San Francisco: "Among nation's worst streets for drivers"
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| Photo from the SF Examiner
From the Silicon Valley Business Journal:
San Francisco and San Jose ranked second and third, respectively, among the nation's worst roads for driving, according to a new report. The report, titled "Bumpy Roads Ahead: America’s Roughest Rides and Strategies to Make our Roads Smoother," was released Thursday by TRIP, a transportation group based in Washington, D.C. The report examined urban pavement conditions, transportation funding and economic development... According to TRIP, bad roads cost drivers $377 a year because they contribute to vehicle deterioration through maintenance, repair, fuel consumption and tire wear. The report looked at 20 large cities (populations of at least 500,000) with the highest percentage of pavements in poor conditions and the highest vehicle operating cost... San Francisco (60 percent) and San Jose (56 percent) ranked second and third, respectively, in poor road condition. In VOC, San Francisco ranked third at $782, while San Jose was sixth, costing $737 per vehicle...
Rob's comment: Hence, City Hall's long campaign to make it as difficult and expensive as possible to drive in San Francisco has been successful, though the city's anti-car movement must be disappointed that San Jose's streets are even worse than ours.
It's not as if the city doesn't already raise plenty of money to pave our streets---more than $170 million from parking and parking tickets and more than $80 million from Prop. K sales tax---but it squanders that money on the Central Subway project and to support a bloated MTA bureaucracy of more than 5,000 employees.
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Labels: Anti-Car, City Government, SFCTA, Traffic in SF
posted by Rob Anderson @ 3:08 PM
8 comments
8 Comments:
Answer: more people on bikes.
"Answer: more people on bikes."
Yeah bikes really tear up the roads with their massive pounding of the pavement. And that's not even accounting for the devastating environmental impact of all the carbon dioxide emissions from their heaving breathing.
City cyclists should be concerned about the condition of city streets, since hitting a pothole while riding a bike can lead to serious injury, while it can only lead to a repair bill for a motorist.
Rob, Everyone knows riding a bike is inherently dangerous and it's useless to try to make it safer. We bikers know this, so we're completely apathetic about pavement conditions.
Ed Reiskin was in charge of the DPW, guess he did such a good job there that he got bumped up to running the MTA where we can expect he will repeat this stellar performance.
With this kind of incompetence at the top it's no wonder San Francisco needs almost one billion dollars for every one-hundred thousand citizens just to barely do the basics.
Government in San Francisco is primarily a jobs program for "progressives." Reiskin makes $300,000 a year and heads up an MTA bureaucracy of more than 5,000 employees. Reiskin signaled in an interview with the Bicycle Coalition when he was at DPW that he supported all the anti-car bike policies favored by City Hall. Actually running our Muni system is a secondary consideration.
Bikes don't tear up the road, but they do severely impact traffic either by the construction of bike lanes or a single biker foisting his 15 mph presence slowing traffic for hundreds of drivers per bicyclist. And all for the cost of zero - the amount they pay in parking meters and tickets, fuel taxes, and registration fees. You know, the moneys that are spent on improving the roads that we ALL depend on.
You know, the moneys that are spent on improving the roads that we ALL depend on.
1) Parking meters/tickets - these moneys are not used for road improvements
2)fuel taxes - Those moneys are ONLY used for state and federal highways. In San Francisco that means 19th Ave, CA-35 from Sloat to Daly City, Van Ness, Lombard, Doyle Drive (bikes prohibited), the Central Freeway (bikes prohibited), I-80 (bikes prohibited).
3) registration fees - Those moneys are used for running the DMV, with surplus to CHP which patrols restricted access freeways (bikes prohibited)
So no, those moneys are not spent on the roads we all depend on. Then again, you knew that.
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