Polk Street survey results
A reader writes:
Rob,
A friend from the Polk St. group said June 21,2013 was a policy and governance committee (PAG) meeting. C. Brinkman and J. Ramos (MTA) said there were 1703 responses to the Polk Street survey.
Option A: 49% - keep street parking
Option B: 6% - keep street parking
Option C: 45% - remove parking on one side of street
49+6 = 55% want to preserve street parking. The survey ended May 24, but MTA hasn't posted the results yet on their website.
Brinkman and Ramos might have a hard time spinning the results, which they obviously don't like.
Take a look at the redesigned SFMTA website. There is not a single link to their phone numbers! Every other city department has contact info, phone numbers.
Rob,
A friend from the Polk St. group said June 21,2013 was a policy and governance committee (PAG) meeting. C. Brinkman and J. Ramos (MTA) said there were 1703 responses to the Polk Street survey.
Option A: 49% - keep street parking
Option B: 6% - keep street parking
Option C: 45% - remove parking on one side of street
49+6 = 55% want to preserve street parking. The survey ended May 24, but MTA hasn't posted the results yet on their website.
Brinkman and Ramos might have a hard time spinning the results, which they obviously don't like.
Take a look at the redesigned SFMTA website. There is not a single link to their phone numbers! Every other city department has contact info, phone numbers.
Rob comments:
Glad to learn those numbers! But that kind of a survey shouldn't be enough to decide the issue. People in the Polk Street neighborhood---including those who aren't computer literate---should get a vote on the issue. It would be even better if all these bike projects on busy city streets were on the ballot for the whole city to vote on, instead of the neighborhoods having to constantly fight off the MTA and City Hall as they try to impose these "improvements" on us, especially considering the MTA's practice of hiring people right out of the SF Bicycle Coalition, while the mayor stacks the MTA board with pro-bike, anti-car appointments, like Brinkman and Ramos.
The new MTA website is a mixed bag. I've already complained about all the old studies and documents that have apparently gone down Orwell's Memory Hole never to be seen again. I have hard copies of a lot of the old documents, but it would help public understanding and the people who write about transportation issues to have links for all the old Transportation Fact Sheets, the bicycle counts, the collision reports, etc. Doing that would be no big deal technically. If they don't do that, one has to suspect that maybe the city doesn't want us to be able to put their current reports in a historical perspective.
Labels: Anti-Car, Bicycle Coalition, Muni, Neighborhoods, Parking, Polk Street
posted by Rob Anderson @ 5:09 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
49+6 = 55% want to preserve street parking
How can that be? If only 3.4% of the city rides a bike, wouldn't it stand to reason that 96.6% would want to preserve street parking?
Given the average age of the people wearing the SAVE POLK STREET T-shirts was roughly 70 (underscored by the "not everyone can ride a bike, most of us are far too old), these stats are going to completely flip over the next 10 years. Those people should not be driving a car - they simply do not have the requisite reaction times to drive a motor vehicle. In San Rafael last week, an elderly driver who surely wants to preserve parking, drove 2 city blocks in reverse on the sidewalk. And we complain about cyclists riding on the sidewalk!
Options A & C were switched when it came to the North/Central Polk section and the South Polk section.
You'll have to expand on which section those results are for.
- Someone who went to the meetings
MTA is all about "divide and conquer", no way do they want anything put to a citywide vote cause most people depend on their cars to do business, get to and from work, take the kids places (yes there are still families with kids living in the city!), and of course seniors who do not want to ride MUNI (guess why?). MTA is no dummy...and their masters at the Bike Coalition will never let these proposals go for a citywide vote because then it will be more than apparent that not everyone is single minded and crazy about bikes.
Time for citizens to get a vote on the SF Bike Plan and/or MTA's bicycle bias on the ballot for an election. It's the only way we'll stop those divide and conquer tactics - we must come together.
"You'll have to expand on which section those results are for."
Look, the MTA hasn't even released the results of the survey.This account is from someone at a recent meeting and not the official results.
But the MTA's strategy on these bike projects is to distract people with phony "options," dividing a street into "sections," etc.And then---surprise!---they end up choosing the "option" that takes away the most parking.
The current version of the Masonic Avenue bike project is a good example of this tactic.The section of the EIR on the Bicycle Plan about Masonic is incomprehensible, since the analysis is sliced and diced into small, one-block units,which doesn't make a lot of sense.
Then the city settles on the project that the Bicycle Coalition prefers that takes away all the street parking between Fell St. and Geary Blvd.---167 spaces!---to make separated bike lanes.
But reality: the MTA and the Bicycle Coalition---virtually identical on these projects---want to take away a lot of street parking to make bike lanes all over the city.
I look forward to Internet tough guy rkeezy standing on the corner with a petition for a ballot prop.
What's "tough" got to do with anything? How "tough" are you with your anonymous insults?
But, tough guy, you're too chickenshit to put your name on your comments.
But I've read Sun Tsu, and you've read Wendell Cox and Randall O'Toole.
I win.
Sun Tsu wrote about bike lanes in San Francisco?
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