You are right that people ride their bicycles or walk to an from train and bus stops. However, the public right-of-way is explicitly treated as a car-only domain - even by the engineers that plan the rail lines! Pedestrians and bicyclists are measured as an impediment to the use of the right-of-way. A dozen modern MTA train stations come to mind that have horrible pedestrian access, and bike facilities that aren't worth mentioning.

Honestly, after seeing how transportation decisions play out in this region first-hand, I have very little hope that a meeting like this will lead to anything but more subsidies for the suburban expansion industry.

Just trying to find a silver lining... :-)

I used to sit on the SCAG advisory board for transportation policy. Bleah. What a waste of time. Pseudo-science "traffic modeling" and crazy economic predictions to suit any and every lame project a local leader could think of, trotted out in front of a bunch of sleepy technocrats ...

The politicians never get any training in transportation issues, other than lame-brained complaints about "congestion". They talk to the professionals (see: sleepy technocrats above), and all they hear about it are pricey road widenings, and more subsidies for interstate trucking and goods movement.

As if making the flood of cheap crap from China increase is somehow going to revitalize our domestic economy.

We could have replaced this million dollar and hour meeting with an 8 year old with a Tonka truck and a HotWheels going "Vrrm, vrrrm!" and we'd end up with the same lame set of priorities.

At least the kid would have something to put on his college resume.