New website on Masonic Avenue!
Check out a new website---Save Masonic---to rally neighborhood opposition to the city's plan to screw up Masonic Avenue on behalf of the city's bike people. Welcome!
Labels: District 5, Masonic Avenue, Neighborhoods, Panhandle, Parking
posted by Rob Anderson @ 9:52 AM
10 comments
10 Comments:
Talk about the 11th hour! I guess they never read all your posts about this for the last 3 years :(
Yes, City Hall plans to implement this dumb project---the MTA board approved it last September---but neighborhood opposition can still kill it before construction starts. In spite of the MTA's pro-forma "community outreach" process, I don't think many people in the neighborhood understand how stupid what the city is going to do to Masonic is.
I tried writing and posting about the Save Masonic Avenue website on some OTHER San Francisco housing/development/political blogs that relate to this type of story , and guess what? They ALL get removed! The Polk Street debacle has created over 250 comments on Socketsite alone in what has turned into WWIII between the bike people and property and business owners. There is no doubt about it, Rob Anderson was way ahead of the curve on the anti-car crowd and their agenda becoming THE political story of this city. As mentioned earlier by another commenter, I can see where a mayoral candidate could win with a platform of curbing the SFMTA and ignoring the bike people and taking care of the majority instead.
Yes, the bike people and the MTA like to think that I'm the only one complaining about this stuff---grouchy old Rob Anderson, the anti-bike guy. When a website like this appears, they circle the wagons, but they're not used to being on the defensive, like they are on the Polk Street issue. Polk Gulch should be an inspiration and an example to other city neighborhoods, which are already upset at the spread of parking meters.
Maybe it's time for me to dust off my Leave the Neighborhoods Alone Plan, which I introduced when I ran for District 5 Supervisor. It's a simple program: City Hall should pave the streets and then leave us alone, except for police and fire protection, which property owners are already paying dearly for.
City voters passed the costly street bond in 2011, which is going to pay for repaving Polk Street. The city should do that and then go away, automatically implementing my Leave the Neighborhoods Alone Plan,saving a lot of money and the neighborhood a lot of fuss in defending itself against an imperial MTA.
But all these PC, anti-car "improvements" are unneeded and unwelcome, make-work projects for the more than 5,000 people who work in the MTA's bureaucracy.
I was hoping that a candidate for mayor would stand up for the neighborhoods but none did. Nor did any of the District 5 candidates for supervisor. They all groveled before the Bicycle Coalition, and the eventual winner, London Breed, groveled with the rest of them. And she's still groveling, apparently under the illusion that these projects have a lot of popular support in the district.
I'm not planning to run for mayor, but I'm thinking about running against Breed in 2016.
2016 run? Didn't you get less than 2% of the vote last time you ran? What makes you think you'll break 5%?
I got more than 1,900 votes in 2008without campaigning.
1900 votes is not outside the statistical noise for voters who have no idea about any candidates and just pick a random candidate, especially given the number who pick a random non-incumbent.
Mike Hunt could have received 1900 votes.
I bet that last Anon is the same one who hacked your blog!
It's okay if people insult me in the comments, but they can't do it anonymously.
Awesome link, thanks Rob! I sent out my mail. Declining to use LOS metrics to ascertain impacts on vehicle users (and there are *many* of us) shows that there isn't very much reaching across the aisle going on on their part.
Of course, then I saw on LinkedIn that someone from the SF Planning Department had viewed my profile...
Ryan K.
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