The May 2 front-page article by George Avalos is exactly why the Bay Area Council and Jim Wunderman should try a different approach to solve our Bay Area gridlock and the declining quality of life.
The Association of Bay Area Governemnts and Bay Area Council are needed, but it seems they should have a serious review of their mission. ABAG is a group representing nine Bay Area counties, but seems to focus primarily on San Francisco County.
Of the nine counties, San Francisco is by far the smallest, already has the highest density, is the hardest to commute to, and is no longer needed as a center of commerce because of telecommunications, computers, working from home and satellite offices.
San Francisco (where I was born) is a great place to visit and has super restaurants and views, and is like an “adult Disneyland.” But it is basically “built out.” San Francisco County is only 46 square miles and has 900,000 people, but the other eight counties contain 6,859 square miles, and almost 7 million people. So we shouldn’t all be held hostage and paying taxes for the benefit of just one distant county.
The 49ers figured it out and moved to Santa Clara. Oakland Airport is a much better place to fly from than San Francisco, and all of our roads, bridges and BART systems go both directions.
So reason argues that we should be building more business parks, shopping centers, and maybe a couple of airports in, say, a 30-mile arc away from San Francisco, out where the people are, rather than forcing even more to commute across the Bay.
Wouldn’t it be great if families only had to drive 15-20 minutes to work, rather than sometimes a two-hour commute? Parents could see their kids grow up, attend their soccer games, volunteer at their schools and our taxpayers wouldn’t be hostage to ever more freeway lanes, BART strikes or toll booths.
Also, there is less crime, better schools, lower rents and brand new homes being built in these other counties for much less than what a tiny condo now costs in San Francisco.
Each of the eight counties could design and compete its own respective business centers, which would create jobs and tax revenues to help to run their counties. The infrastructure is already in with highways, bridges, schools, parks and business districts, we just need to expand a bit more in each county.
The mantra “to avoid sprawl” needs to be revisited, because what I’m recommending doesn’t ruin any of the nine counties. If these new business park areas used from 10 to 20 square miles in each county, they’d each still have many hundreds of square miles left over for open space.
None of this potential expansion would harm our Bay, ridgelines, or extensive park and trail systems.
In fact, mitigation fees could be used to actually create and preserve additional areas, all while creating a better economy and way of life for our entire Bay Area to enjoy, not just to funnel ever more people into gridlocked San Francisco.
If we do these things, it seems to me that people and communities could live and work as they’d like in our outer suburban cities, not forced into stack-and-pack housing in the city or next to the BART stations.
If we properly create these satellite business centers, our highways shouldn’t need expansion and our people can work where new homes are already being built and with better prices, lower rents and better schools.
Pete Laurence is the former mayor of Clayton.
