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SF Climate Strike -- Transportation (week 7) [1]

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Date: 2023-06-22  

STRIKE FOR THE PLANET

because right now is perilously close to too late.

It won’t be cheap, easy, politically feasible, pro-capitalist, or any of the rest of the nonsense we’ve let blind us so long to both the science and the screaming of the biosphere as it dies.

If you’re not alarmed, you haven’t been paying attention.

So this week’s topic is TRANSPORTATION.

San Francisco is a geographically small city and, for a change, that is to our advantage because:

The amount of space that has to be covered is small.

Almost everywhere in SF is already close to some kind of public transit.

This is one area where we start ahead of most places in the U.S. So let’s build on our advantages now. We can do so by:

Permanently closing some roads to private traffic, especially downtown

Taxing all “ride share” businesses a minimum of 1 adult MUNI bus fare / passenger / ride

Aggressively building bike lanes everywhere

Lengthening all pedestrian crossing signal times

Eliminating all intersection parking for sunlighting and bulb outs

Increasing the percent of roads closed every weekend

Only allowing electric vehicles in high asthma areas

Massively increasing the number of recharging stations in every neighborhood

Building solar- and wind-powered recharging stations

Making walking or biking or bussing to school safe and timely

Listening to MUNI drivers on ways to improve on-time performance

Getting more busses to places that are underserved

Getting more busses on lines that are consistently packed

Making sure it doesn’t take 1 hour to travel 7 miles by MUNI (aka the N line)

Hiring a huge number of peace officers (trained in de-escalation) to ride the busses

Aggressively ticketing drivers for parking in bike lanes, running red lights and stop signs, and other behaviors that kill pedestrians and bicyclists

Adding an infrastructure fee to every licensed fossil-fuel burning car in SF

Adding congestion pricing on all internal combustion cars driving in all high traffic areas

Installing many more bike lock ups and bike corrals throughout SF

Outlawing internal combustion delivery services of any kind

Making all new and replacement pavement and roadway permeable

Moving the entire MUNI fleet to all electric immediately

Fortunately, some of this is already in process. We just need to be changing over faster.

If Bogota can do it, we can too.

This Colombian capital decided back in 1974 to close off several central streets in the city, and it’s been expanding on that effort since. Every Sunday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m., roads are closed to cars and people come out for Ciclovia, an event where an average of more than 1 million bike and play sports on the open streets every week. Bogotá has amassed more than 200 miles of bike-only lanes throughout the city, and the program encouraging active living and reducing pollution has prompted other cities to follow suit.

If Berlin can do it, we can too.

The German capital in 2008 created a low-emission zone that banned all diesel and petrol cars that didn’t meet their standards. The ban covers about an 88-square-kilometer area (approximately 34 square miles) of the city center and applies to about one-third of Berlin’s residents. The city also has future plans to install 13 all-new bike superhighways that will run separately from cars and pedestrians.

If Fes el Bali can do it, we can too.

The entire medieval city was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1981. Only pedestrians, donkeys, cyclists and carts are allowed on streets, with a few accessible for emergency vehicles. With a population of 156,000, it’s considered the biggest car-free urban place in the world.

And there are more:

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/22/2176187/-SF-Climate-Strike-Transportation-week-7

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