RESCUE Muni listserv - Downtown assessment

David Powers (chromo@sirius.com)
Tue, 20 Jan 1998 14:47:29 -0800

I remember Prop. O, and I supported it. The campaign against it was
interesting: little more than downtown business advocacy
organizations making veiled threats about leaving town ("It will cost
*jobs*!"). The question of whether they could actually do that is
interesting, but it's certainly easy for just about anybody to say,
we can't raise money from them, they'll leave.

BART is already pointed right at those office buildings, and MUNI is
becoming that. I don't think this is useful transit. This is creating
permanent dependency on a particular area, so that bedroom community
development can continue at the fringes. BART is essentially another
freeway subsidy--money spent creating long distance relationships.
Whether you drive or take BART you do it because your job is 25 miles
away. And the MTC is in charge of maintaining that long distance
relationship.

I don't see what's different between San Francisco's employment tax
and NYC's income tax. Dense areas require more services and more
money, but ultimately they're cheaper and less onerous than spreading
people out very thin and spending a fortune on transportation.

San Francisco will always be fighting about this, because there are
two hearts here, a regional business center, and a strikingly
beautiful local city. The reason we should be looking at the DBAD is
that the regional segregation that BART institutionalizes is a
*terrible* long term land planning goal. The *region* is set up to
reduce costs of being a large business in the Bay Area. It has to
stop.

=dtp=

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.. David Powers : chromozone
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