Transport spending is making our lives worse

Here's the problem with MTC RTP 2035. I and my friends already ride our bikes and walk. The government can take the $109B transport budget for the Bay Area and blow it on Iraq. We don't need another road or transit, or livable community or Transit Oriented Development. What we need is more people doing what we do. And how is that going to happen if the average person says "you would never walk if you saw the way I drive!"

We would benefit from incentives for everyone to use the present infrastructure the way we do. And so that MTC might actually complies with its air and water quality goals and meets its SIP. Incentives, such as parking cashout, and systemic traffic calming like bicycle boulevards, and eliminating the CA speed creep and speed trap laws so that prima facie and safety laws can be enforced and speed limits reduced. Of course MTC does not have law writing capability but it can provide incentives for reduced speed and bike boulevards.

There is no attempt to reduce the growth in driving infrastructure except for redirecting about $1B from the $109B over the next 25 years to bikes and peds. Examples of external costs subsidized by this $108B include air pollution, noise, 10,000 traffic deaths a year, pollution and speeding from road construction and repair, traffic law enforcement, facility expansion at the expense of walking and biking, get out of jail card for hitting a pedestrian or a bicyclist, reduced health care for heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity, inflation reduction of the vehicle license fee and gas tax, future generation indebtedness from bond financing, lack of text books in schools, no school buses, no health care, etc. Of course if none of this paid for in the real cost of driving we don't get enforcement, clean air, drivers in jail, reduced CO2, working emergency clinics, etc.

RTP 2035: http://www.mtc.ca.gov/planning/
CA SIP:
http://www.epa.gov/fedrgstr/EPA-AIR/2005/January/Day-07/a346.htm
Parking Cashout: http://www.arb.ca.gov/planning/tsaq/cashout/cashout.htm
Bicycle Boulevards: http://www.sfbike.org/?page
Speed Trap laws: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d17/vc40802.htm
Prima Facie Speeds: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc22352.htm
Speed Safety: http://www.dmv.ca.gov/pubs/vctop/d11/vc22358_4.htm
Speed Limits Reduced: http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/320/7243/1160