TRANSDEF is clear that suburbanization is no longer a viable strategy for growth in the Bay Area. It stopped "working" long ago. Unfortunately, the public and its elected leaders have not yet recognized this alarming fact. TRANSDEF believes that the simultaneous problems of global warming, rising oil and energy prices, and congestion require a strikingly different approach to transportation planning: one that relies on cost-effective transit, Smart Growth walkable/bikeable communities and higher priced driving, to create incentives to use alternative means of transport.

MTC's continuing focus on expanding highway capacity wastes scarce resources and facilitates more driving, which releases more greenhouse gases, thus exacerbating global warming. We need instead to transition to a future where transit is the preferred way to travel longer distances.

MTC has a long-standing commitment to pursuing BART extensions because of their political popularity, despite their tremendous cost. TRANSDEF views this as a rejection of the basic principles of planning, which call for identifying the problem and serving it in the most cost-effective manner possible.

TRANSDEF believes the region's biggest planning problems are:
1). Congestion on I-580 and I-80 resulting from commuters driving in from the Central Valley and Sacramento.
2). The BART Transbay Tube is operating near its capacity.

TRANSDEF believes the most rational use of resources would be to design the Bay Area's future rail extensions to provide multiple services: High-Speed Rail, interregional commuting, and regional commuting, all using the same compatible infrastructure.

Instead, BART-worship has severely distorted MTC's transportation priorities. MTC has thrown its support behind proposals to build extremely expensive duplicative infrastructure projects: High-Speed Rail via the Pacheco Pass, a BART extension to San Jose, and the cynical promise of improvements to the ACE corridor (which can't possibly be funded, due to the cost of the other projects). Meanwhile, MTC shifted funding for the Dumbarton Rail project over to the BART Warm Springs extension, thereby indefinitely delaying the most cost-effective new Transbay crossing.