Friday, November 24, 2017

True Believers talk to each other

From a Streetsblog interview with the new Executive Director of Walk San Francisco:
Streetsblog: During your years with the Bicycle Coalition, what was your greatest accomplishment?

Jodie Medeiros: Getting past the injunction.

Streetsblog: The Rob Anderson environmental lawsuit? That really jammed things up, but it also forced some creativity, didn’t it?
JM: (Nods) We weren’t able to paint anything on the street. We weren’t able to put up a single bike rack. It was really an interesting time in our city’s history. Out of that period came the Great Streets program at the SFBC–--and that lead[sic] to Sunday Streets, and parklets, and institutionalizing the parklets program. 
These are now things that we see every day in San Francisco. Parklets are flourishing. We’re using our streets for better uses than just car parking. That period was the greatest in my transportation history. I’m very proud of it.
Rob's comment:
Out of the mud grows the lotus! The injunction against the city we got way back in 2006 was traumatic for the anti-car folks. It was one of the few events that pierced their normally impenetrable political bubble (see Susan King, the injunction, and PTSD and The Guardian rewrites history).

Note how Streetsblog and Medeiros talk around the issue without any specifics. How and why exactly did we get Judge Busch to issue an injunction against the city's Bicycle Plan? Because the city was obviously violating the most important environmental law in the state, the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) that requires an environmental study before implementing any project that even might have an impact on the environment. The city was beginning to implement its 500-page Bicycle Plan on the streets of the city without doing any environmental study

Yes, the city and the anti-car folks came up with the parklet idea, which they like because constructing parklets requires taking away parking spaces from those wicked motor vehicles (Parklets: Institutionalizing the smoking section). 

Why anyone but smokers want to sit next to motor vehicle traffic with the accompanying diesel and carbon monoxide fumes is still a mystery to me.

More from the interview:
SB: If that was your brightest accomplishment, what is your biggest disappointment

JM: Change in San Francisco is too slow. That’s definitely something that I’ve learned in my career in the SFBC and the Housing Coalition. Unfortunately, policy and engineering takes time.

SB: We aren’t on track to attain the Vision Zero goals either.

JM: (nods) It’s horrible, it’s tragic–--what’s most tragic is it’s preventable. We know just 13 percent of our streets are responsible for over 75 percent of severe and fatal injuries, so our streets are dangerous by design. It’s not rocket science. We have the tools to re-engineer our streets.
Rob's comment:
All the "improvements" made to city streets under the Vision Zero idea have made no difference at all in the number of traffic accidents or fatalities in San Francisco. 

That result would give pause to everyone but the True Believers at the Bicycle Coalition, Streetsblog, Walk SF, and the SFMTA. For the latter---and the Department of Public Works---the Vision Zero bullshit is also a source of jobs to implement all that "re-engineering."

More on the interview tomorrow.

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14 Comments:

At 4:46 PM, Anonymous sfthen said...

Two year old article here mentions "political gadfly Rob Anderson" (p. 127) in relation to the SFBC, SPUR, Liveable City, WalkSF, Google bus, etc, gentrification of SF, the turning of Valencia Street into a tony suburban shopping mall.

Google the author name for more.

 
At 11:21 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

As Rob stated back in 2011, the parklets are a fad. They won't last much longer than the 7 years they've already been here - I wouldn't be surprised to find they are in serious decline and heading to extinction next year.

 
At 11:50 AM, Anonymous God the Lamp said...

Rob, you will be in jail soon. You have no right to vomit on this city. If you want to live in your car-land, they'd love to have you in Houston.

 
At 12:25 PM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

Parklets are a fad in planning departments, along with "dense development along transit corridors," traffic circles, and BRT. But, like tie-dye shirts, parklets are a crappy fad that's here to stay. They will make more sense when motor vehicles no longer emit toxic fumes and run instead on electricity.

 
At 12:51 PM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

sfthen:
This bike zealot tries to disguise himself as a scholar. His reference to me shows his crude bias and sloppy sholarship:
"Moreover, the Great Streets Project worked in the context of a spurious injunction, won in 2006 by political gadfly Rob Anderson, which halted implementation of the bicycle plan until it was overturned in Superior Court in 2010. This forced advocates to focus on innovation and work to build broader political support for livability planning."

The injunction was "spurious"? In fact it was an easy and obvious decision for Judge Busch to make, since the city was implementing its 500-page Bicycle Plan without doing any environmental review of the ambitious plan, a clear violation of CEQA, the most important environmental law in California.

The Bicycle Coalition even provided a PDF of the judge's decision ignored by the pseudo-scholar.

His pro-bike screed features a muddled discussion of Valencia Street, which I've written about a lot. See The Valencia Lie lives on.

 
At 1:22 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Rob, you cannot win against the true believers. Honestly even if they care to listen to an opposing view they will not move one centimeter from what they perceive the end game to be.

 
At 2:52 PM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

I agree. That's why I oppose religion, whether traditional forms or in the secular BikeThink form.

By the way, this morning's Chronicle has an interesting story on the toxicity of diesel fuel. Better wait until diesel is banned than linger in the city's trendy parklets.

 
At 3:39 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Congestion caused by “street calming “ is causing violence in SF - our board of supervisors has blood on their hands: https://missionlocal.org/2017/11/passenger-shoots-another-drivers-car-in-sf-mission-road-rage-incident/

 
At 3:44 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

“like tie-dye shirts, parklets are a crappy fad that's here to stay..” A fad that’s here to stay.. is it still appropriate to call it a fad? Maybe a “horrible permanent plague and theft of property from the legitimate users, drivers” would be a better term.

 
At 10:21 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

"A fad that's here to stay" .. I like it - it's catchy. Reminds me of "a midget that's big" or "a giant that's quite tiny".

 
At 2:12 PM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

Yes, parklets are an example of a planning fad that's become institutionalized.

 
At 6:23 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

“Yes, parklets are an example of a planning fad that's become institutionalized.“ So.. no longer a fad.

 
At 10:11 AM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

Yes, like tie-dye shirts, parklets are now a thing.

 
At 3:36 PM, Anonymous Gregski said...

Thanks to "Vision Zero" the streets are now even more "dangerous by design". The new segregated bike lanes on 8th Street and on Folsom are filled with broken glass, hypodermic needles and, after the season't first heavy rains, slippery trash and leaves. Traditional bike lanes stay relatively clean thanks to the air blowing under the cars. Since there are no barriers or buffer zones between the cyclists travelling 12-20 mph in the lane, and the doddering pedestrians distractedly stepping off the curb, I experience more terrifying close calls in the new lanes than I used to in their predecessors. This bicyclist now avoids the bike lanes unless they are almost empty. I feel less threatened riding in the motor lane, thank you.

 

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