It's Jimmy Buffett Friday on the John Phillips Show. Johnny is back on Monday. It's Randy Wang here and the phone number to join us is eight hundred two two two five two two two one eight hundred two two two five two two two. You can email us at Johnny Don't like show at gmail dot com. You can search for the John Phillipshow wherever you get your podcasts, and subscribe for free to my new substack. It's the
California Report. I take all the videos that I curate for the John Phillips Show and I put them in an easy to find place. You'll see all the Southern California stories, the Bay Area stories, Sacramento, San Diego, Central Valley, the gubernatorial race, even the crime blodder stories. Will be posted every single day on The California Report. Going to Randywangradio dot substack dot com. That's Randy Wangradio dot substack
dot com. And if you subscribe for free, it goes straight to your email every day when I post it right before the show. Matt Mayhen is making a little bit of a political earthquake with his late entry into the governor's race. He's already picked up some notable endorsements, including several members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, Tom Wolf, and even Rick Caruso has endorsed Matt Mayhen for governor. Quite frankly, Rick Caruso, in his endorsement says
he told Matt Mayhen to run. So if you're wondering why Rick Caruso is not running for governor, it could be that he thought Matt Mayhen had a better chance and was going to occupy the same lane as him. Now is Rick Caruso going to put his money behind Mayheen? One would hope, because Matt Mayhen is probably the most centrist candidate that is out there that has a chance. Antonio Viragosa, I'm so sorry you don't have a chance, but you know, keep trying. Matt Mayheen did an interview
last night with our friend Elex michael On. The story is on CNN. Let's give it a listen.
We don't just need to be against something, We need to be for something, a government that proves it can solve problems for working people.
Once again, how about that? What a novel concept. If we have positive outcomes, people will vote for us because our ideas worked instead of you know, the typical politics of no, the other side's worse.
Look, I don't know if Matt Mahon has the chance to win.
I don't know if the appetite of the primary voters are going to be in for Matt Mayhan. But he certainly sounds a lot more pragmatic and common sense than most of the people who are running on the Democrat side. Honestly, in a lot of ways, he sounds closer to a Steve Hilton than he does to a Katie Porter Lied.
But we'll see. But let's hear what he had to say to Elex.
That is San Jose Mayor. Matt Mahon on his first official day as a candidate for California governor. You see him there with his wife and kids. The moderate Democrat who has called out the current governor, Kevin Newsom on several occasions, is getting a lot of supports, especially from Silicon Valley. Matt Mahon is a forty three year old former tech entrepreneur, a former public school teacher.
He's only forty three. Okay that he might be the youngest person. Well, how old is Ian calderone? No, he also is also ran that has no chance to win. But Eden Calderon is, oh, he's my age. In fact, he's two months younger than me, so he's forty So that would be the youngest. But for like the candidates that have a chance, that's pretty young. How young is Swallwell Eric Swallwell age? He's forty five. That's interesting and Swallow's pulling pretty well right now. I think Katie Porterge
just turned fifty. But then you have Antonio Viragosa who sounds like he's eighty, talks like he's ninety, and he's in his seventies. But yeah, Mayhan's only forty three.
Matt Mahon is a forty three year old former tech entrepreneur, a former public school teacher, a Harvard grad. He's known as a tough on crime mayor and has often criticized this state of California's approach to crime and homelessness. Let's go Live to San Jose, where Matt Mayhon joins us for the first national TV interview of his campaign for governor.
Mayor.
Welcome because the Story is is the only show on cable news that will pay attention to California politics. It's the largest state in the Union. But because all the cable networks, Fox, NBC or whatever they call it now, MS, now, CNN. Up until this show, they're all based on the East coast. California doesn't matter, But now they get Alex from nine to eleven, So California matter is a little mayor.
Welcome back to the story is and congrats on the run.
Thank you, Alex. It's going to be with you.
So when we talked about this many many times before, you said that you had young kids you wanted to focus on them, it wasn't the right time.
What changed, Well, he met all of the people that were running and was thoroughly unimpressed. I guess scrub a dub dub didn't leave a very good impression on him.
Well, I still have young kids, and we'll be focused on them. But I think it's really important that we fix our problems in California.
I believe, Hey, that's the name of the one o'clock hour of this show. I mean the short version would be fixed California, but the long version is fix all of our problems in California hour.
Fix our problems in California. I believe we can do better, Frankly, and I know it because in San Jose. We've been getting back to basics on.
This is it's it's so refreshing just to hear someone that actually is going to run on a record like, Hey, here's what I'm doing in San Jose. People seem to like it. I think I'd like to take that to higher office. It used to be that simple, but of course it's not when you consider how many of the candidates in this race don't even bring up California until like the halfway point of their commercial because it's all
about who's sitting in the Oval office. That does not matter for so many different issues, making a lot of California's problems. Most of California's problems are self inflicted and they persist whether it is a R or a D in the White House.
Making it easier to build housing, getting people indoors into basic dignified shelter, intervening when cycles of addiction or causing people to harm themselves and others, addressing public safety issues, and it's working. We've reduced the number of people living outside by about one third by building basic dignified shelter.
And one thing that he does that a lot of cities don't have the appetite for is if they've built a shelter, you don't get a choice. You don't get to stay in Columbus Park. That park is for the residents, not for you.
Available. We do a lot of outreach and we effectively require that people come indoors, and we've saved lives. It's what we're doing is working. But the state needs those solutions and Frankly to follow through.
Oh we're so close.
The state needs those solutions and Frankly to follow through on this mission I've begun in San Jose. We need more help from state government. We need our state to be as focused and accountable as we've been at the local level. And I think as the mayor of a big.
City, by the way, this is also I like this argument. Hey, we're doing everything we can at the local level. To use Gavin Newsom's favorite phrase, localism is determinative. But right now, in order to keep going, the state is in our way.
The state literally cut off the funding for programs like the things that Matt Mahon is doing personally, because a lot of the funding that went to places like Los Angeles and San Francisco went nowhere, but in places where it is working, they're losing the funding.
I have the best perspective on what our biggest challenges are and how we can solve them with a different kind of leadership and Sacramento.
Of course, the big question is how do you get the legislature on board? You know, how do you get the legislature, for instance, who is vehemently opposed against the Prop thirty six to all of a sudden funded.
And you pointed out your wife said it's time to run, right, And maybe she wasn't totally all in, but now she's in.
Yeah, I got home. I got home the other night about three weeks ago, and she looked at me and said, I think you need to consider doing this because we're both worried about our future, or we're worried about the future of California, about our country. We think California needs someone who will fight for our values but also fix our problems.
And I think, notice how we're three minutes into this interview. He hasn't said the tea word once, hasn't mentioned Trump at all, because that's not relevant here when we're talking about the California governor's race, even though certain people want to make it all about that. Swallwell porter Stier, who's supporting Tom Steyer. I spent an hour and a half yesterday listening to a debate at a Pasadena Green Society. It was a forum between Bessarah Porter Styer and Swallwell.
And I still have a headache from that thing.
But also fix our problems, and I think that in the long run, the best resistance as results, it's actually delivering safer neighborhoods, cleaner neighborhoods, better schools, better jobs. And showing you this.
Styer, if you really want to make a difference, maybe you fund this campaign and you get out because there's nobody that is voting for Tom Steyer. Guy's got a little bit of an ego complex.
Our values, our diversity in California, work in practice.
What's the biggest difference from a public policy perspective between you and the current governor?
Oh boy, Alex is doing what Alex does best, stir in the pot.
What's the biggest difference from a public policy perspective between you and the current governor Gavin Newsom? What changes with you in charge?
Because you got to remember he is probably the only person running on the Democrat side that openly has criticized Gavin Newsom for things like not funding Prop thirty six.
Well, I think Gavin Newsom has been a really courageous governor in a lot of ways.
Oh boy, we're going real diplomatic with this answer.
Really create he knows that what's going to happen is that Gavin's press people are going to see this interview and if it's not nice enough to Gavin, they're going to go after him.
Really courageous governor in a lot of ways. He's done more on homelessness than any past governor. He has stood up to abuses of power from this administration. He's articulated the case for our democratic institutions. He's done a lot of good work. And I think the next governor, whether it's me or someone else, has the.
Job of filling in the details.
Gavin made a bunch of big proclamations and now someone's actually got to do the work.
To use a cliche, building.
On many of the things he's done on homelessness, care court, setting up tools to help people get mental health care. He has done a lot to reform sequels so we can build housing faster, so there are a lot how.
Many reforms do we need.
At what point do we realize that the law is antiquated and it gets abused constantly.
Gavin will give me the first one to admit.
Part of the reason that the high speed rail is nowhere and non existent is because he got sued over sequa a lot.
So there are a lot of areas of agreement, but of course it's always the disagreement that gets have we publicized. And you know, probably the biggest difference has been around addiction.
I've had, by the way, appreciate that after that preamble he is answering the question and it is a pretty big, stark difference between Gavin Newsom and Matt Mayheon.
You know, probably the biggest difference has been around addiction. I've had family members who've ended up on the streets because of severe addiction, and I know that in those cases it requires a certain amount of tough love to help people turn their lives around. You have to be willing to intervene, to impose consequences, to give people a choice for treatment, but also make sure they're held accountable
for it. There has to be accountability, and that saves lives, It makes everybody better off and I just don't think the state has been bold enough in being willing to intervene in cycles of addiction and mental illness and get people the help that they need.
No, we have made things like care Court voluntary. We have supported policies like Housing First that don't fund recovery housing. We've had so many experts over and over again talk about how this is one of the big problems you have, all this permanent support of housing, the SROs in San Francisco where drugs are allowed and a lot of people come out in a body bang.
I mean you. You've Austin criticized the governor for some of his style for.
Oh boy, alex Is Stern, the pop mar.
For basically being so focused on memes and attacking President Trump and not enough focused on state issues and getting results for people here. That's gotten a lot of publicity. Jeremy White, political reporter is at a Bloomberg event with the governor today and he asked him about you. Here's what he said.
I don't know enough about him, I don't good I wish him good luck. He said, you've jumped blindly into meme land, I believe was a quote.
Well, I've tried to put a mirror up I don't know that quote, so he said I don't know enough about him, which reminded some folks of Mariah Carey when she talks about Jennifer Lopez. If she doesn't like when she says I don't know her.
Is Alex Michaelson alleging that Gavin Newsom is mean girling Matt Mahon.
I think so it's pretty good when.
Clearly she knows her. So, I mean, what do you make of that? And are you worried that the governor may try to sort of hurt you behind the scenes because the idea of having you in there if he's potentially a Democratic nominee, may not be helpful to him.
Well, I mean they're still on the same party. They have a lot of policy alignments. There's one major difference. But ultimately for Gavin's legacy, it's going to look bad if the younger, more effective version of Gavin, because Matt Mayhan in a lot of ways is what Gavin sells himself as, but Gavin has no follow through. Gavin gets distracted easily, makes a big proclamation, assumes everyone's going to do exactly what he says is going to happen and
moves on care court being a huge one. Oversold that one a lot.
No. I think this has been played up, particularly in the media.
But he's not taking the bait in the media.
But the truth is, even folks who share a lot of values that are very aligned. We're both Democrats, we're both pragmatic, we both try to solve problems. But we can have differences of opinion, as we did on Prop thirty six and on requiring treatment and severe cases of addiction.
That's and those are some pretty stark differences.
And this is where the you know, as Dan Walters put in his column today, a litmus test for the voters of California. You know, the voters in California. No, I don't know enough to give you any good, but good luck finding someone who does. Even with the results
that we have an election after election after election. Twenty twenty four was interesting because in twenty twenty four, every single county overwhelmingly passed Prop thirty six, and Matt Mayhon was the loudest voice, the loudest big city mayor talking about why we need Prop thirty six. It came on this show to talk about Prop thirty six by the way, we're working on getting him on this show next week. If the voters who said yes to Prop thirty six want to see it fully funded, this is your guy.
Hilton's your guy, Bianco's your guy. But if one of those two doesn't look like it's gonna happen, because California is California, and a Republican getting elected is a really uphill climb, Mayheon might.
Be your guy leading to crime.
Other than that, it's Vira Gosa and that's not happening. Everyone else is staunchly against Prop thirty six, including Katie Porter, which, by the way, someone just emailed something. I cannot read it on the air, but I am laughing on the inside.
Leading to crime, we just had a difference of opinion over the best way to tackle that problem. On style, the point I was really trying to make, I don't particularly care what the governor's tweeting. I just would like more of his attention on what we're doing in our cities and how the state can help us. And I mean, to me, it's just really important that all of our leadership and Sacramento and I'm not just picking on the governor.
I want to see the legislature and all the institutions of state government be more focused and accountable on the core challenges facing Californians right here at home, in our name.
That should be the campaign right there, California should focus on California. Let's clean up our own house before we start complaining about the white house, right.
Here at home, in our neighborhoods. You know, it's access to good schools, good jobs, affordable housing, addressing crime and holmlessness, the basics. We've got to do better. We have to deliver. And again I just been making the case that the best resistance is delivering results and showing a better example.
Well, I open invite to come in here because I'd love to have a deeper dive conversation about affordability, about hiking, housing more affordable, and some of those issues that are really driving not only California politics but around the country. But a good introduction to you tonight on your first night as a candidate San Jose Mayor, Matt Mayhan, Thank you so much for being with us.
Thanks Alex, look forward to We'll be right back.
So there you go.
That's any of you, by the way, huge shout out to Alex Michaelson. I don't know why CNN is not great about posting things on their YouTube channel. Alex has a lot of these really important interviews and they don't get posted often. So when he tweeted out that he was going to have Matt Mayhan on the show, I just commented on his tweet posted on YouTube please, because sometimes he'll put the interviews on his YouTube channel, which you should all follow. Alex Michaelson seven am, No, no, no,
midnight last night? When did he text this to me? Let me see? Alexmichaelson texted me at twelve fifty four am a link to the video because he knew I wanted it. I appreciate that because you know, if it's not on YouTube, it might not even exist to me. I do one hundred percent of my show prep on YouTube, which is why I am now posting all the YouTube videos that I curate for this show on the new Substack Randywangradio dot substack dot com. Subscribe to what I
am calling the California Report. And have we mentioned that We're going to be at Gladstone's in Long Beach for our next Jimmy Buffett Friday. Friday February sixth from noon to three, we're heading to Gladstoness in Long Beach for our next live broadcast. You're invited. John Sagmeister has got great food, good vibes, and a fun afternoon for you by the water. We'll have special guests like so and
Shelley from the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer Association. She'll tell you more about your taxpayer rights and protecting Prop thirteen because the courts have made it easier to raise your Texas. Come by and sign the petition to save Prop thirteen. The deadlines coming fast. Save Prop thirteen dot com. That's save Prop thirteen dot com. Come hang out with us, grab a bite, and be part of the broadcast. The John Phillips Show Live at Gladstone's in Long Beach next
Friday from noon to three. You can get the podcast of this show by going to the anywhere you get your podcast and searching for the John Phillips Show. And you can get The California Report, my curated list of YouTube videos we use for this show by going to Randywangradio dot substack dot com. We're just about a week out from that devastating winter storm that hit a lot of the Southwest and it really really really hit Texas.
My in laws are in Texas and it was I think one of the days it was seven degrees.
We flew out o New Mexico.
We flew out a Santa Fe Airport, which is a tiny little airport on Saturday, and the flight was delayed an hour because of the conditions. We literally saw them trying to sweep ice out of the engine of the plane. We get onto the plane, we get on the tarmacts delayed another hour because they need to hose this thing down like you're at a car wash with de icer.
But we made at home safely. A lot of flights did get delayed, and one of the things that you don't think about when you have that many flight delays is how many other things get canceled, including how many essential things get canceled.
Think about this.
The severe winter weather that we experienced in the last week intensified in already devastating blood shortage. More than twenty thousand donations were uncollected due to these winter storms. The Red Cross is experiencing a severe blood shortage because of this weather. The storm canceled more than five hundred blood drives, which would have resulted in more than twenty thousand blood
and platelet donations going uncollected since January twenty third. To talk to us about this and the need that is out there. It's proud to welcome the American Red Cross BioMed account manager Nina Minton. Welcome to the John Phillips Show.
Thank you so much. I really appreciate being here. Love being on the show, and hopefully I can get some information out there about our severe blood shortage.
Yeah, so tell us about this.
Seems like the weather was so bad that it's making it really hard for y'all to do what you need to do to save lives.
That would be correct. So we have not only you mentioned about five hundred blood drives that were canceled the month before that because of severe weather, we had four hundred blood drives canceled. So you're talking about nine hundred blood drives in the last two months, which is horrendously bad.
And it's something that most people don't think about, and we think about every day because the Red Cross deals with forty percent of the US blood supply, So when we're not collecting in certain locations, and now the winter, that winter storm has affected ooh, a lot of areas in the East Coast and Midwest and a lot of places,
so we're really having problems collecting. But what's wonderful is we live in this wonderful location called California, and I workout of the Los Angeles Santa Monica office, and I will tell you that a lot of donations can happen here. And so there are other places where this is not occurring in terms of winter storm, and we're asking people to really join us if there's any way possible.
Well and to think about it.
Like you said, while it's still freezing in a lot of different parts of the country, it's going to be in the mid eighties tomorrow in Los Angeles, which means it's short sleeve weather, which is really easy if you're donating.
Blood right, you don't even need to pull your sleeve up. You can just stop in. And a lot of people don't realize how easy donating blood is. I'm a regular donor. I donate every two months, and it is something that if you first go for the first time, you realize how incredibly easy it is. We always tell people as first timers, you know, obviously we really need you, Okay, and it takes I would say leave an hour. At most most blood donations it might be a total of
forty five minutes or so. You know, you check in with us and basically we have to check your iron and Heba globin and see you know where you've traveled to. You get on the bed. You're on the bed only for about five to ten minutes unless you're doing a different donation with us, because there's two types of donations, and then you go into our wonderful canteam when you get lots of goodies. So you know, the whole process is actually very easy and the donation part is just a few minutes of that.
And what are the different kinds of donations? Because there are you know, your your typical blood donation, but what else are things that you're doing at the Red Cross?
There are at a mobile blood drive, which is what I primarily do, although we have something called Excites, but at our mobile drives we do two things. And a mobile drive means we basically, for example, we can go to different studios and we can go to schools, we go to office building corporations, and very easy to host a blood drive with us too. But basically, if those drives will have two types of things, and one is a whole blood donation that one in itself takes by
itself five to ten minutes. The whole process, as we said, if you're a first time donor, especially, this can be about forty five minutes, and we say leave an hour. The second type of donation we have is called a power red donation. That is a really amazing donation. It is like platelets, and a platelet takes a lot longer, but you can only do that at certain locations. But the power red donation, now it sounds like you'd think we drain that person of all their blood, and it's
the exact opposite. We are actually taking red blood cells. We are taking a few extra red blood cells, okay, and those red bloods are the most transfused items that we need that a hospital asks for. So that particular donation, instead of being on the bed five to ten minutes like a regular whole blood donation, you're on the bed maybe twenty minutes longer, so you're thinking about maybe thirty
minutes with us on the bed thirty five minutes. And then the rest of the process, the health history when you first come in and the check in and then at the end the canteen, so that you might be with us about an hour, an hour, ten minutes total. So it's just a humanute longer. But the reason that's needed is not only is it's the most transfused item, but let's say you get a mom who lost a
lot of blood in childbirth. Well, we are able to take those power red those red blood cells, we add some whole blood to it, and that mom feels amazing. She actually rapidly repairs. So it's something where those red blood cells are like you know, like spinach for Popeye. You know, they work really fast, and they were pair
someone actually quicker. And so it's a little bit of a process because we are going through the blood and we are cycling through to get those red blood cells, and then we give that person back their plasma and extra saline solutions so they feel great when they're done.
Wow.
So it's actually, yeah, it's a really neat process and a lot of people we ask these certain blood types. We look for, oh, A negative and B negative, but it is something where if you're a donor, you don't know in the future, we're able to actually get those who don't know about in terms of blood donation. You know, I've never done it before, so we're able to do that.
But power Red is something that is pretty amazing in itself because we are able to do it again in not a very long period of time and the donor feels great as well. So there are two types of donations, but we need people to step up because there are a lot of people out there who've never donated. They might have a slight fear. And really it's so easy. I can't even tell you, you know, being a regular donor myself, we just we make it easy. And you know,
it's very easy to even sign up. So all you do to sign up is go to either one eight hundred Red Cross or you go online to Red crossblood dot org. You put in your zip code and we are all over California. We are everywhere.
So all you got to do is go to Red Redcross, blood dot org. You can call one eight hundred Red Cross or I am now going to right now in my app store download the Blood Donor app.
I didn't know that was a thing.
That's a thing. That's a big thing. I have that app and I will tell you our donors absolutely love it. They get to see not only obviously your blood types. There, you get to see your your health history, which is great to show a physician, but even better than that is our blood journey. You actually get to see where your blood ends up in what how it goes to.
Oh wow, that's incredible.
Now quantify for the listeners, especially people that haven't donated before. You know, it's an hour out of your time they're taking up you know, a pint of blood or whatever.
What does that mean? What is that?
What does that blood do when it gets to where it needs to go?
Oh my gosh. Well, first of all, what we do is every every unit we get goes immediately to our lab and we actually have one here in Pomona where they they basically just checking for all the things, the standard things we have to check for that we're required to because we want to make sure that blood that goes out is in pristine condition because it's going to someone who needs it. So you know, in a severe blood shortage that we're going through, it basically doesn't even
reach the shelf. It kind of goes out almost immediately directly to a hospital where you might have a trauma patient, a cancer patient, that their blood is no longer longer really working very well because it's had you know, chemotherapy and things like that which really hurts the blood. So that person it might be sitting at home, they might be feeling horrible, can't get up out of bed. But once they have that transfusion. My cancer patients talk about
how amazing it is. Within a short time, they see pink come back to their cheeks. They feel amazing, they can laugh and run and do things again. Blood is amazing in what it does. It truly is liquid gold. But so it will go almost immediately to a trauma
patient maybe who's been in an accident. And I often, I'll be honest with you, I often have OAR nurses tell me that, look, when someone comes on it to the er and they can't find where the wound is, they're going through pints and pints very quickly, very very quickly. So you know, we're using a hospital, we will go through quite a bit of blood and so it's needed every two seconds. And just you know, only three percent in the US actually donate.
Only three percent of people donate blood. Well, we got to do something about that.
Yeah, it's just it's it's shocking when you think about that, and at any given time, over sixty six percent cannot donate, whether they're on a medication or there's some other issues. So there's really you know, people know who they are, they can donate, and then just don't want to. So it's like you've got to get them over the fear. But once they do it, it's pretty amazing because it really you know, as I said, I do it every two months, and you know, and you save up to three lives.
So you know, we have three different blood products in there. You've got the red blood cells, the platelets, and the plasma, and they're all used for different things. It's kind of amazing. Platelets for cancer patients, you know, and red blood cells, as I was mentioning, we even use plasma for cancer for burned patients. So blood's being used all the time, and as I said, every two seconds. If you think about how often it's needed, we just you know, we
need more blood. We need more donors to come and step up with us, you know, and we're trying to get the word out.
I got to tell you I started watching that HBO show The Pit this year, which takes place in an emergency room in Pittsburgh, and boy do they go through a lot of blood every single hour. Watching that makes me think of a few things. One, boy, do they need a lot of blood in Two, none of those people are making enough money to do what they're doing.
Yeah, it's it's pretty intense work, you know, and we're very lucky, you know, we have our in our staff. For example, we have amazing phlebotomists, you know, and if someone's just it's their first time, we hold their hand, you know, and get them through it. And most people when they get up and they've saved up to three lives, as I said, and they're sitting in the canteen hanging out having our goodies, you know, our cheese, it's oreos,
all of our goodies that we have. They just sit there and they're so excited and they just look at me and they go, I had no idea how easy it was. I wish I had done it earlier. You know.
The need is great right now, especially with these big winter storms, and you can help out by donating blood to the Red Cross, and it's easier than ever. You can go to Redcross Blood dot org. That's Redcross blood dot org. You can call the phone number one eight hundred Red Cross. That's one eight hundred seven three three
twenty seven sixty seven. Or do what I just did, download the blood Donor app, and not only will you be able to find a place to donate blood, but you'll actually see where your blood goes, what hospital it ends up at, and how it's actually saving lives, which is pretty darn incredible. Nina Minton, the American Red Cross BioMed account manager the website of course, Redcross blood dot org.
Thank you so much for joining us today and hopefully we inspired some people to donate some blood this weekend.
Yes, hopefully they can donate or even host a bloodrive with us, so it's so easy to do. But thank you so much for having me. We really appreciate getting the word out.
Thank you, thanks so much for coming on with us. It's Randy Wang here and let's end the week on a very positive note. Sometimes it feels like there's nothing you can do to solve the problems that the State of California puts on you. But you know what, sometimes if you make enough noise, the state will listen to
avoid embarrassment. And that's what happened in Marin County when enough residents yelled and cricked and screamed and organized and got signatures and got Caltrans to reverse that god awful carpool policy where they were closing down one of the lanes to the one oh one to carpool traffic only when the one oh one was at its busiest. More on this, we get to ABC seven in the Bay.
We're following the story as new carpool hours are coming to Highway one oh one in Marin and Sonoma Counties after an uproar from thousands of commuters. They complained the current hours were just too long and caused major traffic delays. Caltran says it listened and made changes. ABC seven Days report, Corneller, you just don't hear this that often. This is great.
The citizens got mad, the citizens wanted changes, and it happened.
Just ABC seven Daies report Cornell bernardists live on Highway one oh one. Cornell smack dab in the middle of tonight's commute.
Yes, poor guy, Yes we are Dan.
Hey, yeah, we are live on Highway one on one heading north. It is a Thursday evening commute through Corda, Madera, and you know carpool hours are about to change here after thousands of outrage commuters said the extended hours were not helping traffic at all. A Ronert Park driver taking those complaints to cal Tran's.
Hey, we get a lot of calls from Ronert Park.
Just them admitting that maybe that these longer hours were not working is a big deal.
Katie Clayton from Broner Park is feeling a bit victorious after taking her commute complaints to Caltranz, which change carpool hours last September, adding hours onto Katie's commute to Nevada where she works as a hairstylist.
And the lanes were just sitting there empty by the way southern California. Everyone just uses those lanes and nobody cares because you don't think you're gonna get pulled over.
I'm glad.
I'm not saying you should do that, and I don't do that, but I know people who do that. And if you're in the slow lane, you see the carpool lane, there are plenty of people who are just by themselves. Also, carpool lane didn't move any faster than any of the other lanes on the freeway I use every day.
The four oh five.
I'm glad that at least they saw our christ because a lot of signatures, a lot of people talking about it. I heard it in the salon.
Katie launching this change dot org petitioned last summer, which now has almost nine thousand signatures, all from commuters demanding carpool hours be changed between Windsor and Sasolito.
I mean, if you commute to the city like me from Nevada, it's been kind of a nightmare.
Yeah, I mean we definitely listened.
I've been to Windsor.
Yeah, I mean, we definitely listened.
Cal Trans Matt o'donald says the agency heard complaints, launched a traffic study, and decided to make a change, reducing current carpool hours Monday through Friday from five to ten am to six am to nine.
I've been to the Russian River brewing in Windsor.
The afternoon drive will move from three pm to seven to three to six thirty.
We listened to what where people had the most issues, you know, and it turned out that the morning commute was the was the biggest issue.
Yes, because nobody was using the carpool lanes aren County. I think we got to go Florida and get rid of all the carpool lanes.
Aren County Supervisor Eric Lucan helped secure the carpool changes through partnerships with state representatives and local transportation authorities. Lucan says, we heard clearly from constituents frustrated by longer commutes, and I appreciate cal Tran's willingness to listen and adjust the hours to better peak travel times while continuing to support carpooling and transit.
I do oh enough with carpooling. That is just it's a failed concept.
I do give Caltrans who works.
In the same area that their neighbor does not that many people.
I do give Caltrans some credit for being flexible. Changing her mind.
Katie Clayton hopes her efforts to bring change will make her life for the lives of thousands of other North Bay commuters just a little easier in the future.
See look at that.
You organize, you get a signature gathering going on, you get the state agency embarrassed on the TV, and sometimes changes possible even in California. Well that's it for this fill in week. Johnny's back on Monday. I gotta go sit on the four h five Cry, have some lunch, and then I'm back on the air at five on seven ninety KABC for the Newsplitz with Randy Wang, where I will be recapping my California Report.
Subscribe to that new substack.
I've already got like thirty subscribers and I invented it today Randy Wang Radio dot substack dot com. We'll see a Monday, and we'll see a live next Friday at Gladstone's. It's Randy Wang here on the John Phillips Show.