Warriors' arena: Gridlock for Mission Bay

From the Chronicle's letters to the editor on May 13:

Gridlocked arena

The proponents of the new Warriors arena want us to believe it won’t cause traffic problems. How can this be? It’s already terrible. Drive through Mission Bay any weekday between 4 and 6 p.m.

Pick a street: Third, Mariposa, 16th, it doesn’t matter. Count how many traffic light cycles it takes you to get through the next intersection. Add a Giants day game, and you don’t move at all. It’s gridlock.

Many of the people moving into all those new condos will have cars. Now you want to add an 18,000-seat sports venue with parking for only about 1,200? No impact? This is crazy. The developers reap huge profits, you get gridlock. It’s called a boondoggle, folks. Mission Bay: empty to ruined in five years.

Kevin Sarmento

San Francisco

Obama, Democrats to blame for train wreck

ABC photo

Instead of installing a safety system, federal money went for the high-speed rail boondoggle. From Randal O'Toole (Too Much Money Going to the Wrong Places):

...In 2008, President Bush signed a law mandating that most railroads, including Amtrak, install positive train control (PTC) by December of 2015. PTC would force trains to slow or stop if the operator ignored signals or speed limits.

In 2009 and 2010, President Obama asked a Democratic Congress to give him $10 billion to spend on high-speed trains, and Congress agreed. Not one cent of that money went to installing PTC in Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor.

PTC would have prevented this accident. There was plenty of money available to install it, but the Obama administration, in its infinite wisdom, chose to spend it elsewhere. Two days ago, it would have been embarrassing to realize that the government-run Amtrak hadn’t yet completed installation of PTC on its highest-speed corridor. Today, it’s a tragedy. But how is it the fault of fiscal conservatives?...(emphasis added)

Later: O'Toole follows up on the Amtrak story with this.