Back in 2000, in Stanford's cavernous Memorial Auditorium, I listened to Ralph Nader make his case for becoming president. Whatever he said convinced me. I would have voted for him — but being only 17, I was saved from making that mistake. Nader was a change agent, sure enough, and his role in the election was decisive. However, up in the balcony in "MemAud," few of us likely realized we were cheering on the instigation of the Iraq War, the flooding of New Orleans, etc., etc., etc.

Anyway, more recently, Nader's name has again returned to the political picture to illustrate another paradox. This time the audience is smaller and the view is retrospective. The argument is that "public interest" law groups (such as Nader's Public Citizen) may have used legal means in the moment to pursue safer cars, cleaner air, and other environmental protections — but by undermining trust in the "administrative state," have ultimately set back our government's ability to efficiently deliver forward-thinking public services. Just as Nader's presidential campaign is interpreted quite differently with the benefit of hindsight, his campaigns against federal regulatory agencies are now being reinterpreted as having somewhat more in common with Reagan declaring that "government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem."

The recent pop-political book Abundance draws a straight line from Nader's innovations to NIMBYs who have effectively blocked the development of housing in most every one of the metro-region neighborhoods where those of us who were hanging around the Stanford campus 25 years ago now desire to live with our partners, dogs, co-founders, and/or kids. His legal playbook of suing government agencies to ensure robust public input and thorough evaluation of impacts has been adopted by everyone — whether they're genuine in their concerns, or just want to protect their view, their free on-street parking, their status quo.

I was thinking of this reevaluation of Nader's tactics when recently reading the agreement that "mutually, amicably, and finally resolved" Brennan and Grand Street Neighbors vs. City of Alameda et al. Similar to Nader and his Raiders: a leader and his civic brigade using legal action to halt the forward momentum of an opaque government, to shift the outcome toward a more just and sustainable outcome, responsive to a broader community! Or so one could say...

(To read the settlement agreement, I myself used a product of the responsive-governance reforms of the 1960s, the California Public Records Act.)

The settlement is mainly boilerplate. Its direct effects on the project are, more or less, a single paragraph:

The Grand Street Neighbors — who appear to number two (2) in total — are now to be given more advance notice of any future meetings regarding this project than members of the City Council or Transportation Commission receive.

What a seemingly small prize for the litigant to have won. The prize of receiving an email a month before the general public.

However, that small prize came with additional accommodations: This lawsuit cost the city and the taxpayers of Alameda money — some tens of thousands of dollars to cover all of Mr. Brennan's entirely optional legal fees, in addition to the city's own expenses to defend its rightful actions. (That was a critical aspect of Nader's success. Getting funds to cover his legal forays.) And also more importantly, this lawsuit cost the city time — both in the time already sunk in court and in future time should 30 days of advance notice for a meeting date need to be calculated into project schedules. It's time that is the true prize. With each moment that opponents can eat up from an infrastructure project's timeline, they are injecting uncertainty and marginally lowering the odds of that project actually being realized.

But enough about the logic of opposition. Think of it this way: How many more classes of students at Wood Middle School will have to bike to school choosing between the unprotected bike lanes of Grand Street or cycling on the sidewalk (as many currently do)? How many families choose to instead drive their kids to school because it doesn't feel safe enough for their kids to get to school independently? There are only ~180 days in each school year. Each round of rethinking and public engagement and contracting has meant another year of students that won't benefit from safety improvements.

That said, progress is being made: This month, the city has broken ground on the first segment of the first phase of Grand Street.

But current plans and current funding will only take those improvements part of the way north (to Encinal Ave). How much longer will cyclists have to carefully watch in order to avoid being "doored" in the unprotected bike lanes of Grand Street heading to and from Clement Ave? (Clement Ave carries the Cross Alameda Trail east/west across the island. There are currently no good ways to cycle from the CAT down to Shore Line Drive's cycletrack by the beach, or vice versa.)

The city's adopted plans call for the length of Grand Street to have "low stress" (a.k.a. safe for all ages) cycling facilities "by 2030."

This blog post isn't intended to reopen any debates about the first phase of Grand Street or even to question this settlement. What's done is done. Rather, the point here is to share this agreement with the wider public that follows the city's infrastructure improvements, as it's been a minor mystery of whether the city agreed to any specific constraints that will affect the project's outcome and design. Fortunately, it has not — other than to ensure that 2 or 3 people on one of the wealthiest streets in Alameda don't miss an update on any potential future public meetings about this project. In any case, one hopes these folks do know that they — like everyone else in Alameda — are also currently welcome to provide input on a potentially magical surfing wave and a potentially magical energy generation facility.

The future is ours to build — if we can get out of our own way.