The San Francisco Bay Area’s population and job centers are famously divided by the bay itself, with jobs and housing on the San Francisco side accessed by commuters to the east via the Bay Bridge or the transbay BART tube. The dream for unlocking access via more transit — and possibly high speed rail — depends on building a second tube
ABC 7 News covered the most recent plans for a potential project, featuring a short clip of me:
This is a subject we covered on my very first City Visions show as a host back in 2016. Regardless of what shape it takes, one thing we know for sure is a second transbay tube will take longer and probably cost more to build than the current plans will estimate. But such a project will be critical for long-term sustainable mobility in the region.
Californians head to the polls today to choose the next Democratic nominee for President of the United States. Bay Area voters will also decide on important propositions ranging from commercial vacancy taxes, office development caps, and transit measures.
Last night I hosted a City Visions radio show with experts dissecting the ballot and discussing where the presidential candidates stand on the issues that matter the most to California.
Listen to the broadcast to hear our guests:
- Nick Josefowitz, Director of Policy at SPUR,anon-profit research, education, and advocacy organization focused on issues of planning and governance in the bay area.
- Cory Cook, Professor and political scientist as well as Vice Provost of academic programs at St Mary’s College.
City Visions airs every Monday at 7pm on KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco. Don’t forget to vote today!
Tonight on City Visions at 7pm, we’ll discuss the new Prop. 13, a $15 billion bond measure on the March ballot in California, which could change the landscape for public education funding.
In the 1970s, California ranked 7th out of all states in per pupil funding. Now it’s 41st in the nation, according to Governor Gavin Newsom. The education budget line is robust, but most Californians think it is not enough. How does the state pay for public education, K through college? In addition to the new Prop 13 on the ballot, what about efforts to reform the old Prop 13, which restricted property taxes that were used to pay for schools?
To discuss these issues, we’ll be joined by:
- Ricardo Cano, Education Reporter, Cal Matters;
- Ted Lempert, President, Children Now and former founding CEO of EdVoice; and
- Sean Walsh, Principal, Wilson Walsh George Ross Consulting.
Tune in and ask your questions at 866-798-TALK! We’ll be streaming live at 7pm and you can access on 91.7 FM KALW in San Francisco.
Bay Area legislators State Senator Scott Wiener (San Francisco) and Assemblywoman Buffy Wicks (Berkeley) will discuss housing legislation with me tonight on City Visions at 7pm, on 91.7 FM KALW in San Francisco.
Governor Newsom wants 3.5 million new homes built by 2025. How are our legislators planning to get us there? We’ll discuss Senator Wiener’s revamped Senate Bill 50, which encourages development around transit and job centers. And we’ll also find out Assemblywoman Wicks’ plans for this year, after she introduced a suite of housing legislation last year.
Tune in and ask your questions at 866-798-TALK! We’ll be streaming live at 7pm.
Tonight at 7pm on City Visions, I’m interviewing sujatha baliga, director of the Restorative Justice Project at Oakland-based Impact Justice.
sujatha is one of this year’s recipients of the MacArthur “genius” grants and joins City Visions to discuss her work expanding access to survivor-centered restorative justice strategies. How might this alternative to our punitive criminal justice system impact mass incarceration, recidivism and violence in California and beyond?
Tune in at 7pm at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live. Call 866-798-TALK (8255) with questions or email us at cityvisions@kalw.org.
PG&E’s decision to cut power last month (and possibly again this week) to hundreds of thousands of customers has thrown Northern California into disarray. Yet despite the blackouts, fires still raged, with people evacuating and in some cases losing homes.
How did California end up in this situation? Who was most affected by the power shut-offs, and what can be done to keep the lights on in the future?
We’ll discuss on City Visions tonight at 7pm, with guests:
- Nick Chaset, Chief Executive Officer of East Bay Community Energy;
- Martha Guzman Aceves, Commissioner at the California Public Utilities Commission; and
- Michael Wara, Director of the Climate and Energy Policy Program at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.
Tune in at 7pm at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live. Call 866-798-TALK (8255) with questions or email us at cityvisions@kalw.org!
How has the city of San Francisco changed in the last decade, and what will it look like in the future? On tonight’s City Vision, I’ll host John Rahaim, Planning Director for the City and County of San Francisco, to discuss these questions.
In his 12 years leading the Planning Department, John has tackled issues ranging from the housing shortage to sea level rise. How have politics and environmental regulations impacted urban development in San Francisco? And how is the city managing growth while addressing climate change, transportation infrastructure, and racial equity?
Tune in at 7pm tonight or stream live. You can join the conversation by calling 866-798-TALK or e-mail or text us at cityvisions@kalw.org. You can also reach us by tweeting us at @cityvisionskalw.
The future of California’s high speed rail system has arguably never been as perilous as now. Otherwise-supportive legislators are now openly mulling raiding high speed rail funds meant to complete the first leg in the Central Valley for rail improvements in the more densely populated parts of California, namely the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles to Anaheim, as the Los Angeles Times recently reported. Governor Newsom also expressed a lack of confidence in the system during his “State of the State” speech, in which he offered an abrupt scaling back of the state’s vision for its signature infrastructure project.
Following that February speech, the governor appointed Lenny Mendonca as the new California High Speed Rail Authority chair, whom I’ll interview tonight on City Visions on NPR affiliate 91.7 FM KALW radio in San Francisco, from 7-8pm. (For those out of the area, you can stream it or listen to the archived broadcast after the show here.) Mendonca has since laid out a vision for a down-sized “building block” segment from the Central Valley cities of Merced to Bakersfield, which could temporarily serve diesel-powered Amtrak trains until funding materializes for a segment from Merced to the Bay Area — and one day through the Tehachapi Mountains to Los Angeles.
This scaled-back plan is in some ways a simple nod to fiscal reality. There aren’t enough funds right now to complete the project beyond this initial phase in the Central Valley. Voters approved roughly $10 billion in bond funding in 2008, the 2009 federal “stimulus” bill offered another $3.5 billion ($1 billion of which the Trump Administration is now trying to cancel), and former Governor Jerry Brown and the legislature dedicated about 25% of the state’s cap-and-trade auction proceeds to continue building the system. But that’s not enough money to connect the Central Valley portion through the Pacheco Pass into San Jose, where it could then connect to the soon-to-be-electrified Caltrain into San Francisco. And it’s nowhere near the multiple billions of dollars needed to tunnel through the Tehachapis to connect to Southern California.
Despite cost overruns and some controversial decision-making by some state leaders, the key stumbling block has mostly been the federal government. Republicans in control of Congress from 2011 to 2019 were unwilling to match the state’s investment with federal dollars. If California had received at least a 50% match in federal funds (the typical match rate for urban rail transit projects), the rail system would have the money today to connect to the Bay Area, while at least making critical rail improvements in the Southern California section, if not starting the tunneling effort to Los Angeles.
So will high speed rail supporters ultimately need a change in leadership in Congress and the White House to get the necessary funds to complete the project? Will the California Legislature abandon the project and use the remaining dollars on local rail improvements instead? How useful will the scaled-back “building block” segment in the Central Valley be, absent further rail connections?
I’ll ask Chair Mendonca for his thoughts on these questions tonight, as well as for an update on the current status of the project. Listeners can call in at 866-798-TALK or email question as well. With the future of the nation’s only high speed rail project under construction now in the balance, and a new governor and leadership team at the helm, this project is truly at a major crossroads.
I’ll be hosting two radio shows on KALW 91.7 FM today. First, at 10am I’ll be guest-hosting Your Call’s One Planet series, focusing for the first half hour on the threat that sea level rise poses to California’s coastal cities and town.
Joining me will be Los Angeles Times environment reporter Rosanna Xia, who penned a fascinating piece recently on how climate-induced changes in ocean levels has already started affecting California communities.
For the second half hour, we’ll discuss the Trump Administration’s proposed rollbacks to the federal Endangered Species Act, a law that protects over 1,600 plant and animal species in this country. We’ll be joined by Rebecca Riley, Legal Director for the Nature Program at the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
Tune in at 10am on 91.7 in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream it live. We’d love to hear your questions or comments. You can call in at 866-798-TALK, or e-mail yourcall@kalw.org, or tweet us @yourcallradio. You can also post your comments and questions on our website @yourcallradio.org.
Then at 7pm tonight, I’ll be hosting City Visions, discussing the crush of student loan debt and what we can do about it. I’ll be joined by:
- Jacob Dumez, Manager of Policy and Partners in San Francisco’s Office of Financial Empowerment which co-authored an April 2019 study on Bay Area student loan debt.
- Juliana Fredman, a consumer protection attorney with Bay Area Legal Aid who works directly with low-income clients through the Legal Aid’s clinic.
- Suzanne Martindale, Senior Policy Counsel & Western States Legislative Manager for Consumer Reports.
Tune in at 7pm or stream live. We’d love to get your questions and comments. You can call us at 866-798-TALK or can e-mail or text us at cityvisions@kalw.org. You can also reach us by tweeting us at @cityvisionskalw.
Hope you can tune in to these two shows today!
Nowhere in the country is childcare more expensive than in San Francisco. Parents can spend nearly $2,000 a month per child for full-time care, if a spot is even available for the child, which is often not the case.
How are families coping with the rising cost of childcare in a region that is already so expensive? What resources are available for families in need? We’ll discuss on City Visions tonight, with guests:
- Graham Dobson, Senior Analyst with the San Francisco Department on Early Childhood Education;
- Gina Fromer, Executive Director of Children’s Council;
- Kim Kruckel, Executive Director of the Childcare Law Center; and,
- Phil Ginsburg, General Manager of the SF Recreation and Park Center
Tune in at 7pm at 91.7 FM in the San Francisco Bay Area or stream live. We welcome your calls or emailed questions for the panelists.
