Instead of the SFMTA MUNI DPT SFPark happy talk what you’ve been getting from the San Francisco Examiner, why not check out what the New York Times has to say about San Francisco’s expensive SFPark new parking meter program.
“PLACE “smart” in front of a noun and you immediately have something that somehow sounds improved.”
Heh.
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I’ll tell you, when the Imperial Japanese Navy tried to invade Wake Island back in WWII, their first attempt, which involved months of planning, failed. The IJN was highly embarrassed but they knew that it was their job to impose themselves on Wake, to “manage” Wake, so they came back and succeeded on their second try. (And they beheaded a few Marines, but, byegones…)
And I’ll also tell you, when the Imperial SFMTA tried to impose SFPark on the Mission Bay and the Dogpatch and whatnot, their first attempt, which involved months of planning, failed. The SFMTA was highly embarrassed but they knew that it’s their job to impose SFPark, or whatever they’re calling it now, on the area. The college boys of the SFMTA just know, they just know it, that it’s their job to increase the power of the SFMTA and have the SFMTA grow and grow and grow.
Get all the deets on the Second Invasion of Mission Bay right here, and below.
And oh, here’s SFPark.info website, written by people who don’t approve of the worst aspects of the SFMTA and SFPark (or whatever they’re calling it these days.)
All right, now back to the official stuff. Uh, and in case you don’t know it, SFMTA, you suck – more proof of this is that your website has “insecure content.” [UPDATE: Good job, MUNI! You took care of that. Someday, you'll get the hang of the whole "Internet" thing.]
Or so they say:
In closing, MUNI sucks!
Posted on 05.25.12 in Announcements, Parking Planning|Share:
The public is invited to join the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) at our second Mission Bay parking planning community meeting. We will discuss the revised plans for parking management in the neighborhood and gather public input. As Mission Bay evolves, we need to ensure that everyone on the road—cars, buses, bicycles, and pedestrians—can travel safely and smoothly.
The SFMTA seeks public input on the following:
During the open house section of the meeting, attendees can review plan details, talk directly with project planners, and submit written feedback. The public comment period follows.
CLICK HERE to learn more about Mission Bay parking planning
CLICK HERE for directions to the meeting venue, including nearby public transit
Please feel free to email us if you have any questions about the location or the project.
The poorly-designed intersection of Grove and Hyde, where traffic sometimes backs up to City Hall, sent the driver of this Land Rover Discovery over the edge.
See? He’s driving the wrong way. He felt that the drivers ahead of him weren’t being aggressive enough moving past the stop sign:
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Oh well. (It’s true that the drivers ahead of him could have paid more attention, I s’pose.) The driver shaved about five minutes off of his trip so I guess that’s a small victory for him.
Anyway, the way to avoid this mess is to cut through the Great Parking Lot of Fulton (minding the peds, of course, the worst in the world hang out around here) to get on Hyde easily. Otherwise, you’ll be in this mess on Grove for ten minutes or whatever.
Happy driving!
Here’s the sitch at the foot of Grove Street these days.
See? Traffic moving inbound, west towards Market Street, backs up to Polk sometimes:
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The thing about that is that not many cars can make it through each traffic signal cycle, so it might take ten minutes to go 1.5 blocks.
There’s a bike lane in there inbound on the right, but, as you can see, it oftentimes gets blocked by double-parked cars and private bus lines like that from the CPMC.
Cyclists are rightly tempted to just take the little-used outbound lane to get to Market.
Oh well.
All right, let’s see here, by the numbers:
1. “Parking Availability” – What this means is that the SFMTA is taking money from the Feds to put in new parking meters and raise prices on existing meters.
2. “Pricing” - What this means is that the SFMTA is taking money from the Feds to put in new parking meters and raise prices on existing meters.
Does that about cover it?
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Imagine if you will an organization called, I don’t know, how about SFFOOD.ORG? And instead of its former policy of giving away food for free for the most part but also charging a little bit of money to some people, it decided to give away a smaller amount of free food and then charge a lot of money to more people. And then imagine that if SFFOOD knew you were really hungry, then it’d charge you even more. And then imagine that its slogan would be “Food Availability & Pricing.”
And then imagine they made some bullshit website about how much happier you’ll be spending less time waiting for food you now have to pay for. (You know who values convenience over money? Rich people, that’s who.)
Do you see why your bullshit initiatives are met with deep skepticism?
Hello, SFMTA? It’s me, Margaret. The Internet called – it wants its URLs back. Don’t you already have a website, SFMTA? So why do you need a different one for every project you do? Like the CultureBus – you had a special website for that too, right? (Until you lost interest in it…)
And aren’t we going to pay back the Feds the $20,000,000 “grant” or whatever they’re loaning us to pay for the new meters (and bullshit website) from the new revenue? (That’s my understanding – disabuse me of that notion if you wish.)
Hey SFMTA, why don’t you just be straight and tell drivers that they’re just going to have to pay more for parking, just tell them that their free ride is over? Why don’t you tell people that it’s impractical to make them put 72 quarters per hour into a meter so that’s why you want to use credit and debit cards and whatnot?
And why does every policy from the SFMTA have to be advertised as a win-win for all concerned?
Why does the worst-run agency in San Francisco have to be so Orwellian?
Oh, and here’s the kicker:
“After the SFpark pilot phase is complete in the summer of 2012, SFpark will evaluate the effectiveness of the project and prepare a proposal for expanding SFpark across the City for the SFMTA Board to consider after public outreach.”
Can you see those Godforsaken souls way out there at 46th and Kirkham feeding the kitty for them to park their cars in front of their houses?
SFMTAWTF?
Is San Francisco really going to start charging admission? All right, but this “Gateway” idea is a whole lot different from the “downtown core” proposal from a few years back, in’nt?
I mean, what’s stopping San Mateo from putting up their own tollbooths? Or charging a per-capita two dollar fee for all BART riders coming into Daly City Station as compensation for us taking up all their space and breathing all their air?
Just sayin, bro.
People have been tooling around Golden Gate Park in their cars for more than 100 years, but it’s never been tougher than now to get around and find a space on the weekends.
This is what MLK Drive looks like from 9th Avenue on a summer weekend – it’s a parking lot. You’d be better off walking:
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And here’s where you’ll find cyclists and bikers on MLK when things are bad – they just lane-split in the middle of the road. That’s how bad it can get.
But you want to carry your brood to the de Young Museum or the California Academy of Sciences anyway, right?
Now, if you want to approach the park from the north, from the Richmond District and then head right to that $4 per hour Music Concourse garage, well then be my guest. The problem with that is that the garage gets full sometimes. In that case, you should be able to (eventually) find a space on Fulton (for free on Sundays and some holidays.)
Or you could make a try for Stow Lake, where it’s always free to park. Pretty easy to get to from the south. Just follow the blue arrows past the boat house - if you can find a place near the east end of the lake then you’ll have to walk just a couple minutes to get to wherever you’re going.
Whatever you do, don’t try to circle the Music Concourse or use MLK between 9th Ave. and the southern entrance to Stow Lake. You’ll be traveling at one MPH if you’re lucky and there’s a good chance the southern garage entrance will be blocked off. You’d be better off trying to find a free space on MLK east of 7th Ave. or on Lincoln (where it’s free to park on Sundays.)
Bon courage.
This open-top sightseeing bus in Golden Gate Park has its steering wheel on the wrong side, cause it was made in merry olde Englande at the British Leyland factory.
Normally that kind of set-up a pain, but it’s a bonus when you’re stalled on Martin Luther King, Jr due to congestion near Music Concourse Drive. Just pull into the other lane and hope that the drivers coming the other way notice.
If you ever get pulled over by the SFPD or the Park police for driving the wrong way, address all concerned as “gov’ner” and feel free to throw in the phrase “me lorry” as much as possible. “See here, Gov’ner, me lorry is right hand drive, so….” That should get you off the hook.
Why waste your petrol waiting in line when you can just jump the queue?
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Cheers!
I’ll tell you, if you are dead-set against the idea of paying money for the right to drive into the Financh at certain times of the day, you’re better off not attending the “outreach meeting” being held tonight tonight* at the Ferry Building.
“We will be conducting a fourth round of public workshops to present our findings in late spring or early summer. Join us in person or on the web to discuss our findings, and your thoughts on next steps.
Tuesday, July 27 from 5:30 – 7:00pm
San Francisco Ferry Building
Port Commission Hearing Room, 2nd floor
Wednesday, July 28 from 5:30 – 7:00pm
SFCTA Hearing Room
100 Van Ness Avenue, 26th Floor”
The reason being is that you don’t have a prayer about changing their minds or nothing. They already know what’s best for you.
They already know that this, or something similiar, is The Future:
And to persuade you of all this, they’ll sacrifice a few straw dogs just for your benefit. Srsly. So, like, does anybody actually believe this statement?
“All the traffic in the city is from drivers who don’t live in the city.”
Or this one? Does anybody go around saying this IRL?
“Congestion Pricing is a regressive tax on poor people who need to drive into the cordon area.”
No, not really. Oh well. They’re trying to persuade so this is how they do it, in a patronizing manner. It’s The System.
This is the same system that FUBARed the Bay Bridge retrofit. This is the same system that calls the increased fares on the Bay Bridge “congestion pricing.” Oh well.
Myself, I support the concept of congestion pricing. In fact, I’m thinking it’s possible that San Francisco could actually execute this idea in a textbook fashion. We’ll see.
*Phil Collins is a jerk but he was also a jerk back in his Genesis days, so you can’t say that he changed or nothing. And you can’t say that he just tagged along with the others from Genesis - he was Genesis, really. So, if you like the extended part that starts at 3:17 here and the other similar parts, well then you have to give props to Phil Collins, I guess.
Well the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) came to Market Street last night to ask the public the best way to raise tolls on Bay Area bridges (except the Golden Gate Bridge, an entity unto itself).
Who was at the meeting early and ready to go? None other than BATA Oversight Committee Vice-Chair and San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly avec charming daughter Grace:
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This was the open house part of the meeting early on. Not a huge turnout:
To see why, let’s look at the numbers on the numerous display boards:
BATA isn’t asking people if there should be an increase, but rather, which increase plan is the best:
The seismic safety upgrading for the Dumbarton and Antioch bridges – that’s the primary issues, a billion-dollar issue. How is BATA going to pay for that?
Well pick your poison. How would you balance charges for carpoolers vs. trucks (with all them axles) and would you be into congestion pricing? (Proposal 2 is called the Homer Simpson Option, due to his practice of charging $10 per axle when he lets people park on his lawn.)
Speaking of axles, you big rig truck drivers have gotten a free ride over the years, some people think:
Here are the anticipated impacts of each option:
How do these proposed tolls campare to what the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority charges people to drive across the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, you know, the one with the highest toll in America? Quite nicely, thanks for asking!
So now, what do YOU think is the best way to raise revenue?
You can tell your commissioners about your choice:
Let’s grab a holiday cookie and mull things over:
It looks like staff is going to make a recomendation tomorrow…
…and your toll will go up at least a dollar as of July 1, 2010.
