Re. speeding up 30-Stockton,
> Any thoughts on this? Any holes that need poking?
I don't know about your specific suggestions, but something
needs to be done. 30-Stockton is Exhibit-1 on how cars slow
busses. When I had to take CalTrain, it was almost always
literally faster to walk from Market to Townsend than to
take the 30-Stockton. (I actually called the MUNI complaint
like and was told just that. At least the guy was honest.
But why should I buy a Fast Pass if I'm going to have to
walk, anyway?) If any bus line in the city needs a
dedicated lane free of traffic, it's that one.
> From: Kenneth Parker <kparker@silcon.com>
> Actually, there is ONE place where I've seen people buying
> the weekly passes seven days a week: the Cable Car ticket
> booth next to the Powell St. Turnaround (and outside the
> Powell St. station).
I was aware of this, but I gave up on this site when,
repeatedly, I went to buy a ticket and the MUNI employee had
"gone to the bathroom" -- or a half hour or more. This does
not count as a reliable source unless there are two
employees or bathroom visits are kept to a few minutes.
> From: Tom Wetzel <tom.wetzel@beasys.com>
> In essence, privatizing Muni means breaking the Transport Workers Union.
> I don't think any riders' group should advocate this. I think it is
> better to develop a cooperative relationship between the riders
> and the workforce.
I used to argue that I didn't mind paying MUNI workers the
second highest wage in the nation, if we got the second
highest service, and we weren't getting that. If this made
me "anti-union," so be it. However, since Mayor Brown,
there has been a dramatic change in the attitude of the MUNI
drivers that I have contact with. While Brown has not given
MUNI the attention he promised, this is one problem that did
get (mostly) solved. I have not met a truly rude MUNI
driver in many months -- which used to be an everyday
occurance -- and I see few of MUNI's current problems as
being directly driver-related. So, at least for now, I
think we are getting the service we are paying for from the
drivers. Unfortunately, this is not true from management,
contractors, and Mayor Brown.
> "Live/work" is just being
> used a pretext to provide housing. The developers prefer this
> pretext because of the zoning loopholes and tax breaks.
You make it sound as if providing housing was a bad thing.
> I think it is not good for the Bay Area to be based on an
> industrial monoculture. L.A. is in a much stronger economic
> position because of its much greater economic diversity.
This is true. But each city must compete in an economic
nich where it can fit. San Francisco will never be Los
Angeles (thank any gods), because we don't have the space.
The Bay Area could easily become Los Angeles North, and is
rapidly becoming so. In fact, the only thing that really
diffentiates the Bay Area from LA any more, is the fact that
we do still have a central, European-style core. San
Francisco cannot ever compete in "blue collar" industries
except for a few botiques like Anchor. We should
concentrate on what we _can_ compete in, which is being the
"Madison Avenue of the computer industry," which we are
doing quite nicely at. However, to retain that status, and
those jobs, we have to have the kind of housing these people
like to live in. That is, a very dense urban environment.
While I agree that San Francisco should keep as wide an
economic base as we can -- and we have actually done
remarkably well at that -- we cannot be all things to all
industries, but we can pick a few and excell in those.
> I don't think the loss of blue-collar work to overseas is at all
> inevitable.
It's not. But its loss out of San Francisco almost
certainly is.
-- _________________________ Donald F. Robertson San Franciscodonaldrf@hooked.net 76217.2066@CompuServe.com
Donald's Space Exploration page: http://www.hooked.net/~donaldrf/index.html
The known is finite, the unknown is infinite; intellectually we stand on an islet in the midst of an illimitable ocean of inexplicability. Our business in every generation is to reclaim a little more land. -- Thomas Huxley.