Today’s Headlines

John King says San Francisco Could Use a Little Manhattanization (SF Gate)
SFMTA to Resume Scaled-Back "Saturation Stings" on Muni (SF Examiner)
AC Transit Says It Has Complied With Judge’s Ruling on Contract (BCN via CBS5)
Rob Anderson Tells Bay Citizen He is Considering Appeal of Bike Injunction Ruling
More Coverage of First Post-Injunction Bike Lane from The Snitch, BCN via Appeal, BIKE NOPA
LA Times Quotes "Experts" Who Say "Global Warming Mission Could Survive Prop 23"
Should America Spends Billions on a North-South Transcontinental Highway? (Transpo Nation)
GM Banking on Subprime Loans to Get Back in the Black (NYT)
Fremont Driver Arrested for Street Race, Ramming Police Car (Merc)
BIKE NOPA and Bikes and the City Launches New Series on Dads Who Bike

mikesonn

The Bay Citizen article really didn’t touch on the merits of Anderson’s appeal. It pretty much just repeated his talking points along the lines of “bikes bad” etc. You’d think he’d have to have something more then distaste for a mode of transit to continue to fight against it.

Does he have grounds for an appeal?
mikesonn

Also, SF Appeal has this:

http://sfappeal.com/alley/2010/08/zero-tolerance-police-cracking-down-on-drivers-using-cell-phones.php

Maybe this will help for a bit, but as soon as they end the sting, it’ll be right back to where it was.
marcos

To John King, Manhattan without the subways would be hell. San Francisco cannot densify to Manhattan levels without an appropriate rapid transit system. The street clearings are wonderful, but the subway offers respite to motorists fed up with the (perceptions of?) increased traffic due to capacity reductions. The last word associated with Muni is “respite.”

To Renee Riviera, “The report cost the city $2.2 million, not including the cost of defending the case in court. The study’s thousands of pages resulted in no changes to the bike lane plan, Rivera said.”

This is simply not correct. The MTA modified several segments to eliminate transit delay identified by the EIR.

Nat Ford gets it: “SFMTA chief Nat Ford said in retrospect that it was a mistake not to do the environmental impact report in the first place. Ford said that the new bike lanes will cost between $12 million and $14 million.”

What does it say that the MTA chief gets it but the SFBC acting interim executive director fails to grasp the lesson?

I hope Anderson appeals. Any citizen has the right to petition the executive branch to command performance according to the law. But the standard of proof required to contest the EIR at this point is imposing.

The City remains exposed, in my analysis, due to its pulling of transit delay standards and thresholds thresholds of significance out of its ass without substantial evidence to back them up.

But I do hope that Anderson and Miles lose, and that Herrera sues them for court costs, and wins. I also want to see transit delay analysis incorporated into CEQA in a way that accurately describes impacts to decisionmakers cumulatively.

-marc
Aaron Bialick

While the City is cutting the budget for so many other things like Muni, why don’t they consider cutting funding for the drain on the budget that is “defending against Rob Anderson”?
Nick

Re: New Bike Lanes

Motorists display some odd behavior when new bike lanes first appear. They’re more likely to verbally lash out and honk at cyclists.

I had one yell at me to “get back in your bike lane” on Laguna Honda when I was riding in the right hand-turn lane. Seriously….watch out for it.