[Andrew Sullivan]
>Having transit that concentrates traffic downtown is much more efficient
>than the alternative, which is Silicon Valley: because business is
>spread out over a large area, nobody can take transit even if they want
>to.
I've said this quip before, maybe here. A longtime Palo Alto resident
and I were talking. It was late 1996 and I was describing the Central
Freeway closure. "Aah, San Francisco," said this person, "the city
that hasn't discovered the car." Here I was getting very active with
Critical Mass in SF ... I bit my tongue.
I don't believe that things should be broken up to the extent that
you find yourself consistently needing to travel alone (at an
unbikeable distance). But where throwing most of the money at getting
people to a central business district flops is that it then becomes
difficult to get where you need to go *other* times, shopping,
school, doctors, wherever.
This is I think the same as prohibiting industrial plants near major
rivers, but ignoring waste dumped in most of the tributaries, with
the argument that the tributaries are "local matters." Well, yes,
"local matters": the local stuff matters much more than the
macro-minded people give credit (and money) for.
>But if you try to find a high-tech job in downtown SF, you will have
>remarkably slim pickings relative to the Valley or the East Bay, because
>most Northern California companies don't think [being in a dense area
>is worth paying for].
Well, you can pay money, or you can pay energy. No shareholders
yelling at you for paying energy, or expecting energy dividends at
the end of the year. Plus, North Americans are *comfortable* footing
the bill for bad land planning, to the point of very large personal
debt. And we're willing to screw local businesses and spend lots of
energy to save a couple bucks on a pair of jeans or our groceries, or
ship a shirt, from fabric to finished, through four countries on two
continents before it gets to the shelf. Current price is all that
counts.
>[San Francisco's] high-density way of life
>ABSOLUTELY DEPENDS on a vital downtown.
This is unclear. Are you saying that a vital downtown creates a money
stream that can help pay for public services, or that density is
defined by a concentration of office buildings, or something else?
>A downtown assessment district runs the significant risk of upsetting
>that balance ...
I'm sorry, but somewhere, this money has to come back. Municipalities
are being left holding the financial bag of tax breaks negotiated at
the state and federal levels. We're getting screwed where we live and
we're carrying the difference on our credit cards, or on local bonds.
Business lobbyists worked very hard to put us in this position. The
only local services we can provide are services the large business
community needs. That group has final say because they convinced the
government levels above us to abdicate bargaining authority.
This is relevant to MUNI because raising money for MUNI (wherever you
put that on your list of things to do) can't happen without state-
and nation-wide tax changes. Paying bills and raising money city by
city makes none of the needed adjustments for putting resources where
they're more socially productive.
>BART is a totally separate issue. I agree that it seems built to waste
>money. Fortunately much of the money it wastes is paid by taxpayers in
>other counties (Contra Costa comes to mind) for useless tracks to
>nowhere. So what? They certainly have no obligation to subsidize Muni!
The most dense places in the Bay Area would be a nightmare without
mass transit. Unliveable, unnavigable. MUNI service has Bay Area-wide
repercussions. What does it carry, three times as many people as
BART? Every area that has to give up its own local mass transit fucks
things up for other areas.
So yes, I think it could be very well argued that Contra Costa
citizens have as much of a stake in MUNI and in ACTransit and what
they don't cover for BART, as I do in the 680/24 interchange and all
that other amazing freeway crap to the east of us. All the parts are
interdependent.
=dtp=
........................................
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.. David Powers : chromozone
.. San Francisco CA USA
.. fax 415 436.9141
.. mailto:chromo@sirius.com
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