"Stop listening only to the bike people and start listening to the rest of us"
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| Supervisor Farrell |
A commenter to a previous post referred to the May 2 meeting of the Board of Supervisors' Neighborhood Services Committee and the parking item:
It took a while but I think the bike coalition's influence at the SFMTA and
SFCTA is about to come to an end. Viewing of the May 2nd Board of Supervisors
meeting will show you that the vast majority of citizens are fed up. The
loudest applause was for the gentleman who said "stop listening ONLY to the bike
people and start listening to the rest of us."
The hearing on the MTA's aggressive expansion of parking meters in the neighborhoods---activating parking meters even on Sundays---was called by Second District Supervisor Farrell, one of several supervisors concerned about parking in their districts. The neighborhood pushback against an imperial MTA and its anti-car policies annoys the anti-car, pro-bike Bay Guardian and Streetsblog, but that's the thing about district elections---it makes supervisors sensitive to what people in the neighborhoods are actually concerned about. (District elections also allows leftists, who could never win a citywide election, to get elected, which is why they like this system. Ranked Choice Voting, another prog "good government" policy adopted by San Francisco, also distorts the democratic process.)
Meter Madness provides a link to the SFGTV video of the hearing and recommends starting at 130155, when the parking agenda item begins. But if you want to skip Ed Reiskin's boilerplate PowerPoint presentation on MTA's need to "manage" parking in the neighborhoods, skip to around 02:15:30 for the more interesting public comments.
Labels: Anti-Car, Ed Reiskin, Muni, Neighborhoods, Parking
posted by Rob Anderson @ 12:25 PM
11 comments
11 Comments:
so wait, district elections get supervisors who listen to their neighborhoods, which is good unless that neighborhood is a bunch of leftists, in which case it is bad that their neighborhood is listened to?
Note when watching how Reiskin presents NO plans for fixing MUNI because he says he needs to tackle getting the entire city parking "managed" first, and that this was their mandate because of the transit first policy. So while he worries about "penetration" into the outer reaches of the city with parking management, he mentions that many of these areas are not served by MUNI.
I think parking management should be given back to a division of the SFPD. Reiskin seems terribly frustrated that using a car to get around in San Francisco is "too easy and inexpensive", but he is making sure to change that.
Again and again during his presentation he seems frustrated that some neighborhoods have "free" on street parking which says a lot about what his ultimate goals are.
I love the citizen comments including the guy who said he walked to the meeting because it was faster than MUNI. The gentleman in the wheelchair also made a strong visible and verbal statement that using a bike is impossible for many and removing on-street residential parking hurts people with disabilities.
I think the supervisors took notice that the majority of the speakers were long term residents of the city, most of whom own their own homes, many of whom also use MUNI and want MUNI improved FIRST. The percentage of business owners was very high as well.
Where were the bike people? I actually think they were too cowardly to show up and present their side.
The so-called progressive supervisors will not listen to views that are one centimeter removed from their world view. My supervisor, Jane Kim, is not as bad as Daly was, but not much better. I am not Attila the Hun, yet my supervisor and the other "progressive" supervisors are not inclined to open up debates that are inclusive of other people's views that they do not believe it. That is the reality.
"so wait, district elections get supervisors who listen to their neighborhoods, which is good unless that neighborhood is a bunch of leftists, in which case it is bad that their neighborhood is listened to?"
The only reason all this anti-car stuff could get passed in the first place is with a district election system, which allows supervisors to be elected who couldn't win a citywide election. But those progressives are now learning that that system can bite them in the ass with neighborhood opposition that doesn't conform to prog doctrine about the wickedness of motor vehicles and the need to "manage" neighborhood parking.
That's why, as I pointed out on both the Fell/Oak bike lanes and the Polk Street bike lanes, progressive supervisors have been conspiculously silent on both those issues.
If any of this stuff---and the Bicycle Plan itself---is ever on the ballot, it would lose.
If the city accommodated cars like all of you want the BoS to do, you wouldn't even recognize San Francisco anymore.
No, all City Hall has to do is leave things alone and stop meddling with its bogus "improvements," especially taking away traffic lanes and street parking to make bike lanes. All that's going to do is make traffic worse for everyone---except cyclists, of course, who will weave in and out of the resultant traffic jams and run red lights and stop signs just like they do now.
Fell/Oak are already done. The world didn't end. Next!
Rob, you may want to check out the Small Business Commission hearing from April 22, 2013! If I were an SFMTA senior manager, I would be putting out my resume quick! There was NO support for SFMTA policies at the meeting either by the audience, commission members or staff. Watching this makes me think the Bike Coalition better start looking for another source of revenue because SFMTA tax dollars that are sent to them are about to dry up. The various speakers make an excellent case for why bike paths are not the answer for fixing MUNI. I wonder if SFMTA senior staff have watched this meeting?
http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/MediaPlayer.php?view_id=45&clip_id=17346
Anon said, "Fell/Oak are already done. The world didn't end."
Of course the world didn't end, the result is that SF is just a little more unpleasant as a place for most people to live, the kind of people who made SF such a livable city long before the bicycle hipsters moved here.
Bike lanes may make SF marginally more convenient for recent arrivals, short-time college students and the extended stay tourists, the types that contribute nothing the City beyond trying to turn it into a suburban shopping mall. The kind that expect privileges they've done nothing to earn.
The losers are the vastly greater number of residents who were willing to make the commitments necessary to live here long term, the kind where e.g. at Thanksgiving there are three generations around the table.
So yeah, the world didn't end, it just whimpered a bit more.
Suburban shopping malls are synonymous with large amounts of parking, which is what you want. Maybe you meant something else?
And clearly, the greatness of a city is measured in how many families gather that include more than several generations from one geographical location.
City Hall worries that middle income families are leaving the city, that there are fewer children in the city. But making it harder for these families to function by making it more difficult and expensive to drive here encourages them to leave the city and move to the suburbs.
The traffic is already here. There are more than 460,000 motor vehicles registered in SF. 35,500 motor vehicles drive into the city every workday. There are more than 1,000 Muni vehicles on our streets and more than 1,500 taxis. Millions of tourists drive to and around the city every year (tourism is our largest industry).
The City of San Francisco itself owns more than 20 parking garages/lots, which is a major source of income for City Hall.
This anti-car foolishness is nothing but a PC fad fostered by college students and the trendies.
More importantly, it's pervasive as an influence on our Planning Dept. and our development policies, which is called, in a nice Orwellian touch, "smart growth." No need to make sensible plans for all the traffic that's going to be a result of the present boom in housing development, because all the new city residents can ride bikes!
19,000 people living on Treasure Island! 5,000 more housing units at Parkmerced!
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