City Hall is deliberately screwing up city traffic

London Breed

Letter to the editor in today's SF Chronicle:

Untangle S.F.'s streets

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is pinching down Van Ness Avenue, a construction zone for many years. Market Street is all but closed to autos and covered in unsightly red paint. City streets all over town are closed, making travel confusing. Conflicting bicycle lanes and traffic calming devices make intersections more dangerous. 

There are many giant barriers that are graffiti magnets blocking transportation through Golden Gate Park. High-occupancy vehicle lanes will soon restrict auto traffic on already-clogged 19th Avenue-Park Presidio. Extensive attempts to reduce pedestrian fatalities have changed numbers very little. 

Is this the urban environment we want, controlled by the ideological whims of the unelected MTA? 

San Francisco Mayor London Breed and the Board of Supervisors need to assert the jurisdiction of local elected officials over city streets. Changes to city streets must be necessary, sensible, effective, beautiful and an improvement over what has existed before.

Traffic calming? Let's open up all closed streets to normal traffic.

William Klingelhoffer

San Francisco

Rob's comment:

Alas, screwing up city streets is supported by Mayor Breed and the board of supervisors. They apparently think that making it difficult to drive in the city will encourage people to stop driving those wicked motor vehicles and start riding bikes.

When she was District 5 Supervisor, London Breed screwed up traffic on busy Masonic Avenue in my district based on bogus safety claims.

The Chronicle has been running with the anti-car lemmings in San Francisco for years. See for example its stories on Masonic Avenue: The Chronicle story on Masonic Avenue #1 and The Chronicle story on Masonic Avenue #2.