A how-to-screw-up-Masonic Meeting

Citizen's Jim Herd is sounding the alarm over the city's latest move to screw up Masonic Ave.---a neighborhood meeting on June 15. Actually, Herd's concern is that the same people who designed the awful Octavia Blvd. are working on plans for Masonic. It's probably unfair to blame those folks for the perpetual traffic jam that is now Octavia Blvd. Once city voters chose to not replace the earthquake-damaged Central Freeway overpass, something like Octavia Blvd. was probably inevitable. Once the overpass was gone, a lot of the traffic that used to go over Hayes Valley would inevitably end up on the surface streets of the neighborhood.

But what's ominous about the latest move on changing Masonic is the talk about "calming"---that is, slowing down---traffic on Masonic between Geary Blvd. and Fell Street. The traffic-calmers are of course led by the city's bike people, whose goal is always to make it as difficult and expensive as possible to drive in the city.

The Bicycle Coalition tags the June 15 Masonic meeting on their online calendar with the same weasely disclaimer they used to put on their Critical Mass listing: "Events not officially sponsored or organized by the SFBC are marked with an asterisk. We post events that might be of interest to our SF area members; we do not necessarily endorse any particular group or perspective you may find represented here. Contact us with questions."

Of course the SFBC has long wanted to screw up Masonic on behalf of the city's bike people. The problem is---on Masonic and other city streets they want to "calm"---if you slow down traffic on Masonic, you are going to slow down Muni, which on Masonic means slowing down the popular #43 Muni line that now moves well between Haight Street and Geary Blvd.

But the bike people aren't concerned about Muni. They just hate any busy street---a k a, "traffic sewers"---in the city where motor traffic moves well.

And all their talk about the dangers and accidents on Masonic is simply untrue, as the city's own accident numbers show.