Public Transit Hearing Dominated by People Who Drove There

A public hearing on a proposed bus rapid transit line through the Westfield corridor was dominated Tuesday by vocal opposition from approximately 200 residents, 197 of whom arrived at the hearing by car, parked in the surface parking lot adjacent to the community center, and expressed their objection to public transit from behind the steering wheels of vehicles stuck in the traffic that the BRT line is designed to alleviate. 'I don't want a bus running through my neighborhood,' said resident Carl Cul-de-sac from his idling Ford Explorer in the parking lot overflow area. 'There's already too much traffic. Adding buses will make it worse.' When asked how he traveled to the hearing, he said, 'I drove, obviously. There's no other way to get here. That's my point.' Transportation planner Diane Headway noted the irony without pleasure. 'The parking lot where 197 cars are currently idling is the exact site where the BRT station would be built,' she said. 'If we'd approved this line in 2015 when it was first proposed, these people could have taken the bus to the hearing about the bus. Instead, they drove, created traffic, and are now citing traffic as a reason not to build the thing that would reduce traffic.' The opposition's stated concerns included increased noise (the proposed electric buses are quieter than the traffic currently on the corridor), decreased property values (studies show BRT increases adjacent property values by 10-25 percent), and 'the kind of people who ride buses,' a comment that drew no elaboration from the speaker and considerable silence from the room. The hearing ran two hours over its scheduled time, primarily because attendees kept leaving to feed parking meters.