It might still be possible to get more money to bikes and transit projects from MTC. Check out Transbay Blog's post about tomorrow's meeting. If you go, tell them to shove the road money.
My annoyance goes far. They have done no modeling to see what would happen with Oakland or San Francisco core BART expansions in terms of land use and green house gas changes. There's no real true modeling as the Streetsblog post mentions to real bike infrastructure and improvements to Muni and other agency bus movement would go a long way as well. Curbing cars with congestion pricing downtown would be good, but only if they improve transit capacity and speeds into downtown and the areas within the cordon. As I always say, it shouldn't take me an hour to go three miles on the bus. That should be the goal, better transit service, not better car service during peak hours.
That's what I hate about congestion pricing. Many proponents of it seem to see as a magic bullet miracle solution to mobility. Because of their focus on automobility rather than people mobility, such a scheme is doomed to failure.
ReplyDeleteIf you want to improve mobility, provide a train line that has TOD at each of its stations. Have a parking lot at the terminal station that has a price, that when added to the train fare will cost a little less than the peak use congestion toll.
But that idea it too hard to grasp for some, I guess...
If we want buses to move at a rate faster than 3 miles/hour, shouldn't we support congestion pricing for that very reason? Congestion pricing would mean instant improvements to Muni travel times. Yes, it will improve the experience for those who pay to stay in their cars, but they would hopefully become a smaller minority.
ReplyDeleteMichael has it right. As it stands the congestion pricing proto-plan will funnel money to transit improvements. I don't understand why people are objecting to the recent study on congestion pricing in SF by saying we need corresponding transit improvements. To say that is to agree with the study, not object to it.
ReplyDeleteBut even if the money fell off the face of the planet, it would stop some people from driving during the most congested hours, thereby instantly improving surface transit efficiency. [insert positive feedback loop here]
I forgot to mention this but a large part of Steve Heminger's hope is HOT lanes as well. I'm not sure that money is going into better transit.
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