Request to VTA/County BPAC regarding prioritizing for safety

Akos Szoboszlay, President, Modern Transit Society

To greatly and inexpensively improve pedestrian safety, the Modern Transit Society (MTS) requested VTA/County BPAC to approve a Request with six points. If approved by the Board of Supervisors, priority would be given to fixing unsafe design failures of County Roads, rather than paving over existing pedestrian paths, which adds negligibly to safety but has been County Roads' usual practice.

A separate web page explains the reason for each item in this Request, provides evidence with links to photos or documents, and also provides sources for the quotes (with links).

AT THE BPAC MEETING OF OCTOBER 10, 2007, when this Request was first presented:

There was a slide show [download 15 MB pdf file] with three handouts at the meeting:

The Request with six points. (censored)

BOS policies and orders. (censored)

County Roads request, marked in red, for $1.7 Million for 1.7 miles of sidewalks.

Unfortunately, VTA staff censored the presentation of the Modern Transit Society (MTS), as follows:

• prevented a vote, the result of changing the agenda item from "action" to "discussion only,"

• changed the title to be the same as Michael Murdter's memo to the BOS (June 19, 2007). Both the title and topic was: Pedestrians along expressways: Facilities and policies.

• changed the topic to "history" rather than discussing the six points in the Request, which cited facilities and policies, and

• eliminated my two handouts from the agenda packet, which were the Request with six points and the list of BOS policies and orders. This is censorship because at the meeting, nobody could read them completely or verify authenticity of the quotes — which required an internet link for sources.

I made a speech prior to the presentation to counter the misleading handout of VTA staff to the BPAC. The handouts that staff substituted for my handouts omitted fundamental information: the BOS path creation order. I stated three times to staff that my handout of BOS policies and orders needs to be in the agenda packet, but was ignored without any advance notice of the omission.

The MTS presentation and handouts were given a month in advance to VTA staff, on September 4 when I delivered files on a Flash memory. Also, a reminder was sent by email the week prior to the meeting. These were all ignored. To see the agenda as tampered by VTA staff, click here.

The BPAC could take no action on the Request, due to staff changing “action” to “discussion only,” but did form a subcommittee to look into the matter.

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Also see: Expressway Topics, Links page.

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