Editor,
For good reason, recent letters criticized Jeremy Levine’s guest perspective about the benefits of the state’s Senate Bill 79 mandating high-rise buildings within a half mile of a major transit stop. The idea of the law was that most would take public transportation and abandon their vehicles because they live close. Ideology versus common sense. You decide:
1). Major transit agencies ridership has fallen dramatically. People are not taking public transportation like in the past and a lot already live close: Caltrain’s 11 million 2025 riders are down 40% from 2019; BART’s 56 million 2025 riders down 59%; SamTrans 11 million 2025 riders has 0% change. Hence, agencies are in a financial crisis aided by inept management. In November, they want a vote for a sales tax increase to help.
2). Developers have free rein to bypass local governments and build high-rise buildings regardless of the impact on the neighboring community with no infrastructure requirements to support it.
3). There is no minimum for on-site parking spaces (Assembly Bill 2097). Developers can build one or less parking spaces per unit, but the average household has 2.3 cars per household. Garages are expensive to build, more residence units mean more profits. The spillover traffic and parking into neighborhoods will be horrendous along with plummeting property values for houses and multiunits.
4). State bureaucrats arbitrarily discriminated against residences close to public transportation by incentivizing developers with high profits allowing higher units with little or no parking spaces.
Are you drinking the Kool-Aid too? Simple solutions to complicated problems never work.
Gary Isoardi
San Mateo
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