Let's Revisit the CyberTran Plan

By Jeffrey R. Smith

As many local residents know: Alameda is an island. But that could change: it may become an atoll, a shoal or an oyster bed. Many residents are also aware that fuel prices are rapidly catching up to the prices of table wines: a gallon of the carbonated pink Catawba currently sells for less than $5!

Local bureaucrats, munching perks from the hands of developers, are overstepping their mandates: ignoring the hue and cry of Alameda natives, citizens and denizens who demand an attenuation of growth. Under the rubric "affordable housing" or "outgrowing municipal fiscal inconveniences," the apparatchiks inexorably squeeze more homes onto the Island; clogging the sclerotic arteries that connect Alameda with the continental United States.

On a broader scale, greenhouse gases are bringing sea level closer to our back doors: soon your redwood deck may be your redwood dock: you might be catching croaker, Chilean sea bass and orange roughy from your chaise lounge. The highest peak in Alameda, Mount Snob, rises majestically, like Olympus to a height of 37 feet above sea level. You may have to evacuate to the second floor and use the first floor for a 1,700 square foot, furnished, aquarium.

Realistically, we may be seeing metering lights on the tunnels and bridges that join us with the fatherland. Developers, salivating over exploitation rights to the former Naval Air Station and abandoned federal properties, have suggested a variety of chimerical conveyances to get commuters to and from BART: monorails, gondolas, light rail, hydrofoils, catapults, kayaks, slingshots, chair lifts and, seriously folks: a Jetson-like "Personal Rapid Transit System."

One suggestion was a Bus Rapid Transit System. It invites the question: Would a furloughed MUNI bus driver be at the wheel of this rapid bus and would the passengers be required to wear helmets and safety harnesses?

Strange that in an effort to mollify the public, developers offer up so many exotic transportation proposals, while overlooking the obvious. CyberTran has conclusively demonstrated that by utilizing the existing 5.5 mile Alameda Transit Corridor — Atlantic Avenue, the Beltline Rail Yard, the Clement Extension, Clement, Blanding, the Fruitvale Rail Bridge — that passengers could be transported from Alameda Point to the Fruitvale BART Station in less than 11 minutes. The proposed system involves a 100 percent fare box cost recovery. Imagine: no subsidies for operation and maintenance (O & M) costs.

The much-touted San Jose light (sic) rail recovers just 10 percent of its O & M costs. A.C. Transit recovers just 30 percent. BART recovers so little, it survives on a $250 million annual subsidy.

The CyberTran System, already off the design boards and proven feasible in numerous computer simulations, is ultra-light and involves no grade crossings. Instead, the few intersections encountered are all safely grade-separated. Why? Speed and safety.

The Blue Line from Los Angeles to Long Beach has killed 62 people since 1991; mixing with traffic, it averages 21 miles per hour. Bus Rapid Transit System, assuming you would like to protect Alameda from wildly careening buses, would take over a lane to improve on current bus travel times.

Not to invoke New Age terminology but as Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums recently warned, "Time is not on our side." We are at a point of harmonic convergence.

More than 50 percent of the greenhouse gases produced in the Bay Area stem from fossil fueled vehicles. Neither the State of California nor the City of Alameda has the infrastructure funds for new bridges or tunnels. For better or for worse, at every juncture, developers are going to have their way with the city of Alameda: high density or low density. The population and traffic are going to continue to ratchet upward.

Find someone in city hall that really puts your driving convenience and quality of life ahead of dauntless development. There is no reason to suspect that fuel prices are coming appreciably down: domestic oil production actually declined 23 percent in the last 10 years. We are on the ropes and OPEC owns the ropes. And, let's be honest with ourselves: did we really think that domestic oil sells below world market prices? Exxon and Chevron are not giving U.S. consumers a price break.

Ironically, the average U.S. vehicle has gone from an obese 3200 pounds in 1987 to a behemoth 4000 pounds in 2008. As a nation, a state and a city, we are in denial.

BART charges $5 just to park. CyberTran could get you to BART, sans hulking dinosaur, for less than 50 cents per mile: the highest break-even fare is still less than $3. But as the good book says, "A prophet is without honor in his own city."

Why ignore CyberTran? Is it just the pipe dream of Alameda visionary Neil Sinclair?

We think not: The U.S. Departments of Transportation and Energy invested federal funds into the development and several California cities are looking seriously at CyberTran systems.

Seriously folks, even the world-renowned Rocky Mountain Institute, the organization that is trying to ensure that winter includes snow falling on the high peaks of the Rockies, recognizes CyberTran as a future leader for innovative mass transportation; they have nominated CyberTran International for the World Clean Energy Award in Mobility and Transportation. Given federal incentives for clean mass transit, Alameda could finance a system for less than the amount Alameda Power and Telecom loses annually on its failing cable service: the Albatross Channel.

Alameda and CyberTran alone are not going to stop global warming. It is the collective effort of the planet that will stem the literally rising tides. Alameda has the opportunity to simultaneously do its share, to be a leader and to resolve its own unique transportation problems. The future is arriving. We could direct it to land here first.

Jeffrey R. Smith is a U.S. Naval aviator and Lieutenant Commander (retired), math teacher at Encinal High School, member of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle, sidewalk politician and armchair liberal and a laissez faire, coupon-cutting economist.