photo credit: Marc Albert/KRCB
Northbound SMART train prepares to depart Larkspur.  

How we get around affects the environment, ourselves and our built environment. To some, like Carter Lavin, a co-founder of the Transbay Coalition, a 5-year old advocacy group, it's a paramount issue. Earlier this year the group sent every candidate across the Bay Area seeking a city or state office a survey about transit, intending to provide voters another facet on which to base their choice.

The group received 160 responses, the most ever. But among the 47 seeking office in Sonoma County however, only seven responded.

KRCB's Marc Albert spoke at length with Lavin about the survey, the responses and what it all means for how we all get around, asking first about the importance of transportation in terms of climate change.

Lavin: "Cars are California's number one source of carbon emissions. When you look at the data presented by the state, the number one thing is our transportation sector. That's mainly cars. And a big part of that is because people don't have options and a big part of how we fix that is we need to get people more options."

KRCB: "Are there any general themes or standouts in the responses that you received?"

Lavin: "One thing that really stuck out to me about North Bay candidates was the uniformity that a lot of them had in understanding that if we made walking or biking safer for people to run basic errands, that more people would do it.

I found that really heartening to see that candidates for office, whether it's a local or state one, really recognize that we do have solutions, that we just need to implement them and that the demand would follow.

The other thing that I thought was really heartening to see was folks recognize that rural areas deserve better transit. Across the board, folks were saying, you know, you can't have limited hours where the bus runs till you know, 8:00 PM and then stops or bus runs only once an hour and expect a person to go car free or car light."

KRCB: "Were any of the responses surprising to you?"

Lavin: "We've run this questionnaire several times over the past few elections, so I'm never really particularly surprised. One thing that is always a little interesting to see is how much some folks really just wanna wave a magic wand and think, you know, self-driving cars solve every problem, and that it's about to happen tomorrow, where that's just really far from reality. And I think one thing that always surprises me also is how much the ferry either comes up a lot or not at all. Some people just think transit is getting to San Francisco versus transit is your kid getting to school."

KRCB: "Are there any issues where North Bay candidates, where there's a general consensus?"

Lavin: "I think there is consensus that there needs to be more funding for transit. If transit were better, people would ride it more. There was a lot of talk in the questionnaire answers about, you know, folks who take Golden Gate Transit and then Muni or folks who take Petaluma Transit and then SMART, you know, they take multiple agencies and so they need these agencies to be well funded and coordinated."

KRCB: "Are there things that North Bay candidates are really far apart on?"

Lavin: "I think the big gulf is definitely on the housing front, of like, where does housing fit into all of this? I think some candidates were very clear, especially those running for kind of city council in some of these towns. Were recognizing that if you put the housing in the downtowns, people drive less and people can get and walk to where they want to go and it's easier to serve by transit. And I think for other folks, housing wasn't part of the equation at all."

KRCB: "The Bay Area has 27 different transit agencies. It requires people who are riders to become public transit and scheduled detectives. What is the general feeling about agency consolidation?

Lavin: "There's a lot of understanding that these agencies need to talk to each other, other. I think there's a wide spectrum of what does that look like and that from a consumer standpoint, for people like me and you and the listeners, that we need to have an experience that is seamless. We need to have an experience that, you know, we don't care what the name of the company is on the bus. We care that the bus is taking us where we want to go. And then that connects to the train. It's good that politicians are seeing that disconnection causes people to not ride transit. And it's great that we as a region are starting to take that more seriously because other places don't deal with such, uh, nonsense <laugh>. When people have bad transit experiences, what that teaches them is to get off transit as soon as they possibly can."

KRCB: "What, if anything, do you take from getting such a poor response rate from Sonoma County candidates?"

Lavin: "I think from an objective standpoint, being a candidate for office is hard. When you're looking at a questionnaire for them, they're really thinking, okay, do I spend two hours door-knocking or do I spend 30 minutes figuring this out? I think we did get a good number of responses and I think the responses that we got were very thoughtful---and people very clearly thought a lot about this stuff---and a lot have worked on this issue---and they're kind of eager to, you know, raise their hand and take the question. My guess is the candidates that we didn't hear from are the ones who say, what the heck are you talking about? Transit. And so I think it's really telling or when a candidate says, Hey, I'm not gonna do this work 'cause I don't really care that much about this issue, or I haven't thought about it before."

The full responses of each candidate who responded to the Transbay Coalition's transportation questionnaire may be found by clicking here.