Streetsblog San Francisco will be off for the holidays starting Monday, December 23 through Friday, January 3, 2025.
Dear Readers:
As we say goodbye to 2024, I wanted to close out by sharing some end-of-year thoughts.
Despite the grim news nationally, San Francisco, in my view, marked two great accomplishments in 2024 that will improve the lives of people in the Bay Area for generations to come. The first is the start of Caltrain electrifed service. It's already showing what we knew ahead of time: if you run fast, frequent trains, more people ride! It's also the result of decades of advocacy and I'm proud to say Streetsblog made its own small contribution to seeing it to fruition.
And Prop. K won by ten points, assuring that the Great Highway will transform from a speedway into a park. Advocates should be proud.
Prop. K was the second time in recent elections that San Francisco voters signaled their strong support for safer, more inviting streets. In 2022, they overwhelming supported converting J.F.K. Drive into a promenade. And although things break down differently by district, the political takeaway is clear: voters support causes that are dear to Streetsblog readers and other advocates for safe-and-liveable streets.
But while Prop. K crushed it, Mayor London Breed received only 24 percent in the first round of votes.
The decision by the major advocacy groups to endorse Mayor London Breed was motivated by fear, perhaps terror, of a victory by candidate Aaron Peskin (or, to a lesser extend, Mark Farrell). That's understandable: Peskin would have been a disaster for safe streets, given his track record of parochialism and blocking projects. On the other hand, even her biggest supporters conceded that Mayor Breed was no Anne Hidalgo.
There's no denying Breed's help in securing car-free J.F.K. and the Great Highway Park. We should all be thankful for that. But she was also notorious for talking out of both sides of her mouth. Think of all the speeches she gave about "one life lost is too many" while her staff directed SFMTA to essentially sabotage slow streets. Think about how long it took her to order SFMTA to fix one block of Polk Street, after years of Streetsblog calling out the hypocrisy of her holding Vision Zero speeches and rallies on the steps of city hall in sight of cars parked on the bike lane. There was no progress on Vision Zero during her tenure. And is there anything more to say about the Valencia debacle, where in its effort not to anger merchants, her administration managed to infuriate pretty much everybody? To add insult to injury, Mayor Breed drove to bike and transit project ribbon cuttings in a giant SUV, where she talked about the importance of the environment, safe streets, etc. It's not as if she can't ride a bike herself: she managed to do so for photo ops.
Fortunately, the fear of a Peskin administration turned out to be overblown. But I hope Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie and his staff are paying attention to the polling on safe streets and the Prop. K results. And just as importantly, I hope they're mindful of the fact that Michael Bloomberg, who oversaw the start of New York's transformation, won re-election three times. Anne Hidalgo of Paris, first elected in 2014, is in her second term and got re-elected in 2020 on a pro-bike platform. Both of them got, and get, screamed at and ripped by car brains too. I'd submit that progressive San Francisco is easy compared to New York or Paris. But whatever you think of their politics, Bloomberg and Hidalgo are real leaders who were, and are, focused on doing the hard work of transforming their cities into safer, more inviting places. And Bloomberg actually rode the subway, even on his last day in office when he had absolutely nothing to prove. Hidalgo rides a bike to get around, not just for show.
Lurie's also known for riding a bike and taking transit to get around. We'll see how that's reflected as he starts his term as mayor. I'm guardedly hopeful. Streetsblog readers should be too.
Enjoy your holidays and we'll see you next year.
Best wishes,
Roger Rudick, Editor, Streetsblog San Francisco
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