A number of good and interesting points raised there.
My current thinking is that our highly decentralized transit system is
mostly a good thing. Not because decentralization is inherently good,
but because urban transit users constitute a minority in the Bay Area.
Most Bay Area dwellers are suburbanites. Regional transit agencies
overwhelmingly reflect suburban agendae. BART builds useless extensions
to the middle of nowhere because a whole bunch of people who'll almost
never use the system feel they've paid into it through the BART sales
tax and they'll hope, as you state, that the system will take other
people off their God-given freeways.
LA's expensive and useless subway bears so many hallmarks of regional
government gone wrong, one runs short of breath just trying to list them
all: the fetish for capital spending over operating spending, the use
of political (rather than transit) criteria for placement of the
service, the failure to recognize non-sexy solutions already working,
civic boosterism expressed through staggering amounts of bond debt, etc.
If the MTC ran Muni, for instance, what might we expect? On the plus
side, we might see more willingness to cut schedules to levels that can
reliably be provided given the resources and environment available. The
MTC, being more distant from city voters would probably have the
backbone to acknowledge reality and move from unplanned service cuts
(which we have now) to planned service cuts.
On the minus side, Muni's priorities would become regional (read:
suburban), not local. Getting people in and out of San Francisco would
overtake moving people from place to place within San Francisco. This
might be good news for people living in suburban areas not served by
BART, but I can't see how it would be good for much of anyone else.
Right now, relieving freeway congestion isn't a major function of Muni.
Freeways in San Francisco don't provide a whole lot in the way of
intracity functionality. They're designed to get people in and out of
the city. Muni focuses on getting city dwellers where they're going.
I think this is a good thing. City dwellers live in land use patterns
conducive to transit. Trying to make suburbs with low-density
development transit-friendly is like teaching a pig to sing. It wastes
your time and it annoys the pig. The only way LA or Sunnyvale becomes
transit-friendly is if auto costs get so high that demand for auto use
flexes. This could be a very high price point indeed. Auto use prices
peaked during the oil embargo in the 70's and the suburban response was
to drive lighter, more fuel-efficient cars, not to abandon cars for
transit.
For some decades, transit advocates have pined for the day when the oil
would run short, prices would soar, and people would get out of their
cars. Well, it's 1997 and where are we? Oil extraction techniques have
advanced considerably, so the supply of oil appears likely to last well
beyond our lifetimes. OPEC isn't what it used to be, and a freer market
in oil is driving prices down, too. High-population developing
countries may sharply increase their demand for oil when they get
wealthy enough to buy cars (as is feared to happen soon in China), but
they'll have to use a hell of a lot of oil before it drives the price,
in real (inflation-controlled) dollars past, say, the price it hit
during the embargo. Which, as we saw, wasn't sufficiently high to
change much besides our choice of car model.
So what's the point I'm making? It's that transit flows from land use,
period. If you screw up the land use, transit is mostly a waste. For
all the disagreement we have about how to fix Muni, no one really thinks
transit can't work in San Francisco. We're a dense, European-style city
with lots of mixed-use zoning.
So putting control of transit in the hands of people who represent areas
with poor land use policies probably means less transit, period.
Donald F. Robertson writes:
> If expecting the employees that I pay for with my tax dollars to do
> their job and do it well is "Thatcherite", than so be it. I have no
> problem paying MUNI (and BART) employees close to the highest rates in
> the world. We do, after all, want the highest quality public transit in
> the world. By I, at least, want to get what I am paying for. We're
> paying top dollar, we should get top service. That is not Thatcherism,
> that is common sense.
Some folks feel Muni's labor situation is only incidental to the
problems of getting vehicles out on the street on time. The labor
situation is a much bigger problem for Muni than that, as any detailed
examination of absenteeism, customer service, etc. reveals. Unplanned
absence of employees alone (quite aside from any problems that crop up
from their conduct on the job) causes near-meltdowns of the system. I'm
sure many private sector industries with unionized workforces (like UPS,
car manufacturers, etc.) have days when employees call in sick and so
on, but not on a scale that makes it impossible for them to meet their
customers' needs.
The godawful contract with TWU isn't Muni's only problem. Anyone who
says 'x is Muni's only problem' isn't paying attention. But it's very
significant. And organized labor's role in making the world a better
place doesn't make the problem any less significant, much as we might
like to think it should.