Cars - Golden Gate Park’s most cherished resource.
Anyone who goes into Golden Gate Park by foot or bike, immediately knows they don’t belong there. Last year a bicyclist even died in the park, and that’s why the SFMTA is ready to protect our most cherished San Franciscans - cars. So the mayor asked the SFMTA to devise a plan that does the bare minimum and keep cars driving and parking everywhere for free. The project’s goals can be found here.
SFMTA makes note of a person dying in Golden Gate Park as a reason why they’re willing to make tepid car-friendly changes to the park.
The SFMTA used index cards to collect all the potential ideas for Golden Gate Park improvements. Ideas included:
Remove free on-street parking
Manage and charge for parking
Install bike lanes on all park streets
Divert all through traffic to the 2 ARTERIAL roads surrounding the park
Limit speed to 15 mph
Triple traffic fines within the park
Once all the ideas were collected, they were thrown into a dumpster and set on fire.
The SFMTA then came up with “solutions” that wouldn’t impact motorists in the slightest, honored suburban style street design, and treated bicyclists and pedestrians like second class citizens.
The SFMTA proposes adding a smattering of paint, some signs, and maybe even a few raised crosswalks and blinking lights in a grand show of safety theater. Fortunately none of the proposed changes will do anything to reduce the amount of people driving and parking for free in the park.
If you want to thank the SFMTA, Mayor Ed Lee and Ed Reiskin for all their hard work keeping cars everywhere in the park, you can thank them by filling out their survey here.
We heard you don’t want cars in the park, but we’re putting cars in the park, because of cars.
The SFMTA is at it again with their assault on cars, this time with, er, cars! The plan is to utilize a whopping 0.002% (900) of the total of public parking on car sharing in San Francisco. It's pure madness! These precious spaces shouldn't be devoted to vehicles that are accessible to everyone, and where cars can be utilized throughout the day at a rate of 95%. Every car owner knows that parking spots are supposed to be free to people that actually OWN cars and reserved for people to store 90% of the time.
Kiss your freedom goodbye, suckers. image found here.
Studies suggest that car share actually helps ease parking congestion, because people are more likely to ditch their car if they have more access to them. Other studies estimate between 9 and 32 people ditch their cars when car sharing options are available in their neighborhood. These parking spots also bring in anywhere from $50 to $225 a month to the city. While this so called "evidence" suggests a lot of benefits, the Internet had a lot of poignant and rage filled comments on this car sharing pilot.
BBhater: "Give away the bus stops and now parking?? What is SFMTA doing?"
WhyMeWorry: "OK, City of SF, why not just track down all the privately owned motor vehicles and put us in jail."
Enders_of_sf: "The war against the individual continues."
SF_local: "What a rip. San Francisco forcing people to bend to their will. So goes freedom."
Orange Moose: "great. that much harder to find a spot. thanks!"
Rkeezy: "Stay out of my neighborhood! You're not as wanted as you think you are."
First Car Share invades your neighborhood, then they take away your freedom, and then it's just a matter of time until car owners wind up in jail. Image found here.
The SFMTA pilot program thinks this is a win for everyone; from people who don't have cars and would like access to them, car owners on the verge of getting rid of theirs, and also for people who want a better chance to store their personal car on the streets.
Based on these insightful comments above, the pilot is just another war on cars. It's going to be even harder to find a spot when more people stop owning cars, 'individual freedoms' will be lost, and private car owners will wind up in jail, somehow. The common sense individuals of San Francisco need to stand up and defend their free 2-3 car storage rights. Parking spots should be publicly accessible, but not actual cars. We finally need to end this war on cars, even with, umm... cars, once and for all!
