Let's Talk Traffic

I don't get it. The boat left and I guess I wasn't on board.

San Francisco prides itself on how "green" it is. There's mandatory composting and mandatory recycling. All new taxicabs registered in the city have to be hybrids. Getting a building permit requires a trip through the Byzantine world of the city's sustainability programs. There are new bike lanes being added to the city streets all the time. And so on and so forth.

Why, then, does a city that prides itself on being so environmentally correct have one of the worst traffic control systems in the country? Take a drive down most any major thoroughfare in the city and you'll encounter the same issues time and again. Streetlights that are timed so poorly that you'll literally have to stop at every intersection. Passing lanes that appear and disappear (on the Embarcadero, for example, there's a right lane that appears and disappears no fewer than seven times between Bay Street and AT&T Park). Half-assed paving jobs and/or patches of pavement that require you to slam on your breaks to avoid ripping out your car's undercarriage.

The net result is that traffic gets snarled in San Francisco to a degree that is utterly avoidable. And that's where the environmental issue comes up: there are more cars idling and accelerating/decelerating, that you could put every single person in a hybrid and they'd still be spewing exhaust into the air.

But this seems to be a pretty standard phenomenon in San Francisco. The city's "leadership" constantly pushes new programs like the hybrid taxicab requirement, while ignoring fundamentals that would have far more impact. Does anyone really believe that a few Prius cabs make up for the thousands of cars idling on the Embarcadero, or Market Street, or Divisadero, or any number of other streets?

Miss Homeless San Francisco?

Maybe the city could learn something from Belgium. Seems the country recently held a "Miss Homeless Belgium" contest to bring attention to the country's growing homeless problem.

Personally, I'd pay good money to see a parade of methed out, toothless wingnuts up and down Polk Street. Then again, we can see that for free everyday - hmmm, maybe we just need to get some sashes made.

The Purpose of This Blog

Is simple: I've lived in San Francisco now for about ten years, and in that decade I've seen the City that I once loved go from bad to worse. It has reached the point where it's hard to come up with good reasons to stay here.

The simple truth: a lot of people (maybe most) who live here seem to, well, kind of hate life. There's a lot of angst and resentment in the population. And to be fair, by population I mean the population that I'm most familiar with: white, upper-middle class urbanites. But that's the point - the people in the City with the most seem to be the ones who are the most unhappy.

It starts when you pull onto any street and have to navigate your way through a sea of angry horns, people who would sooner drive into a telephone pole than let you in front of them, and lunatics blasting through red lights. Or when you walk into your local coffee shop or Starbucks to get your caffeine fix, and the person in front of you is too self-absorbed to perform the simple kindness of holding the door for you. It continues throughout the day, when grimacing face after grimacing face passes you on the street. Inked out bicyclists glowering at you because if you don't have ten tats and twelve piercings you must be part of The System (whatever that is).

They seem angry at all things American, even as they benefit from all things the country has given them. They're angry at corporations, and express their rage by buying hybrids from big corporations and computers from big corporations and clothes from big corporations. They're angry at anyone with the slightest religious faith, and yet cling to some of the most dogmatic views on life, politics and faith imaginable.

So I started this blog in hopes of understanding this dark underbelly of the once great City by the Bay.

Because let's face it, the City is beautiful. It has amazing things to offer. Culture, scenic beauty, restaurants, vistas aplenty. And that's what makes this anger and misery all the more incomprehensible. I know people from rust-belt towns in New England with more optimism about life. I have friends from small midwestern towns with a greater sense of hope and resilience than the average San Franciscan. So what happened?

When did the City become a place of violent bicyclists, filthy streets, congested neighborhoods, racial tension, aggressive homeless people, skyrocketing crime, public defecation and all the rest? When did a city that prides itself on diversity become one of the most Balkanized urban areas in the country?

It's important to understand these things, because for all its flaws San Francisco still exerts an important influence on the national consciousness. The Speaker of the House and two U.S. Senators are from here (well, if you include Marin). It's possible (lordy help us all) that the next governor will be the current mayor.

So I'm going to start posting observations about the City, and hopefully some people out there will share the experiment. This is not a "bash everything in San Francisco" blog. It's a blog about trying to understand the City, and maybe figure out how to make it a little bit better.

We could start by holding doors and letting people in front of us in traffic from time to time.