A petition-based initiative to allow more off-street parking in San Francisco has made it onto the ballot for the next local election. City Supervisors countermanded the move by amending a funding provision for the city's public transport (MUNI) that would insert the city's current parking restrictions into the City Charter. As The San Francisco Chronicle points out, if voters approve BOTH measures, the Muni measure would take precedence. Jim Ross, campaign manager for the parking measure, expressed his dismayed that it's become an either-or choice between additional parking and mass transit. "There's room for people to have parking and room for the city to have a good transit system. This doesn't have to be black or white." The chief sponsor of the MUNI measure disagrees: "This is about San Francisco's destiny," Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin asserted. "Voters will have to ask themselves: Do you want San Francisco to be more like Paris or Los Angeles?"
Find Reviews by Make:
Read all comments
“Voters will have to ask themselves: Do you want San Francisco to be more like Paris or Los Angeles?”
So… Do you want to be a beret wearing, chain smoking elitist or do you want to be a superficial, vapid elitist?
The biggest problem I’ve noticed when in San Francisco is that Muni is hardly reliable therefore not a very good public transit system for “business” users. If you’re older and retired and have time to move about, if you’re 10:11 bus doesn’t show up, but the 10:21 does, it probably isn’t a problem.
The thing is, if Muni were given enough money, SF probably wouldn’t need that much more off-street parking because people could easily take Muni where they wanted to. But it’s the whole chicken and egg thing.
Not to mention the MUNI cars just aren’t very nice. Money would help change that though, and SF really does need a good mass transit system. The streets are too tight for everyone to drive into the city.
On the other hand, there are a lot of parts of the city that aren’t easy to get to with public transportation, especially after midnight. SF simply needs all possibly solutions in place.
“Voters will have to ask themselves: Do you want San Francisco to be more like Paris or Los Angeles?”
If only Phoenix, Dallas, and other cities had asked themselves that question before going gung ho for cars.
I live in San Francisco now, lived in NYC as well at one point, and I have lived in other cities – ones that are car-heavy in their approach; cities like Los Angeles, Charlotte, NC, etc.
It’s a lot more pleasant to have less cars driving around as a general rule if you are a city resident, and I say that as someone who loves cars and loves driving cars. San Francisco is a wonderful place – more cars on the streets in the city, or, around the perimeter of San Francisco, is probably not going to make San Francisco more wonderful, only less.
B Moore – Autosavant.net
It would help a lot of BART ran past midnight! If you wanna go out, you have to drive is you plan on staying out late.
Wow! Looking at the photo, you can’t help but think about gimballed cup holders… or that the tires on those cars are experiencing say, 0.3g “cornering” forces while parked.
In Allegheny County (Pittsburgh PA), the Commisioner is pushing a 10% tax on all alcoholic drinks served in bars/restaurants to plug a gaping hole in mass transit (funding was cut by the state). Meanwhile, the same transit system is burning $800M in federal cash to dig a 1/3 mile tunnel under the Allegheny river so that our version of “BART” (which are nothing more than glorified sreetcars) will have access to the two sports stadiums and a soon-to-be-constructed slots casino.
I guess that Commisioner Dan Onarato must have overheard a lot of drunks sympathizing with auto-less working people (who were losing night/weekend routes), and thought: “Let them put their money where their mouths are.”
How much money does BART lose every year? I had heard it was in the hundreds of millions.
The traffic in Paris is much worse than that in Los Angeles because Paris has virtually no off street parking – unlike Los Angeles. Mr. Peskin needs to get out more.
“The traffic in Paris is much worse than that in Los Angeles because Paris has virtually no off street parking – unlike Los Angeles. Mr. Peskin needs to get out more.”
The traffic in Paris is irrelevant. No one needs to own a car in Paris. In Los Angeles cars are obligatory and traffic is terrible.
jabdalmalik: The traffic in Paris is irrelevant. No one needs to own a car in Paris. In Los Angeles cars are obligatory and traffic is terrible.
Whether one needs to own a car in any city is irrelevant if the residents of said city still want to own one. Traffic is terrible in both Paris and Los Angeles, even though Paris apparently hasn’t planned too well for it.