Today, an article about a proposal for congestion pricing in San Francisco, a la London and bizarro-New York. That is, the city envisioned by Mike Bloomberg, with a sports stadium on every corner and his cruising to a third term on the Right-to-Life line and a fourth term on the Alaska Independence Party ticket.
This is the proposed area:
First, as a 3-month resident of this city I am in no way qualified to speak authoritatively on anything important but for the fact that my anecdotal observations are probably the same as anyone else’s. I would be totally behind this idea, and even more importantly, a car-free Market Street, if not for the fact that traffic in San Francisco is not actually all that bad, and the public transportation is so much more irritating than driving, to nearly any neighborhood, at nearly any time. I can get downtown from Bernal Heights in 7 minutes by car and no fewer than 45 by bus. New York is not like that at all. There would need to be some kind of simultaneous injection of hundreds of millions of dollars into public transportation, or else this will seriously result in a hellish dystopia.
You cannot simply allot more money to BART and run more trains; there is only the one Transbay tube and it already accommodates four lines. More importantly, BART is not like the NYC Subway. It’s more like Metro-North or the LIRR. It exists to get people into the city from outside of it, not move them around once they’re in, unless you’re going from the Mission to Downtown.
MUNI is a goddamn nightmare. Along with my other Fallacy of the Uninitiated–the idea that SF housing is dog-friendlier than NYC–I also erroneously believed that New York’s public transportation was a humongous pain in the ass and getting worse all the time. (Hello, L train, I’m looking at you). I’ve seen some shit on MUNI that makes New York look golden. And at least in a city where people are gruff and unhappy, they shut up. MUNI is louder than recess.
And the map is oversimplistic. How can you give the 19th Avenue corridor a free pass to the Golden Gate Bridge? Why are both the Castro and the Mission lopped in half? They’ve also included some very quiet neighborhoods in the congestion zone, but since they’re on the affluent side I guess that’s not the worst thing that ever happened.
I guess my main criticism is that the Bay Area’s dirty secret is its veneer of environmentalism masking the same overreliance on cars that you see in LA or Atlanta. Preserving vast tracts of land in the region only means the towns are that much farther apart and people need to drive that much more. I’m sure seismological concerns are way more of a factor than I’ll ever know, but seriously, BART shouldn’t even be included in discussions of how to improve intra-SF transit unless someone’s actually talking about building more tunnels. And I doubt anyone is.
And the whole idea failed in New York and might not last in London! Try again with a city-imposed $1 gas tax, more 24-hr buses, a free-transit zone downtown and maybe a Velib-style free bike program. Inducements before punishments.
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Also, there is an article that, rather balanced on the whole, does slant subtly towards calling the NYPD the sanctioned agency of urban terrorism that it is. I can’t think of another Times piece that hammered home the connection between the garrison state mentality which has ossified in the city’s political culture since 2001, and the racist policing practices required to sustain it as is. Plus they quote Chris Dunn, who I used to work with at the New York Civil Liberties Union.
How odd that the SF would be so bourgey and the NY-centric article so progressive.
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In a typical article in which a reporter travels to the unknown wasteland between 10th Avenue in Manhattan and Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, the NYT examines a devout Christian Kentucky state legislator and his crusade to insert God’s name onto every available surface the government possesses.
This is an annoying thing that some conservatives just like to do. It does absolutely no quantifiable good, and they always lose in court cases, but it really riles up the faithful. Naturally, Ian Urbina got the one non-Christian lawmaker in Kentucky (who comes from my boyfriend’s hometown of Lexington), and larded up the article with good quotes from her.
Even though I hate Christianity, this is bullshit. First, what is the point of this article? Any reasonably informed person knows that this is just another example of the same simmering cultural battle that happens again and again, sometimes in Alabama, sometimes South Carolina or Texas. Now Kentucky. I wouldn’t argue that it “perpetuates stereotypes” so much as it reaffirms what lots of New Yorkers already think. It feeds into the parochialism of the article’s consumer, rather than its subject.
What would be more interesting is a discussion of why this legislator is a Democrat and not a Republican, and why the Democratic governor–who has had some netroots support, so he can’t be all that bad–has acceded to the meaningless-except-as-cultural-flashpoint law about inscribing some God-crap on a prominent plaque. Or, you know, maybe a response to their critics, since the article is about them and not…the critics who get the final say.
Also, the conclusion makes me cringe:
Stopping the family pickup truck in front of the City View Park housing projects on Louisville’s West End, part of her husband’s district, Ms. Riner stepped out and pointed to several houses that had the Ten Commandments on wooden signs posted in their front yards.
“Christian values are part of this country’s history,” she said. “Without God, this society would be anchorless.”
As she spoke, the sign behind her read Muhammad Ali Boulevard.
Never a good sign when a non-editorial ends with pointing out someone’s stupidity. It sort of undermines the pretense of non-biased journalism. Have fun staving off bankruptcy by borrowing against your ugly skyscraper, Timesy.
Suck the Rainbow 