The Anatomy of Public Corruption

In May 2013, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway hired Meyers Nave

California Powerhouse: Meyers Nave


By Jeff Sistrunk
Law360, New York (July 24, 2014, 2:55 PM ET) -- In less than three decades, Meyers Nave Riback Silver & Wilson has grown from a small municipal law firm in the San Francisco Bay Area into one of the leading firms for local governments and public agencies throughout the state as well as private clients focused on complex, public-facing transportation and development projects.

From winning landmark pension reform litigation for some of the state's largest local governments to marshaling the city of San Bruno through the aftermath of a devastating pipeline explosion to representing the city of Sacramento in its ongoing efforts to build a new home for the Kings NBA franchise, Meyers Nave has flexed its muscle in the areas of environmental, labor and employment, land use, eminent domain and constitutional law.

Meyers Nave's ability to get large projects completed, secure major litigation wins and resolve crises landed the six-office firm a spot among Law360's California Powerhouses.

"One of the things that sets us apart is the complex, high-profile, bet-the-farm litigation matters that public and private entities come to Meyers Nave to handle," said David Skinner, Meyers Nave's managing partner, adding that the firm also is "on the cutting edge of handling the largest infrastructure projects in the state."

Meyers Nave was founded in San Leandro in 1986 by Steve Meyers, Michael Nave, Libby Silver and Mike Riback, who came from small or solo practices and from public agencies.

"The idea of the founding partners at the time was to start a firm that was going to be practicing public law — those areas of law that pertain to the operations of government," Meyers said. "We all had some expertise in that area and thought we could provide those services to clients through a law firm that was exclusively dedicated to that kind of work."

Some of the firm's early work included serving as city attorney for municipalities in the Bay Area and beyond, including San Leandro, Dublin, Novato and Cloverdale.

Meyers Nave relocated its San Leandro office to Oakland in 2003, a move that coincided with the firm's expansion into new practice areas and regions. Today, Meyers Nave boasts a bench of 75 attorneys practicing in 18 distinct areas of law, with 50 lawyers located in the firm's Oakland headquarters and the others spread among offices in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno and Santa Rosa.

Amrit Kulkarni, chair of Meyers Nave's land use practice group, noted that the firm's expansion in the 2000s was driven by greater demand by clients for multidisciplinary legal services in connection with some of the largest and most complex transportation and development projects around the state.

Although Meyers Nave has broadened its reach, it has remained firmly in touch with its roots in public agency service, currently serving as city attorney for more than 20 California municipalities and as special counsel for many more.

The firm has taken the lead in helping local governments in California address issues relating to public employee pensions and retiree health care coverage.

"We've helped a number of agencies that have faced crises in which you had long-term labor contracts and very significant post-employment benefit obligations, and the agency sought to restructure those," said Art Hartinger, chair of Meyers Nave's labor and employment practice group. "We've helped to fashion long-term plans for fiscal sustainability and helped put those plans in place."

After a decade of budget shortfalls, the city of San Jose enlisted Meyers Nave to analyze its authority to tweak its retirement system via ordinances or charter amendments. The firm's analysis led the City Council to propose a ballot measure, known as Measure B, to create "second-tier" benefits for new city employees and increase contributions by current employees to their retiree benefit plans. The initiative passed with 70 percent of voters in favor.

But the city's plan was targeted in a slew of lawsuits by unions and retirees, which were consolidated and tried. Meyers Nave prevailed on a significant number of the issues, with a state court in 2014 validating 12 of the measure's 15 provisions. The case is now before an appeals court.

"A lot of eyes are on that case in terms of potentially making new or different law in the areas of pension reform," Hartinger said.

In another prominent case, the Ninth Circuit in February held that thousands of retired employees of Meyers Nave client Orange County don't have an implied contractual right to pool their health insurance premiums with those of current employees, affirming a lower court’s ruling in favor of the county.

Orange County had developed a multipart program to address an unfunded liability for retiree health insurance that was initially estimated at $1.4 billion, prompting the 6,000-member Retired Employees Association of Orange County to sue in an effort to force the county to reinstate a practice that had subsidized retiree health insurance premiums for many years.

Meyers Nave's expertise in representing public agencies also extends to the realm of crisis management. The city of San Bruno retained the firm immediately after a deadly pipeline explosion in September 2010 that killed eight people, injured several dozen more and destroyed 38 homes.

"Public agencies often find themselves dealing with areas of law that one might not easily predict, and this is one example," Meyers said. "I doubt that the city of San Bruno thought that they would be spending up to four years before state and federal pipeline regulatory agencies, and yet that's exactly what's happened."

Initially, Meyers Nave's job was to guide the city through the National Transportation Safety Board and federal regulatory processes, and that led to negotiations with the pipeline's operator, Pacific Gas & Electric Co. The firm secured a two-part settlement with PG&E — $70 million to compensate San Bruno for the disaster and $50 million to help the city defray the costs of rebuilding and dealing with the aftereffects of the blast.

In public investigatory hearings before the NTSB and the California Public Utilities Commission, Meyers Nave developed and presented much of the evidence that would later form the backbone of federal prosecutors' April 2014 criminal complaint against PG&E. The firm also prepared and filed San Bruno's request that the CPUC impose $2.25 billion worth of fines and penalties against PG&E for alleged safety violations leading up to the explosion.

"We still don't have some of the decisions out of the Public Utilities Commission on the prosecutorial matters that we've been participating in, but we have confidence that the results will be the largest fine of an investor-owned public utility in California's history," Meyers said.

While the San Bruno matter "has taken a great deal of our time and effort," it has resulted in "some pretty significant achievements working to the direct benefit of the city, but also helping California deal with aging infrastructure and pipeline safety," Meyers said.

"Ultimately, this will affect all cities in California that have gas distribution systems," he said.

Meyers Nave's work with San Bruno has led to other assignments from California cities and counties dealing with similar subjects and utility issues.

"The specifics of this case are probably not as important as the overall consequences of the assignment, in terms of building a practice area and building a firm that can deal with hot issues that require a multidisciplinary approach," Meyers said. "I think our experience with San Bruno has greatly benefited the firm and given us a whole new practice area within which to expand our operations statewide."

Meyers Nave's representation of both public and private entities in their development of large-scale projects around the state requires extensive coordination among attorneys across practice areas, as the projects involve land use, eminent domain, environmental, labor and employment, construction and other issues, Kulkarni said.

"We are very fortunate that we have a broad depth of expertise in these areas spread throughout our offices," Kulkarni said. "Our experts are available to our clients anytime, anyplace, regardless of where they're located."

In Southern California, Meyers Nave was retained by Los Angeles International Airport to advise on environmental compliance for its $3.2 billion master plan and runway expansion. That work led to the firm's retention by the Port of Los Angeles as outside counsel on transactional and litigation matters related to the port’s plans to expand the capacity, increase the efficiency and reduce the environmental impacts of its container terminals.

In May 2013, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway hired Meyers Nave to represent it in connection with the development of a $500 million high-tech intermodal facility that would allow goods from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach to be transferred onto trains closer to the ports. The firm is defending BNSF in seven now-consolidated suits challenging the adequacy of the eight-year environmental review prepared for the project, in what Kulkarni said is one of the biggest California Environmental Quality Act suits currently pending in the state.

Further up the coast, Meyers Nave has been retained by the city of Sacramento to help implement its plan for revitalizing the city's downtown area, which includes a highly contentious proposal for a $477 million basketball arena for the Kings NBA franchise. In March, the firm secured a ruling granting the city possession of the vacant Macy's store presently sitting where the planned arena will be built.

"Our land use and eminent domain lawyers are working hand in hand with the city to ensure that the facility will be built on the schedule that is part of the deal to keep the Sacramento Kings in town, rather than moving to Seattle," Kulkarni said.

Meyers Nave is representing Sacramento in several suits stemming from the arena project, including environmental challenges. The project is so significant that the California State Legislature passed special legislation governing the litigation of the CEQA suits.

"We take great pride in being part of a team with our clients and we like to get results," Kulkarni said. "When lawsuits are filed, as is often the case with major projects, we litigate aggressively to ensure that our clients' plans and visions become a reality. Ultimately, the firm's greatest reward is seeing these projects built and contribute to the vitality of the state."

--Editing by Jeremy Barker and Katherine Rautenberg.
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Trump 9/11 Spoken like a real New Yorker

Republican Presidential frontrunner Donald Trump didn't back down from his controversial comments about 9/11 Monday night, saying residents of Jersey City, NJ celebrated the World Trade Center attacks.

Trump, speaking at a rally in Columbus, OH said he has received "hundreds" of phone calls and tweets from people who claim to have seen the celebrations.

"Lo and behold I start getting phone calls in my office by the hundreds, that they were there and they saw this take place on the internet," Trump said in Ohio.

Trump also quoted from the Sept. 18, 2001 Washington Post article which described how authorities detained people "allegedly seen celebrating the attacks and holding tailgate-style parties on rooftops while they watched the devastation on the other side of the river."

Trump told ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that "there were people that were cheering on the other side of New Jersey where you have large Arab population."

"They were cheering as the World Trade Center came down," he added. "I know it might be not politically correct for you to talk about it, but there were people cheering as that building came down -- as those buildings came down, and that tells you something. It was well covered at the time."

The mayor of Jersey City said Trump was "plain wrong."

Several of Trump's fellow GOP candidates, including Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio have condemned Trump's remarks. Ben Carson retracted his comments that he had seen "newsreels" of American Muslims celebrating 9/11, explaining that he confused it with footage from the Middle East.

"It's not true," Marco Rubio said today in Iowa. "And there's plenty of fact-checks to prove that it isn't."
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Judge Golub - Facing Obstruction Charges



Walnut Creek CA
In 2004, Judge Golub is a resident of Danville CA, he was a member of Pack 36, his step children attended Green Valley Elementary School. We both know Stephen Tanabe, Chris Butler, Lombardi, and Norman Wielsch who've been indicted and convicted.

Howard V. Golub, teachers at Montair Elementary and Green Valley assisted with kidnapping my sons then systematically taking away my assets, interfered with customers, destroyed my software business but never realized my role in a larger FBI investigation.

They've been wiretapped for over ten years.

He was an officer of the court - he forget to follow the laws he's supposed to administer.



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Constitutional Law

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Obit: LLHS Wife of Coach Dead

and teacher, loses wife to cancer, leaving behind four adopted children

Note: 

by Kate Didion

Co-Sports Editor

The whole family had only been together for a month.

las_lomasJeff Loving and his wife Brenda had returned from Ethiopia with their two adopted children, Lailie, now 4, and Landon, now 3, to add to their family that already included Luke and Linnea, 5, whom had also been adopted from Ethiopia.

Four weeks after their return, Brenda was diagnosed with terminal cancer. For the next year, Brenda was in and out of the hospital, undergoing chemotherapy treatments.

Now, Loving can’t even be in a room with a picture of his wife, who died Nov. 9.

“It’s too hard to see her,” said Loving. “You see pictures of those happier times. It’s hard to see. You miss the person, and you miss what your life was. Getting used to that is hard.”

These days, Loving said his bedroom is “like a Motel 6.”

“All the pictures are gone,” he said. “Her stuff is gone. The bathroom is empty. I was just used to seeing her stuff there.”

Beyond struggling with his own grief, Loving has had to help his children learn to manage their own.

“I check in with them a lot,” he said. “They’re like, ‘I miss Mommy. I want to talk to her.’ They see my emotion too, which is good, and we talk about it.”

Loving keeps telling them stories about their mother in order to keep her in their lives. But still, death is a hard concept for his young kids to understand.

“Landon still runs into the room and looks for her and asks where she is,” he said. “That’s hard, explaining it to them, and they ask a lot of questions.”

The Lovings began the adoption process after infertility kept them from conceiving naturally. The paperwork is lengthy and legal process is long and arduous, but it was worth it for the Lovings, who might have had even more kids if Brenda had not gotten sick.

“We wanted to have a bigger family,” he said.

When the Lovings decided to adopt two more children from Ethiopia after getting Luke and Linnea, they ran into problems.

“We had run out of money and we didn’t know how we were going to get them,” he said. “Ethiopia was clamping down on everything and the adoptions were coming to a halt, yet magically there was a handful of people that got to go, and we got to go. It’s not accident, because if we had gotten back four weeks later, as heartbreaking as it would have been, we could not have gone and gotten those kids. God wanted those two kids here, no question.”

The family attends North Creek Church, whose members have provided support for the Lovings over the last year.

“I’ve gone there pretty much my whole life,” he said. “They’ve been amazing. You name it, they’ve done it. My car was broken down, and the head pastor came and gave me his car and took my car and got it fixed. It’s crazy, the amount of love and support.”

The love and support has been coming in from many places—the WCI and Las Lomas communities, neighbors and even strangers.

Loving said a man recently came to his door in tears. He told Loving that he had seen his story on the news and wanted to help.

“He pulls out three one-hundred-dollar bills, then gets in his car and drives away,” he said. “I’ve never seen him before in my life. It’s very humbling to have all these people that want to help you.”

Proceeds from the Las Lomas Basketball Alumni Game on Nov. 27 were donated to the Loving family. Loving, who coached the Las Lomas boys teamfor 12 years, was there with his kids.

One of Loving’s former students, Aly Walsh, started a GoFundMe page to raise money for the family. In the month since its creation, the campaign has raised over $70,000 from over 8000 people.

People have also been leaving comments on the page, offering words of encouragement and love. Loving says that these short notes and the cards he gets are the most encouraging things.

“I love going to the mailbox and getting cards,” he said. “What’s nice is to see that people want to help you—and reading the little notes. That is the best part for me.”

Another website was created after Brenda’s diagnosis that allowed people to sign up to bring meals, buy groceries, and help out the Loving family. For over a year, every slot has been filled, and the Lovings have received five meals a week, as well as all of their groceries bought.

The seemingly endless generosity of the community has touched Loving.

“I want to be grateful and thankful for these people that have done a lot for me, not to take it for granted and appreciate it for what it is,” he said.

Loving’s involvement with the church and his faith have also helped him deal with his grief.

“God is sovereign over all of this. He’s in control of all of this,” he said. “I trust his plan for her. His plan to take her then is perfect, and I believe that. As much grief as I have over losing her, I honestly believe she’s in heaven, in paradise, right now, without pain and without suffering. So why did he do this? I don’t know, and I may never know. It may be played out in the days ahead, but I have complete trust and faith in that.”

Even so, Loving still struggles to find peace.

“The process of grief is one of those things you’ve just got to go through,” he said. “It’s not like you can hide from it. I try to stay busy, but if it’s there, it’s there, and you’ve just got to deal with it. It’s hard that you’re in a house that you’ve built together, painted the walls together, and it’s like every drawer you open, there’s something there that reminds me of her every time.”

Loving said that the most important thing people should know is that the family is okay.

“The best thing people can do is pray for us,” he said. “Pray for peace and comfort. One of my biggest prayer requests is that the kids are resilient through this and that it doesn’t just break them in life. That would be hard. I want them to be able to survive this, and have good, happy lives.”

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Lockheed Martin and Dick Cheney



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Mormon Murders - The Murder of an Accenture Employee (Mormon Bishop)


Mortem Sibi Conscivit - Sucides

Sepember 23rd, 2014
Pete Bennett addresses the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors. The room was filled with county leaders safety, fire and hospital leadership.
My comments:
  • PG&E Explosions are Domestic Terrorism
  • Domestic Terrorism
  • Poison
  • Bacteria
  • Decades of unfullflled police reports
On September 29th, 2014
 A national news story ran about a family of five found dead.  The Strack's were my nephews and yes the obsfucated police report are part of the story. 
Suicide

Homeless Homicides

On Februry 23rd, 2012, I learned the Todd Cambra, a homeless person in Walnut Creek CA was in John Muir Hospital after being run over on S. California Blvd., began searching for Keith Richards (Alias) after learning he was out of the hospital.
Homeless Homicides

Mormon Murders

My first real contact with Mormons wasn't good as I arrived home with the Kings of Cultism in my house.
The way the Mormons operate is like a chess board, they Sacrafice Pawns, then roooks then it goes on to Bishop on f1 to g2, g2 pawn to g3?
  • Mormon Temples
  • Stakes
  • Wards
  • Dead Bishops, Dead Members and you'll see #MormonMurders
  • Next to them are
    • #deadlitigants ~ Contra Costa Superior Court
    • #deadattorneys ~ Contra Costa County Bar
    • #deadwitnesses ~ Kinder Morgan
Mormon Murders
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The Stolen Truck and Stolen Music Gear


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The Catellus Derailment : Ouster of CEO is Latest Chapter in Saga of Struggle


The Catellus Derailment : Ouster of CEO is Latest Chapter in Saga of Struggle

February 28, 1994|DAVID W. MYERS and CHRIS KRAUL | TIMES STAFF WRITERS

The news last week that the top executive at Catellus Development Corp. in San Francisco will resign is the latest twist in a long struggle by California's largest private landowner to turn nearly 1 million acres--once owned by the nation's railroad barons--into a vast real estate empire.
The expected departure of Catellus Chief Executive Vernon B. Schwartz was engineered by the California Public Employees Retirement System (CalPERS), officials close to the company and pension fund say privately. CalPERS owns more than 40% of the company's stock.
Schwartz declined to be interviewed. So did senior officials at CalPERS, the giant pension fund in Sacramento that invests the retirement money of more than 800,000 of the state's current and retired workers.
CalPERS officials had been lobbying for drastic changes at Catellus because they were tired of seeing the company's stock go nowhere and of listening to management blame the firm's misfortunes on California's weak real estate market.
The pension fund has seen the value of its initial $473-million investment in Catellus cut in half in recent years. Even its financial adviser, who initially recommended that CalPERS buy the stock, now doubts that the fund can recoup these losses any time this century.
"This whole thing has turned out to be a catastrophe for investors, especially CalPERS," said Burland East, an analyst who follows Catellus for Kemper Securities in Chicago. "It's not all Catellus' fault--there's plenty of blame to be spread around."
(The losses represent no danger to the health of the fund itself, East noted. CalPERS has assets that exceed $80 billion, making it the largest public pension fund in the nation.)
Catellus--which transportation giant Santa Fe Pacific Corp. established as an independent, publicly traded company in 1990--is involved in about a dozen megaprojects from San Francisco to San Diego. It also owns more than 900,000 acres of land across the state--an amount twice the size of Orange County.
While Catellus' once-bright prospects have certainly been dimmed by California's real estate recession, it has also been hurt by forces ranging from slow-growth advocates to toxic waste.
Catellus' joint-venture in the once-thriving Pacific Design Center in West Hollywood is suffering, as its wealthy clients have cut back their spending. A plan to build a massive mixed-use complex at downtown Los Angeles' Union Station has been caught up in controversy and legal disputes. So has another proposal to develop a 16-acre site in downtown San Diego.
And then there is Mission Bay in San Francisco, the company's most ambitious project--and perhaps its most problem-plagued.
The 313-acre, $2-billion development would front the bay about a mile south of downtown and would be the largest in the city's history. Plans call for 8,700 homes and more than 6 million square feet of offices, shops and light-industrial space.
But the project has languished on the drawing boards for years, as first Santa Fe and then Catellus wrangled with everyone from local no-growth advocates to government environmental officials.
Conservationists wanted the company to build fewer offices and preserve more of its wetlands. Housing advocates pushed for lower rents and cheaper selling prices. Environmental agencies wanted Catellus to clean up the toxic-laced site, which was previously used as a dump for everything from 1906 earthquake rubble to parts from old locomotives.
Catellus worked out a compromise with each of the groups and received the city's conditional approval for the project in 1991. But the permission came with so many strings attached that Catellus does not expect to break ground until next year at the earliest.
"Mission Bay is a great project, but it has just taken too long to get it off the ground," said John Lutzius, an analyst who follows Catellus for Newport Beach-based Green Street Advisors. "And all the while the land just sits there, it's eating up cash without generating any income."
No one expected delays this long back in the 1980s, when Santa Fe started mulling the plan to establish Catellus as an investor-owned company to develop vast real estate holdings acquired in the previous 100 years.
Much of the property stood in the middle of key transportation hubs, bustling commercial areas or fast-growing suburbs. Raw-land prices for less desirable parcels were rising as much as 20% a year.
CalPERS first got involved in 1989 when, in a private sale of stock, it bought a 20% stake in Catellus at the urging of advisers at Chicago-based JMB Realty Corp.
The pension fund paid $398 million for about 10.5 million shares--or nearly $38 a share--and also invested another $75 million in a convertible security. CalPERS felt the move was a smart long term investment that would pay off when the properties were developed.
But by late 1990, when shares in Catellus began trading publicly for the first time, California real estate prices had already begun their steep descent.
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RussDarby.com - Alamo Mormons @mormon @senfeinstein @CBRE ‏@CBRE_UK @G4S @gatesfoundation @SueDHellmann


Alamo CA 2004


Connecting 40 years of murders back to a core group.

Back in December 2004, I met Alicia Driscoll, six months later she was found in a Murder Suicide with her daughter Jineva, around that time Chad Cordon was allegedly injured in a school bus accident on Lilac Drive Walnut Creek near where Adam Milford was found, near where a body was allegedly found along the same creek.
In 2004 someone swapped out the trailer ball on F-250 and later that night my trailer flipped on Stone Valley Road where 25 years of my legal documents were stolen by Alamo 1st Members but in 2011 the FBI arrested police officers from Danville, later indicted Albert D. Seeno for the Builder Bailout fraud.
The files were lost to Alamo 1st members who are connected to Safeway CEO Steve Burd, Super Lawyer James Greenan, his murdered son Nate Greenan and Russ Darby litigation leads to the Buchanan Family, another set of murder victims?

Connecting an Arson to Senator Feinstein

CBRE: A prominent employee of Richard Blum was once our Mormon Home Teacher. My ex-wife was raised at Alamo 1st where she converted after her father died (Cancer) in 1975.

Connecting the H-1b visa to Bennett and Senator Feinstein

Senator Feinstein was the defacto ardent supporter of the H-1b visa whereas Bennett operated a web against the visa and outsourcing, we've appeared in the same segments, been quoted for opposing opinions.
Today she lives in a Mansion and I'm sleeping outside (Summer 2016) but as the years passed by police officers were arrested, more fires, more murders and then one day I connected the dots leading to the murders of children.
The incident tracker can be found here but eventually will be served from petebennett.net
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The Santa Fe Murder Railways - Key System




For other uses, see Key system (disambiguation).

Key System logo
The Key System (or Key Route) was a privately owned company that provided mass transit in the cities of Oakland, Berkeley, Alameda,[1] Emeryville, Piedmont, San Leandro, Richmond, Albany and El Cerrito in the eastern San Francisco Bay Area from 1903 until 1960, when it was sold to a newly formed public agency, AC Transit.
The Key System consisted of local streetcar and bus lines in the East Bay, and commuter rail and bus lines connecting the East Bay to San Francisco by a ferry pier on San Francisco Bay, later via the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. At its height during the 1940s, the Key System had over 66 miles (106 km) of track.
The local streetcars were discontinued in 1948 and the commuter trains to San Francisco were discontinued in 1958. The Key System's territory is today served by BART and AC Transit bus service.

Contents

History

Early years

The system was a consolidation of several streetcar lines assembled in the late 1890s and early 1900s by Francis Marion "Borax" Smith, an entrepreneur who made a fortune in his namesake mineral, and then turned to real estate and electric traction. The Key System began as the San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose Railway (SFOSJR), incorporated in 1902. Service began on October 26, 1903 with a 4-car train carrying 250 passengers, departing downtown Berkeley for the ferry pier. Before the end of 1903, the general manager of the SFOSJR devised the idea of using a stylized map on which the system's routes resembled an old-fashioned key, with three "handle loops" that covered the cities of Berkeley, Piedmont (initially, "Claremont" shared the Piedmont loop) and Oakland, and a "shaft" in the form of the Key pier, the "teeth" representing the ferry berths at the end of the pier. The company touted its 'key route', which led to the adoption of the name "Key System".
In 1908, the SFOSJR changed its name to the San Francisco, Oakland & San Jose Consolidated Railway, changed to the San Francisco-Oakland Terminal Railway in 1912. This went bankrupt in December 1923 and was re-organized as the Key System Transit Co., transforming a marketing buzzword into the name of the company.
Following the Great Crash of 1929, a holding company called the Railway Equipment & Realty Co. was created, with the subsidiary Key System Ltd running the commuter trains. In 1938, the name became the Key System.
During World War II, the Key System built and operated the Shipyard Railway between a transfer station in Emeryville and the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond.

National City Lines era

National City Lines acquired 64% of the stock in the system in 1946.[2]
The same year E. Jay Quinby hand published a document exposing the ownership of National City Lines (General Motors, Firestone Tire, and Phillips Petroleum). He addressed the publication to The Mayors; The City Manager; The City Transit Engineer; The members of The Committee on Mass-Transportation and The Tax-Payers and The Riding Citizens of Your Community. In it he wrote This is an urgent warning to each and every one of you that there is a careful, deliberately planned campaign to swindle you out of your most important and valuable public utilities–your Electric Railway System.[3]
The new owners made a number of rapid changes. In 1946 they cut back the A-1 train route and then the express trains in 1947. The company increased fares in 1946 and then in both January and November 1947. During the period there were many complaints of overcrowding.[4]
On April 9, 1947, nine corporations and seven individuals (constituting officers and directors of certain of the corporate defendants) were indicted in the Federal District Court of Southern California on two counts: 'conspiring to acquire control of a number of transit companies, forming a transportation monopoly' and 'Conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies to companies owned by National City Lines'.[5] They were convicted of conspiring to monopolize sales of buses and supplies. They were acquitted of conspiring to monopolize the ownership of these companies.
In 1948 they proposed a plan to convert all the streetcars to buses.[6] They placed an advertisement in the local papers explaining their plan to 'modernize' and 'motorize' Line 14.[7] Oakland city council opposed the plan by 5–3.[2] The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) supported the plan which included large fare increases.[6] In October 1948, 700 people signed a petition with the PUC "against the Key System, seeking restoration of the bus service on the #70 Chabot Bus line".[4] The councils of Oakland, Berkeley and San Leandro opposed the removal of street cars. The traffic planners supported removal of the streetcar lines to facilitate movement of automobiles.[2] Local governments in the East Bay attempted to purchase the Key System, but were unsuccessful.
Streetcars were converted to buses during November/December 1948.[6]
In 1949 National City Lines, General Motors and others were convicted of conspiring to monopolize the sale of buses and related products to their subsidiary transit companies throughout the U.S.[8]
Between 1946 and 1954 transbay fares increased from 20¢ to 50¢. Fares in this period were used to operate and for 'motorisation' which included streetcar track removal, repaving, purchase of new buses and the construction of bus maintenance facilities. Transbay ridership fell from 22.2 million in 1946 to 9.8 million in 1952.[4]
The Key System's famed commuter train system was dismantled in 1958 after many years of declining ridership as well by the corrupt monopolistic efforts of National City Lines. The last run was on April 20, 1958. In 1960, the newly formed publicly owned AC Transit took over the Key System's facilities.
Most of the rolling stock was scrapped, with some sold to Buenos Aires, Argentina. Several streetcars, interurbans and bridge units were salvaged for collections in the United States. Of the large bridge units, three are at the Western Railway Museum near Rio Vista, California[9] while another is at the Orange Empire Railway Museum in southern California.

System details

The initial connection across the Bay to San Francisco was by ferryboat via a causeway and pier ("mole"), extending from the end of Yerba Buena Avenue in Oakland, California westward 16,000 feet (4,900 m) to a ferry terminal near Yerba Buena Island. Filling for the causeway had been started by a short-lived narrow-gauge railroad company in the late 19th century, the California and Nevada Railroad. "Borax" Smith acquired the causeway from the California and Nevada upon its bankruptcy. The Key System operated a fleet of ferries between the Key Route Pier[10] and the San Francisco Ferry Building until 1939 when a new dual track opened on the south side of the lower deck of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge, bringing Key System trains to the then-new Transbay Terminal in San Francisco's downtown. The bridge railway and Transbay Terminal were shared with the Southern Pacific's Interurban Electric and the Sacramento Northern railroads.
The Key System's first trains were composed of standard wooden railroad passenger cars, complete with clerestory roofs. Atop each of these, a pair of pantographs, invented and manufactured by the Key System's own shops, were installed to collect current from overhead wires to power a pair of electric motors on each car, one on each truck (bogie).
The design of rolling stock changed over the years. Wood gave way to steel, and, instead of doors at each end, center doors were adopted.
The later rolling stock consisted of specially designed "bridge units" for use on the new bridge, articulated cars sharing a common central truck and including central passenger entries in each car, a forerunner of the design of most light rail vehicles today. Several of these pairs were connected to make up a train. Power pickup was via pantograph from overhead catenary wires, except on the Bay Bridge where a third rail pickup was used. The Key's trains ran on 600 volt direct current, compared to the 1200 volts used by the SP commuter trains. The cars had an enclosed operator's cab in the right front, with passenger seats extending to the very front of the vehicle, a favorite seat for many children, with dramatic views of the tracks ahead.
The exterior color of the cars was orange and cream white with a pale green stripe at the window level. Interior upholstery was woven reed seat covers in one of the articulated sections, and leather in the other, the smoking section. The flooring was linoleum. During WWII, the roofs were painted gray for aerial camouflage. After acquisition by National City Lines, all Key vehicles including the bridge units were re-painted in that company's standard colors, yellow and green.

Transbay rail lines

Until the Bay Bridge railway began operation, Key commuter trains had no letter designation. They were named for the principal street or district they served.
  • A – Downtown Oakland (was extended far into East Oakland to near the San Leandro border on the competing Southern Pacific interurban (see East Bay Electric Lines) tracks when they shut down their operations in 1941)
  • B – Lakeshore and Trestle Glen (originally ran through a Key hotel, the Key Route Inn at Grand and Broadway in Oakland; the Inn burned down in the 1930s)
  • C – Piedmont (Via 40th Street and Piedmont Avenue; alongside Pleasant Valley and Arroyo avenues; and between York Drive and Ricardo Avenue to terminus at Oakland Avenue)
  • E – Claremont (ran directly to the Claremont Hotel, terminating on a track between the two tennis courts; the tennis courts survive to this day)
  • F – Berkeley / Adeline Street (was also extended on former Southern Pacific interurban tracks on Shattuck Avenue beyond Dwight Way and through the SP's Northbrae Tunnel, terminating at Solano Avenue and The Alameda)
  • G – Westbrae Shuttle (actually, a streetcar shuttle providing a connection at University Avenue with the H transbay train)
  • H – Monterey Avenue (originally, the Sacramento Street Line; the original line ran up Hopkins, but was switched to the SP's old tracks up Monterey after 1933)
  • K – College Avenue (also a streetcar shuttle providing a connection at Alcatraz Avenue and Adeline Street with the F transbay train); this line ran extra cars and was heavily used on football game days as its terminus was only a few blocks away from UC's Memorial Stadium
  • D was reserved for a proposed line into Montclair alongside the Sacramento Northern interurban railway
The A, B, C, E and F lines were the last Key System rail lines. Train service ended on April 20, 1958, replaced by buses using the same letter designations. AC Transit preserved the letter-designated routes when it took over the Key System two years later, and are still in use; AC Transit's B, C, E, F, G and H lines follow roughly the corresponding Key routes and neighborhoods.

East Bay Street railways

The Key System's streetcars operated as a separate division under the name "Oakland Traction Company", later changed to "East Bay Street Railways. Ltd" and finally "East Bay Transit Co.," reflecting the increasing use of buses. The numbering of the streetcar lines changed several times over the years. The Key System's streetcars operated out of several carbarns. The Central Carhouse was on the east side of Lake Merritt on Third Avenue. The Western Carhouse was located at 51st and Telegraph Avenue in the Temescal District of Oakland. The Elmhurst Carhouse was in the east Oakland district of Elmhurst. The Northern Carhouse was in Richmond. In the early years of operation, these were supplemented by a number of smaller carbarns scattered throughout the East Bay area, many of them inherited from the pre-Key companies acquired by "Borax" Smith. The Key streetcars were painted dark green and cream white until they were re-painted in the green and yellow scheme of National City Lines after NCL acquired the Key System.[11]
The Key System had ordered 40 trolley coaches from ACF-Brill in 1945 to convert the East Bay trolley lines. The new NCL management canceled the Key's trackless program in 1946 before wire changes were made, and diverted the order (some units of which were already painted for the Key and delivered to Oakland) to its own Los Angeles Transit Lines where they ran until 1963.[12] The last Key streetcars ran in 1948, replaced by buses.

Related rail systems

  • The Key System organized its freight business in 1929 as the Key Terminal Railway, Ltd. In 1938, the name was changed to the Oakland Terminal Railroad, Ltd. In 1943 the Oakland Terminal Railroad was jointly purchased by the Western Pacific Railroad and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway and is now known as the Oakland Terminal Railway.
  • See also the East Bay Electric Lines; another transbay commuter rail system operated by the Southern Pacific in the East Bay until 1941.
  • See also the Sacramento Northern Railroad, an interurban system running from Chico through Sacramento to Oakland which also used some of the Key System's trackage as well as the Key System's ferry pier, and later ran to the Transbay Terminal until 1941.

Other properties

From the beginning, the Key System had been conceived as a dual real estate and transportation system. "Borax" Smith and his partner Frank C. Havens first established a company called the "Realty Syndicate" which acquired large tracts of undeveloped land throughout the East Bay. The Realty Syndicate also built two large hotels, each served by a San Francisco-bound train, the Claremont and the Key Route Inn, and a popular amusement park in Oakland called Idora Park. Streetcar lines were also routed to serve all these properties, thereby enhancing their value. In its early years, the Key System was actually a subsidiary of the Realty Syndicate. Berkeley's numerous paths, lanes, walks and steps, were put in place in many of the newly developed neighborhoods, often in the middle of a city block, so that commuters could walk more directly to the new train system. Berkeley's pathways are still maintained by local groups.

Legacy


Key System car #187 preserved at Western Railway Museum
Signs of the system still remain.
  • The elevated loop at San Francisco's Transbay Transit Terminal, with some modifications to the original design, was used until the terminal's closure on August 6, 2010 by AC Transit buses to drop off passengers and return to the East Bay as the Key System once did. The loop was completely demolished in 2010-11 as part of the project to replace the old Transbay Terminal with a new structure scheduled for completion in 2017.
  • The south wall[13] of the lower level (today's eastbound lanes) of the Yerba Buena Tunnel, connecting the two spans of the Bay Bridge, still contains the as-built "deadman holes", regularly spaced nooks into which railway workers could duck whenever a train came along.
  • The eastern end of the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge sits on landfill which was added to the northern edge of the causeway which carried the Key System railbed to the ferry piers.
  • The underpass tunnel used by transbay trains on their way to the Oakland ferry pier (and later to the Bay Bridge) to cross under the Southern Pacific (now Union Pacific and AMTRAK) mainline tracks, is today still in use for an access road leading to the East Bay Municipal Utility District (EBMUD) sewage treatment plant. The road is gated, but visible at the far southwest corner of the parking lot of the Orchard Supply and Hardware outlet in Emeryville, and also from the new Bay Bridge bikeway.
  • A stretch of road in Albany that was built with a wide median for a planned extension (never constructed) of the "G" Westbrae line is named Key Route Boulevard.
  • The Claremont Hotel, built by a Key System affiliate company, The Realty Syndicate, survives as the Claremont Resort. It was the terminus of the "E" transbay line.
  • The Realty Syndicate Building at 1440 Broadway was built in 1912 and housed "Borax" Smith and Frank C. Havens's Realty Syndicate that created the Key System.[14] It is listed on the National Historic Register.[15]
  • The Key System's subsequent administrative headquarters building, built as the Security Bank and Trust Company Building in 1914, still exists at 1100 Broadway in downtown Oakland and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[16] The building suffered some damage in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake and is currently unoccupied.
  • A building which today houses a restaurant at 41st Street and Piedmont Avenue in Oakland is the partial remnant of what was formerly a covered stop for trains on the C-line. (The tracks followed 40th Street, crossed Howe Street and curved through the parking lot behind Piedmont Avenue shops, then merged onto Piedmont Avenue at 41st Street and headed toward Pleasant Valley Avenue.) There are old photos of the Key System on the walls of the restaurant as well as a mural of Key System images on one of its outside walls. In December 2014, the mural was destroyed during renovation of the building. This act, apparently done swiftly and without public notice, has stirred considerable controversy [17]
  • The old Key System Piedmont shops building at Bay Place and Harrison is now a Whole Foods Market retail store. This building was originally built in 1890 as the powerhouse and car barn of the Piedmont Cable Car Co. In the 1920s it was substantially remodeled and used as a Cadillac showroom which closed in the mid-1990s. The building sat vacant until 2003 when Whole Foods initiated a radical interior redesign while retaining and restoring much of the facade.
  • The bus yards of today's AC Transit in Emeryville and Richmond were originally the bus yards of the Key System. The Richmond yard was also previously the site of the Northern Carhouse of the Key streetcar system.
  • Several streetcars and bridge trains from the Key System are preserved at the Western Railway Museum at Rio Vista Junction in Solano County, as well as a Bridge Unit at the Orange Empire Railroad Museum in Perris, California and a streetcar at Seashore Trolley Museum in Kennebunk, Maine.[18]
  • One of the 0-4-0 Steam locomotives used to push the trains during power outages is on display at the Redwood Valley Railroad. It had a brief stint on the currently re-constructing Virginia and Truckee Railroad in Virginia City, Nevada. Here, the mountain grades proved too taxing for the little locomotive. It was later replaced by 2–8–0 Steam locomotive No. 29.[19]
  • Though built by the Southern Pacific Railroad, the Key System inherited the Northbrae Tunnel alignment, which it operated from 1942 through 1958. It was converted to street use in 1963.

See also

References








  • Old Alameda's transit system was less confusing













  • "Traffic Engineers vs. Transit Patrons". Archived from the original on 2012-02-04.













  • "Paving the Way for Buses – The Great GM Streetcar Conspiracy Part II – The Plot Clots". Bay Crossings. May 2003. E. Jay Quinby, a mercurial rail fan, former electric traction employee, retired Lieutenant Commander in the Navy (World War II), and home builder of a battery-powered electric Volkswagen. His contribution to this story was to hand publish and expose the owners of National City Lines (GM, Firestone, and Phillips Petroleum) and he addressed it to "The Mayors; The City Manager; The City Transit Engineer; The members of The Committee on Mass-Transportation and The Tax-Payers and The Riding Citizens of Your Community." In 1946, he sent his 36-page analysis, which began: "This is an urgent warning to each and every one of you that there is a careful, deliberately planned campaign to swindle you out of your most important and valuable public utilities–your Electric Railway System."













  • "The Desired Result: Drive People to Drive". Archived from the original on 2012-02-04.













  • "United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit". 1951. Archived from the original on 2008-06-08. On April 9, 1947, nine corporations and seven individuals, constituting officers and directors of certain of the corporate defendants, were indicted on two counts, the second of which charged them with conspiring to monopolize certain portions of interstate commerce, in violation of Section 2 of the Anti-trust Act, 15 U.S.C.A. § 2.













  • "The Fight to Save the Streetcars and Electric Trains". Archived from the original on 2012-02-04.













  • "Newspaper ad (reduced from actual size) from Oakland Tribune, 1/23/48:". Archived from the original on 2012-03-14.













  • See appeals court ruling: Altlaw.org













  • WRM equipment roster.













  • Exhibit Name: Trains of Oakland, Oakland Museum of California













  • Key System Streetcars, by Vernon Sappers, Signature Press, 2007













  • The Yellow Cars of Los Angeles, by Jim Walker. Interurbans Press, 1977.













  • San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge Lower Deck Eastbound Drive http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9Eo5-PpPVU (visible at 4:15 to 4:35)













  • "Oakland" by Annalee Allen, Edmund Clausen. p. 32













  • Downtown Historic Oakland - National Historic Register #98000813













  • "Oakland California Landmarks". Retrieved 2010-04-02. See also National Register of Historic Places listings in Alameda County, California.













  • [url = https://localwiki.org/oakland/Key_Route_Plaza_mural "Oakland wiki: Key Route Plaza mural"]. Retrieved on 2015-04-18.













  • "Key System in Preserved North American Electric Cars Roster". Retrieved on 2009-08-18.









    1. Virginia & Truckee. Virginiaandtruckee.com (1902-07-14). Retrieved on 2013-07-15.

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