Car Culture

This morning much of the nation's news outlets are devoted to the demise of General Motors, which represents the fourth largest bankruptcy in U.S. history and the largest of any industrial titan. Perhaps most entertaining of all the articles is P.J. O'Rourke's onanistic fetish piece about horsepower and the "masculinity" emblematic in the growl of American muscle cars, in which he bemoans the passing of the automotive giant as the emasculation of the American Dream. 

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) has released a survey of nearly 1400 shoppers in downtown San Francisco that found less than one-fifth drive to shop, and that they spend less money in aggregate than shoppers using other transportation modes (PDF). The study indicates drivers spend more each trip than transit riders, but visit less often and account for far fewer total visits and therefore spend less total.

When tens of thousands of people come out to the first of two Sunday Streets in the Mission on June 7th, they will find a route that winds through some of the densest pedestrian streets in San Francisco, a route that at just over two miles is half as long as previous events and should lend to casual strolling perhaps more than cycling.

We’ve been waiting for years now to see some physical changes to accommodate the huge increase in daily bicycling. We did get an odd set of painted bike lanes and green bike route signs, and a significant number of bike racks for parking, before it all came to a halt due to the injunction three years ago. After perusing the much-anticipated Draft Bicycle Plan and its dense bureaucratese, full of overlapping redundant promises, I’m afraid we’ll be waiting a good while longer to see the kinds of changes that we ought to be getting.

Apparently I'm not the only one who got the sneaky suspicion Green Gav doesn't really take transit or ride a bike unless it makes for good publicity. Yet-to-be identified satirists decided to call Mayor Gavin Newsom's bluff on the nonsense assertion he (or his handlers) made to the Chronicle that he occasionally rides Muni incognito when he's not being chauffeured around in a hybrid SUV or driving his ridiculously expensive electric sports car.

Standing before a crowd of more than 100 people, many of them city staff who had worked to realize the transformation of an underutilized street into a "Pavement to Parks" pedestrian refuge, Mayor Gavin Newsom dedicated the first of at least four such plazas that will be constructed around the city.  

The second of six Sunday Streets was a great success as thousands of people got out on a glorious sunny day to pedal, blade, run, skate, and stroll along the waterfront from AT&T park down to India Basin and the Bayview Opera House.  By coincidence, my father was in town and I got to take him on his first bicycle ride in a city.  Not a bad way to show him the type of streets we might hope to enjoy every Sunday all year long.