Author: Jayme Ackemann (Jayme Ackemann)

This will be my final column for San José Spotlight. I am grateful to have been given a platform here. Excuse my indulgence in this final column, I’d like to tell a more personal story. During the early days of the pandemic the transit situation in the Bay Area felt dire. Trains, buses and even...

It’s been six weeks since a mass shooter turned on his VTA coworkers early in the morning on May 26, but there’s no end to the ways in which the tragedy is still being felt. I worked at VTA for a few years in the early 2000s—but I spent most of my career working in...

Leadership is a quality we aspire to and place high value on as a society and yet often fail to meaningfully define. But the Bay Area is grappling with this question on multiple fronts in our civic lives. VTA is currently in the midst of the vaunted “nationwide” search to replace former CEO Nuria Fernandez...

VTA is considering another round of consultant-led recommendations to overhaul its Board and Committee processes on Thursday. This time, changes include a controversial recommendation to overhaul the public comment process in a way VTA hopes will streamline meetings and lead to greater efficiency. But members of the public who frequently attend these meetings to offer...

Driving a bus isn’t easy and the public would do well to remember that as it considers the concerns VTA’s bus operators are raising about what the organization is doing to protect them during the pandemic. Bus Operators are responsible for safely operating their vehicle, for the safety of pedestrians and other drivers with whom...

Happy New Year! Is it Groundhog Day yet? This year, regardless of what Punxsutawney Phil says on Feb. 2, a few things will definitely be different. Among those differences will be a new administration and that has already meant seismic changes in state of California politics. But after a round of speculation about the fate...

When you read this column, we may know the outcome of the 2020 presidential election but as I write it, we do not. In the bright sunlight of this November morning this election has given us reasons to count our thanks in the passage of the Yes on RR campaign, and reasons to hold our...

Vote yes on Measure RR today, and I promise I’ll never ask you to #SaveCaltrain again. In the past 20 years, I’ve probably turned — hat in hand — to the public asking for help rescuing Caltrain a half dozen times in my various roles. At the heart of each request was the same ongoing...

The CZU Lightning Complex fires burned to within 1,000 feet of my road. While my home and those of my neighbors on our road were saved, friends, local teachers, firefighters working on the front lines and so many more did lose their homes. Most months I plan to use this space to discuss Bay Area...

Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic we’ve all become “doomscrollers,” a phenomenon where people obsessively scroll social media for the latest bad news. “Doom loops” are an economic phenomenon where every decision a business or organization makes to try and break a bad cycle serves to reinforce it. That’s the case with Caltrain. Basically, in trying to fix...