Heather Knight doubles down

Photo: Paul Chinn

Heather Knight keeps the falsehoods coming for Chronicle readers in today's column:

Sometimes it takes an emergency to get anything done in San Francisco. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has developed the popular Slow Streets program, created emergency bus-only lanes and found street space for coronavirus test sites and pop-up food pantries.

And sometimes it takes declaring a bogus emergency---and skirting the law---to get things done that City Hall really wants to do.

Knight of course has an important advantage in this exchange: she writes for a large circulation daily newspaper, and I write for a blog with, let us say, limited circulation. That means she doesn't have to respond to what I wrote about her first column, while I have to repeat points I made the other day.

The city doesn't really have to take away all those traffic lanes and street parking to make room for "test sites and pop-up food pantries." It can carve out the limited space required for those functions wherever it wants. 

Nor is it clear exactly how "popular" these projects are with in San Francisco. What the city should have done years ago is put the Bicycle Plan and its anti-car projects on the ballot to allow the issues to be thoroughly debated and then decided by city voters. 

A 2017 Chamber of Commerce poll asked city voters this question: Traffic lane removal to make room for bike lanes [?]: 49% support 47% oppose. I haven't seen a recent city poll that asked this question about City Hall's anti-car traffic policies, but I suspect that the results would be similar, if not worse for the anti-car bike cause.

For obvious reasons, the city didn't want to consult city voters. What if voters rejected what the Bicycle Coalition and its enablers in City Hall want to do to our streets? That would have derailed the whole crackpot movement to redesign city streets on behalf of a small minority of cyclists.

Then the pandemic hit early this year, and it provided an unprincipled City Hall a chance to declare this bogus emergency and finally do what it has wanted to do since 2005, when it knowingly ignored the law and began implementing the 500-page Bicycle Plan on the streets of the city without the required environmental review.

City Attorney Dennis Hererra warned the city at the time that it would have to do environmental review of the Bicycle Plan, but he was ignored by the mayor and the supervisors. Knight should ask Hererra what he thinks the city's legal duty is under CEQA on the Slow Streets project.

Knight knows what I wrote, since I sent her a link to the post. That makes her dishonest, since it's a lot easier to make a one-sided argument if your readers never hear the opposing argument. 

Knight, by the way, complains that the critics of the allegedly "popular" Slow Streets project won't talk to her on the phone to explain why they oppose what the city is doing to city streets. 

But she has been sent several of the documents filed with the city by project opponents. Apparently if you're a "columnist," and not a reporter for the Chronicle, you don't have to clutter up your mind by reading stuff to inform yourself before you write: City's temporary transit lanes project is based on a lie.

Those documents go into great detail about exactly why these projects are based on a bogus emergency to justify redesigning city streets on behalf of special interest groups like the Bicycle Coalition. 

Knight of course goes to the Bicycle Coalition for a supportive soundbite in today's column, along with positive comments from City Hall officials and the SFMTA, the bloated city agency that's sponsoring the project.

That's objective reporting just for you, Chronicle readers, you poor bastards!

Knight's quote from the Bicycle Coalition:

“We’re outraged that private citizens would use city resources during an emergency time like this for their frivolous suits,” said Janice Li, advocacy director for the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is committed to pursuing every mechanism possible to prevent these suits moving forward.” Li lives in the Outer Sunset and spends a lot of time on the Slow Streets on 41st Avenue from Lincoln Way to Vicente Street. “I see how much they’re enjoyed and how critical these spaces are,” she said.

That struck a familiar note with me, since it was a lot like what we were hearing from Leah Shahum who led the SFBC in days of yore.

Shahum way back in 2006 on our successful litigation that made the city to do the required environmental review of its ambitious Bicycle Plan:

"We're frustrated. We've got a case here where the environmental laws are being perverted in a way that is not helping the environment and not helping the city of San Francisco" (SF Examiner, Nov. 9). "I'm surprised and disappointed that the environmental regulations can be twisted this way---to slow down a plan that obviously is a pro-environment action." (SF Chronicle, Nov. 9).

I'm not surprised when the Bicycle Coalition says stuff like this. That's what representatives of special interest groups do. Like Shahum, Li is just doing her job, though her job description also requires her to be a True Believer in the great bike revolution.

Like Supervisor Peskin the other day, Supervisor Yee refused to join Knight and the City Hall lemmings on the issue:

Supervisor Norman Yee, the president of the board, was the only one to defend the current process, saying he doesn’t consider it a waste of time or effort and that appeals can lead to a compromise that improves the project. “Like anything in a democracy, we can’t just throw the baby out with the bathwater,” he said, adding he pushed back on SFMTA’s idea to turn Hearst Avenue in the Sunnyside neighborhood into a Slow Street until there’s proof the community wants it.

Of course Supervisor Rafael "RoboProg" Mandelman supports Slow Streets. 

Our District 5 Supervisor, Dean Preston, supposedly needs more time to study the issue. Preston is not exactly a profile in  courage. In his campaigns for supervisor, he refused to say anything about the Masonic Avenue fiasco, even though Masonic is in the middle of his district.

CEQA is being denigrated by people who should know better: 
See CEQA: The Litigation Myth and Anti-CEQA Lobbyists Turn to Empirical Analysis, But Are Their Conclusions Sound?

See also Aaron Peskin leads from behind.