San Francisco downtown has been in decadence since the ban of cars on Market Street, a stupidity made by the autonomous SFTMA, nonelected body, whose members dream of Paris or Amsterdam style. And the Mission District commercial corrido followed, with increase of crime, dragging commerce to the ground. Profits have fall and stores closed.
Four years ago, San Francisco made a crazy decision to distinguish its most famous corridor by banning cars, like if Americans were not used to driving. Overnight these bureaucrats in charge, wanted to change people’s behavior, thinking, “now the people will be happy walking without the danger of cars…”
For the first time in roughly 120 years, the city banned private vehicles on part of Market Street with the idea to improve public safety and transform San Francisco’s most important traffic artery.
A $600 million capital project called Better Market Street promised to create a futuristic boulevard that would safely buffer bicycles and scooters on elevated sidewalk lanes, separating the little wheels from rapid bus lines, vintage streetcars and pedestrians, explained a local media. The thought that because beneath the surface, ran BART trains and Muni, it would continue to shuttle passengers around the city and across the bay, and everything would be beautiful.
They were wrong. Now all the money spent on their futuristic idea has been nothing but a socially and economically disaster.
Of course, ideas created by bureaucrats usually translate into big money, as the city must continue creating bonds to continue the money flow.
The victims? Go and see how Market street looks like now? Who comprise the sidewalk traffic now days? So many office spaces are now empty that the city is now trying to convert them into housing to fill the housing scarcity – which will probably house low income people and perhaps, the homeless?
What was built in a couple hundred years, has been destroyed in just four.
San Francisco is not San Francisco without its once robust downtown, Market Street. We need cars back, they bring people, shoppers, they revitalize, bring money that create jobs.
It’s time to take the city back from those none elected boards like the SFTMA and dissolve them. We need the elected officials to take charge.
