Monday, December 07, 2009

How the anti-car jihad hurts the city #1


So Tom Radulovich doesn't like the proposal for a major retail project on a blighted section of Market Street because the plan includes a 201-space underground parking garage. What a surprise! Radulovich prefers the blighted status quo rather than allow parking for death monsters, aka automobiles:

Retailers and investors have insisted it's a no-go...unless the plan's underground parking provision is given the go-ahead. Opposition to that is certain. One of the people at the meeting, Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, has expressed opposition to additional parking in San Francisco. One of Livable City's goals is "a reduction in our dependence on the automobile."

Radulovich is a BART director, but he's really just another San Francisco anti-car advocate, which is evident when you look at his website. This is the progressive plan for the city: make it as difficult and expensive as possible to drive here---for residents and tourists, even though tourism is our most important industry. The Bicycle Plan is of course the key to this plan, since it will go a long way toward creating gridlock on city streets.

I notice that Radulovich lists "Transit Villages in the 21st Century," by Michael Bernick and Robert Cervero, on his site's bibliography. But Bernick himself is alarmed by how his transit corridors idea is being misunderstood and misapplied to the streets and neighborhoods of San Francisco, as he told us years ago in an op-ed in the Chronicle.

Like other city progs, Radulovich has never met a parking garage he liked.

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3 Comments:

At 5:16 PM, Anonymous Orton said...

To be honest (and I usually agree with you), I'm not sure that garage is a good idea. Market Street has enough cars as it is.

I was originally skeptical of the Westfield mall for the same reasons, but it's actually working pretty well with no extra parking and primarily BART access.

I'm all for ecomonic development, but malls for tourists aren't exactly my cup of tea either. The Tenderloin does need to be cleaned up and I agree with you Rob about that fact (arrest the scum bags, get rid of the homeless, etc...)

 
At 10:13 PM, Blogger Rob Anderson said...

Officially Market Street now has no cars at all in this area. Besides the cars will enter this building from Stevenson Street, not Market Street.

All the young groovies can run around with their dicks in their hands and pretend that bikes are a big deal, but the reality is that SF is mainly a tourist town. The notion that we have to let fantasy trump the reality of our economic interests is nuts. We need people to be able to drive into the city, to eat at our restaurants, stay at our hotels, and visit our museums,etc.

I don't know where you got the idea that I think that we need to "arrest the scum bags, get rid of the homeless," because I think we need to either get the homeless off our streets into shelter or supportive housing, or, preferably, send them back to where they came from via the Homeward Bound program, which usually means a Greyhound bus ticket out of town.

 
At 8:23 AM, Anonymous Orton said...

Yes yes... but if we have a chance to vote, must we support more tourist development? Is that REALLY in our economic best interest? It certainly is NOT in mine, I'm just a working professional.

Sorry, didn't mean to be extreme about the homeless statement. I agree with you 100% on that, also that druggies, punks & gangstas need to be rounded up and the tenderloin given back to normal people, etc... now that could be some huge economic development, some affordable housing with out messing with market rates, and we wouldn't need to have more disneyland tourist bullshit in town!

 

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