I can understand how difficult watching a give and take like this is within a groupthink culture, a culture that is manicured on avoiding conflict.

But don't piss on my leg and tell me its raining, okay?

-marc

I agree with Rob that illegal shortcuts are a bad idea as much now as I did in the years leading up to the debacle which is about to conclude.

However, the political calculus in San Francisco is stacked decidedly on the side of development because that is where the money is. Any San Francisco politician who stands up significantly to the growth machine, as in exacting more than 30% of the net costs that such growth visits on existing residents, will be targeted for defeat, the political equivalent of being taken out back and shot.

When you add the power of a state agency to that of the growth machine, supervisors are impotent.

Rest assured, Rob, that you will win out in the end, that this inability of progressives to effectively challenge the growth machine means that progressives are forfeiting themselves out of our own base by entitling more and more moderate "settlements" in our progressive "east bank," which will lead to our eventual defeat and extinction. With it, will go the progressive protections, and probably you from San Francisco, as your rent controlled apartment, if it is that, goes on the market.

-marc

The moral of the story: progressive city government is just like convervative government. Political elites do whatever they want and ignore the law to do it.

You sneer at my alleged intellectual deficiencies, but I'm the only one still writing about other important progressive failures, like on homelessness and the shockingly bad Market/Octavia Plan, which is only being delayed in implementation by the recession and litigation. And the equally shocking surrender of the old UC extension property to that predatory institution by the city, with Ross "Revolution" Mirkarimi leading the way on the sell-out.

Back in 2005, I urged folks on the BofS to put $1m on reserve to start an EIR as soon as the City was enjoined, but was rebuffed by groupthink practicing denial; the City Attorney is going to get us out of this, just wait!

Those of us who had trod through LOS and CEQA instead of dancing around it knew the dangers, but groupthink elicited a kind of policy recklessness that has yet to be acknowledged by its proponents, and which ended up costing life and limb of cyclists for half of this decade.

This life is more than just a read through, these are real policies here that portend real, even fatal consequences for real people. This is not academic, some community improvement project you did for your grad school thesis.

So long as servicing the ego and bending over backwards to not offend other actors trumps sober policy analysis, we're going to see these dangerous policy outcomes continue.

When will there be accountability for failure? The people who led us here are still getting paid, still deny complicity in a disastrous outcome, still project their failures onto others, and thus don't appear to have learned much, yet they maintain their claim on the mantle to lead us into the future. Incredible!

-marc

I never saw you or any of the bike people at the many hearings during the litigation leading up to Judge Busch's decision. Where too were Steve Jones and Matt Smith?

"In a world where everyone is blind, the one-eyed man is king. You, Rob, are the one-eyed man in this picture for the next several months."

I don't claim that it took any great intellectual acumen to be informed on the issue, but I went to the hearings and read the documents, something that apparently no one in the bike community did. That ignorance was reflected in the statements issued by Leah Shahum insisting that the Plan was only being delayed by legal technicalities, when in fact the city violated the very essence of CEQA. It's never clear when she and the SFBC issue a statement whether they are simply ignorant or are lying.

And when I say incompetence, I mean serial incompetence. We would have seen more positive outcomes on the bike plan had we flipped a coin at each decision point to chart a path forward rather than for these people who get paid to do so apply their collective "expertise."

We would have seen more positive outcomes had these decisions been exposed to the sanitizing rays of sunshine and not conducted behind close doors between designated stakeholders on a mission to monopolize the debate.

In a world where everyone is blind, the one-eyed man is king. You, Rob, are the one-eyed man in this picture for the next several months.

-marc

Politics? Driving a private car alone through San Francisco--and many other cities--is also as much a political act and part of a political lifestyle as it is transportation. And unlike the politics of cycling, the politics of pimping petrol are sickening and destructive to people and other living things.

Private motoring in America in 2009 engenders the politics of constant and bloody oil wars abroad that kill hundreds of thousands of innocents; the politics of tens of thousands of Americans killed annually by cars; of auto-oriented exurban sprawl that alienates humans from one another and facilitates obesity and related chronic diseases; of pollution of the air, soil and water and the alarming warming of our global climate.

The politics of driving a car are the politics of war, disease, toxicity, imbalance, destruction and degredation.

So I'm happy to put my body on the line to make a political statement against all of that--I ride a bicycle. And, Rob--you're welcome.

This is all important because a statement of overrriding considerations must be supported by substantial evidence, so if some information is not in the record and they are doing things the old-fashioned way it may be difficult to rationalize doing things differently or any such decision may be vulnerable to appeal.

Oh Justin, don't be sad! "Legal loopholes"? The city violated the essence of the most important environmental law in California, which is all about environmental review of projects before they are implemented. The city knew this but just assumed they could get away with it. Yes, of course my life would be much more meaningful if I could only see the light and embrace the great, planet-saving bicycle movement.

"I wasted a lot of time trying to reason with the litigant. I finally realized that I wasn't having a spirited debate on the merits, but talking to a brick wall. I don't feel sorry for brick walls. Happily I have cured my curious addiction of talking to brick walls, on the litigant's blog and elsewhere."

Yes, you wasted everyone's time with your dim-bulb comments on my blog. All you established is that you're a complete bore. I diligently read all the city's documents on bicycles, but you never seemed to read anything, and your one idea---Bikes are Good and Cars are Bad---barely qualifies as an idea at all.

"The fact that an individual as pathetic as Rob Anderson was able to prevail against the City should speak volumes to the quality of CEQA and legal product that was presented in court by the City. The fact that Mary Miles was able to get the City to pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars for her efforts should not go unnoticed when we elect a City Attorney or that City Attorney asks for a promotion."

Why am I "pathetic"? But Marc is right about the deficient "legal product presented in court by the City." As I say, obviously the city simply thought they could get away with it, and they would have if we hadn't challenged them? What does that say about the integrity of "progressive" government in SF? Yes, of course the City Attorney showed zero integrity in allowing the litigation to continue for months beyond the point where the city surely knew it was going to lose. That's malpractice in private practice; you have to tell your client the truth about his/her case, but the City Attorney obviously extended the litigation for purely political reasons. After all, he had a united Board of Supervisors and the Mayor behind the Bicycle Plan, and he would have gotten a ration of shit if he dropped the case. Dennis Herrera is not the kind of politician who sticks his neck out on a matter of principle. Once we got the original injunction in June, 2006, the city knew its case was lost. To get an injunction in the first place, you have to convince the judge that you're likely to prevail on the merits once the hearing takes place. Instead, the City Attorney took us and the court on a lot of unnecessary trips about the Administrative Record: they refused to certify it, tried to exclude documents that put city in an unflattering light, etc. All a waste of time and done with a lot of nastiness in the process. And of course the clock was running for Ms. Miles, who simply added all that delay to her bill once the process was over.

"Since the City has striped, what 3 bike lanes over the past 7 years, one might conclude that factors other than the expanded bicycle lane network contributed to the increase in the number of cyclists in San Francisco."

Yes, of course. Riding a bike in SF---and in many other cities in the US---is as much a political act and part of a political lifestyle as it is a serious transportation "mode." It has little to do with bike lanes or that cycling is a safe and sane way to get around.

-marc

The fact that Mary Miles was able to get the City to pay her hundreds of thousands of dollars for her efforts should not go unnoticed when we elect a City Attorney or that City Attorney asks for a promotion.

I'm not sure what's worse, challenging an American's right to seek relief in a court of law for executive malfeasance or painting lipstick on the pig that was trotted out in court and calling it pretty.

The way to prevail in cases like this is to do your legal homework and come to court prepared, not to denounce your opponent or your perceptions of his motives because that doesn't count. That said, Anderson lies, claiming to have nothing against bikes and then slipping into his multiple prejudices against bikes, cyclists and his perceptions of us.

All of his caterwauling would have been for nought had the MEA and CA done this all right the first time and not bowed to political pressure from our allies to break the law by taking a short cut.

-marc

In fact cyclists are really being under-represented and motor users are over represented. Add to that the associated air pollution and that you can fit 6 bikes side by side in a spot used by one car, it's very much motorists who are getting beneficial treatment here for a very long time and thank goodness that will change.

I am sure as more people transition to bikes, cars will be able to drive around with less traffic and we wont need streets 6 lanes wide anymore. Its time to move away from the L.A. traffic model which is a complete failure and free SF.