KQED / SamTrans Officials' Pensions

KQED stopped by my house to learn more about ground zero of Transit Oriented Development in the Bay Area, right here in San Carlos. Ground Zero means that San Carlos Transit Village is the "test development" for a rebuilding of El Camino up and down the Peninsula, which is being commandeered for apartments that nobody wants to bring revenue for unfunded pensions to government officials, particularly SamTrans. We believe they chose San Carlos and particularly my neighborhood because of San Carlos' history of being pro business and our neighborhood as having lost every fight we ever waged. Greater East San Carlos, for example, has had non-ADA compliant sidewalks for the past 20 years since the building of the berm. While this is all happening at a local level, it's part of a big plan to move us out of our homes and into apartments up and down the Peninsula. And the plans are so poorly conceived that these so-called Transit Oriented developments are going to make hundreds of people walk across Holly and El Camino at grade in order to ride the train. Pedestrian safety is not part of the plan, so don't expect riders to be able to get to the platform, particularly when it moves further South in a few years. In San Carlos, the fate of this project will come down to the City Council. So far, the San Carlos City Council has done nothing to decrease the size of the buildings after 6 years of massive community opposition. They recommended public meetings which feature dog and pony shows by the developers touting the benefits of the projects. These same developers are claiming that just because they met with us they are somehow listening even though none of our ideas on height or density are being implemented. The San Carlos City Council as a whole has not reduced the height or density of this project. Yet they passed an EIR which fraudulently claimed that these developments would have "no significant adverse impact" on the surrounding environment.