Fingers Crossed, BOS Just Might Reject MTA Budget

Sources in-the-know say it looks likely that the SF Board of Supervisors will find enough votes to reject the SFMTA's budget, which is badly flawed. This as Beyond Chron reiterates its opposition to the current budget and new-and-already-awesome blog SwitchingModes.com adds its voice to team 'No.'

They should do just that and I'd like to encourage you to contact your supe of you haven't yet done so.

There are so many good reasons to reject this budget that have been put forth by so many sharp minds in the transit advocacy and progressive community:

• Raising fares and cutting service hurts ridership
• This budget balances the deficit on the backs of Muni's poorest users
• In creating this budget, the SFMTA board has shown an inclination to avoid making drivers pay their fair share of road costs
• This budget represents a sharp departure from the goals and promises of the much-touted TEP

Pedestrianism Vol. 4

Pedestrianism Vol. 4 from Josh Bingham

This edition is HD by Vimeo's standards. I recommend viewing it full-screen with HD on and scaling off.

This walk circumnavigates one of San Francisco's ugliest warts: the tangled maze of on- and off-ramps that connect Potrero Avenue and Cesar Chavez Street to Highway 101 while separating the Mission and Bayview Districts for car-free residents. Other liveable streets advocates have taken to calling this monstrosity the "hairball," and I'll use that term here as well since my own name for it is unprintable.

We start at Muni's Potrero trolly yard and maintenance facility, recipient of some much-needed Federal stimulus funds and end at the Flowercraft garden center on Bayshore Boulevard. Since the hairball cuts off the most direct route, down Potrero, across C Chav and on to Bayshore, I cut across 101 at the 18th Street Pedestrian bridge and over Potrero Hill into the Islais Creek industrial area of Bayview.

Things to note in order of appearance:

• The steep slope of Mariposa between Potrero and Utah Street results in steps for a sidewalk.
• 18th Street pedestrian bridge
• Potrero Hill community garden is planted on former Caltrans land
• McKinley Square park with its formal Victorian lawn and panoramic views
• The section of Vermont Street adjacent to McKinley Square is curvier than Lombard, but far less famous
• The lack of pedestrian crossings on C Chav, even east of the hairball, forces pedestrians to go out of their way around Kansas and Marin Streets, past the KOFY TV20 studios and Beronio Lumber
• The Bayshore Boulevard traffic sewer with its merge turns and narrow sidewalks encourages motorists to drive recklessly. Note the failure to yield at 2:18
• The Old Clam House is a San Francisco institution; a relic of the days when this area was wetlands surrounding Islais Creek
• The old Whole Earth Access and Goodman's Lumber buildings. Locals remember these places fondly; the latter is the site of the ever-controversial and endlessly reincarnated proposed Big Box Home Center store

The Era of "The Era of Big Government is Over" is Over

Republican politicians who argued against federal infrastructure investment in the recently passed stimulus bill are either out of touch with economic reality or are deliberately sabotaging government.

It's been 28 years since the conservative movement took control of this country with Reagan's declaration that government wasn't the solution, it was the problem. For nearly three decades the Republicans in Washington have made sure of that by racking up public debt and slashing funding for government programs. Anyone who has faced a household budget with shrinking income is familiar with some of the ways we struggle to get by, and their consequences down the road. (And unfortunately, thanks to conservative rule, there are more families in this situation every day)

The first thing most people do in that situation is cut out luxury spending. Most of us have a certain amount of luxury spending we can cut without much pain. When the government agencies responsible for vital public services make cuts like this, conservatives celebrate the success - and then demand more.

But after the first round of easy cuts have been made, there's rarely anything left to eliminate before it starts to hurt. At this point most folks stop spending money on things that aren't day-to-day or week-to-week necessities. Home maintenance and replacing old clothes or appliances make way for rent and bills. You may be able to keep your head above water for a surprising amount of time this way - until your last pair of shoes wears out.

For 28 years we've kept our heads above water, acting like a first-world country using this strategy. But our public infrastructure, which makes our American lifestyle possible, is on its last pair of shoes.

We've been deferring maintenance on all of our infrastructure (even our "roads and bridges," those sacred cows of our autocentricity) because it saves a few million dollars a year. Well, now that the true cost of that practice is coming due - and $787 Billion is just the beginning - it doesn't seem like a good idea anymore.

It is insulting and false to say that spending this money is wasteful. If the obstructionist Republicans don't like the price tag they shouldn't have gotten us into this mess, but we're here and we need to make this investment.

People who don't get this should shut up while they figure it out.

How Much is Your State Spending on Highways?

Check out this Google doc showing the impact of the Federal stimulus package state-by-state:

The sources are listed below each state.

For my particular area of interest, I pulled out the two figures related to infrastructure spending spending: highways and bridges, and total infrastructure spending. Below are the numbers along with the percentage of each state's "Infrastructure Investments (Highways, Transit, etc.)" allotted to "Highways and Bridges."

State	Highways and Bridges	Infrastructure Investments (Highways, Transit, etc.)	Percent of Infrastructure Alloted to Highways
DC	124,531,869	403,294,018	30.88%
NEW YORK	1,354,887,198	3,604,281,816	37.59%
MASSACHUSETTS	506,364,328	1,057,817,030	47.87%
NEW JERSEY	777,808,665	1,582,367,363	49.15%
ILLINOIS	1001675645	1897016099	52.80%
HAWAII	129,434,787	229,192,014	56.47%
MARYLAND	478,655,397	810,954,639	59.02%
CALIFORNIA	279,6972,002	4,695,000,384	59.57%
WASHINGTON	529,547,455	887,650,903	59.66%
CONNECTICUT	391,353,941	601,032,043	65.11%
PENNSYLVANIA	1,254,266,677	1,925,200,441	65.15%
NEW HAMPSHIRE	137,525,889	209,441,009	65.66%
OHIO	1,036,086,707	1,575,509,341	65.76%
MINNESOTA	477,633,398	705,660,596	67.69%
OREGON	349,351,566	515,441,583	67.78%
ALASKA	238,322,406	348,362,118	68.41%
UTAH	221,325,277	323,489,446	68.42%
MICHIGAN	875,167,353	1,276,940,176	68.54%
WEST VIRGINIA	243,473,459	355,047,758	68.57%
WISCONSIN	563,779,408	813,424,893	69.31%
COLORADO	412,851,201	589,298,325	70.06%
MAINE	138,664,985	197,296,913	70.28%
FLORIDA	1,461,783,079	2,051,376,755	71.26%
NEVADA	217,735,801	302,577,848	71.96%
MISSOURI	688,319,889	954,333,066	72.13%
RHODE ISLAND	154,292,484	213,558,633	72.25%
VIRGINIA	745,536,628	1,022,735,526	72.90%
DELAWARE	120,854,048	163,522,616	73.91%
IOWA	353,045,333	471,010,693	74.95%
INDIANA	746,339,493	985,465,899	75.73%
TEXAS	2,420,703,384	3,136,554,563	77.18%
LOUISIANA	470,649,161	609,584,818	77.21%
GEORGIA	1,045,902,643	1,343,576,793	77.84%
KENTUCKY	457,309,594	585,461,514	78.11%
NORTH CAROLINA	802,258,586	1,018,359,423	78.78%
KANSAS	317,232,125	402,218,266	78.87%
ARIZONA	586,554,097	743,017,915	78.94%
TENNESSEE	613,113,563	776,511,050	78.96%
VERMONT	129,533,151	163,774,203	79.09%
NEBRASKA	230,260,742	285,220,368	80.73%
IDAHO	216,573,325	264,548,247	81.87%
MISSISSIPPI	353,025,359	430,877,808	81.93%
SOUTH CAROLINA	479,859,162	582,063,166	82.44%
NEW MEXICO	281,158,912	339,738,916	82.76%
NORTH DAKOTA	194,497,761	235,016,201	82.76%
SOUTH DAKOTA	198,688,944	239,131,584	83.09%
ALABAMA	559,665,637	673,498,909	83.10%
WYOMING	199,236,775	237,600,880	83.85%
OKLAHOMA	464,228,443	552,681,549	84.00%
ARKANSAS	370,302,961	437,754,636	84.59%
MONTANA	277,452,620	322,487,955	86.04%

How does your state rank?

Note that this isn't a direct comparison between highways and public transit, but it does illustrate the relative priorities of each state.

You will be the butt of jokes if you fail to think big

Americans pride ourselves on thinking big and following through on those dreams. Nobody would argue that it's anything but a point of pride to have the tallest building, the longest bridge span, etc.

That mindset is present even when planning the less sexy segments of our public infrastructure. Unfortunately that's mostly only true for asphalt projects. From Jon, commenting on The Overhead Wire:

the urban ring should really be subway, too bad boston spent all their money on the big dig back when subways were still being built.

this is what gets me, a transit oriented city like boston (nyc, chicago, philly too) has for the most part the same subway system that it had 50-80 years ago. for any new expansion they have to settle for buses when grade separated rail is whats needed. they need to be ambitious now and plan some subway and fight for the federal transit money to pay for it.

Replace Boston 50-80 years ago with SF 40 years ago and you have the situation as I see it.

To the extent that there is any big-thinking going on here, it's poo-poohed by the inbred pool of political power. The most we seem to get are proposals to push BART to the edges of the state or the world's slowest BRT. Our much-championed Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) is a "consolidation of service" (Muni's euphemism, not mine) not a plan for a truly effective transportation network. Heaven forbid we move the region or even the densest city outside of Manhattan away from a 1:1 parking ratio.

What if this is stimulus is our chance to make game-changing capital improvements, along the lines of the Market Street tunnel, and we blow it? We'll look like fools, and more than likely do it anyway decades late and for billions more.

It all starts with walkable streets

Eric at the must-read Transbay Blog has an excellent post about the connection between the pedestrian environment and the overall health of our cities. Specifically he's rallying support for the Congress for the New Urbanism's recent proposal to include dense, livable streetscape improvements in the upcoming Federal stimulus bill:

The CNU proposal leverages the power inherent in a street grid to disperse traffic throughout an open, integrated network of routes. This is preferable to funneling a high volume of cars onto a few wide arteries, which encourages many drivers to use the exact same route. As a result, these wide arteries attract congestion like a magnet, and when the roadway reaches capacity, there is the perception that it must be widened to further increase capacity, leading to a vicious cycle of induced demand. ... This pattern has led to the decline of many once-prosperous urban districts and corridors, including here in the Bay Area. It confirms our observation that the freeway/artery model is inferior to the grid model, in which traffic is dispersed throughout a network of streets.

Investing in the rennaisance of our neglected urban cores - and in the creation of new urban areas where previously cars were king - will yield more bang for our buck than any freeway widening project, and should be a part of any taxpayer-funded stimulus package.

Please let your elected representative know how you feel about this.