Masonic Avenue and the pandemic

The present Masonic Ave.

Sometime last year or early this year---the MTA doesn't date this stuff---the city issued another bulletin on impending "emergency" changes to Masonic Avenue, a busy city street that it has long been obsessed with "improving":

The SFMTA will soon implement initial segments of the approved Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes for both the 43 Masonic and 44 O’Shaughnessy Muni routes. This spring, at several points along these routes and on various streets, we will install transit lanes and left-turn restrictions to keep our city moving....Throughout the course of the pandemic, the SFMTA has focused on maintaining a core service network that serves essential workers and those who depend on Muni for essential trips.

Like a lot of politicians, transportation bureaucrats apparently think they have to do something during an emergency to show the public they're being "pro-active." 

Of course Muni has no way of knowing who its passengers actually are or why they are using the system, whether they are "essential workers" making "essential trips." 

Like me they are mostly people who can't afford cars with no other way to make trips in the city too long to do on foot.

The notion that somehow muni buses are being delayed by the pandemic---a public health emergency---is questionable, since many passengers quickly stopped even riding buses that clearly posed an increased infection risk, which is why Muni has abandoned many of its lines in the last year.

Jim Herd at San Francisco Citizen recently noticed that the above notice was taken down from its website by the SFMTA, presumably because the agency has abandoned plans to eliminate traffic lanes on Masonic, a major North/South street in this part of the city.

After receiving the above notice last year, I wondered what it meant in practical terms:

Masonic now has two traffic lanes in each direction. Hard to believe that even City Hall is dumb enough to remove another traffic lane with this project, which would leave a street that carries more than 32,000 vehicles a day with a single lane in each direction!

A month later, Herd and I raised the Masonic issue again. Apparently we're the only ones in the local media interested in City Hall's grotesque anti-car policies. [Have to mention Heather Knight's interest as a cheerleader for those policies]

I suppose we should be relieved that it turns out City Hall isn't dumb enough to take away more traffic lanes on Masonic Avenue. [Later: as matter of only historical interest now, there was serious opposition to the city's original screw-up of Masonic.]

Typical that the bloated agency made no announcement about the change, like it stonewalled stories about the UC study showing how City Hall, supposedly worried about the safety of city cyclists, failed to even count serious cycling accidents in the city.

Typical too that the local media let the city get away with it.