Tuesday, May 09, 2017

The "improvements" at 9th and Division

A view of the newly upgraded intersection of 9th and Division streets, looking west down Division.
MTA photo
From Rob Francis:

The SFMTA recently spent millions of dollars to create "improvements" to the 9th and Division street intersection. The results have been disastrous. 

Please take a moment to provide feedback to to the SFMTA through the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/9S6RSQ6

The street is more dangerous than before because cyclists are no longer required to stop at the intersection. Motorists and pedestrians must wait for cyclists to pass, and no one knows who has the right of way.

The "protected bike lanes" have backed up traffic to both the Bay Bridge and the 101/280 on-ramps. 

The newly created space in the streets is now attracting encampments in the intersection.

The SFTMA wants to roll this design out to the rest of the city. Please circulate this survey to your neighborhood groups.

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How to "get" the Octavia Blvd. fiasco

Construction workers were putting the finishing touches on the new Central Freeway offramp at the intersection of Octavia and Market Streets. They were removing barricades, landscaping, laying brick and cleaning the streets on Wednesday morning. San Francisco, California. Wednesday, September 7, 2005. Photo by Jessica Brandi Lifland/For The Chronicle Photo: Jessica Brandi Lifland/For The C
Creating the Octavia Blvd. expressway in 2005

Sometimes I enjoy Jim Herd's blog, especially when he does pictures like this. As an analyst of local issues, however, he's a pretty good photographer. 

Like his flawed account of the under-construction and future Masonic Avenue traffic fiasco a few years ago, he too doesn't "get" why we have the ongoing Octavia Boulevard "disaster":
You know what a pigeon drop is? I sort of do, but I still don’t get it, not really. I’d be like, well, how is this going to work. And it was the same thing with the Octavia Boulevard disaster, which pitted a handful of landed millionaires of Hayes Valley against all the little people of the West Side. It went back and forth a few times, but the West Side lost and that’s how we ended up with the Octavia Boulevard disaster. Anyway, I never believed in it and I still don’t...
"Millionaires" versus "the little people"? In fact as I've pointed out over the years, the present Octavia Blvd. traffic fiasco was supported mostly by city progressives, though it took several elections and four ballot measures to get it done: the Bicycle Coalition, the Green Party, San Francisco Tomorrow, Calvin Welch and the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council, Jane Morrison, SPUR, John Burton, Art Agnos, Carole Migden, Tom Radulovich, the San Francisco Democratic Party, the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association, Robin Levitt, the Harvey Milk Club, and Walk San Francisco.

People of good will can disagree about whether rebuilding the Central Freeway overpass would have had worse consequences, but it's silly to continue denying that the new, unimproved Octavia Blvd. has had an awful impact on that part of town, which is gridlocked for most of the day with a lot of traffic that used to go over the Hayes Valley neighborhood on the Central Freeway: See John King's amen chorus: Norquist and Macdonald and "Healing" Hayes Valley with the Market and Octavia Neighborhood Plan.

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Typical month in Gun Nut Nation

Nine of the 73 guns discovered in carry-on luggage by TSA agents at airports across the country, during the week of March 6-12, 2017
Daily Kos

People exercising their Constitutional right to be morons:

No let-up in early March. Twenty-three people accidentally shot themselves (that we know of), and ten kids were accidentally shot. Four people accidentally shot family members or significant others. Three people accidentally fired their guns while they were out shopping and dining with the rest of us. We also had two each in the categories of accidentally firing weapons while cleaning them, and accidentally firing rounds into neighbors’ homes. You know, an average week...

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