One of the tasks our New York City executive editor put to us at Streetsblog San Francisco when we started was to hold "mainstream" journalists' feet to the fire when they write stories about transit, bikes, and pedestrians from a windshield perspective. You know, pieces like Mike Aldax's story in the Examiner today, which goes out of its way to focus on the negative impacts of the Bike Plan to vehicular traffic, impacts that are based on misguided vehicular Level of Service standards that hold ease of movement for motorists to be a proxy for environmental standards.
Some of the other requisites for these types of stories? Find an angry old cur like Rob Anderson or a community group that claims to "support biking" so long as it's "not in my back yard."
Rincon Hill Neighborhood Association, check. Why no Rob Anderson? I'm sure he could have repeated the same thing he always does when he opens his mouth.
A good little discussion started this morning in Today's Headlines, where we linked to the story. Can you bring it over here, dear savvy readers of Streetsblog SF, and help dissect this piece? Consider it your chance to talk to Aldax yourself, because we know from the IP addresses that a few folks at sfexaminer.com check in here regularly.
