How to recognize a transportation boondoggle
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| Masonic Avenue "Streetscape" project |
Randal O'Toole provides ten ways to know when a transportation project is a boondoggle.
Number 8 sounds like a combination of the under-construction Masonic Avenue bike project and what the MTA has planned for Page Street: make it a bike boulevard:
8. It’s a bike lane project that reduces the number of lanes for automobiles. Many cities are attempting to encourage cycling while simultaneously discouraging driving by converting auto lanes to bike lanes, such as by changing a four-lane street to a two-lane street with a center left-turn lane and two bike lanes. This probably doesn’t increase bicycle safety, but it does increase traffic congestion. It is nearly always possible to find parallel local streets that can be turned into bicycle boulevards without impeding through or local auto traffic. All bicycle projects that reduce the capacity of arterial or collector streets to move automobiles are boondoggles.
Last year O'Toole gave us this eternal truth about transportation projects: "All you have to do is mention the words 'public transit' and progressives will fall over themselves to support you no matter how expensive and ridiculous your plans."
Labels: Anti-Car, High-Speed Rail, Honolulu Rail Project, Masonic Avenue, Muni, Rail Projects, Traffic in SF
posted by Rob Anderson @ 2:50 PM
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