Transportation

To the Editor:

We commend the Examiner for covering the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) delay in adopting environmental justice principles to guide Bay Area transportation spending (April 12, 2006). Community groupscontinue demanding that the two shelved principles also be adopted.

Mayor Gavin Newsom should note Chair Jon Rubin's inexcusable delay in fully supporting the principles and consider how well his appointee is serving all San Franciscans-- including low-income people and communities of color who are being consistently short-changed by the MTC.

To the Editor:

We commend the Examiner for covering the Metropolitan Transportation Commission's (MTC) delay in adopting environmental justice principles to guide Bay Area transportation spending (April 12, 2006). Community groupscontinue demanding that the two shelved principles also be adopted.

Mayor Gavin Newsom should note Chair Jon Rubin's inexcusable delay in fully supporting the principles and consider how well his appointee is serving all San Franciscans-- including low-income people and communities of color who are being consistently short-changed by the MTC.

Contrary to Rubin's claims that the principles would expose the MTC to litigation, they could actually help avoid the type of discrimination lawsuits it is currently facing.

Rubin should be turning the wheels in favor of the communities he was appointed to represent, not derailing the MTC's own Minority Citizens Advisory Council's hard work for environmental justice.
 

Juliet Ellis
Executive Director
Urban Habitat

See related Action Alert

April 13, 2006


RESPONSE TO LETTER

On March 22, 2006 the full Metropolitan Transportation Commission voted 8-5  to delay adopting the the Environmental Justice Principles proposed by the Minority Citizens Advisory Committee (MCAC). (For more information see the full story.)

Debate at MTC meeting over wording leads to adoption of two out of four EJ principles calling for equal treatment in transportation funding and planning.

Action alert: MTC commissioners to vote on EJ principles

Fifty years after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, transportation equity is still a crucial issue for communities of color across the country. While legal segregation of public transportation is a thing of the past, one only has to step onto any urban bus system to see that racial inequality is alive and well in the United States. The passing of Rosa Parks, a pioneer of transportation justice, reminds us of the distance we have traveled, and is a fitting occasion for a rededication to undertaking the hard journey toward justice.

On March 22 at 10:10am the Environmental Justice Principles proposed by the Minority Citizens Advisory Committee (MCAC) of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) will go before the full MTC Commission for adoption. An alternative, weaker version of EJ Principles proposed by the MTCs General Counsel will also go before the Commission.

Please call the MTC’s Commissioners and urge them to adopt the MCAC’s Environmental Justice Principles as they are. Their contact information is below.

Earlier this month, the MTC’s Minority Citizens Advisory Committee (MCAC) proposed Environmental Justice Principles before the MTC’s Legislation Committee. The MTC’s Legislation Committee decided to further postpone the adoption and thus, the implementation of the EJ principles.