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  1.  

    murphstahoe

    He was the impetus behind the Measure B bond. As he said to me – while he was riding a bike – “I am not a cyclist, but I am a big fan of keeping our streets paved properly for various reasons. The bike coaltion has been a big ally in that push, and riding a bike I really see why, there is a big difference between a well paved street and a poorly paved one”.

    Not to mention that every person who rides MUNI instead of driving is a benefit to every cyclist in town.

  2.  

    Anonymous

    I feel like a car crashes into a building about once a month in San Jose… coincidence?

    I remember seeing the insane damage (they’d removed the car) a car had done to a Blockbuster years ago in SJ. There was tons of broken glass and deep burns in the carpet from the tires.

  3.  

    mikesonn

    How is that a response to my comment? I must be missing something.

  4.  

    Karen Lynn Allen

    I agree about Supervisor Breed. I was wondering who had lit a fire under the SFMTA to get Oak done so quickly after so much inaction. Didn’t in the least expect it would be her.

  5.  

    Anonymous

    I’m happy to hear about what an ally Supervisor Breed has been to safe bike riding in particular with her work to get funding for Masonic and pushing to get Oak finished. I wasn’t exactly expecting that when she won the election. Just imagine if every district office worked that hard on two critical bike projects, we’d have a nice network in no time. As far as I can tell, she’s the only supervisor who had something concrete (or green painted) to bring to BTWD.

  6.  

    Karen Lynn Allen

    All the politicos speaking said the right (or near right) things. However, actions speak louder than words.

    Muni needs more money in a big way. Without proper maintenance, reliability plummets. Without reliability, no one can depend on Muni. The good news is this is something everyone can agree on! The bad news is no one seems able to come up with the funds whatever the consensus.

    What bicyclists really need is space. Generally taken from car parking or car travel, because that is what 90% of street space is currently devoted to. The good news is that in absolute dollars this is cheap! The bad news is that in terms of politics there will never be consensus. It will take courage and leadership to adapt our city to low-energy, low-pollution, space-efficient transportation methods.

    We will reach the 20% bikeshare by 2020 based on energy supply alone. Increased energy costs will continue to mean people leave the suburbs for more energy-efficient city living, which will continue to increase density in SF, which will continue to make private cars more and more inappropriate on our city streets. Declining world-wide (and US) oil supplies will render energy-gobbling private cars obsolete to all but the very wealthy. Declining natural gas, the highly climate-destructive properties of coal and the poor outlook for hydroelectric in the face of western drought means that even electricity will be hard to come by. Muni is subsidized 78% of each ride. I don’t see how SF will ever be able to come up with the funds to turn all car trips into Muni trips. Bicycling is the cheapest option; it also has the benefit of being quick, direct, practical, pollution-free and healthy. Really the only question is how much pain we give ourselves as a city on the path to get there.

    After the speeches, I went and observed the bike counter for a while. Two SFMTA guys were there watching it. It did okay picking up single riders, but had lots of trouble with clusters, which, given the light half a block before, bicyclists tended to arrive in. It also, of course, got none of the people riding down the adjacent (non-green) travel lane. I would say it missed at least 30% of the riders.

  7.  

    Anonymous

    How was Wiener’s talk more impressive or more action and less talk than Chiu’s? Chiu has obviously completely embarrassed himself with Polk and made no one happy, but I missed the part where Wiener was pro-cycling with anything other than words. He’s into complete streets and transit, but what has he done to improve biking in the city. I remember that he and Avalos wrote letters urging Better Market Street to avoid delay, but that’s still just words and that’s the last thing I remember from him in regards to making bike riding safer as a form of every day transportation in the city.

    With fell and oak limping towards completion, I think the two most important projects right now are Polk street and car-free market today, Better Market Street tomorrow. It’d be nice if the supervisors or the mayor or both could push those to get completed as soon as possible.

  8.  

    Anonymous

    But you will if the public transit options are safe, reliable and rapid (of which they are none of today) and the walking/biking infrastructure & milieu is inviting, well-travelled, safe, and comprehensive (which it is not) and also that driving costs money, as it should – based on the costs it imposes in terms of land use and other factors. I am a huge fan of the predictability of subways, but not so much their noise, grit, or (sometimes) limited reach. Bus Rapid Transit can use the same dedicated tunnels infrastructure that trains do, thereby eliminating the issues of stoplights, traffic, etc., while also having the capability of extending reach beyond the end of the subtunnel road to stations on surface streets. They are also quieter. They are also much cheaper to run on a per-unit basis, which means you can run them more frequently for the same cost. Would you rather have a single Caltrain every hour that can hold 200 people, or an equally fast bus that runs every 5 minutes and has capacity for 30 people?

  9.  

    Anonymous

    BRT as proposed on Van Ness is a terrible idea. Removing all the greenspace, spending a firtune, and not even getting that much improvement in throughput.

    What we need is undergronding. It is not that expensive – SFCTA/SFMTA projects cost of $1.6 billion per mile to underground the High Speed Rail underneath the downtown infrastructure. A simple parking garage under a street will cost peanuts, comparatively. Reed Construction Data estimates that a commercial underground parking garage the size of Polk street between two cross streets would be around $30 million. SF Planning Dpt regs specify that this size parking garage would hold approximately 60 cars, or an average of $500,000 per spot. The financing cost of $500k at today’s interest rate with 30-year amortization is approximately $800 per month in interest, or $1,800 including principle repayment. Parking on the open market costs $80,000 per spot. However, revenue potential of a single metered parking spot along Polk St could exceed $1,800, or more than offset the cost of building it. So the question merely becomes, do you want to remove all cars from the surface streets?

    As to roads undergrounding, this should be paid for by motorists, by way of toll roads. Make SF roadways toll roads. Charge congestion pricing, too. Use the billions raised to finance better and more stable infrastructure spending such as underground Van Ness auto and BRT traffic, with grass, bike lanes & walking streets above ground.

  10.  

    NoeValleyJim

    Wiener, I am impressed with. He is my rep and I am guessing is the next Mayor. Chiu, not so much.

  11.  

    Adrienne Johnson

    That tow company parking in the lane makes me CRAZY! When I ride through there with my kids, a fairly common occurrence, they are afraid of that spot because EVERY TIME we pass there we get shoved into 40MPH traffic that does not want to slow down because it is not their fault that there are 3 trucks parked in the bike lane! I honestly think they park there just because they can as I have seen drivers laugh as people get stuck trying to get around them.

  12.  

    Adrienne Johnson

    It will be interesting to see how this works with the bike lane now that those buses turn right into it every time they leave. I predict challenges.

  13.  

    Anonymous

    oh go fuck yourself, jerk wad! clouding civility with your brand of bullshit? Seriously fuck off, fucknard

  14.  

    mike

    It’s easy to come up with a catchy “20% by 2020″ phrase, Supervisor Chiu. The real work is in finding the needed funding and having the political courage to make a decision that improves safety in the face of noisy opposition. It’s a disgrace to set what is an unrealistic goal that gets people excited then do nearly nothing to try to achieve the goal. Thankfully some supervisors (like Breed and Wiener) come forward with action rather than just words.

  15.  

    Todd Edelman

    Would people accept this drunken leapfrogging if it concerned their iPhone or cancer treatment?

  16.  

    Civil conversation supporter

    Is your vocabulary so limited that you have to cuss? Really.

  17.  

    murphstahoe

    “I think there has not been enough dialogue between the various sides of this perspective,” he said. “

    Baloney. There is a schism between groups who favor more parking and groups who favor bike lanes. There aren’t any members of those groups changing their minds. More dialogue changes nothing except making people’s attitudes even worse. Chiu is the Supervisor. He has to make the call. Tough decisions are what being the man is all about.

  18.  

    mikesonn

    Listening to David Chiu’s speech. Whatever. Mentions San Jose’s separated downtown bike lanes. Mentions that we need to do more for cycling in San Francisco. No mention of Polk. What a joke this has become.

    He is the one who choose to push cycling and make it his central issue. Now follow it up! Polk is our district, David. Logic and safety over emotion.

  19.  

    Hank Hodes

    I yelled out Polk Street twice during David Chiu’s talk. This is indeed an annual photo opportunity which supervisors can appear politically correct supporting the biking community. I rode in with my supervisor Farrell from district 2 with ten others – only one or two regular commuters were riding – the remainders were friends of Farrell. Many kudos to Morgan Fitzgibbons for his signage.

  20.  

    voltairesmistress

    A great idea, gneiss! Next Parking Day, let’s take hundreds of sofas, glue them to the asphalt, and park them for 72 hours. If explained to others initially bewildered by this action, it would make more than a surreal point, I think.

  21.  

    Martha Bridegam

    If you’ve never gotten a (formerly pink, now yellow) tag for 72-hour parking, it’s probably because your ride looks pretty good or anyhow unobtrusive. Get yourself a retired U-Haul truck with some graffiti on it or a vintage RV and see how much time passes before a tag appears.

    The 72-hour parking ordinance in San Francisco is enforced much more fiercely on the southeast waterfront and I think also along Golden Gate Park and the western waterfront — gentrifying areas where vehicular residents were formerly tolerated/contained. In those areas particularly, but throughout the city really, the ordinance is enforced selectively against older and visibly inhabited vehicles.

  22.  

    voltairesmistress

    Great article details, color, etc. I felt I was there listening to all that rhetoric interrupted only by trenchant protest signs. Feels like a scene from Animal Farm — the smarmy pigs are running things while the donkey with all his pathos is bridled up and carrying the load.

  23.  

    voltairesmistress

    Now, you have a point there. Serious underground infrastructure really should be subways first. Something about those connected systems — tourists and residents use them heavily, knowing that once they enter the Tube, Metro, whatever, it will get them where they are going, transfers and all. Bus systems don’t get perceived as working so seamlessly. Consequently, people tend to get to know the bus system as a whole much more slowly and partially.

  24.  

    voltairesmistress

    Mike & Eric, I take your points. So far we haven’t seen the political will to create truly separated transit lanes, ones that are hard for drivers to breach. And I personally have never seen any driver ticketed for traveling in the transit lane. But it seems to me those two things (building & enforcement) would still be more concrete goals with more tangible results for transit speed than the more general goal of reducing the total number of cars on the streets. I know the BRT on Geary has been bogged down for YEARS. But I still think politically it may be easier to get something positive built (hard-to-breach transit-only lanes) than to scrub existing parking for no easily apparent, high priority use.

    The Polk Street struggles have taught me how difficult it is to push a protected bike lane through what have been parking spots — it’s obscene, I admit. I wonder, however, if transit lanes that eliminate parking would be an easier lift, given that a substantial portion of the population walks to and uses the bus lines.

  25.  

    Anonymous

    Is nine months how long it typically takes to bring charges?

  26.  

    mikesonn

    I find it entertaining that people think cars just magically appear in garages, that they don’t have to travel on roads to get to them. I find it even more entertaining that people think we can afford to build all these new parking garages and roads to handle it. I find it disturbing that someone thinks we should spend our limited capital, not only on building it, but putting it all underground.

  27.  

    mikesonn

    SF doesn’t have that kind of money.

  28.  

    Anonymous

    That kind of garage would easily cost over $100,000 per parking space and arterials of that kind would cost billions and you hopefully know how long the bay bridge is taking to build. I’m not saying SF doesn’t have that kind of money, but there are a lot of simpler solutions. I’d rather dig subway tunnels to nowhere than holes for cars to sit in.

  29.  

    gneiss

    Do you even know how much it costs to create underground car storage? Good God – who is suppose to pay for this cartopia? The problem is not lack of storage for cars, but rather poor management of demand. Let’s raise the rates on existing parking – voila, no more demand issues.

  30.  

    Ryan Brady

    I really like this idea, and my sci-fi utopian dream of SF would look exactly like it. Seems expensive and disruptive to implement though.

  31.  

    Anonymous

    Coming from Potero Hill, I would love to dine out in North Beach and Chinatown more often, but Muni stops bus 10 at 7pm! WTF???

  32.  

    Karen Lynn Allen

    I go through that area 1-2 times a week. Though occurrences are certainly less frequent than they used to be, I encounter a tow truck maybe 1 out of 4 times. To squeeze past it, my right elbow ends up a few inches from traffic and its attendant noise and stress. I find it unpleasant, but worse, such circumstances discourage hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans from being willing to ride bikes in city traffic at all.

    I encounter at least one car (often two or three) queuing for Arco idling far enough over in the bike lane that I have to look over my shoulder and merge into car traffic 2 out of 3 times.

    Why call it a bike lane if it’s really a tow truck parking lane that bicyclists may only truly ride in when the tow truck company has no use for it? Why can’t the tow truck company purchase space from the gas station next door to store their trucks rather than utilize free public space? Why can’t Arco do what Whole Food does in Noe Valley and pay someone to manage parking so as to prevent queuing in the street? Why does Arco get free use of public space as part of their business operations so they are able to sell cheap gas?

    By using free public space for car storage, these two car-related businesses keep their costs down. The result of this subsidy (paid for by all of us, but especially by bicyclists) keeps the cost of driving artificially lower than it truly is.

  33.  

    mikesonn

    We have exclusive lanes (that are ROUTINELY ignored by drivers) and transit priority signals that aren’t being used (because LOS). The other stuff is just the cherry on top, it will help and make a difference, but getting cars off the road will speed Muni more than anything (look at Market travel times pre/post car-ban [that isn't even fully respected or enforce]).

  34.  

    Anonymous

    Those can be under ground. Those SHOULD be underground. Regardless of whether or not SF could ever become “car-free.”

  35.  

    Anonymous

    Build underground parking garages underneath the asphalt of smaller side streets. Remove all surface-level parking. Underground the major thoroughfares (e.g., Van Ness, Geary, 19th Ave, 280, 101, etc) and put parks, retail, walking streets and residential on top of them. No reason to waste 40% of SF real estate on transportation infrastructure.

  36.  

    MrEricSir

    This is a city where people throw a fit when one parking space is removed, you should see what happens when you want to remove an entire lane.

    We’ve spent the last what, 6 years trying to get BRT installed on Geary and Van Ness? It’s not a bad idea, but after countless hours of meetings there’s nothing to show for it.

  37.  

    voltairesmistress

    Yes, but it’s interesting to toss a few ideas around. When it comes to politics, meetings, etc., one has to be really focused. But on a blog like this, I think it’s good to explore ideas, hypotheticals, etc. with others. It certainly has changed my thinking over time.

  38.  

    voltairesmistress

    Eric (and Mike), I am not convinced that car traffic per se is what is slowing down Muni. What I mean is this: if we could get the exclusive transit lanes and signaling installed, wouldn’t the number of cars in the adjacent lanes affect transit times not at all? Add to that a reduction in stops (part of TEP), the already instituted all-door boarding, and greater use of Clipper Cards, and wouldn’t we have much better transit times? And all of these things don’t involve much sacrifice from drivers and parkers, other than giving up the lane now devoted solely to transit.

  39.  

    voltairesmistress

    First off, sorry for the long response, but you got me thinking. . .

    1) What you describe is dead on for most SF drivers. I am only beginning to get used to the fact that some garages offer competitive, hourly rates, and that I should go there first. Others are still really expensive, so checking them out can be frustrating. It will be a gradual change in habits for any us when driving.

    2) I think as a city we will get to Transit First if we employ a variety of fixes, and competitively priced garages + diminished amounts of street parking + dynamically priced metered parking could help get circling cars and parked cars off many streets. That would help bus and bike travel tremendously.

    Of course, making parking more efficient and market-priced will not satisfy those who equate painful driving experience with creating the critical mass of persons advocating for better transit. I think creating a negative driving/parking experience in SF has not yet resulted in more funding for and good transit. And I wonder if this dynamic is more theoretical than real. I’m not sure making driving and parking more difficult will achieve more use of poor transit. On the contrary, I think it may push people to use services outside of the city core. So then you get more people driving in and out of the city, and through the city to and from access points, but you get a drop in business conducted in city shops. That would be really bad.

  40.  

    Anonymous

    I don’t get it either, it’s this weird double think where poor people are invisible and drivers are some kind of mythic working or middle class. Anyone who bikes or wants to discuss transit in a rational way or even on a non-emotional level is “elitist”

    I do think it’s valid for merchants to be afraid of turning into another Valencia street. I’d hate to pay rent on a lot of Valencia’s store fronts, and wonder how many of those places can. That said, their reaction to the changes in our city couldn’t be worse.

  41.  

    Ryan Brady

    Well, it’s super hypothetical anyway. I would just think that a car-free city would be a more pleasant place to live, walk, and bike in. There would, of course, have to be 2 or 3 arterials for people to get between the penninsula, north bay and east bay.

  42.  

    murphstahoe

    For the life of me I cannot figure out how a customer base that is described as “elitist” is bad for a small business. Perhaps I’m just not a very good businessman, and I was missing out on all the megabucks coming from people barely scraping by.

  43.  

    Anonymous

    Just out of curiosity, have you really had problems with Ted’s Towing? In my experience (westbound Wiggle 5 days/week), they’ve done a great job accommodating the new lane. I encounter a tow truck in the lane maybe once a week (at most), but the lane is plenty wide enough to squeeze by in the buffer without moving into the car traffic. Given the previous arrangement, I’ve been impressed by their adjustment.

    The ARCO situation has improved greatly as well, IMO.

  44.  

    Anonymous

    In regards to the private shuttles: the people I know who take them (anecdotal, I know) don’t take MUNI buses. They’re more likely to be the bike elitists that are so often decried by downtrodden merchants or they take Uber everywhere.

  45.  

    Anonymous

    Build more garages? Really?

    Ok let’s have some fun. Cole Valley is a tough space to park. Let’s go demolish, oh, let’s say several old homes near Cole and Carl, and build a nice big fucking parking garage.

    1. It’ll cost a fortune. you know what land values are out there?
    2. The neighbors will freak out . OMG tearing down housing for a garage
    3. The spaces will cost a fortune. That is unless we have to subsidize it with city money to impose a car first lifestyle like Mr. O wants
    4. Are you fucking kidding me? This ain’t gonna happen.

    I’m getting tired of people telling me I have to own and use a car when I’ve gotten along quite nicely without one for over EIGHT years now. sure I’ll rent a van to move stuff or borrow a car for a costco run , but that’s rare. Yet to hear this nutball at the SBC, I must have a car or die or some shit like that. Fuck that.

  46.  

    murphstahoe

    But it could to stores that sell one-off expensive items like antiques
    and designer fashion, which target high rollers who probably don’t take
    the bus.

    Depends on which bus it is. There are some pretty damn high rollers on the google bus, right?

  47.  

    murphstahoe

    And we can’t forget that there are no restaurants, book stores, grocery stores, or any of those things west of Twin Peaks – they only exist on Polk Street.

  48.  

    Karen Lynn Allen

    When it comes down to it, the car-driving way of life is indeed being imposed on in San Francisco. There’s no way around it. If nothing else, changing demographics demand it. (And then we can add declining world net energy, soaring health costs, climbing cost of car ownership, climate change, etc.) Of course people who are car-dependent are not going to like losing privileges. In the history of civilization precious few ever give up privileges without a fight. Though this rearguard action may delay San Francisco adapting well to the reality at hand, it doesn’t change the reality.

    Though it may still be marginally more politically acceptable to protect car-privilege than not, (see Supervisors Farrell and Cohen) at least Reiskin answers with the right words. (I just wish the words were accompanied by actions to match.) That the car-driving way of life has and continues to impose on non-car drivers to a far greater extent than non-drivers will ever impose on drivers is also perhaps political poison to point out (except at a bike-to-work day rally), but it is also nonetheless true.

    At the city hall rally this morning a number of speakers brought up the benefits of biking in terms space issues. Maybe politicians are seeing all the new buildings going up. Maybe they are reading demographic forecasts. If they have even a little intelligence, they should be getting nervous. In some ways they are caught between a rock and a hard place–wanting the campaign money of the car-driving O’Brien’s but realizing the votes will shortly come from the non-car driving masses.

  49.  

    voltairesmistress

    I would amend that vision to include neighborhood garages to get that virtually free parking on residential streets into clusters where everybody pays. A lot of people would evaluate the cost of car ownership and downsize from multiple cars to one, or from one to none. That would free up not only the street space for other uses, but lessen congestion in the remaining traffic lanes. At this point, I don’t see the need for car storage consigned only to the periphery of the city or elimination of car travel within the city. Congestion just isn’t that much of a problem most of the day. Congestion pricing could lessen auto use during peak hours. In any case, a variety of solutions that include paid auto storage should be part of any transit policy.

  50.  

    MrEricSir

    Given the cost of land and construction for a parking garage, why build one? It’s extremely expensive for something that’s already becoming obsolete.

    I’d also point out that for the most part, the reason Muni buses are slow is because they have to contend with private vehicles. Adding more of those to the streets will only serve to make Muni worse.