It seems to me the equally sad undercurrent to that experience were few locals to give this mourning out-of-towner tips and help.

Wrong citation of constitutional law I'm afraid. The Civil Rights movement had strong arguments on this sort of thing.

The situation is this: people have a right to move and do what they like within the limits of the law. Limited urban space is a public good that has to be allocated to the maximum benefit of all the different things people want to do in that space.

Unfortunately, it's just plain lazy design (with questionable motives) that has forced so many to turn to the car.

I often see several generations of a family climbing out of their aging minivans parked on the Valencia median to get to church on Sunday. Any design proposal that makes it impossible or strongly weighed against that connection happening is a bad design...and possibly unconstitutional. The challenge then is to get that network of people to their destination without a car. At a minimum, that means far better seniors-friendly pedestrian access from the BARTs on Mission to Church St.

Mission itself is overdue for renovation - I think we can still have strong local character, without half the grit, and none of the tripping hazards residents grindingly accept.

For the funeral processions, that too can be organized differently - to have gatherings and convoys mediated by BART/MUNI. The barest minimum of the closest relations need accompany the body, while the rest meet up at a rally point to proceed with the convoy to the cemetary. Of course, if I had unlimited capital, I'd have a rickshaw/pedi-cab company do local funeral convoy runs. It certainly is a difficult business model to sell, even to just one of the 10 funeral companies in the city, but our populous species forces all of us to invent new ways of doing things.

@Susan Vaughn: Shoup's "High Cost of Free Parking" has some background on how the "right" to park at the curb became standard practice as cars became more common personal possessions. It is particularly interesting to look at cities like SF and NYC as car ownership increased and spacial constraints required writing or changing policy to accommodate car storage. I'm not sure if anyone has compiled a list of cities that have Providence-style restrictions. Shoup or Robert Cervero at Berkeley would be good places to start.

There already is a residential parking permit system in place: http://www.sfmta.com/cms/pperm/13442.html - it supports street cleaning, and is a patchwork, since some neighborhoods are exempt, due to the hills that prevent street cleaning equipment from getting in. That's the existing compromise. To make the residential parking permit system complete, it should account for these geographic realities.

Otherwise, I quite agree that there should be no free parking anywhere (downtown SOMA parking to attract customers can cost a business $2000/mo), or anywhen - with stricter enforcement of the existing laws against double-parking, etc.

How that can remain flexible for Sunday church-goers, and funeral convoys in key parts of the city needs to be considered.

i bet you that would do a lot to move things along : )

It would be interesting if someone who reads Streestblog had more information about such parking management policies -- how and why they came to be and where they are still extent.

That is a service transfer between proximity and quality of service which does not necessarily reflect the priorities of Muni's diverse ridership.

The Charter is clear. Nat Ford works for the MTA Board. The MTA Board was expressly made an independent body per charter by the voters, the directors can only be removed for cause. The case can be made that mayoral interference in the MTA is official misconduct, same for directors who carry out the will of the Mayor under political pressure. Any Planning, Appeals or MTA commissioner who responded to mayoral pressure and submitted their resignations in 2007 are likewise exposed. Official misconduct would mean a bar on future service, so if the DA or Ethics Commission put the electorate before the electeds, we'd maybe see some action.

The voters created an independent agency with a budgetary set aside and Newsom has it as an adjunct of his office and is raiding its subsidy. Sounds like official misconduct to me.

-marc

But calling the TEP "a study of how best to dismantle city-wide bus service." is BS. The TEP called for redistribution of bus services around the city, not any service cuts.

When the state took away millions of transit support, and the city went into a huge deficit, the TEP data was used to intelligently manage service cuts. Far better to cut that Valencia bus and some of the redundant services around Laurel Heights than to cut lines significant numbers of people rely on.

There was no TEP conspiracy. Just poor financial planning at the city and state levels.

Folks challenging the Newsom MTA budget are not wild eyed radicals, but folks who have put in years and years of effort to make transportation work in San Francisco.

As Campos said, there's nothing radical about shifting around $15m.

And the voters have just weighed in against budgetary shenanigans and gimmickry. Newsom using the MTA as an ATM is the kind of sleight of hand that California voters just rejected.

-marc

Bloomberg isn't perfect but one thing is for sure - if he loses his job and is reviled by all, he'll be ok. A lot of these guys have to avoid bold strokes because doing so not only might cost them their job, but impact their ability to get another one, or get elected to higher office.

And you are right on describing Ford as "Solemn"

@Josh: Since transit first policies are the law, aren't our politicians breaking the law by not acting accordingly? Since the city seems to be afraid of lawsuits, perhaps pursuing the legal avenue is the way to go. Lawsuits were certainly effective in terms of thwarting the bike plan.

If I had Ford's broad, almost autocratic powers, I'd be dispatching paint gangs all over town, overturning the status quo every morning. But Ford uses his powers to just show up at meetings and nod solemnly.

NY MTA, please hire this guy.