Bay Area Region
Panel challenges transit funding
OAKLAND - A minority advisory committee headed by a Mill Valley man is pushing a key Bay Area transportation funding agency to spend more money on transit in low-income areas, such as Marin City and the Canal neighborhood.
But a Metropolitan Transportation Commission committee Friday rejected a proposal to adopt guidelines on the issue, saying equity in transit was too hard to define.
But a Metropolitan Transportation Commission committee Friday rejected a proposal to adopt guidelines on the issue, saying equity in transit was too hard to define.
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Update: MTC Rejects Bid for Environmental Justice Principles
A Metropolitan Transportation Commission committee today rejected for now a request by activists that it adopt a set of "environmental justice principles" aimed at remedying alleged transit funding inequities for minority and low-income people.
However, Legislation Committee members said they will revisit the issue later this year after new members are assigned to the committee.
However, Legislation Committee members said they will revisit the issue later this year after new members are assigned to the committee.
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Media Advisory: Will MTC Commit to Equalize Transit Spending?
January 8, 2007
MTC Director Flip-Flops on Prior Support for Correcting Transportation Funding Inequities, Despite Recent Findings that Low-Income Bus Riders Get Short End of Stick
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MTC package to increase BART expansion projects
S.F. subway, smaller bus services also deemed worthy of funding
Erik Nelson
Subway, BART and bus projects, along with transit service for the Bay Area's lower-income riders, should get a boost from a $419 million funding package approved by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission on Wednesday.
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End funding discrimination in public transit
Fifty
years ago, Rosa Parks did not give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery,
Ala. Public transportation, and more specifically buses, became the
stage from which the civil-rights movement was launched. This act of
courage is fresh in our minds due to the recent passing of Mrs. Parks.
Viewed as a national hero, her body was placed in the rotunda of the
U.S. Capitol -- the first woman ever accorded such a tribute.
The
irony is that today, discrimination is alive and well in mass-transit
bus service. In the Bay area, for instance, a federal civil-rights
lawsuit is pending in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco,
charging that the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission --
which plans and allocates funding for the area's transit needs --
supports a "separate and unequal transit system" that discriminates
against poor transit riders of color.
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