MTC-ABAG

The Bay Link – the joint blog of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) – recently celebrated the six-month anniversary of its "soft launch" in December 2017.

Over that time, we've served as a single public information resource for both agencies, providing news, views and analysis on a wide range of regionally relevant topics, including housing, land use, transportation, the economy, the environment, climate change and resilience, among many others.

Below is a curated round-up of the "Best of the Bay Link" that you may have missed over the last few months. Don't forget to subscribe to receive a weekly digest of the latest posts, and feel free to drop us a line at blog@bayareametro.gov for any comments or questions.

Housing and the Economy

• The Bay Area’s Fastest Growing Cities and Towns (link)
• New Data from U.S. Census Shows (Mostly) Broad and Steady Employment Growth, Highlights Changing Nature of Bay Area Economy (link)

MTC and ABAG have released their first-ever joint annual report to Congress for 2018, urging lawmakers in Washington D.C. to honor long-standing bipartisan commitments to transportation, housing and disaster relief.  The report, Accelerating Progress: Strong Partnerships Move the Bay Area Forward:

• Provides an overview of the Bay Area’s policy and funding priorities, including priorities for a national infrastructure and a response to the Trump Administration’s budget proposal
• Discusses the region’s major capital investment grant requests, including Caltrain modernization and the Bay Area’s next generation of transit capacity
• Provides an update on both agencies’ major ongoing initiatives, including North Bay wildfire recovery efforts, climate change adaptation, bold efforts to solve the region’s housing crisis, the expansion of the Bay Area Express Lanes network, as well as research, planning and funding to maximize the benefits of autonomous and connected vehicle technologies. 

For more detail on these and other issue areas and initiatives, download the report. Read More

Three meetings are scheduled for this Friday, February 9, starting at 9:30 a.m. at the Bay Area Metro Center: the Joint MTC Planning Committee with the ABAG Administrative Committee, the MTC Operations Committee, and the MTC Legislation Committee. 

Highlights include: an overview of an ambitious new joint agency project called Futures, an update of MTC’s Draft Coordinated Public Transit-Human Services Transportation Plan, a report on MTC’s Goods Movement Investment Strategy, an update on efforts to improve traffic operations systems in the I-880 corridor, a discussion of the imminent Regional Measure 3 ballot pamphlet, and an overview of key elements of Governor Jerry Brown's budget proposal.

Continue reading on to see more from the agendas and find links to all meeting materials. As always, you can tune in to the meetings live on the MTC website once they are underway. Read More