Roosevelt
Blvd.is a better connector between Beltline and 99, it
serves northwest Eugene neighborhoods better than WEP could. Some
local traffic would use Roosevelt, regional through traffic would bypass
on Belt Line.
transfer WEP money to finish Beltline,
fix Roosevelt / 99 intersection two options for completing Beltline: (1) if Peak Oil is here,
(2) if Peak Oil is not yet here. The larger option could convert
Beltline to an interstate highway - perhaps I-605?
transfer ODOT / City lands for WEP to BLM's
West Eugene Wetlands Project
new roads:
First - 99 - Second Connector, Barger Road Extended & Trainsong
Connector (to NW Expressway)
fix West
11th intersections (would cost about $2 million, the cost
to complete WEP study), other road repairs
bicycle paths and lanes, pedestrian safety enhanced by road test for
drivers license renewals
land use shifts to coordinate transit and development, mixed use centers,
co-housing neighborhoods
"Saving Oil in a Hurry" - practical steps
toward coping with sudden energy shortages, road safety, speed limits
upgrade Amtrak to enable high speed trains to Seattle
Second and Garfield: ideal location for Eugene's
new hospital (central
& accessible)
Peak Oil and climate change are "new circumstances" that requires reopening
the NEPA process
City of Eugene Adopted Growth Management Policies
violated by WEP
Endangered
Species Act: a "license to kill" - Road Kill: Fender's
Blue Butterfly and Car Fenders
controlled burning for wet prairie restoration incompatible with WEP
environmental
justice: WEP traffic dumped onto 6th and 7th would severely impact
Whiteaker neighborhood
plants of the West Eugene Wetlands - photos by Linda Swisher
Endangered
Species Act: a "license to kill" - Road Kill: Fender's
Blue Butterfly and Car Fenders
controlled burning for wet prairie restoration incompatible with WEP
Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglass
- a letter that protected a
park from a parkway
sand
and gravel - impacts of an elevated WEP in the wetlands
Environmental
Injustice, Whiteaker and the WEP
"These forty million [poor]
people are invisible because America is so affluent, so rich; because
our expressways carry us away from the ghetto, we don't see the poor."
-- Martin Luther King, "Remaining Awake Through a Great
Revolution," March 31, 1968
Had he lived long enough, Dr. King would probably have been
a leading advocate for the "environmental justice" movement
- efforts to stop toxic abuses that disproportionately impact minority
communities. At the time of his assassination, he was in Memphis
to support striking garbage workers who suffered dangerous working conditions
(toxic exposures, faulty machinery) and were poorly paid.
This highway proposal threatens the lowest income, highest
minority parts of Eugene, since dumping huge amounts of new traffic onto
6th and 7th Avenues would eventually force new highway construction through
Whiteaker to connect the WEP to I-105 (Washington/Jefferson bridge).
The Whiteaker neighborhood already has Eugene's largest
toxic burdens. The Eugene railyards leach serious contamination
problems into the community, and transport large amounts of hazardous
materials every day. 6th and 7th Avenues already divide the neighborhood
with large amounts of polluting traffic, and the WEP could force construction
of even more highways through Whiteaker.
Legally, a federally funded project like the WEP can only
be approved by the Federal Highway Administration if it does not force
additional construction to cope with problems that it generates for other
roads. ODOT's 1997 traffic study estimated that with the WEP, 7th
Avenue between Garfield and Chambers Streets would have 54,000 cars per
day in the Year 2015. A road like 7th can handle about 10,000
cars per lane per day (this segment of 7th has four lanes), so it would
be about one-third above capacity - in plain English, 7th and Chambers
would be solid gridlock during rush hour.
In the 1970s, the "T-2000" plan considered a "6th/7th
Freeway" and a Whiteaker
Bypass along the railroad tracks. Either option would cost tens of
millions that do not exist in the long range transportation budget and
would have severe impacts to the Whiteaker neighborhood.
It is inappropriate that the City of Springfield's
new sprawlway (to facilitate the relocation of Sacred Heart / Peace Health)
is going to be called Martin Luther King Parkway considering Dr. King's
objection to expressways used to promote economic injustice. The $400
million spent on hospital construction is money that could have been used
to provide universal access to health care in Lane County.
"perhaps the best thing that we can all do to celebrate
the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr. is not just to go to the prayer
breakfasts and religious services which remember this great man, but
to get involved ourselves in the multitude of issues of injustice around
us.
"One such issue is environmental justice or environmental racism
- the dumping of toxic wastes in communities of color across this nation,
and indeed, around the world."
- "Making the King Legacy Come Alive," by Bernice Powell Jackson www.black-collegian.com/african/kinglegacy100.shtml
Atlanta’s Transit Riders Union has played a key role in stopping
a 25-cent fare increase proposed by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit
Authority.
Fifty years after Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery,
Alabama bus, Atlanta’s Transit Riders Union (TRU) is continuing
the struggle. Formed this spring as a committee of Atlanta Jobs with Justice,
TRU has already played a key role in stopping a $.25 fare increase proposed
by the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA).
As TRU builds on that success, Atlanta’s transit riders, union members,
and community supporters are heeding the call TRU co-chair Sheila Adams
made at a December 5 community forum: “Get on board!”
The December 5 event linked TRU’s ongoing longhaul campaign to the
legacy of Parks and the Montgomery bus boycott. In 1955, Montgomery’s
African-American community had organized and planned a boycott for years
before the actual boycott was launched. Parks was one of many community
activists who became trained organizers and leaders of that struggle.
STOPPING A FARE INCREASE
As in most major cities, Atlanta’s public transit system overwhelmingly
serves Atlanta’s African-American working class, who would have
suffered disproportionately under the fare increase MARTA proposed this
spring.
TRU’s campaign against the increase began when a coalition of community,
labor, environmental, disabled, senior, and student activists and organizations
brought over 100 people to protest at MARTA’s May board meeting.
Twenty-six people testified and demanded that MARTA not balance its books
“off the backs of the people who can least afford it.”
The board tabled the decision. The coalition came back to the June board
meeting and successfully turned back the fare increase, a historic victory.
Following that campaign, TRU began working this summer with Amalgamated
Transit Union Local 732, which was in the middle of a contract fight and
looking for support. Local 732 represents more than 2,500 transit workers
in the metro Atlanta area.
Over 400 people—mostly union members—attended a September
26 mass meeting and teach-in on issues facing transit workers and riders.
At this meeting, there was electricity in the air as riders and workers
energized one another to continue their mutual struggles.
The contract fight was linked to the community’s demand to restore
Route 61 bus service to the Bowen Homes community, a low-income, African-American
community on Atlanta’s northwest side.A few days later, 200 ATU
members and community supporters turned out again at the MARTA board meeting.
This time the board had to listen to testimony from dozens of workers
about their issues and from the community about Route 61.
Board chairman Michael Walls heard Route 61 mentioned so many times that
he assigned a staff person to meet separately with those affected. This
protest jump-started contract negotiations (which had been at an impasse).
At the end of October, MARTA announced route changes which included restoring
service to Bowen Homes.
COMMUNITY-UNION ALLIANCE
Forming a strategic alliance between transit riders and workers is not
a new idea. When the “Unity Speaks” reform slate swept Local
732’s top offices in December 1998, their platform included a vision
of working in the broader labor movement and with the community the union
serves.
ATU members were part of a community, civil rights, and environmental
justice delegation that traveled in February 2000 to Los Angeles to meet
with that city’s Bus Riders Union and learn about their work. The
trip was co-sponsored by the Environmental Justice Resource Center (EJRC)
at Clark Atlanta University, which has led the way in analyzing transportation
equity issues nationally.
EJRC Director Dr. Robert Bullard asserts that understanding racism is
central to understanding the financial difficulties MARTA faces today.
TRANSIT RACISM
In his book Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity,
Bullard notes that MARTA is regional in name only. In fact, MARTA is supported
by a sales tax from only two counties and the city of Atlanta.
Suburban counties, including two that have seats on the MARTA board, refused
to join the system, in order to deny Atlanta’s African-American
majority access to their neighborhoods and the jobs which have historically
followed whites out of the city.
MARTA is the largest transit system in the country that receives no operating
help from the state, yet the state has four members on MARTA’s board.
MARTA represents two problems to the new Republican majority in Georgia’s
state capitol. First, it is primarily an Atlanta public institution, which
means that the African-American community is in control of millions of
dollars in resources. Second, ATU represents the only public sector workers
in the state with a collective bargaining agreement.
Fighting the decisions of a newly-created, regional “Transit Planning
Board”—and a possible state takeover of MARTA and privatization—will
take a strategic alliance of riders and workers. Building on its initial
successes, the Transit Riders Union is preparing for much bigger fights
ahead.
With the traffic and air quality problems that plague Atlanta, the need
for mass transit is a no-brainer. But creating a truly regional transportation
system raises the question of how it will be funded and who will control
it.
According to Bullard, “Until racism is reined in, the Atlanta region
will continue to have a patchwork of unlinked, uncoordinated, and ‘separate
but unequal’ transit systems feeding into and feeding off of MARTA.”
Whatever the future holds, Jobs with Justice and TRU will continue to
fight for MARTA to be the sole transportation provider for the Atlanta
region, for transit riders to have real say over decision-making, and
for the rights of union workers to be protected.
