Yes on A / No on H Campaign Launches
The Transit Not Traffic campaign, led by SPUR and many other community groups supporting better public transit, has launched. This campaign supports Proposition A (Muni Re-Reform), which would dedicate additional funding to Muni and improve many work rules that today make it very difficult to improve service reliability, and opposes Proposition H, the so-called “Parking For Neighborhoods” initiative that would dramatically increase parking downtown and allow new parking spaces and garages to block Muni lines and remove street trees citywide. If you agree that better transit should be SF’s priority and not huge increases in auto traffic, get involved! (Comment here or sign up at SPUR’s page.)
After reading the arguments I may vote yes on H and no on A.
Prop H: Rescue MUNI should stay on the subject of improving MUNI and not get sidetracked. Rescue MUNI should focus on adapting to the environment with engineering solutions such as transit-first lanes. Fighting changes in the environment e.g., more building and parking is a distraction from the core purpose.
More parking is not the problem. Building more condos and office buildings is the problem. If you want to stop more traffic, stop more building. More building will mean more foot and vehicle traffic of all kinds. It will be more difficult to walk and drive. More parking is necessary. If you want to make automobiles less necessary, make public transit a more attractive alternative. In a highly congested area, public transit may be the only alternative for many.
The campaign also has arguments that are not credible and make me think twice about voting for it. For example, added curb cuts will not be unfettered and more curb cuts may or may not have much of an impact on street trees. There have been no studies. There is no evidence. But even if some trees are removed more trees can be planted. Trees are renewable. The removal of bus stops is also an unsubstantiated claim.
Prop A: Vote on proposition A to fight global warming? What a bunch of irrelevant nonsense. Getting on the Gore-Bull warming band wagon to attract support for prop A may have the opposite effect. I am inclined to vote against proposals that demonstrate muddled thinking. It creates doubt that the other parts that may have merit. MTA should stay focused on real transportation problems and not engage in imaginary unrelated problems.
I disagree with most of the previous comment.
RescueMUNI should cover whatever bases it can. This campaign does not require much work for the RM staff and once the page is up, it kinda sits there and just draws attention.
Proposal A should get YES votes from all of us because MUNI needs more money in order to do more for its riders. It doesn’t cost more money – it just redirects parking meter money away from the general fund and sends it straight to MUNI. So yes, parking and MUNI ARE related, and yes, voting for “A” DOES mean fighting global warming (and keeping soldiers from dying for oil wars brought on by cowboy revenge fantasies and paranoid displays of manhood) because MUNI would LIKE to buy more biodiesel, plug in hybrid buses, etc, but cannot do so quick enough. And buying such busses saves money.
It’s nice that MUNI’s electric bus and train fleet is 100% Hetch Hetchy hydropowered. Did you know that? Most people don’t. It runs on a dedicated line. Too bad this isn’t well marketed on overhead space in the buses and trains – it would increase ridership by providing one more reason not to drive. But because people NEED reasons like this not to drive, we have to look at as many other reasons we can use to motivate people – like parking. And making MUNI provide better service to it’s riders with more buses, trains and drivers.
And proposal H should get a NO because it does the opposite of what the above paragraph suggests – instead, the bill actually gives people a reason TO drive! And more importantly, it’s a badly written bill! Look at it carefully. You mentioned all the bad things it contains. Sure, everybody “wants” more parking, but at what expense? More traffic and congestion? Do we want to live in a more congested city? Do you ever think about all the people who just say “if you cant beat em join em” and just park their cars at BART and transfer to MUNI in the city because parking IS so difficult? This won’t be the first or last parking bill. At least vote for one that isn’t so full of loopholes for hurting hurting the city. At least vote for a parking bill that ties the permission to park with creating some form or transit and sustainable energy connection. Proposal H does nothing of the sort.
Shall we make it easier to drive into the city and create more congestion? That is the issue – making it easier to DRIVE not making it easier to PARK.
How many people in San Francisco choose to leave their cars home because “oh, well, I might as well ride the N downtown because well, like, I guess it’s there and I won’t have to pay for P A R K I N G”
The part of the first comment I agree with is making MUNI a more attractive alternative. Poor on time performance is something that does affect a riders choice for driving. For some people, like those who make multiple time sensitive trips throughout the day for a living vs a 9-5 in one location, MUNI as we know it might not ever be an answer. (But public transit does evolve so the option should not be permanently closed.) Imagine delivering a truckload of things all over the city by going back and forth all day long with one person on a bus instead of just driving the truckload to all the locations – ridiculous. Nobody is proposing this.
What people are proposing are motivators for improving MUNI and for actually using it. Folding bicycles on MUNI is another step in motivation to use a system. Imagine jetting from your door to MUNI and from MUNI back to your door on a quick-fold bike – THAT’S another reason to ride MUNI. And bottom line, most people who claim they “need to drive” and therefore “need more parking” actually do not. Most have not tried MUNI or bothered to look at a system map to see how it can work for them or think it’s for poor people or alcoholics or for those who haven’t “achieved” the privilege of burning fuel and sitting in traffic. What’s next? Alleviate the increase of traffic with more and wider roads in the city? Those are NOT people for whom we should kow-tow to and sign a bad bill so we can increase traffic and congestion so they can maintain their ignorance.
But trying to unlock the issue of parking convenience from creating a “need” for using public transit by an unmotivated populace is like trying to debate the eternal question – “Which came first? The chicken or the egg?”
Hey Don above, is your last name Fischer? You were supposed to drop Prop H remember? The prop. own authors abandoned the bill, they are just hoping a phony name like ‘parking for neighborhoods’ would fool people into signing this extremely flawed bill, look at any exciting neighborhood in the city, none of it has parking. What if we replaced the groundfloor restaurants in north beach with garages? I try to pick a neighborhood with no parking to live in because its exciting, more walkable, and makes better use of density. Sure you could move to the Sunset where most everyone has a garage instead of a coffee shop or restaurants on the ground floor, but thats so boring. Not to mention the parking space is at least 15% more to the cost of a unit.
And we need Prop. A, just about everyone with common sense agrees, except for McGoldrick, I guess hes just worried about losing control of the MTA, or maybe hes worried about those pesky anti transit recall crazies. I boycott any place that lets them meet there…
ECadvocate identified the problem. If we vote on Prop A, we are voting on global warming, on the war in Iraq, on big oil, on President Bush, on alternative fuels, on electric buses, etc. I simply want to vote to improve MUNI. If this is a referendum on global warming I am likely to vote no on A because I am in favor of global warming.
There is no evidence that Prop H will harm MUNI. In fact, increased automobile congestion may actually benefit MUNI. It’s not the parking that will cause congestion, it is the building.
Streetcarsean: If horses had wings they could fly.
Prop A is a simple vote for MUNI because it takes parking meter money that normally goes to the general fund and gives it to MUNI to improve rider service. They don’t have the money it takes to make the improvements needed. Proposal A will help with that. Period.
Prop H will harm MUNI because it will give people a way out of using MUNI downtown while limiting bus stops in residential neighborhoods.
Arguing otherwise is like saying unregulated urban sprawl won’t hurt the central core. Look at Detroit, Los Angeles, et al. It DID hurt those cores and their public transit networks. So will proposal H only not as bad.
So you neeeeeed parking? You can’t staaaaaand riding on a crowded train? Think about something else – consider all the attention the public is placing on MUNI to improve because we have made a commitment to use it!
Do you want SF to be LA? They seem to have plenty of parking. And because of that, they don’t seem to have much transit.
If Prop A will help MUNI it should be supported. However, the cost of implementing the global warming provision may cancel the benefit. Requiring transit planners to make plans for an issue way beyond their expertise is a waste of time and talent.
Prop H will not give people a way out of using MUNI or limit bus stops in residential neighborhoods. There is no evidence for that.
Besides, the strategy should be to attract people to MUNI not push them onto MUNI. The carrot often works better than the stick. We should work to improve MUNI and not get sidetracked by other issues that may or may not be related. It is not Rescue MUNI’s job to regulate urban sprawl.
We can’t triple the parking/traffic downtown, increase the number of freeways, etc. AND THEN wait for MUNI to improve so we can then get off those new freeways and parking spaces and back onto an improved MUNI.
We have to hold off on the increase of traffic/parking/pollution by voting NO on the shortsighed prop H.
Also, just because there are more parking spaces, it doesn’t mean you’re going to get one.
And most importantly, there are already many empty parking spaces downtown during prime time. Let’s use those up first.