January 26, 2007
Stuart "Fare Hike" Sunshine Fails Upward, Lands in Mayor's Office
We don't have anything funny to say about this one -- we're simply at a loss. Rumor had it yesterday that Gavin picked Stuart Sunshine to be his new Deputy Chief of Staff, and now the mayor's Director of Communications Peter Ragone (not to be confused with houseguest John Nelson) has confirmed it. Stuart will be leaving the MTA and moving to the mayor's administration, where he'll be "focusing on infrastructure and transportation."
That's just terrible.
Stuart's one of those bosses who gets promoted to new and better jobs not because he's awesome, but in order to put him in the position where he can do the least amount of damage. Remember those fare hikes and service cuts that Muni went though a few years ago? That was under his stewardship. Throughout the last three mayoral administrations, he's waged a war against improving the Transbay Terminal. He had his hands in the patronage-rich SFO runway extension. He repeatedly derided Muni's legally-mandated but never-achieved goal of 85%-on-time. He worked to stop Caltrain from expanding into downtown.
Basically, think about everything that's awful about Bay Area transportation ... and that's the guy who'll be chieffing up the mayor's staff.
After the jump: we reminisce about the good old times, and also revisit that Octavia/Market intersection nobody can stop talking about these days.
We sifted through the archives of the Bay Area Transit News, looking for news articles about Stuart's time at Muni. Here's what we found.
In Feb of last year, the Central Subway project was bleeding money. "We're in the process of doing value engineering to do cost savings," he said. That "value engineering" meant scaling back the project with shorter platforms and humbler stations and cheaper routes. As a result, it'll be even harder for the insanely expensive 2-mile subway to carry enough people to ever be profitable.
In December of 2005, Ken Garcia wrote that Stuart "has done such a fine job of keeping the trains running on time." Anyone who was attempting to ride Muni back then can only interpret that statement as being wickedly sarcastic. In fact, we'd go so far as to say that you did a heckuva job, Shiney.
In an Chronicle article in November of 2005: "Stuart Sunshine ... said Muni could improve its on-time performance, but said the 85 percent standard set by voter initiative was unrealistic in that it failed to take into account such things as weather and roadwork... " Yes, fuck the voters. They don't understand how hard it is to predict the weather in San Francisco. Will it be foggy in the morning? Will there by a high of 55 degrees or 56? And as for roadwork: if that's the cause of late busses, it must mean that roadwork has been in progress on every route in the city for the last fifteen years.
The Muni union loved Stuart, though. Here's a quote from the 11/18/05 Examiner, a local advertising circular: "'I have been happy with the direction [Sunshine is] taking,' said union President William Sisk."
That love affair might have something to do with this tidbit from the 8/17/05 Examiner: "Sunshine vowed to 'work with the union to better monitor unscheduled absenteeism.'" Skipping off from work is just about the only thing Muni drivers do well. Did Stuart ever get around to monitoring absenteeism? Maybe. But he sure didn't curb it.
From a November 2005 article by KCBS radio comes this: "The busses may come much less often, but more people are riding them, said Sunshine, with fare box revenue up by 11 percent." This is approximately equivalent to throwing up in your mouth, then making out with someone, and then telling them that they enjoyed it.
A few brief promises in September of 2005: in the Examiner, he promised to do something about far evasion. In the Bay City News, he promised to implement the last phase of NextMuni. And in the Chronicle, he said that he'd consider allowing right turns onto freeway ramp at Octavia and Market. Yes, that's right, the freeway ramp that was designed specifically not to accept right-hand turns. The one where bicyclists keep getting flattened. On this topic, Stuart outdid even himself on being ahead of the disaster curve.
Regarding his fare hikes: In the August 5, 2005 Chron, he's quoted as saying, "I think the public generally understands that we had a deficit and we had to balance the budget in an across-the-board approach." And in the March 1, 2005 Contra Costa Times, he says, "even with a 25-cent increase, MUNI is still on the low end of the top 25 transit providers." We certainly agree with the middle third of that sentence.
But the best blurb comes, as always, from Matier and Ross. In their June 6, 2005 column, they share this anecdote:
Years ago it was Sunshine's luck as a mayoral aide to be standing next to Willie Brown when the mayor made his notorious pledge to "fix Muni in 100 days.""Mayor, how do you plan to do that?" a bewildered Sunshine asked Brown the next day.
"That's not the question, Mr. Sunshine," Brown replied. "The question is, how do you plan to do it?"
His answer wasn't pretty then. And it's not going to be pretty now.
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I'm sure that he will be dearly missed at MTA...
Rock on dude!
Stuart Sunshine represents everything that is wrong with San Francsico City Government. Here is a guy who is paid nearly $200,000 a year but has done nothing to earn this salary or his position. The only reason he gets to stick around is because he is Jack Davis's protege...
A positive side to this is that he isn't at the MTA anymore and that we know that this administrations rein is just about over.
hooray for paying high salaries to do-nothing incompetent bureaucrats!
According to Matier and Ross from September of 2005 the intersection was designed to allow right turns, but the right turn was banned by the board of supervisors resolution 508-04 passed on 8/17/04. As for what was designed, the final page of the November 4 2003, "notice of public scoping meeting" shows a secondary freeway accesses route down market ending at the Octavia ramp, so the right turn was planned but banned after lobbying by SFBC's Josh Hart on 07/21/04 fearing a right turn lane would at times back up into the bike lane.
Matier and Ross were mistaken. The following is a memo written by the Planning Dept. which gives the true history of the project.
DATE: June 5, 2003
TO: Manito Velasco, DPT
FROM: John Billovits, Planning Dept.
CC: ISCOTT Members
RE: June 12th ISCOTT Mtg., Right Turn Prohibition from Market St. onto
Freeway Touchdown
---oOo---
Hello Manito,
Per your request, We’ve put together the following points summarizing some of the background and issues related to the importance of the above item at ISCOTT next week. I hope this is helpful. I thought it would be useful to cc it to other ISCOTT members that might be interested.
Why the Planning Department?
The Planning Department has taken the lead on this issue and related items in the area as part of an ongoing comprehensive community and interagency planning effort.
The pending freeway touchdown at Market Street and Octavia Boulevard is at the center of the Market & Octavia Neighborhood Plan, part of the Department’s Better Neighborhoods Program. The Plan is the product of three years of intensive community planning work seeking to promote housing and good mixed-use urban development that is appropriately transit and pedestrian-oriented for this central city location. It was in response to concerns over safety and livability on behalf of the community, staff, and our transportation and urban design consultants that the Department anticipated conflicts with the early touchdown design and took the initiative to address the problems.
City agencies and Caltrans unanimously agreed to prohibit right turn in early 2001.
More than two years ago, the Planning Department facilitated an interagency discussion and decision-making process to engage Caltrans on the freeway touchdown design in conjunction with the Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, Muni, DPT, DPW, SFCTA, and urban design and transportation consultants. The prohibition of a right turn movement from Market Street onto the onramp was unanimously agreed upon by City staff as the top safety priority in January 2001. In the following early months of 2001, Caltrans agreed to prohibit this movement and designed it out of the structure - settling the issue.
A prohibition on right turns here has been assumed and carried forward ever since, not only in the Market & Octavia Plan draft, but in the expectations of the hundreds of participating members of the public, neighborhood groups, advocacy organizations and various public agencies.
At the suggestion of DPT staff, we are providing the following points outlining some of the issues supporting the right turn prohibition at this unusual location.
• Published plan, history of community process and understanding. The elimination of the right turn has been published in the city’s Market & Octavia Better Neighborhoods Plan. This lengthy community process, in addition to interagency communication, has had this as a fundamental understanding for at least two years. Because this has been considered a settled issue, changing this decision would necessitate going back out to the public to change the project, introducing delay.
• Caltrans design and understanding. Potential project delay to introduce right turn. Caltrans has designed the freeway touchdown to not accommodate a right turn from Market Street. Earlier designs had incorporated such a movement but were very problematic from a pedestrian safety, bicycle safety, and urban design standpoint, and were eliminated, at the unified request of the City. At this point Caltrans is neither expecting nor desirous of re-introducing a right turn from Market Street onto the freeway, and doing so would introduce additional delay to the project.
• Bicycle safety. Banning the right turn is necessary to avoid creating significant negative conflicts for bicycle traffic: There are currently bike lanes on Market Street and a regular flow of cyclists; Market Street is the most important and heavily used street for bicycle transportation in the city. As the freeway touchdown is on a sloping section of Market Street, cyclists are coming downhill with significant momentum; introducing a turning and merging conflict across this cyclist momentum would produce dramatic conflicts more serious in nature than average turning conflicts. The current movement on Market at Duboce of motor vehicle traffic merging across bicycle traffic and turning toward the freeway is a better location (being at the crest of a hill, rather on the down-slope) for such movements.
• Pedestrian Safety and Convenience. As Market Street is San Francisco’s primary pedestrian street and this intersection is the heart of the Market & Octavia Better Neighborhoods Plan area, ensuring pedestrian priority and safety is most important. This area indeed has significant pedestrian traffic, which will only increase with the redevelopment of former freeway parcels with housing, retail and other uses. Further, there are many community facilities in the area which are frequented by more at-risk pedestrians, such as elderly and disabled persons. Prohibiting the right turn from Market Street will be an essential step in keeping this heavily trafficked intersection safe for pedestrians, as the movement along Market is the most important for those on foot. Allowing the right turn onto the freeway would likely also require a separate arrow signal phase which would prohibit pedestrians from crossing the street, adding greater inconvenience for those on foot. The initial Caltrans plans for allowing the right turn led to the conclusion that the related conflicts would necessitate either the prohibition of pedestrian access on Market Street (and unacceptable proposition) or the elimination of the right turn (which was preferred by all parties). Narrowing the intersection, roadway cross-sections, and pedestrian crossings in all directions is critical to making the complex intersection pedestrian-friendly and prevent traffic movements from overwhelming the character of this important urban center.
• Simplifying complex intersection. An interface of a freeway with city streets is very difficult to make pedestrian-friendly; mitigation and elimination of avoidable conflicts of traffic with the surrounding urban activity is critical. This is a complex intersection that will have heavy traffic, and simplifying this intersection by prohibiting right turns will be necessary to make the area appropriate as the heart of a pedestrian-oriented fine-grained neighborhood.
• Narrowing sidewalk, impact on plaza. Allowing the right turn would require cutting back the sidewalk (a politically very unpopular proposition) to create a right-turn lane necessary to accommodate the high volumes of traffic that would be attracted to this freeway access instead of using the existing Duboce connection. Narrowing the sidewalk would be a significant degradation of the planned triangular plaza at the intersection of Elgin Park and Market Street (included both as part of the Octavia Boulevard project and included in the Better Neighborhoods Plan), on the west side of the freeway touchdown, and also require an offset crosswalk.
• Impact on transit. Market Street is a critical Transit Preferential Street (designated so in the General Plan). The heavily-used F-line streetcar uses this portion of Market, but there is no dedicated transit-only diamond lane. Allowing the right turn onto the freeway would encourage the use of Market as a freeway access route (especially diverting traffic currently turning right at Duboce) and would cause significant queues near the on-ramp and delays to transit (and other modes).
• Policies discouraging auto traffic on Market Street. There are long-standing city policies discouraging looking to Market Street as a primary traffic route, especially traffic heading eastbound toward downtown. Because a right-turn here would only be two blocks past the existing right-turn at Duboce to access the freeway, it would not serve any additional traffic on Market but rather would divert and encourage more freeway-bound traffic onto Market Street (which would be attracted from using Duboce due to perceived greater convenience).
• Right turn from Market is Unnecessary. The replacement freeway and Boulevard were charged with ensuring a level of service comparable to the previous structure and configuration. This has been achieved without the right turn and no such freeway access from Market Street existed in the prior configuration.
• Enforceability by Design. The only concern we have heard raised against prohibiting the right turn is the notion that the prohibition would be hard to enforce because motorists would have the presumption of being able to make the right turn. As with any prohibited traffic movements, clear signage will be provided indicating the prohibition of this movement, both at the freeway touchdown and further westward on Market indicating to eastbound freeway traffic that it should continue to use Duboce for freeway access. As an additional physical safeguard, DPT, in consultation with the Planning Department and concerned members of the public, have begun designing a small raised median between the bicycle lane and the travel lane that would create a physical barrier to prevent cars from turning right onto the on-ramp. It might be possible for the median itself to have signage indicating the prohibition on right turns. Motorists determined to make this illegal right turn onto the freeway would have to not only ignore the clear signage, but make the difficult maneuver around (or over) the raised median and make a very sharp turn onto the freeway, whose geometry has been designed not to easily accommodate such a movement; these movements seem highly unlikely.
If you have any questions or would like to discuss this personally in advance of the ISCOTT meeting, feel free to call John Billovits at 558-6390. You can see more on our plan at www.betterneighborhoods.org.
I can think of lots of better places to talk about that intersection and leave lengthy comments than this particular post.
give it up mm
Stuart is the best thing to happen to Gavin since kawa left. he will help guide the administration in the right direction. Stuart has the experience and ability to move the agenda away from photo ops and start focusing on policy issues that we care about.
Stuart is a great choice to stabilize this fledgling administration. Peter “Baboon” Rangone must be checked. His all show and no policy influence needs to be stopped. Stuart is the right man for the job. It’s about time we got a policy guru on the second floor.
The above negative comments have a tone of anti-Semitism. Stuart is a seasoned government operative that has served multiple administrations. He is progressive and pragmatic. His promotion is well deserved. His departure from the MTA and into Gavin’s inner circle is a move that should be applauded. The negativity is undeserved and seems to hint of a personal dislike of an ascending young talent. Gavin needs a cabinet of people just like Mr. Sunshine.
What does anti-Semitism have to do with it?
Sounds like another sock puppet to me.
As long as bicyclists are up to the plate, we SF wheelchair users have a beef, too, not only about cars doing the Market/Octavia right-turn onto the fwy, but about bicyclists riding on San Francisco sidewalks and too often vitually crashing into us or forcing us off curb-ramps or off our paths into other pedestrians or structures. IT'S AGAINST THE LAW FOR BICYCLES TO BE RIDDEN ON SAN FRANCISCO'S SIDEWALKS! Will you please help get the word out. Too many crips are narrowly escaping being hurt by bicyclists who act like they don't even give a fuck!
Like bicyclists, we SF wheelchair users also have a beef, not only about cars taking illegal rights onto the fwy at Market/Octavia, but bicyclists riding on SF sidewalks.They too often come close to slamming into us, cut us off at curb ramps, & force us off into other pedestrians or structures. We're already disabled & bike riders don't seem to give a fuck that they're putting us at risk for more injury. SFPD promised in writing it would enforce the law against bikes being ridden on sidewalks. Help us???
shiny is a complete do-nothing nincompoop who accomplished zero at mta. gavin ended up with him cause no one else wanted him. stuart, stop having your mother write comments for you.
Stuart SUNSHINE!!....Wow,,,,now we know that San Francisco will go bankrupt......he's the guy who followed Newsome(who was paid mightly and skipped out of his position) to take over the newly formed parking and traffic...that was to relieve the polive of mundane process of parking and traffic control...under his tutorage...the city was at it's widest and the MOST CORUPT....................only the lowly and unconnected paid tickets and fines..he and Mary Ellen O'brien...fixed EVERYTHING for everybody(talk to Matier and Ross about this)........better make sure the fact finders start digging and asking questions before letting Sunshine help himself amd cronies to the light coffers of SF....Muni is failing for the same reason...oh yeh...O'brien was fired for her dilly dally in DPT but is soak(socking to it) in MUNI...WATCH OUT FOR SUNSHINE!!!!!...hey NEWSOME FIND CLEANER FRIENDS!!!!!!!...we like you(and sick to the single gals)
SFist does permit commenters to proofread their spelling and punctuation.