Supervisor Kim's CEQA proposal

Jamie Whitaker of the Rincon Hills blog sends his newsletter, which includes this on CEQA reform:

South Beach/Rincon/Mission Bay Neighborhood Association Meeting on May 13th

Please mark your calendar to attend the next SBRMBNA meeting at the South Beach Harbor Services Building's Community Room on Monday, May 13, 2013 at 6 p.m. 

I believe that Supervisor Kim (or a representative) will present her CEQA appeal process legislation to neighbors for a good chunk of the meeting. Joshua Sabatini has a decent article summarizing the difference between Supervisor Kim's legislation and Supervisor Wiener's competing legislation on the matter.

The main differences are that Supervisor Kim's legislation provides more robust notifications to neighbors about what is being proposed for demolition and new construction in the neighborhood and that the clock starts ticking after the final approval for a project for citizens who spot errors by City employees or bad or inadequate information to appeal that final approval. Supervisor Wiener's legislation shuts the door after the first approval.

In South of Market, where we're being overwhelmed with the amount and large size of projects, Supervisor Kim's legislation is the way to go, but you can hear it for yourself from the Supervisor at this meeting!

The Berkeley Daily Planet on CEQA "reform" on the state level:
"Democrats in Sacramento are still trying to gut CEQA"

The Polk Street survey

A reader sends this in:

Rob,

I see Streetsbloggers are unhappy with that MTA proposed new designs for Polk St. 

MTA did a survey on Polk St., Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. The statistics are very interesting.

410 people were surveyed in 42 hours. 56% of the people surveyed live in the area of the Polk St. project.

How survey respondents arrive on Polk St: 5% by bicycle, 15% by car, 17% by transit, and 58% by foot. Since 56% of respondents live in the area, no wonder they all travel on foot!

If you read sf.streetsblog.org they say again and again that 85% of people do not arrive by car on Polk St. That's true, but it's a distorted statement.

Streetsblog fails to emphasize that only 5% travel by bicycle. That means bicyclists do not play a large role in Polk St. traffic. Therefore bicyclists should not be given a disproportionate representation in the Polk St. design by having dedicated bike lanes.

This is something to repeat over and over again, that 5% of bicyclists cannot be equated with 85% of traffic on Polk St.

Rob's comment:

That most shoppers/visitors on Polk Street get there on foot is why the city deployed the pedestrian safety lie to justify taking away all that street parking to make bike lanes.

The survey is really an attempt to reassure the small businesses on Polk Street that removing all that parking to make bike lanes will be good for business. Not surprisingly, those business owners think they know better than Streetsblog, the Bicycle Coalition, and Ed Reiskin---who makes $294,000 a year---about what's best for their businesses.

Reiskin and other MTA employees---there are more than 5,000 of them---don't have to worry about parking for their customers or about street "improvements" that could reduce their incomes. And if the MTA board fires Reiskin, he'll get six months pay going out the door!