Bay Area Plan 2050 + at Castro Valley Farmers Market
Photos by Mike McGuire
Transit 2050+ co-manager Andy Metz shows choices for improving Bay Area transit to a visitor to the Bay Area Plan 2050+ booth at the Castro Valley Farmers Market on Saturday, August 24.
The lines were longer to buy strawberries at last Saturday’s Castro Valley Farmer’s Market. However, two regional planning agencies still drew plenty of people to talk about making the Bay Area a better place in the decades to come.
The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) met with shoppers on Saturday, August 24, to gather public feedback about the Bay Area's vision for 2050.
It was one of 18 such sessions throughout the nine-county Bay Area held by the two agencies on their way to producing a final report by mid-2025.
“We’re about halfway through our planning,” said Bay Area Plan 2050+ Project Manager Chirag Rabari, himself a Castro Valley resident.
“We want to see what most people would want in the environment, housing, and transportation,” he said.
Staff members from the MTC and other agencies like AC Transit spoke with visitors to their booth just across from the Castro Valley BART station. People were encouraged to fill out a survey, in person or online, and put dots indicating priorities on several boards offering various ways forward into the future.
Rabari explained that Regional Plan 2050+ implements several requirements by state and local governments and is a limited update of Bay Area Plan 2050, passed in 2021.
One board showed the vision for the year 2050 that the hosting agencies have. They hope for twice as many people biking, walking, and taking transit, 35 percent more downtown development, seven times as much affordable housing (to bring it up to one million units), and 780,000 new acres of parks and open space.
On a related board, people chose how to make that vision, or a similar one, a reality.
The most popular item was new housing for all income levels. Expanding access to parks and open spaces and preparing for climate change’s effects were also popular.
Lagging further behind were building a better regional transit system and maintaining existing roads and transit.
On a board for reducing climate-changing emissions, the most unpopular was charging people more in various ways to drive solo. The most popular was transit improvements to get more people to use transit, followed by expanding transit into new areas, and making using electric vehicles more accessible.
Andy Metz, co-manager for Transit 2050+, the companion transportation plan, walked people through possible choices for improving Bay Area transportation.
Notably absent from those choices was new or expanded roads to fit more cars. Optimizing existing highways was an option that fewer people chose compared to non-car alternatives.
On one display board, people were asked whether to improve existing transit or expand it into new areas. They seemed to favor expansion slightly over improvements.
Another board looked at safety concerns on transit, which are sometimes blamed for holding down ridership. Station cleanliness and adding crisis intervention staff received the most support, while more unarmed ambassadors, police officers, or security cameras received less support. Better lighting, though, was popular.
The transit improvement most cited by participants was an expanded 15-minute service between Bay Area cities, followed by express buses between suburbs. Fewer people chose five-minute service frequency in downtowns and dense urban areas, and improved mid-day service.
One can get more information on the Plan 2050+ website at PlanBayArea.org. You can take the survey in English, Spanish, Chinese or Vietnamese at
https://planbayarea.org/news/news-story/public-comment-period-survey-open-plan-bay-area-2050.