October 1, 2007
Yay for Buses and Oxygen! Boooo for Pretending that Hummers are "Low-Emission"!
So, obviously, SFist can't even pretend to be neutral when it comes to Prop A. We've been covering its progress for months, and now it's evolved into a smart, fair compromise that has just about everyone on board -- everyone except a local Republican group. Our local GOP is backing the loathsome Prop H, which would, no joke, replace bus stops, trees, and bike lanes with parking garages. Could this be any more like The Lorax? Prop H would allow for unlimited construction of parking lots for "low emission vehicles," but ha ha ha, their definition of "low-emission vehicles" is so broad that it includes EVERY vehicle -- including Hummers. Puh. Leeeeeeez. And did we mention that Prop H was designed by a company that builds parking garages? Oh how terribly sly.
Anyway, the Prop A/Prop H battle is the most interesting thing on the ballot this year, so you should probably get involved. You do like interesting things, don't you? Local planning group SPUR is holding phone banks at a local SEIU building all this week, and you know how SFist loves phone banks.
They've also got an intriguing scheme cooked up whereby volunteers do some campaigning on buses and at bus stops. It's a neat idea -- after all, there's no better place to find the people who desperately want to fix Muni. But hm, how would you respond to campaigners hopping around during your commute? If someone approached us with a clipboard and flyers and talking points, we would probably not think to ourselves, "this person clearly knows how to improve the quality of a commute." Maybe if they were passing out thin mints.
But anyway. If anyone can find a way to make phone banks and street-teams tolerable, it's SPUR. And it's for a good cause, after all -- you can get involved by emailing transitnottraffic -- at -- gmail dot com.
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Repeat after me - Yes on A, No on H
Matt, thank you so much for making this post. Just as I was on the verge of losing all faith in SFist, you manage to find a way to rescue its reputation. You and Rita should post more. :)
The drafters of Prop H didn't just pull the term "low emissions vehicle" from outer space. It derives from govmint definitions:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/elections/Nov2007_VIP_EN.pdf
So this critique seems a bit off:
"vehicles which it [the test of Prop A] calls “low-emission.”"
Of course, exempting most new vehicles is completely ridiculous and the drafters were foolish to do so.
LOW-EMISSION VEHICLE (PROPOSITION H) — A motor vehicle
that meets one of the following standards:
(a) Federal Inherently Low Emission Vehicle
Standards,
(b) California Air Resources Board standards for
a Super Ultra-Low Emission Vehicle, an Ultra
Low-Emission Vehicle, or an Advanced Technology
Partial Zero-Emission Vehicle (see
www.arb.ca.gov/msprog/ccvl/ccvl.htm),
(c) eligibility for single-occupant use in High
Occupancy Vehicle lanes as determined by the
California Air Resources Board.
I don't think it was foolishness; I think it was duplicitousness.
Vote No on Both A & H, and push for real, effective legslation that meets the needs of all san franciscans.
I think this city should allow and promote off-street parking. It should require x amount of parking spaces per residential unit. We cannot kid ourselves into thinking that everyone is going to get rid of their cars. It is not feasable, without substantial gains in public transit or hindering the style of work that makes the bay area such a hotbed of technology.
Transportation legislation needs to be a combination of the two propositions. It should not put cars ahead of transit, bicycles or pedestrians; nor should it be blind to the fact that most people need at least one vehicle per household. It should promote a safe, secure, and off-the-street-whenever possible means of automobile storage. At the same time, it should promote keeping those vehicles in storage unless absolutely necessary.
Maybe I'm a rare breed around here, but now that I have a garage under my house, and my car is off the streets, it stays in the garage except when I (in my opinion) need it. Otherwise, I walk, take transit, or bicycle.
J is somewhat right. BUT if only H only rolled back some of the ridiculousness that prevents the voluntary development of new parking. Instead, it just turns the existing rules on their heads and requires developers to build parking spaces.
San Franciscan love their cars, there's no denying it. The only way to change this is to, over a 5 to 10 year period, make it damned expensive to own a car, like in Europe. Raise registration costs to $0.50 per engine cubic centimeter per year, raise the cost of gas to $8 per gallon, and SF will quickly unchoke itself.
You can't have it all -- easy parking and great transit. As car usage becomes more attractive, more people will use cars, just as more people buy a commodity when its price goes down. And more cars = slow roads = worse transit. If you want people to take the bus, then the bus has to yield more value than car ownership, not equal value.
Nobody's happy with the current situation. Something has to change -- and that means picking a side.
It's all so zen-
Many people want to use their cars as little as possible, but MUNI is unreliable not frequent enough, all around putrid.
MUNI sucks because there are too many cars and people won't use it because cars are easier.
Making parking scarcer will not make cars go away. There is much more to Prop A than meets the eye. Read the whole thing carefully, and remember be careful about what you ask for; you might get it.
Nothing wrong with a parking ban. Downtown Boston has had a court-ordered public parking freeze since the mid-1970s as an air pollution control measure. It basically freezes the creation of new onstreet general public spaces as well as freezes new general public parking garages, for the most part.
Boston hasn't suffered for it and the Central Business District of Boston (the core of the city) is one of the most walkable downtowns in the country with an abundance of public transit.
If you force the cars out of downtown, people will walk and also demand more and better transit. If you make it easy to park, people will not walk and they won't give a crap about transit.
Yes, this IS an either/or, pick a side, mutually exclusive issue.
mattymatt...I agree that something has to be done. I just don't agree that either of these two props offers a silver bullet. In fact, they both go too far!
Prop H has merits in looking to build garages downtown (for new construction) and allowing homeowners to build garages under there dwellings.
Prop A, on the other hand, wants to ban any additional parking (the way I read it. It's long and I'm not a wonk-type) whether downtown or in the residential 'hoods.
Some of the biggest problems with cars, as pointed out here, are 1) double parking, 2) circling the block to find street parking and 3) too many cars on the road, period.
1&2 are addressed through prop H, but 3 isn't touched. Prop A assumes that through addressing 3, 1&2 will follow.
For me, Prop H offers a better (but not perfect) solution by moving parked cars off the street. Prop A is a slap in the face to anyone who happens to have to travel outside the city (and away from transit) for work in order to (barely)afford a home here....or is that the goal?
You can read the Voter Information Guide here:
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/elections/Nov2007_VIP_EN.pdf
Prop A wouldn't reduce parking spaces; it just doesn't provide for new ones. And in fact, it leaves open an option for the Board of Supes to vote to increase the limits on parking, if they so want.
Also: counterintuitively, more parking does not equal emptier streets. In fact, by artificially forcing developers to inflate the value of car usage, it could create MORE congestion. As they are built, more cars will arrive to look for new spaces, to circle the block, and to double-park.
Prop H causes a lot of damage -- it eliminates bike lanes, sidewalks, trees, and bus stops. It allows unlimited construction of parking garages.
Look at who says No on H: the local Democratic Pary, the Green Party, just about every single neighborhood group, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, small business owners, senior groups, merchant groups, architects, people at Caltrans, planning directors and commissioners, Walk SF, the Bike Coalition, Livable City, Rescue Muni, Friends of the Urban Forest, most of our Supervisors, Migden and Yee and Leno, the Sierra club, multiple labor unions ...
It's pretty much unanimous.