[UPDATE: Right on schedule: "Bay Citizen’s Scott James Tries to Drum Up Opposition to Fell and Oak Bikeways"]
Back in the day, Rob Anderson was The Most Hated Man In Town, ’cause he tied the City and County up in knots by insisting upon an Environmental Impact Report for the San Francisco Bicycle Plan. He instigated a slam-dunk lawsuit (really, he was pretty much guaranteed victory) owing to the City trying to go around CA state law by just pretending that an EIR wasn’t necessary.
But eventually, after years, the required report got finished and that was that. IMO, he should have quit while he was ahead, but no, he and his lawyer said the EIR wasn’t good enough – they ended up losing on that issue. Still, you’d have to say he was one of the most successful NIMBYs in CA history.
Remember when he was on the front page of the national edition of the Wall Street Journal? Good times:
But that was then and this is now, so forget about Rob Anderson.
Comes now Scott James of the Bay Citizen - feel free to set your sights (sites?) on him:
Why?
Well, because of stuff like this. People didn’t like that bit, not at all.
And now, today, ooh boy, that’s not going to go down well, no sir.
“I was pleasantly surprised by how there’s not a ‘no way, this is crazy, don’t do it’ feeling out there,” [Mike] Sallaberry said, according to Streetsblog.org, a pro-cycling website. But the bike coalition research, obtained using the open-records law, surveyed only 14 businesses — and it actually reveals very serious objections, which some survey respondents later reiterated in interviews.
To annoy drivers “and make it worse of a pain is not the solution,” Miloslavich said.
Robert Williams, owner of Panhandle Guitar, said: “Fell Street is dangerous to have bike lanes on.”
[SFMTA Spokesmodel Paul] Rose said he was not sure whether Sallaberry’s remarks had been correctly reported. Sallaberry was not available for comment.”
Wow, that’s all you can come up with? You’re “not sure whether the remarks had been correctly reported?”
Wow. That’s the last arrow in your quiver that you should be using, right? Oh, it was the only arrow you had?
Wow.
Obviously, when the SFMTA and its affiliates decide to do a program, it’s the job of the SFMTA to push that program through come Hell or high water. If the program gets executed then the manager succeeded and if the program doesn’t get executed, then the manager failed – it doesn’t matter a whit whether or not the program itself is good or bad for the commonweal at that point. Not at all. What matters is that the SFMTA decided to do something. It’s the job of SFMTA employees to cheerlead and mislead and lie to get any particular program through.
Remember the traffic circles of the lower and upper Haights? Boy, they took out stop signs on Page Street and Waller and then you’d just have to guess at what drivers were going to do when they came upon the intersection. You see, drivers didn’t have to stop. Anyway, that crazy idea got voted down – it lost five times out of five – but all the people behind the stupid traffic circles could say is how “sad” it was that the traffic circles were such a failure.
The fact that they weren’t a good idea never seemed to occur to the people behind the traffic circles.
Fixing the eastbound Panhandle-to-Wiggle connector shouldn’t be that hard. Mostly, it’s about taking out some parking spaces or otherwise freeing up some more room. It’s not about “completing” Oak Street, it’s not about being the next “win-win” from the SFMTA. It’s about making compromises, it’s about winners and losers, it’s about costs and benefits.
Lying to people about the costs doesn’t benefit the people of San Francisco.
Of course.
