assume you do if you’re reading this blog), and you find a candidate you sincerely want to see be the Mayor or City Councilmember or on the School Board or BART Board or Peralta Board or whatever, write them a check. If you want to reduce the influence of other people’s money, the way to do it is to dilute the importance of their money.

And whatever your first inclination is for an amount to donate, pause for a second and think about whether or not you can afford to give more. How much does who is running your city matter to you? How much do you want this person to win? What can you sacrifice to allow yourself to give a little bit more? One dinner out? Two? Ten? Think about it. Figure out what you can afford. Yeah, writing that check, in whatever amount you settle on, is going to hurt you a lot more than it hurts Daddy Warbucks or whoever. But that’s just life. Deal with it.

The Public Ethics Commission will meet to discuss the proposal (PDF) at 6:30 PM tonight in Oakland City Hall Hearing Room 1.

Whether it’s doable or not of course remains to be seen. However, the Chief’s record in Long Beach, both in terms of reducing crime and also restoring community trust of the Police Department, makes me optimistic.

New plan, Old concept

Of course, it isn’t like the concept of strategic planning is new to OPD. There have been frequent stabs at creating such plans even just in recent years. There’s this one from 2007 (PDF), for example. And of course there was the ongoing Crime Fighting Strategic Plan (PDF) efforts discussed repeatedly at Council (PDF) meetings during 2008. These discussions were probably most memorably summed up in a presentation to the Public Safety Committee, where Committee members were told that the bottom line is “We can’t arrest our way out of the problem.”

Consistent with that statement, the Crime Fighting Strategic Plan (PDF) documents and presentations generally characterized the Department as practically helpless with respect to crime reduction, taking the general position that the Police Department, no matter what they do, can have at most a limited impact on Oakland’s crime rate.

There are a number of factors that contribute to changes in crime: socioeconomic conditions, community involvement, and the school system are three significant factors. While the Police Department’s impact is important, it is limited.

and

While there are strategies that provide a toolbox approach to specific types of crimes, there are no “national best practices” for crime reduction. Oakland in comparison to cities of like size has both common and unique crime problems.

Another common thread in the discussions was essentially that crime in Oakland isn’t actually that bad, and that perception is worse than reality. Perhaps in some neighborhoods that’s the case, but of course many people would like to think that all of Oakland’s residents deserve safety.

A noticeably new approach

The new Strategic Plan framework (PDF) and presentation (PDF) unveiled by Chief Batts last week represent a sharp (and welcome!) departure from that attitude. Both the Chief’s letter introducing the framework (PDF) and the introductory charts in the presentation (PDF) (see pages 6-17) make no bones about the fact that the level of crime in Oakland is beyond unacceptable and the Department’s current response to reported crimes is deplorable. Here’s an excerpt from the letter:

As with any plan, it is important to define the current reality or starting point as well as the destination. Unfortunately, the current reality is not very positive. Oakland is not a safe community – in fact it is among the least safe and most violent in the US. Services provided to the Community by the Police Department are nowhere near the standards that should be expected. Many good people in the Community do not trust the Police Department and live in fear of the police as well as of criminals.

How refreshing! What’s that thing they say about problems? You can’t solve one until you acknowledge that it exists or something like that? Yeah. So just the recognition that the status quo is not acceptable represents a huge step forward.

Basics of the new strategic plan framework

The framework lists five strategic goals, along with a set of actions related to achieving each of them. I won’t copy it all out here, since the document (PDF) is basically just a set of short, bulleted lists and if people are interested in reading the whole thing they should just go ahead and download it. It is a very fast read, since, like I said, it’s basically just an outline. The goals that frame the plan are:

• Focus on the underlying causes of violent crime in Oakland – Gangs, Drugs, and Guns
• Improve police services provided based on the Community’s priorities
• Improve the relationship between the Oakland Police Department and the Community
• Develop and implement a “Total Community Policing” model in Oakland
• Expand the capability of the Oakland Police Department to meet its Mission

OPD seeks community input

Perhaps most refreshing of all is the Chief’s serious effort to work with Oakland residents in crafting the plan, which is supposed to be ready in a final version this summer. Over the next two weeks, there will be a series of community meetings to solicit feedback on the framework. People should go!

Here’s the schedule:

• Wednesday, March 3: Montera Middle School, 555 Ascot Drive. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Thursday, March 4: East Oakland Senior Center, 9255 Edes Avenue. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Wednesday, March 10: Willie Key Recreation Center, 3131 Union Street. 6:30 to 8:00 PM
• Thursday, March 11: Manzanita Recreation Center, 2701 22nd Avenue. 6:30 to 8:00 PM

If you can’t, or for some reason don’t want to, make it to any of the meetings, you can still share your thoughts. The Police Department has put up an online survey to collect feedback from residents. Questions are basically all open-ended, asking residents to share their own ideas for reducing violent crime, improving OPD services, and improving the level of trust between the Department and the community. Additionally, residents interested in participating in implementation working groups are invited to leave their contact information and areas of interest. It’s so refreshing to see the Police Department reaching out to citizens like this.

BTW, the Library wants your input too!

Oh, and one more thing. As long as we’re on the topic of City surveys, the Oakland Public Library is also currently soliciting patron input. As you guys may remember, all OPL branch libraries were reduced from six day per week to five day per week service in August as part of the City Council’s budget decision. The library is now evaluating the new branch schedule and is looking for patron thoughts on Monday vs. Saturday service, morning vs. evening hours, and for patrons with children, the most convenient periods for storytime. Also, there are open ended questions where you can offer general feedback. The survey ends after this weekend, so please, if you are a library user, take a few moments to fill it out. You can find the survey here: http://surveymonkey.com/oplpatronsurvey.

Anyway, as you likely recall, after two contentious meetings, the Council voted to reverse their June decision that extend the parking meter hours until 8 and to make up for the lost revenue through a combination of steps, including the addition of 250 parking meters Citywide (PDF).

So two weeks ago at the Council’s Finance & Management Committee meeting, staff offered a list of 400 possible locations for the new parking meters (PDF). The list included the following locations:

• Lakeshore to 22nd on International Boulevard: 160 metered spaces
• 38th to 54th on International Boulevard: 130 metered spaces
• 4th to 14th on East 12th Street: 70 metered spaces
• 15th to 20th on Telegraph Avenue: 40 metered spaces

Now, almost all of those meter locations are in Council districts 5 and 2. Normal people tend not to think about things in those terms, but elected officials certainly do. So, as you can imagine, District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente and District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan were, um, none too pleased with the list.

The Committee said that Council’s original direction had been for the new meters to be evenly distributed throughout all seven Council districts, and that staff should go back and do it that way. Staff then decided that the best way to handle that was to ask each Councilmember to make a list of where they think 60 parking meters should go in their district. I don’t think I need to bother explaining why this is an staggeringly misguided way to approach parking policy.

If it isn’t obvious to you why this is a bad idea and you happen to be free this evening, allow me to suggest an event that you will likely find enlightening. High Cost of Free Parking author Donald Shoup will be speaking tonight in Lafayette. I’m out of town so I can’t go, but reports from people who trekked down to San Jose last night for the show have been uniformly laudatory.

The event will be held at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center Community Hall from 6 to 9 PM at 7 PM (see Dan’s comments below) at 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd in Lafayette (map here). And no, you don’t have to drive there! It’s less than a half mile walk from the Lafayette BART station.

Here’s the event description:

Mark your calendars!! On Thursday evening, February 25th, the cities of Lafayette and Walnut Creek will co-host a presentation on “Parking Policies in the Downtown” at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center. The speaker, Donald Shoup, is a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles and has served as the Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning at UCLA. He has extensively studied parking as a key link between transportation and land use, with important consequences for cities, the economy, and the environment. His influential book, The High Cost of Free Parking, is leading a growing number of cities to charge fair market prices for curb parking, dedicate the resulting revenue to finance public services in the metered districts, and reduce or remove off-street parking requirements.

I really wish I could go to this, and I hope some of you will and report back to us. Shoup’s work gets referenced pretty frequently in policy discussions when parking comes up in Oakland, but the nuances of his research and suggestions are, frankly, very rarely stated accurately. I get that it’s a long book, and an expensive one, but I still wish more people would take the time to sit down and read it. Attending the presentation is certainly going to be a substantially faster way to learn.

Well, as a matter of fact, that’s exactly what they have been doing. And conveniently, AC Transit has recently issued a report (PDF) on exactly that subject and will be hosting a community forum to discuss it on Thursday.

Let’s start from the beginning.

What is the 1R?

AC Transit’s has been running a bus line called the 1R since June of 2007. The line runs from downtown Berkeley to downtown Oakland along Telegraph, then from downtown Oakland to the Bayfair BART Station in San Leandro along International Boulevard. Along the same route, AC Transit also operates a line called the 1, which is in general, slower than the 1R, because it has way more stops. Previous to the summer of 2007, this corridor was served by two different buses, the 40 and the 82.

It is a tremendously popular line, carrying over 12,000 passengers daily as of November 2008 (an 11.4% increase from 2007). This is on top of all the passengers that ride the 1. Although riding the 1R is substantially faster than riding the 1, many people choose to take the 1 anyway because the 1R stops are quite far apart, and often not particularly close to one’s destination.

Theoretically, the 1R arrives every 12 minutes between 6 AM and 7 PM at each of the 36 stops along its 17 mile line. The total trip from downtown Berkeley to Bayfair BART is supposed to take 73 minutes in the morning and 78 minutes during the afternoon rush hour.

The superior speed of the 1R versus the 1 is due to the two factors. First, the 1R stops a whole lot less than the 1. 1 stops are spaced between 800 and 1,300 feet apart. The minimum distance between 1R stops outside of downtown Oakland is about 1,200 feet, but they average a much longer 2,400 feet and some are spaced nearly 5,200 feet apart.

Besides the stop spacing, the 1R is also faster than the 1 because of something called Transit Signal Priority. This is a neat-o high-tech tool that you put both on the bus and the traffic light. When the bus is approaching the traffic light, the tool can tell, and it will keep the light green for a couple seconds so the bus can get across.

Sounds great. But do people ride it?

So this is an issue that comes up a lot when people are talking about transit. It is not uncommon whatsoever to hear people talk about the bus as if only buses are only ridden by the destitute and crazy transit freaks. Often, when talking about the bus – in public meetings, in comments on, say, this blog, or in general conversation, you will hear people say things like “Oh, I would never ride a bus” or “Nothing could make me ride a bus” or “Nobody who has a choice of doing something else would ever make me ride a bus.” Maybe. Maybe not.

Obviously there are always going to be some people who will just never ride the bus anywhere. You can’t do anything about that. But there are also lots of people – normal people – who ride the bus because it gets them to where they need to go, and it’s simply easier than driving a car. One of my favorite things I’ve read in the last year was this interview with Mad Men and Angel star Vincent Kartheiser, where he says he takes the bus to work. The interviewer acts all shocked. Like, where do you live that you can do that? And he’s so casual about it, all “Oh, I live here, but you can take the bus from lots of places. It’s not a big deal.” It is so rare in the media to see taking the bus portrayed as a normal thing to do, even though, in reality, it is incredibly normal. More Oaklanders take the bus to work than take BART.

Anyway, enough with the tangent. Do people ride the 1R? Um, yes. The 1R carries roughly 12,000 passengers a day. And they ride it in growing numbers. Between October 2007, a few months after the line debuted, and November 2008, ridership on the 1R increased by 11.4%.

And why do they ride it? Well, a lot of people take the 1R to work. The chart below illustrates the number of people on the bus during AM commute hours, along with how many people are boarding and exiting (alighting) at each stop.

Click to enlarge

Also, contrary to what some people seem to believe, people don’t only ride the bus during commute hours. If you ride the bus during the middle of the day, you know this already. If you don’t, well, the chart below illustrates the line usage during midday hours.

Click to enlarge

Overall, the 1R averages 89 passengers per trip.

Okay. So why don’t even more people ride it?

Well, big problem with the 1R is reliability. As I said above, the entire route is supposed to take 73 minutes. In reality, it can take as much as 115 minutes. That’s a big difference.

Of course, most runs don’t go so crazy far over schedule. The average running time for the 1R going south during peak afternoon periods is 89 minutes, 11 minutes longer than it’s supposed to. The deviation from scheduled running time varies throughout the day, but it’s almost always longer. See the chart below.

Click to enlarge

A more sobering way to look at it is to consider how many trips are completed within 5 minutes of the scheduled runtime. In AM peak periods, this figure can be as low as 21%. Yikes!

The full report includes lots of great charts that give a little more context to the problem, showing where exactly the bus gets so slowed down, but for the sake of space, we won’t get too much into it here.

When buses get behind schedule, the result is often something called “bunching.” This is when multiple buses arrive at or near the same time. The bunching is probably the most serious problem with the 1R, as it means riders end up having to wait much longer than they should for a bus to show up. It means the service is unreliable. And when people can’t count on the bus to take them where they want to go when it’s supposed to, then they are much less likely to ride it.

For purposes of the report, bunching was defined as buses arriving within 2 minutes of each other. During peak afternoon periods, 16.5% of buses were found to be bunched. The report defines “normal” headways as buses arriving 10 to 14 minutes apart. During peak afternoon periods, only 14.8% of buses were found to be normal. Terrible! The bunching percentage increases and normal percentage decreases as the bus gets further and further along the route.

What makes the bus so slow?

Well, obviously, there’s traffic. And along with it, stop lights. 19% of the 1R’s running time is spent waiting at traffic lights. But there are other factors as well.

24% of the 1R’s running time is spent at stops, waiting for passengers to get on and off. This is an issue with busy bus routes. It takes time for people to get on and off the bus, and when you have a lot of people getting on and off, it ends up taking a lot of time. At the worst stop, International and 34th Avenue, it takes an average of 78 seconds to get everybody onto the bus.

Part of the reason it takes so long is because it takes people a while to pay. People paying cash take the longest. Often people (irritatingly) have not gotten their money ready beforehand, and end up standing at the farebox fishing for change and making everyone wait behind them. 34% of 1R passengers pay cash.

The fastest way to pay is using something you can just flash and go, like a TransLink card or flash pass. Riders using TransLink take as little as 2 seconds to load. Sadly, TransLink payment accounted for only 3% of the 1R’s passengers as of the time of this study, although that figure is surely increasing now due to the more widespread adoption of TransLink and policy changes on the part of AC Transit.

Besides the general loading time, the 1R also has to deal with the additional time it takes to load strollers and wheelchairs. There are also a lot of strollers and wheelchairs on the 1R. Obviously, there are, in general, going to be more strollers and wheelchairs on high traffic lines simply because there are more people riding the bus total. But it does sometimes seem that the 1R, particularly on the East Oakland portion, gets a disproportionate number of strollers.

Strollers and wheelchairs slow down the bus because it takes a much longer time to get them on. The ramp has to come out, people have to get on it, then the ramp has to come back up, then once they’re on the bus, strollers have to find a place to go and wheelchairs have to be secured. The average loading time for a stroller was found to be 1 minute and 34 seconds, and the average loading time for a wheelchair was found to be 4 minutes and 10 seconds.

How do we fix it?

Do BRT.

No, just kidding! Seriously! I don’t want this discussion to turn into another debate about BRT, it’s about improving the 1R. Various features of a BRT system would eliminate or significantly reduce some of the dwell time problems delineated above, but even if AC Transit ended up deciding to go through with totally full fledged BRT as designed in the maximum alternative, that still wouldn’t be operating until like 2015. That’s a long time to wait for a better bus.

The report identifies a number of ways to improve speed and reliability on the current 1R. Read the full report (PDF) to see them all, I’m just going to do the highlights here.

First, the bus can be made safer for the large number of strollers if they have a place to go. Additionally, the time associated with loading the strollers and having people stuck in line behind them could be decreased it they don’t have to hunt for a place to park. The suggestion here is to replace some of the normal seats on the 1R with seats that flip up and down. That way, if there are lots of strollers on a run, more space can be available to accommodate them. If there aren’t, then people can use the space to sit down.

For wheelchairs, the report suggests marking clearly the space at the bus stop where everyone should be waiting – one space for people using the front door and another space for passengers who will need the ramp. This would be helpful, but of course, only works if the bus always stops in the exact same place. As frequent riders know, that doesn’t always happen. The report suggests that this problem could be ameliorated by separating 1R stops in certain high locations from the stops used by other buses, so the 1R wouldn’t be stopping all the way behind the other bus.

Additionally, the report suggests that 1R drivers get special training to familiarize them with the unique operating needs of the rapid line and that the line be managed more closely to lessen the impact of bunching. For example, when a bus reaches the end of the line, the driver would be instructed to not depart in the other direction until 12 minutes have passed since the last bus left. The ideal departure time would be indicated through the use of a countdown clock, and would hopefully put a stop to the snowball effect created by bunching, where each instance of bunching ends up making the problem even worse for the next bus.

Finally, the report suggests that the time spent loading passengers could be reduced by encouraging less time consuming payment methods. Specifically, it proposes exploring the use of some sort of ticket vending machine at the line’s busiest stops (Shattuck and Allston in downtown Berkeley, 20th and Telegraph, 14th and Broadway, 11th and Broadway, 12th and Broadway 11th and Harrison, and 12th and Harrison in downtown Oakland, International and 34th in the Fruitvale district, and Bayfair BART). If passengers could buy a flash pass before they get on the bus, then the time waiting for people to hunt for change could be significantly reduced. Passengers could be encouraged to use the vending machines instead of on-board cash payment if the vending machines offered some kind of fare discount. Clearly, there are a variety of issues that would have to be addressed before AC Transit could implement ticket vending machines, but it seems like a promising concept.

If you find all this as fascinating as I do and want to know more, you have two options. First, you can just sit down and read all 88 pages of the report (PDF). It’s not anywhere near as bad as it sounds – there are lots of big maps and charts, and the whole thing is written in admirably clear and non-jargony language. Second, you can go to the community forum AC Transit is hosting tomorrow. At the forum, AC Transit staff will present the findings of the study, answer questions, and take suggestions from the public about how to improve 1R service.

The meeting will be held tomorrow, Thursday, February 25th at AC Transit’s headquarters at 1600 Franklin Street in downtown Oakland from 6 to 8 PM.

Measure DD was a nearly $200 million bond measure meant to finance improvements to Oakland’s creeks and waterways, public recreation facilities, waterfront parks, and of course, Lake Merritt. It’s Measure DD we have to thank for Lake Chalet at the Boathouse and the reconfiguration of El Embarcadero.

Now, if you were one of the 70,000 people who voted yes on Measure DD, it’s possible you did so because you love Studio One or Children’s Fairyland and you wanted to see them improved. Maybe you were really excited about the East Oakland Sports Center. Or maybe you voted for it because you’re just super concerned about Lake Merritt’s water quality. But if you’re like most Oaklanders, chances are you said yes because of this:

Click to enlarge

That would the the transformation of the world’s shortest freeway between Lake Merritt and the Kaiser Convention Center into a pleasant, walkable, tree-lined, 6 lane boulevard. The 12th Street reconfiguration was Measure DD’s marquee project. When you hear people complain about how they voted for DD and nothing’s happened on it in 8 years and they’re never going to vote for a bond measure in Oakland again because of it’s been such a waste, they’re often referring to their frustration over seeing no progress on this particular project.

So I’m sure you guys will all be absolutely delighted to learn that the 12st Street reconstruction actually is about to finally happen. Well, maybe. Maybe not.

The City put the project out for bid and had hoped to award a contract for the reconstruction project a few years ago, but they only got one response, which came in at about $10 million more than the City had to spend. So it was back to the drawing board.

Or more accurately, back to the computer, to look for new funding sources. And lo and behold, they found one (PDF) – $13.3 million from the Federal Highway Bridge Program. Two years later, the funds were finally secured, the project went back out to bid, came back with more responses, and on February 9th, the City Council’s Public Works Committee was asked to award a contract (PDF) so we can finally build the damn thing. Simple, right?

As it turns out, not so much. You see, in Oakland, we do this thing called local hire for businesses contracting with the City, where we require 50% of the work on contracted projects to be performed by Oakland residents. The idea is that when we spend money that we get from Oakland taxpayers, we should make sure it helps create jobs for Oakland residents. The merits of any specific local hire policy are, of course, debatable, but conceptually, it isn’t unreasonable, especially in a City with such a frighteningly high unemployment rate.

Problem is, when you’re using Federal money, you don’t get to use your own rules about hiring on projects, you have to use theirs. Federal guidelines require that 30% of the work performed on a project be completed by minority employees (on a craft by craft basis), and they also specifically say that you aren’t allowed to mandate local hire.

Do you see where this is going? That’s right, this contract (PDF) the City wanted to award for the 12th Street reconstruction would have no local hire requirements. And as I’m sure you can imagine, some Councilmembers were none to pleased to hear that.

Specifically, District 6 Councilmember Desley Brooks and District 3 Councilmember Nancy Nadel extremely displeased to hear about the lack of local hire. Desley Brooks asked about a dozen times why the City couldn’t just unbundle the project so that there would be one contract for part of the project to be funded with City money and a different contract for part of the project to be funded with Federal money, and even though staff said every single time that doing so not possible at this point, she just kept asking. Calling the idea of spending tens of millions of City dollars on a project that doesn’t guarantee jobs for Oakland residents “unconscionable,” she insisted she would not vote for the contract, and that was that.

Nadel, out to lunch as usual, said that she had no idea there was federal money being used on the project and wanted to know when that decision had been made. (Hello! When you voted for it (PDF), lady!) Although she expressed strong concerns about the lack of local hire, she took a somewhat more pragmatic approach than Brooks, saying she wanted more information about what would kind of time and costs we’d be looking at if we decided to unbundle the project and restart the Federal funding application process, and that she’d make a decision once she had more information.

District 2 Councilmember Pat Kernighan, no doubt thinking about how desperately she’d like to be able to point construction work on the bridge while campaigning for re-election this year, was adamant that the project can’t wait a minute longer than it already has, local hire or no. And At-large Councilmember Rebecca Kaplan, ever the pragmatist, noted that the issue of local hire being limited by Federal dollars isn’t unique to this one project, and should be addressed on a broader policy level instead of quibbled over on individual projects. She pointed out that other some jurisdictions substitute local hiring requirements with something called “impact area hiring” when dealing with Federally funded projects, which does not violate Federal guidelines, and suggested that the Council explore a similar policy so we don’t have this problem in the future.

In the end, they decided to have the question return to Committee, and it will be back on Tuesday morning (PDF). The supplemental report (PDF) on the item basically reiterates the point made repeatedly at the previous meeting that there’s no way to unbundle the project to allow for local hire without starting the whole process completely over.

So what will happen? Will the Committee, and later, the Council, move this long-awaited project forward? Or will they decide that it’s not worth doing without the local jobs guarantee? Whatever the outcome on Tuesday, we can be relatively sure that this won’t be the last we hear about the issue. Darrel Carey of the East Bay Small Business Council made that abundantly clear at the last meeting:

The Public Works Committee will take up the issue again this Tuesday, February 23rd (PDF). The meeting starts at 10:30, although the 12th Street project is last on the agenda. If you can’t make it down to City Hall, you can always catch the fireworks on KTOP.

The Commission’s website describes their function like this:

The City of Oakland Public Ethics Commission was established in November, 1996 with the passage of Measure J which amended City Charter §202 (see Governing Legislation).

The mission of the Public Ethics Commission is to promote the highest confidence in the ethics of the government of the City of Oakland. We help ensure that government works the way it’s supposed to – that you are treated fairly, with honesty and integrity. We do this by:

• Informing you about your rights to obtain information about your City government;
• Creating easier access to information and meetings of public bodies in the City;
• Educating City officials, employees, Board and Commission members, and candidates for elected office about ethics laws;
• Investigating complaints about possible violations of ethics laws under our authority;
• Recommending changes in laws to promote ethical government; and
• Setting the standard, by example, for ethical conduct.

So how does that work in practice? Well, let’s take a look at two upcoming PEC discussion items. At the PEC’s March 1st meeting (PDF), the Commission will be considering ethics complaints involving Mayoral candidates Jean Quan and Don Perata.

The first, filed by Pamela Drake, claims that City resources were improperly used (PDF) to promote the Mayoral campaign of Don Perata. Some of you I’m sure will remember this controversy from last fall, when Oakland Police Officer’s Association (OPOA) President Dominique Arotzarena announced at a community meeting introducing new Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts that the OPOA would be endorsing Don Perata for Mayor. The event was held at OPOA headquarters, but invitations to the event were sent out to community groups by City Neighborhood Services staff.

Drake says that since the OPOA used the event for political purposes, they should have to pay back the City for the time and resources used to promote the event. Commission staff basically says that since Neighborhood Services Staff didn’t know the OPOA was going to announce their endorsement of Perata at the event, and since OPOA didn’t know that City resources were being used to promote the event, nobody did anything wrong, and the Commission doesn’t have the authority to demand reimbursement.

The second complaint, filed against Jean Quan by Anthony Moglia, alleges that Jean Quan acted in violation of law by using City resources to promote her Mayoral campaign (PDF). Visitors to Quan’s City Council website are invited to join her Mayoral campaign e-mail list. Additionally, Moglia objects to a feature included in one of Quan’s constituent newsletters regarding the implementation of Instant Runoff Voting for the 2010 City elections. Moglia claims both actions violate laws prohibiting the use of public resources to promote political campaigns. Commission staff basically says no big deal (PDF). The reasoning is that since Quan claims she maintains a strong separation between her Council work and her campaign for both her and her staff, it’s all totally okay.

This is pretty much how ethics complaints usually go. Either nobody did anything wrong, or maybe they did, but the Commission doesn’t have any power to do anything about it, or they did do something kind of iffy but it wasn’t that big a deal and it’s too late to fix it now. Almost everyone I’ve ever known who has filed an ethics complaint in Oakland has been disappointed in the result. (For a current example of this, see today’s post on Marleen Sacks’s blog, about a complaint she filed regarding the Measure Y Oversight Committee.) And maybe that’s how it should be. After all, people who are passionate about a particular issue tend to get really obsessive about all sorts of improprieties, both real and imagined, that in the long run, don’t really matter all that much. I don’t say that with judgment – I am often guilty of the same thing myself. It’s just the way things work.

Do I believe for a second that the OPOA had no clue that city resources were being used to promote the event with Chief Batts? Um, no. Do I believe for a second that Jean Quan is careful to separate her Mayoral campaign from her Council work? Um, no. Give me a break. When the decision about IRV came to the Council, she gave this interminable speech about how IRV is so great because it will make her more likely to elected Mayor. But Councilmembers do stuff that is technically illegal or against the City Charter or whatever all the freaking time, and as much as I personally hate that, I also don’t know what you’re going to do about it.

Or maybe I’m wrong and the Public Ethics Commission is a total failure and they should be doing something about all this and other people have better ideas of what. In any case, I do think it’s good for people to at least make an effort to draw attention to these sorts of things, and to that end, I’m grateful for the people who keep filing complaints, even if nothing ever comes of them. It’s important to remind ourselves that just because something’s the status quo that doesn’t mean we should be okay with it.

Does the Public Ethics Commission perform a vital function? Does it ensure transparency in government? Does the Commission do a good job? Or is it a toothless waste of time and resources? These are all important questions, and who better to help you answer them than Oakland’s League of Women Voters?

At this month’s League hot topics meeting, Andrew Wiener, immediate past chair of Oakland’s Public Ethics Commission will be on hand to talk about the Commission’s role in ensuring open and transparent government. Regarding the discussion, this month’s League newsletter offers:

Come join the League in a lively discussion of what “sunshine” means in the affairs of your city and your rights as a citizen to know what and how your government is doing. Oakland passed the Sunshine Ordinance in 1997. Among other things it created a Public Ethics Commission to administer the Ordinance. It was the LWVO Task Force on Sunshine in the early 1990s that shone a light on the need for the public to have access to public records and the activities of their elected officials. To this day debate follows the decisions of the PEC as it administers the Sunshine Ordinance.

The event will take place next Wednesday, February 24th, from 6:30 to 8 PM at the Redwood Heights Community Center, which is located at 3883 Aliso Avenue (Redwood Road just below Highway 13).

As long as we’re talking about the League, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention another upcoming event, a party celebrating the 90th Anniversary of the founding of the League of Women Voters. Gotta love that 19th Amendment! The party will be held tonight – Friday, February 19th from 6 to 8:30 PM at the Pro Arts Gallery, 150 Frank Ogawa Plaza (by Broadway and 15th). There’s also a great article about the history of the League in this month’s VOTER newsletter.

And if you’re not yet a member of the League, I strongly recommend you consider joining. They do great work. And you can join online!

On Tuesday night, the Oakland City Council convened a Budget Workshop to discuss the Budget shortfall of $15.26 million dollars for Fiscal Year 2009-10 and $32.72 million dollars for next Fiscal Year, 2010-2011.

The balancing measures taken Tuesday night included staff layoffs in Information Technology, Finance and Management, the Fire Department and Human Services and sale of City owned properties.

Unfortunately, most of these decisions made during the Tuesday meeting are only temporary band-aids and not real solutions to the crisis at hand. The City budget doesn’t have the “luxury” of carrying debt into the next fiscal year. As I repeatedly stated Tuesday, delaying critical long-term decisions until later is completely irresponsible.

Simply put, these budget cuts are not easy but they are necessary. Tuesday night I proposed eliminating six legislative analysts to the council office, five positions in the city attorney’s office, and six positions in the mayor’s office. In addition, we need to mandate that City agencies operate within their budgets. This includes the Police Department, Department of Information Technology, and the Mayor’s office which is currently over budget by $260,000.

I was frustrated that the majority of my colleagues decided that we will wait until May to make the challenging decisions that could help stop the bleeding right now. The fact is that we are not efficient, and the impact of this crisis is not going away. Putting off these cuts now means there will be more people laid off from key departments in the city. A combination of substantial waste being ignored throughout various City agencies along with a drop in revenues means we need to cut many of the non-Core Service that are currently in our budget, its that simple.

Other pending decisions that I will not support include placing special taxes on the ballot for public safety, utility consumption and a temporary, quarter-cent sales tax increase.

One of the least talked about issues we are facing during this crisis is the impact that our debt will continue to have on our city’s credit rating. Oakland, like Los Angeles and San Francisco, is not immune to the looming reality that our credit worthiness will likely continue to fall unless we make immediate spending cuts and address the hundreds of millions of dollars in unfunded liabilities from our PFRS and CalPERS pension plans.

We have a responsibility to structure our budget in such a way that will ensure we do not have our bond rating downgraded. But if we take only temporary measures, rather than making fundamental changes that will produce ongoing savings in the years ahead, our credit rating could face a steep downgrade. If our credit rating is lowered, the city will have to pay a higher interest rate on money it borrows, making the financial situation even more troubling.

I appreciate the many of you who have written and called council members or attended meetings to voice your priorities publicly. I am urging residents to continue demanding that a priority be placed on Core Services from your city officials. And I urge my colleagues on the Council to act now on the budget, putting off these important decisions will not make the problem go away.

This guest blog is cross posted from District 5 Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente’s e-mail newsletter. To receive these updates regularly, you can sign up for the newsletter here.

Anyway. So what does this mean, to select a locally preferred alternative?

First, here is what it does not mean. It does not mean that the Planning Commission (and in coming weeks, the City Council) is approving doing BRT. That is a decision that will come later, after AC Transit has completed their Final Environmental Impact (FEIR) Report for the proposal. Before they can complete the FEIR, each City in the corridor (Oakland, Berkeley, and San Leandro) has identify their preferred route for the project and preferred station locations.

With a detailed plan for the route and stop locations, AC Transit will be able to identify the actual impacts of BRT more precisely than in their Draft EIR. Once the concrete impacts have been identified, they can then try to come up with specific steps they can take to mitigate those impacts. When that is all finished, the Council can then decide to approve or not approve the project.

I think that BRT would be pretty much the best possible thing, transit-wise, that could happen for Oakland and really hope that when we get to that point, the Council will make the correct decision. But it is important to understand that we aren’t there yet. I feel like a great deal of the opposition to BRT is due to a lack of information about the project. Yes, there are, of course, some people who are fully informed and have well thought out rationale for not liking the project. I disagree with those people, but respect them.

However, most of the time when I encounter people who don’t want BRT, it takes all of two minutes of talking to them before you realize that they are aware of like, zero facts about the project besides the fact that it involves dedicated lanes. I think this is unfortunate, and largely due to a combination of poor press coverage and aggressive misinformation campaigns on the part of a few local organizations. It’s sad.

If BRT is a new concept to you, you can get up to speed on AC Transit’s BRT page, the City of Oakland’s BRT page, and of course, the BRT archives on this blog. Basically, BRT would replace the bus routes 1 and 1R. Buses would run from Berkeley to downtown Oakland along Telegraph Avenue, then from downtown Oakland to San Leandro along International Boulevard. The stops would be spaced every one-third of a mile. This will be closer together than the stops on the existing 1R, and farther apart than the stops on the current 1. Roughly, the bus would stop every four blocks instead of every two.

Passengers would board the buses from raised platforms in the median. The stations would feature ticket vending machines, so that fares are pre-purchased. The raised platforms would also allow for level boarding (no more painful waiting for the bus to go up and down to let wheelchairs on and off). The buses would run in dedicated lanes along the route, except in downtown Oakland. Combined, the features are intended to significantly improve speed along the route, but much more importantly, ensure reliability of service.

Oakland’s draft locally preferred alternative, which the Planning Commission will be discussing tonight, involves not only dedicated bus lanes, but also the transformation of International and Telegraph into what is called a “complete street,” featuring significant improvements for pedestrians and bicyclists along the corridor. Read dto510’s blog post on the subject for more context.

You can read the details of the City’s draft locally preferred alternative at the City’s BRT website.

The City held a series of public meetings to solicit feedback on the proposed locally preferred alternative during January. The comments received at these meetings are included in the agenda report for tonight’s discussion (PDF). The 46 pages of comments include a lot of good questions and useful suggestions for further study. They also include a lot of pointless, unproductive, and totally uninformed comments from crazy people who hate BRT and have no interest in learning any facts or having a conversation about how to improve the project. And there’s also a pretty healthy dose of the random and irrelevant. Below, I’ve listed some of my favorites from the document:

I will enjoy the bus rides

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The City of Oakland needs to repair the underground infrastructure such as the ailing old Sewer System before this Transit project. Most of Oakland’s Neighborhoods have Sewer leaks, Leaking Raw Human waste into the Ground!

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To improve bus transportation routes, this is good. But you’ve got to first repair the roads, because now many roads are broken and without repair. Therefore the roads cause accidents, not only to pedestrians but to automobiles. Therefore I suggest that Oakland fixes all the broken roads first, and then tries to improve the bus transportation route.

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I adamantly oppose the implementation of AC Transit’s Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan. The havoc it woudl create for private autos and everyone else using the Tlegraph corridor is well beyond reason, with no great benefit to transit users. It would also make riding a bicycle on Telegraph Ave much less attractive, being hemmed in by long lines of autos and large buses whizzing by. And the idea that the City has no recourse to remove the infrastructure once the plan shows its not useful is beyond gall.

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I’ve ridden AC Transit buses on Telegraph in Berkeley and Oakland for about thirty years. Never has there been any bus more dangerous (for a senior) and uncomfortable to ride than the BRT. In fact, I avoid BRT whenever possible, as do many others (witness the low ridership; I often see near empty BRT lumbering down Telegraph). It’s hard for me to believe you know or care how passengers are thrown around inside the BRT trying to grab something to hold onto or sit on. Did you think drivers waited for passengers to clasp something to hold onto or sit onto before driving off? It’s fairly obvious to we who ride buses that someone, somewhere, who never rides buses, took a big bribe to authorize such a mosterosity.

And my hands-down favorite of the comments? This one:

I can’t thank you enough for dropping your STOP BRT flyer on my Temescal home’s doorstep. I had heard nothing about this, and after reviewing various things on the web about it this afternoon, I am thrilled. What a creative proposal to improve public transportation in our city and help the environment.

Your flyer, by the way, is a bit of a downer. More the “politics of nope” than a “politics of hope.” My reaction to people who “just say no” is to always look at the other side, and in this case was so excited by the possibilities of Bus Rapid Transit that I have to wholeheartedly support it. To that end, I am cc’ing _brt@oaklandnet.com_ (mailto:brt@oaklandnet.com) with this comment: Yes to BRT!

Yeah, you read that right. Temescal was papered with STOP BRT flyers filled with a bunch of lies about the proposal designed to terrify people about the concept of BRT. Happily, in at least one case, it backfired.

But the input received is by no means all silly or uninformed. There are a number of issues pop up repeatedly in the comments, and how these concerns can be addressed or mitigated, either through changes to the locally preferred alternative, or later through specific steps on the part of AC Transit, should be the focus of tonight’s discussion so that Oakland can end up with the best possible project when and if this finally happens. The common themes are as follows:

• Prohibiting left turns will shift traffic onto side streets
• Concern over bus only lanes limiting access for emergency vehicles
• Concern about losing parking spaces
• Concern about seniors walking too far for the bus

The Planning Commission meets at 6 PM tonight at City Hall, in Hearing Room 1. Oh, and if you feel like showing up early, the Planning Commission’s Zoning Update Committee will be meeting at 4:30 this afternoon to discuss a proposal to amend the Zoning Code (PDF) to allow conditional use permits for people to create new “temporary” surface parking lots on vacant property downtown. No, I am not making that up. There is more to the proposal than that – the parking lots are just one example. The idea is to allow “temporary” uses of things that otherwise wouldn’t be allowed throughout the City. What’s the point of even having zoning in the first place, you ask? Yeah, I don’t know either.