Transportation Funding

BeyondChron editor Randy Shaw, who gets funding from the Mayor Ed Lee's office for projects like the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, penned a predictable defense of Lee's recent attack on Supervisor Scott Wiener's transit funding ballot measure today. Shaw backed Lee's decision to drop support for the vehicle license fee increase, and argued that Muni's share of the city's general fund has increased enough in recent years, compared to other city services.

Mayor Ed Lee, who has cut into transportation funding by nixing Sunday parking meters and abandoning a proposed vehicle license fee increase, now says that he will punish the six supervisors who voted to approve a ballot measure to increase transportation's share of the general fund. Supervisor Scott Wiener proposed the charter amendment as a stop-gap measure to fund the city's transportation needs, while SF waits two years for the mayor to support a vehicle license fee measure.

The Board of Supervisors voted 6-4 today to put on November's ballot a charter amendment that would increase the share of general funds devoted to transportation, based on population growth.

Supervisors are expected to vote next week on Supervisor Scott Wiener's backup plan for transportation funding -- a charter amendment that, with voter approval, would increase the share of the city's general fund that gets allocated to Muni, pedestrian safety, and bike infrastructure. That share would be tied to the city's growing population.

Earlier this evening, the bicameral Budget Conference Committee  approved a compromise between state legislators and Governor Brown on how to spend $850 million in revenues from the state's cap-and-trade system for the next fiscal year.

The ballot measure to restore the vehicle license fee has been postponed until 2016, under an agreement reached between Mayor Ed Lee and supervisors.

Just because Mayor Ed Lee withdrew his support for restoring the vehicle license fee doesn't mean it's dead. Sustainable transportation advocates are building a campaign to get the measure approved at the ballot this November with the help of Supervisor Scott Wiener, who may introduce the measure at the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, which is the legislative deadline to do so.

Muni vehicles break down far more frequently than in other cities, after years of the system being starved of the necessary funding to adequately maintain its fleet of trains and buses.

Today's Muni "sick-out" reminds us once again that San Franciscans need better ways to get around. The consequences of a transit strike -- people stranded and unable to get to their jobs, queues of drivers clogging streets, and dangerous conflicts between impatient drivers and people who are walking and biking alongside -- are just a more extreme example of the everyday reality caused by the city's lack of investment in real transport alternatives.