Chron on Prop H: “The most dangerous measure on the ballot”
John Diaz of the Chronicle slams Prop H in Sunday’s edition and points out the dealing in bad faith that has led to No on A mailers being sent to voters despite a supposed deal between proponents of better Muni service and opponents of San Francisco’s transit-first policy, led by Republican billionaire Don Fisher.
If you agree with us that SF does not need massive increases in auto traffic, vote NO on H, and get involved! The campaign needs your help in the last two weeks before the election.
As a Christian and a Republican and reluctant resident and business owner in San Francisco, I support transit but only for the poor. We need support and cleaning staff to get to work. But the rest of us need cars, more roads, more parking and more freeways because we aspire to something better than. When we were kids we rode the bus. When we were young workers we rode the train. When we achieved we bought cars. I won’t say what kind of business I’m in because I don’t want anybody boycotting my stores, but my products and services are targeted towards aspiring professionals who want to express their success in ways public transit cannot communicate. Again, for the poor, transit should be an option. For the rest of us, its time to built more roads and parking. As for proposal H, congestion can only be relieved by letting congestion increase with larger artieries and places to park off street. Parking structures create jobs. Street parking does not. So what if some developers profit? Some of my best friends are developers. They are citizens of San Francisco too. Don’t they have the right to earn a living?
Diaz is obviously biased and spouts total nonsense. He engages in more hyperbole than LatteLiberal who is at least funny. Latte is wrong on a couple of points. When I was a kid taking MUNI was considered déclassé. Try taking a girl to Inspiration Point on MUNI! As a young worker I still drove. I now have more money but take MUNI.
Latte liberal introduces the class issue. That is an image problem that Rescue MUNI should address. The convenience of public transit in congested areas can overcome class. For the affluent able-bodied, public transit in a congested area can be more convenient. But if not convenient and safe they will drive.
Opposing Prop H does nothing to make transit any better. Rescue MUNI should focus on improving transit and not spend its political capital on issues such has Prop H. Rescue MUNI should not get involved progressive politics but stay above the fray. Rescue MUNI should keep its eye on the ball. There are Republicans who support pubic transit! I suspect that even Fisher would agree that an effective public transit system is good for business.
This isn’t “progressive politics” for Rescue Muni – it’s really the core of what we are about.
The serious problem with Prop H, evil or just dumb intentions by Don Fisher aside, is that the volume of cars it will put on the road WILL have a real impact on mass transit use. 20,000 new cars on the road is a very real possibility if this passes, due to the big new DOWNTOWN parking that would be build now that all parking is legalized thanks to the Hummer loophole – and you only have to remember how it was in 1998, during the Metro Meltdown, to know how bad this is for traffic and therefore for Muni service.
Like it or not, the buses have to go in traffic, and will have to for the foreseeable future. Even if we win all the bus rapid transit battles, and we haven’t even won Geary yet, the majority of Muni passengers will ride in traffic in some way, and that majority will ride downtown. So the increase in traffic in this already gridlocked area will only make the transit ride EVEN SLOWER than it already is – and it is already PATHETICALLY slow.
Remember, Don, “convenient and safe” is not enough if service is so slow you can get there faster by walking. That is already the case on some downtown corridors.
Fisher may think better transit is a good idea – I don’t know. I do know that, intentionally or not, he has funded a severely anti-transit measure, and we have to fight it.
The only way to stop congestion is to stop the building. We are not going to stop the building. And we are not going to stop people from driving cars. So stop playing Don Quixote. Deal with the facts of life and adapt. More building will make traffic slower for both automobiles AND transit. Cars will NOT have the advantage. If you can walk faster than MUNI you can walk faster than automobiles. Public policy and traffic engineering can give transit the advantage. That should be Rescue Muni’s battle.
Legalizing something not the same thing a requiring it. And making something legal does not make it happen. A healthy economy needs more options not more restrictions. I think that may be Fisher’s point. There are some business people who cannot see beyond the end of their nose. However, downtown interests and sophisticated business people like Don Fisher know, or should know, that a functional regional transit system is absolutely essential. MUNI is a vital part of that system. Rescue Muni should approach Fisher and his kind as allies not enemies. They have more to gain from an effective Muni than anyone.
The whole point of No on H is to give transit the advantage via public policy. That is why the voters have approved transit first several times before, and why we should reject H now.
I don’t have much confidence that Fisher will be willing to do anything for better transit. With his sponsorship of Yes on H and No on A, he has told transit riders to go stuff it. (Surely he is smart enough to understand the consequences of increased congestion!) Why do you think he will suddenly change his tune?
“The only way to stop congestion is to stop the building.”
The presence of a building does not in and of itself cause congestion. The congestion comes when people in that building drive instead of take transit.
Halting all construction is not the answer. Notice that we already have lots of congestion, so simply stopping the building doesn’t even address current levels of congestion. The key is to get the people occupying those buildings out of their cars. Introducing Don Fisher parking will do nothing to get people out of their cars; on the contrary, it will only encourage them to drive. Downtown congestion is bad now, but it will be much worse unless we highly restrict parking built in connection with the new Rincon Hill and Transbay towers. Prop H demonstrates a total lack of long-term vision.
I think we have the same goal but a difference of opinion about strategy. You want to force people out of their cars; I want to attract people out of their cars. In my opinion, the carrot works better than the stick.
I am not persuaded that it is necessary to be anti-automobile to be pro-MUNI. Rescue MUNI should focus on improving MUNI. Taking a position against automobiles may create antagonism and be counterproductive.
With the possible exception of Eric’s utopian city, both pubic transit and automobiles are necessary. Even if parking is restricted, more building will cause more congestion. But more congestion may be public transit’s best friend. If not for congestion would BART exist? In highly congested areas automobiles are less necessary and more of a burden. In congested areas, public transit can have the upper hand. It can be an attractive alternative. It will take some good engineering however to make pubic transit reliable, convenient, comfortable, clean and safe to get more people to give up their cars. That should be Rescue Muni’s single purpose.
Public Transit is critical to economic development. I don’t know if there is any leadership for downtown interests like there was when Clausen from BofA was around. Is Fisher it? If so, I would approach him as a friend of pubic transit and challenge him and the downtown interests to help come up with solutions.
As far as Peskin and Elsbernd are concerned, they lack credibility on this issue. I take MUNI to work. Do they? Andrew and Eric, do you own a car?
There is no reason why a downtown as dense and vibrant as San Francisco’s needs to be cluttered with dozens of stories of additional parking garages. World-class cities have many amenities, but plentiful parking is simply not one of them. In fact, the relationship between urban vibrancy and parking supply is most likely inverse.
I think you are attempting to degrade my argument by referring to the “utopian” city. My goal here is not utopian, but rather, extremely practical: there is not enough space on our streets to support the number of cars that Fisher would like to inject in this city. To allow more space, I would like to get cars off the road. It’s as simple as that. As much as I would enjoy a “utopian” vision of a carfree San Francisco, what I’m really after here is an increased transit share. I know that some people need to drive — I am not trying to banish all cars — but there are a lot of people in this city who have easy transit access and yet still drive.
Your argument that we should appreciate congestion because it gives rise to transit makes very little sense, so I hope that you can do better than that. If there’s one thing we are not short of in the Bay Area, it’s traffic congestion. Even if a healthy chunk of people convert from driving to transit, there will still be plenty of cars on the road. What really contributes to transit service more than congestion is population density. The higher the density, the more people you have to support transit. Transit does NOT have the “upper hand” in congested areas, as you suggest. Transit is extremely unreliable in congested areas because there are too many cars. For example: many Bay Area freeways are very congested, but I don’t see plentiful transit options popping up in those corridors. Population density is the key, not congestion. If your dense population mostly does not drive, then you’ll still have good transit, but without the congestion.
Case in point: downtown SF neighborhoods, such as Nob Hill, Tenderloin, etc. In fact, there is not that much traffic congestion in this area usually, even though the Tenderloin is the city’s densest neighborhood. Why? Because over 70% of people living in these neighborhoods don’t own cars. What if all these people owned cars and were pulling in and out of huge garages at the bottom of each building? The area would be much more congested. Luckily, people were smarter about building cities in 1907 than they are now in 2007.
As for your argument that Rescue Muni should not actively fight against Prop H: this is rubbish, pure and simple. Rescue Muni should be focused on anything that will help to improve transit service and reliability. Embracing policies that cut down on traffic is one part of the puzzle. Rescue Muni’s position on this issue is entirely consistent with its primary goal.
As for my credibility in discussing this issue: I don’t own a car, nor even a bike. I don’t even take taxis. All my trips are either on foot or on transit. Nice try, but sorry: you won’t get me on that one.
By the way, I wouldn’t call being against Prop H “anti-automobile.” Rather, I’d call it pro-San Francisco.
You are correct it is density. I was equating congestion with density because they usually go together and that was the topic at hand. But congestion does get people out of their cars and onto transit. I know many people who park in Oakland or farther out and take BART into the City, or park in my low-density neighborhood and take Muni Metro downtown because of the congestion. Public transit offers more freedom of movement in congested areas.
As far as transit being impacted by congestion is concerned, that is a solvable engineering problem that Rescue Muni should address. Rescue Muni has nothing to gain and possibly image to lose by taking on issues such as Prop H not clearly related to its purpose of improving Muni. Opposing prop H is anti-automobile. Fighting congestion should not be Rescue Muni’s job. It is going to happen anyway. Rescue Muni should stay positive and focused on improving Muni by adapting to reality.
If prop H passes (and it probably won’t with or without Rescue Muni’s help) there is no reason to believe that downtown will be cluttered with high-rise parking garages. However, more parking could get cars off the street and help with congestion. I am not certain of the market forces but living space and office space is probably more valuable than parking space. I have noticed that in my neighborhood people are converting garage space into living space. No one is giving up living space for their car. Government restrictions may not be necessary.
The neighborhoods you mention have more cars per square mile than other less densely populated neighborhoods. Some of the congestion there may caused by people driving around looking for a place to park. But it is true that many people who live in high density areas can get by without the expense or hassle of owing a car and do. The demand for parking will be less per capita in new downtown condos but people should have that option. Most residents will not add much to traffic congestion. Their cars will most likely be parked most of the time unless they are leaving the City.
Why do you think that people with easy access to transit drive? Maybe it is because transit is not attractive enough? As far as you not owning a car, that makes you a better person than me.
Don, you’re right of course that people with easy transit access drive because transit is not attractive enough. I think we both agree that Rescue Muni should endorse projects that make transit more attractive, particularly speed and reliability of buses and LRV’s. What we disagree on is the extent to which Prop H is part of this formula. As I see it, an initiative which would result in increased traffic congestion is also an initiative which *decreases* the attractiveness of transit by slowing it down and making it more unreliable. Seen this way, Prop H is not a separate issue from the attractiveness of transit.
As for congestion being an “engineering problem that Rescue Muni should address” — well, yes, but let’s consider the possibilities. We already have proof all over town that “bus only” lanes are not an effective means of increasing reliability, as long as they go unenforced. Now, it is quite possible that affixing cameras to buses and sending fines to violators, such as has been done in London, will go a long way towards increasing the effectiveness of this sort of bus-only lane. Still, the improvements we’d both like to see come down to completely separating transit from cars. Unfortunately, we cannot afford to construct these projects all over town, assuming no public opposition whatsoever, which is hardly a given in real life. Given that we don’t have the resources to build all the projects we’d like, and the amount of time associated with such construction (ranging from nontrivial to practically colossal), I believe we should, as a supplement, discourage voters from voting for Prop H, so that the issue of transit reliability can be approached from multiple perspectives.
Hem…, some of the replies are cool but the first one seems fake to me. no one talks like that right?
anyway, just wanted to point out that I am a muni user, we only have one care (as a family) and still, I don’t see the sense in this. Why can’t we have parking in the city? most normal cities in the world have plenty of parking, they call them paid parking lots. and they don’t cost like $20 just to have a dinner.
nothing in life should be free (cause then it is abused, like the air for example), so we should be able to drive to a restaurant and pay whatever is the right price for that. it should be more then taking the bus, so you can choose to take the bus.
I just don’t see why the 2 are exclusive. especially, taking the position that MUNI is so FU$%# up that I would not trust it for a second. in fact, I know many people that sadly choose to use a car because they hate muni so much. so why would I vote to force me and my friends to use a crappy system?
http://sfmunibroken.blogspot.com/