Mayor Lee's Muni photo-op
From today's letters to the editor in the Chronicle:
No on Prop. A
Regarding “Mayor rides jam-packed Muni train with the masses” (Sept. 17) and “Mayor Cautious” (Sept. 17), Mayor Ed Lee and city officials are indeed cautious ... by not riding Muni at all except for election photo ops. And Lee is trying to raise $1 million in campaign cash to push his $500 million transportation bond?
It’s far better for donations to actually ease the crush in the Market Street Metro, because Prop. A does not restore years of Muni service cuts in every neighborhood. Prop A is an attempt to raid $1 billion ($500 million in bonds and $500 million in interest) by increasing property taxes and rents (50 percent pass-through) for non-Muni work and pet projects.
During future election cycles, Muni riders and touring bigwigs will still watch sardine-packed trains pass them by. Instead, reject Prop. A!
Then we sardines can help plan for four-car trains, free neighborhood circulator buses and more futuristic transit found around the world.
Howard Wong
San Francisco
posted by Rob Anderson @ 12:03 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Prop A does absolutely nothing to make MUNI faster or more efficient, with the exception of MAYBE spending money on an upgraded maintenance yard (whether or not that translates to a better functioning fleet is definitely not a guarantee). Some of the money also MAY go to transit only lanes.
All the other money goes to - you guessed it - curb bulbouts, bike lanes, disabled access platforms for MUNI, more traffic lights, more pedestrian signals that talk to you, and other things that don't have anything to do with how efficiently MUNI moves people. All this after the MUNI fare just went up another 12.5%.
This public transit bond, billed as "making streets safer for everyone" really seems to be a pedestrian/bicyclist bill. One that will be paid for by every single person who lives in SF.
Also, doesn't the Mayor know you're supposed to exit off the back of the bus?
Muni's problems have nothing to do with money and most can be solved practically for free:
1) Get rid of 50% of the stops
2) Get rid of most of the stop signs on many routes
3) Build more curb bulb-outs so the bus doesn't get screwed pulling into traffic.
Haha! More curb bulbouts! You mean, those things that slow all street traffic and make it hard for buses to turn? That is a piss-poor idea if I've ever heard one. Curb bulb-outs are one of the worst blights affecting the city right now - they bring no safety to pedestrians and make motorist traffic twice as dangerous to everyone.
And yes, let's get rid of stops, that way people have to walk further to get to the bus. If THAT doesn't force people into their cars, nothing will.
You're going to have a lot of problems getting rid of stop signs from the pedestrian crowd. Or could you be a person who doesn't normally pay attention to stop signs... like our two wheeled citizens perhaps?
Rkeezy, you are right on about the bulb-outs increasing danger, at least for cyclists.
The bulb-outs intrude into the right-turn zone and misguide motorists into making wider right-hook turns across bike traffic than they made before the bulb-outs were installed.
To deal with the right-hooks cyclists must either veer far left around right-turning traffic (risking sidswipe and rear-end collisions with motor vehicles in the center lane) or else stay in the bike lane, say a prayer, and utilize their daredevil bike-handling skills to dogleg between the right-hooking cars' bumpers.
The Bicycle Coalition rightly made a big stink about the female cyclist who was right-hooked to death next to the bulb-out on Folsom at 6th. The city effectively remediated this by striping a dedicated right-turn lane there and fixed the problem. Too bad the city then did exactly the opposite on Grove Street at Polk, where a formerly-functioning right-turn lane was replaced by a bulb-out (and some new curbside parking for City Hall big shots) which has effectively turned the bike lane on that block into a terror tunnel during morning commute hours.
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