• Wednesday, May 10th, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Felton Community Hall, 6191 Highway 9 in Felton
• Saturday, May 20th, from 1:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. at the Watsonville High School, Lincoln and East Beach Streets in Watsonville
• Thursday, May 25th, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at the Seacliff Best Western Inn, 7500 Old Dominion Court in Aptos
• Wednesday, June 7th, from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. at Mission Hill Middle School, 425 King Street in Santa Cruz

The Transportation Funding Task Force was set up after the voters of Santa Cruz County refused to approve a sales tax increase to widen Highway One. Its purpose is to engage the community in a discussion about transportation needs and funding. In other words, to consider what kind of transportation projects, if any, the public is interested in paying for. If you have thoughts on that, you should plan to participate.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Transportation Funding Task Force For Santa Cruz County
http://www.tftaskforce.org/

As reported yesterday, a Santa Cruz County Transportation Funding Task Force has been created to explore what sorts of transportation projects the public wants, and what projects the public might be willing to pay for. And as reported last Wednesday, a solution for at least some of our transportation problems might be “Bus Rapid Transit,” something like a rubber-tired light rail system. That would definitely require new funding, and just might be able to utilize the existing rail line in Santa Cruz County, to bypass the traffic jams on Highway One.

In the end, though, I think most people understand that we have built our transportation system based on the automobile, and have spent hundreds of billions of dollars on that system, and that with that magnitude of investment having been made, it’s unlikely that there is any kind of quick or easy fix for the problems that this automobile-centered system has created. There are steps we can take, but no one should think that those steps will lead to a transportation utopia.

I have a personal prescription, which is that we should simply try, in every way possible (even in very small ways), to provide alternatives to the automobile. We built our current system step by step, and step by step we can build a different one. Stopping sprawl, which increases our need for the automobile, is one step that is certain to take us in the right direction.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

For listeners interested in seeing how a “step by step” approach would work, in connection with planning approvals for new development, please read the Chapter titled, “Transportation and Transit,” beginning at Page 42 in Land Use and the General Plan.

Land Use and the General Plan
http://www.landwatch.org/pages/publications03/
gpsummit/landusegeneralplan.pdf

Sustainable Monterey County: Beyond Peak Oil is sponsoring two showings of a compelling film that explores what the future may hold for our auto-dependent society. The film is called “The End of Suburbia.” Featured in the film is Peter Calthorpe, a renowned urban planner who lives in Berkeley, and who has been named one of twenty-five "innovators on the cutting edge" by Newsweek Magazine for his work redefining the models of urban and suburban growth.

“The End of Suburbia” will be screened at the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History, 165 Central Avenue, Pacific Grove, on Saturday, May 13th, at 2:00 p.m., and on Tuesday, May 16th, at 7:00 p.m. There is no charge for admission.

The thesis of the film is pretty simple: suburbia can’t exist without cars, and people won’t be able to afford to drive without endless cheap gas. Because the amount of oil pumped out of the ground is expected to peak sometime between now and 2010, things don’t look rosy for the long term. After “Peak Oil,” every gallon of gas will grow more and more expensive, rendering auto-based sprawl obsolete.

There are good land use alternatives. Among other things, that’s what the fight is about in Monterey County, where community groups are challenging the sprawl model, and where the Board of Supervisors continues to cling to it.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Information on Peter Calthorpe
http://www.calthorpe.com/bios/pcbio.htm

Sustainable Monterey County: Beyond Peak Oil
http://www.postcarbon.org/groups/monterey

Information on the movie “The End of Suburbia”
http://www.endofsuburbia.com/

The Society for Conservation Biology is a global community of conservation professionals. The 20th annual meeting of the group will be held on June 24th through June 28th in San Jose, California, and I’m alerting interested listeners way ahead of time, so you can consider attending. There may be as many as 2,000 participants from more than 50 countries at the conference. In other words, this is a world-class event, and it’s well within reach of Central Coast residents.

Among the themes highlighted throughout the meeting will be freshwater and marine conservation, local level and regional level conservation, 21st Century conservation, and transboundary conservation. The overall theme of the conference is “Conservation Without Borders.”

Meeting concurrently with the Society for Conservation Biology will be the 9th annual international conference of the Society for Conservation GIS (meaning geographical information systems). My friends at the Elkhorn Slough Coastal Training Program alerted me to the conference, and I’m passing on the “heads up.” Many conservation professionals live or work in the Monterey Bay Area, and this is a meeting they should really consider attending.

Please send me an email with your comments and suggestions, as well.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Society for Conservation Biology
http://www.conbio.org/

Information on the 2006 Annual Meeting
http://www.conbio.org/2006/

Registration information is available by email - 2006@conbio.org

Yesterday, I highlighted the 20th annual meeting of the Society for Conservation Biology. Today, I’d like to let open space advocates know about the Bay Area Open Space Council’s Eighth Annual Open Space Conference, to be held in San Francisco, on Friday, June 2nd.

The reason I’m suggesting that Central Coast open space advocates might want to attend a conference in San Francisco is that the Bay Area Open Space Council is so successful in what it does. The Council is a collaborative of over fifty-five member organizations actively involved in permanently protecting and stewarding important parks, trails and agricultural lands in the nine-county San Francisco Bay Area. One million acres of open space are currently being protected and maintained, and the Council is working to protect an additional one million acres of open space, thus doubling the amount of protected lands in the region.

The Central Coast has many fewer organizations involved in the difficult task of protecting open space. For instance, there is no official “open space district” that is able to mobilize public funding from local sources to preserve and protect threatened resources. I’m familiar with the Bay Area Open Space Council, and think they have a lot to teach us. Mark your calendars for the June 2nd meeting.

For KUSP, this is Gary Patton.

More Information

Conference Information available on the Bay Area Open Space Council Website
http://www.openspacecouncil.org/