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Home Resource Center In the News Home Greenbelt Alliance in the News |
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Greenbelt Alliance In the News
July 27, 2007 Greenhouse Gas, BRT Issues Draw Crowd Subheading Richard BrennemanGreenhouse gases and Bus Rapid Transit dominated the first half of Wednesday night’s Berkeley Planning Commission meeting which drew a packed house to the North Berkeley Senior Center. While public transit plays a central role in the city’s effort to radically curtail Berkeley’s global-warming-inducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, AC Transit’s plans for Bus Rapid Transit running down Telegraph Avenue has hit a major speed bump in the opposition from residents of the nearby neighborhoods. Wednesday night’s commission meeting began with a two-hour presentation on Measure G measures, resulting from the resounding 81 percent victory scored by the proposal to cut the city’s GHG output by 80 percent in the next 43 years. Timothy Burroughs, the city’s climate action coordinator, opened the meeting, which included presentations by Greenbelt Alliance Senior Policy Advocate Stephanie Reyes, Berkeley Green Building Coordinator Billi Romain and Matt Taecker, the planner hired to help draft the city’s new Downtown Area Plan. The themes emerging from the presentations were familiar to Commissioners James Samuels, Gene Poschman, Helen Burke and Patti Dacey from their service on the Downtown Area Plan Advisory Committee (DAPAC), the city council-appointed body that is developing the guidelines for the downtown plan. With sustainabilty as the designated theme of the new plan, they were familiar with the calls from Reyes and Taecker for denser “infill” development on transit corridors to reduce reliance on the passenger car, the single greatest source of GHGs. Looking at the existing city General Plan “is almost like reading a climate action plan,” said Burroughs, “geared toward erecting a more livable compact community” with an emphasis on transit-oriented development. While improved technology promises to make cars less polluting, Reyes said the city couldn’t meet its GHG reduction targets without cutting back car use. One key measure, bringing jobs and housing closer together while creating walkable neighborhoods with nearby services, will cut car use about 30 percent. The next major piece, she said, is bringing housing and transit together, with near-transit housing resulting in a ten-fold increase in transit use, she said. “ The good news for Berkeley is that if you want to be on this downward path, just keep doing more of what you’re already doing,” she said. Romain said green building strategies are as much about building locations as they are about the technology of building. New projects of significant size are required to fill out use permit applications that contain green building checklists, and programs from the city and Pacific Gas & Electric offer strategies for increasing the efficiency of building design. Taecker presented the same Power Point presentation he’d offered to DAPAC members during their most recent meeting, citing massive carbon savings he said would accrue from creating more high-density development in the city center. He contended that “over 15 years with the densest alternative,” residents of the higher, denser downtown would save 112,000 barrels of oil and cut their carbon emissions by 60,600 tons. [...] ### |
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