Driving San Francisco — Part Two
By Sebra Leaves
We witness the impact of anti-car activists every day. As bike lanes replace car lanes, parking disappears and stores close. Sometimes it’s a new protected bike lane going in without notice, or the expansion of parking deserts where we conduct business. Everywhere we see the never-ending construction sites and detours.
Taraval has been torn up for 5 years for passenger on a trains that has not run for 5 years. The conditions on Taraval are felt on commercial corridors all over town by businesses that have lost their customer base or are on the chopping block for safety measures that always translate into lost parking spaces.
Who and what are driving this anti-car machine that is obviously tied to up-zoning? Radical cyclists are clearing the way for their masters to demolish the neighborhoods to make way for tasteless towers on Geary, Folsom, and Harrison and, for some reason, Sloat and Sunset. There is no street that the cyclist will leave alone, or site they will not take.
While we are coming together now to oppose the closure of the Great Highway, we must prepare to reverse more of the injustices being lobbed at us from the Bike Coaltion and the SFMTA. This is only the beginning of their plans to cut us out of the city.
Our fight to save the Great Highway is the beginning of the journey we must begin to take back our city. We must find people who can write laws and ballot initiatives for us. Our goals must include future actions to reverse the damage that has been done.
This ballot is important, but our advocacy work to engage and activate the growing number of people who are fed up with the high-jinks and manipulative power and turf grabs by the City Hall elite and their astroturf buddies must continue after the election.
We must take back the power of the public to determine how we want to be governed and how we want to pay for it. We must do what our advisories have done. We must write and pass legislation to amend the goals they put into motion.
Let’s start with our vision for a safe, sane, convenient and fun city, that allows everyone to get wherever they want to go however they choose to get there. The public must retake control the streets. We have to amend the corporatized government overreach.
It’s the people who provide the ideas, action and financial support that make our lives livable Only we can turn this around.
