If I were to tell you that it's almost over, what would you think I meant? Would you think it was the end of the Trump Administration and its assault on cities? Would you think it's the bizarre year of 2020? Maybe the end of the era of COVID-19?
While it's true that all of these things may be coming to an end in 2021, there are still many problems that cities in the Bay Area and throughout the world will be tackling next year and in the years to come. To best handle these issues, we're going to need a powerful Streetsblog in every major city, and San Francisco is no exception. The urgency we felt when writing to you in December of 2016 to ask for your help is still there today, even if the fear of what the Trump Administration is going to do next is now a short-term problem.
That urgency remains strong because 2020 was a very bad year for local journalism. Some news websites that we worked with and relied upon, such as Curbed, folded shop. Local newsrooms were far more likely to experience cuts instead of new hires. Public radio is also making major cutbacks. Through all this, Streetsblog San Francisco has continued to publish daily thanks to the perseverance and dedication of Roger Rudick with occasional help from Melanie Curry in Berkeley who helms Streetsblog California and other Streetsblog writers around the country.
Because we had to cancel our spring fundraising drive, we aim to raise $25,000 between now and the end of the year from the Bay Area. We hope to match that with $25,000 from the rest of the state to help fund our partner sites Streetsblog California and Streetsblog Los Angeles.
Your donation to Streetsblog goes a long way. If you value the solutions journalism that helped save Caltrain, protected bike shops during stay at home orders and fights for Dutch-style progressive transportation projects to make the city safer, than there is no better way to help than by supporting Streetsblog today.
And there's a lot of important work to do in 2021, such as:
- Laying the groundwork for a new transportation measure that could direct transit growth for decades. Building on the work of Voices for Public Transit, and Faster Bay Area, backers of transit expansion will be working on the 2021/22 version of a measure that was shelved in the early days of the COVID-19 outbreak in March. We've been talking to the people involved in both groups, and experts on transportation ballot measures from around the country, and will continue to do so to help make sure a final measure is equitable and the best measure it can be.
- Oakland DOT pioneered Slow Streets, which are now part of transportation plans through the Bay Area and the rest of the country. The push will be on to keep these streets available and make slow streets a permanent part of our urban fabric. That's going to take ongoing efforts by advocates and we intend to be there highlighting their work.
- Valencia, the Great Highway, Car-free Golden Gate Park, Better/Bummer Market Street, the Embarcadero protected bike lanes, finishing safety projects around Lake Merritt, on Telegraph--there's no shortage of safety projects that need pushed over the finish line by advocates.
