A Collection of Collectors

I can understand collecting things--matchbooks, stamps, 18th century snuffboxes.  You can hold them in your hands and admire them.  As a young boy, I had a mineral collection of stones that I gathered myself or purchased at mineral shows.  At various times in my life, I've also collected shells, tropical fish and china patterns. 

So, I shouldn't be surprised that there are people who collect counties they have visited, currency they have handled and highways they have driven and websites where members can keep databases of their collections.  There is even an organization for county collectors to compare notes called The Extra Miler's Club.  There are people like Dave Schul and Charlie Zeb who have websites where they keep meticulous track, with color-coded maps of all the counties they have visited.  Being something of a compulsive listmaker myself, I stand in awe of the effort these people have put into their hobbies.  Needless to say, I ran out and joined a bunch of these sites and started entering my counties and currency. I may not be quite the afficianado that Dave and Charlie are, but it's still a lot of fun!

We Can Work It Out...Or Can We?

There was an Examiner editorial on Tuesday telling BART and Samtrans to work out the long standing dispute over who will pay for the San Francisco Airport BART extension:

BART insists SamTrans owes it $11.2 million next year to repay operating losses of the extension line to San Francisco International Airport. SamTrans counters that it won’t pay a cent more than $5 million and will never make another payment after next year.

Of course, it was BART that gulled Samtrans into making a ridiculous deal based on numbers that were wildly out of whack. An article on SFO BART ridership from BayRail Alliance states:

The BART/SFO Final Environmental Impact Report/Final EIS projected that the four stations of the SFO extension (not including Colma ) would be used by 62,000 riders in the year 1998. 1998 was the originally planned year of opening of the extension, which was repeatedly delayed due to problems that arose during the construction of the project. This projected ridership is more than three times what the extension carries now. The June 1996 EIR /EIS document has a table on page 3.1-14 which also predicted that the four stations of the SFO extension, if it had been in operation in 1993, would have carried 56,100 riders, and that it would carry 68,600 riders in the year 2010.

The BayRail analysis estimates that the BART SFO line carries 13,000 new riders. This is a high estimate, because many of the SFO line riders moved from other public transit-- Samtrans and Caltrain.  To be fair, the dot-com bust and 9/11 happened between the time the line was planned and when it was built, which caused SFO passenger trips to nosedive.  But that can't be entirely to blame, because in 1996, when the EIR/EIS was written, there was no dot-com boom let alone a dot-com bust.  As time passes, it becomes increasingly clear that BART's figures were arrived at by the time-honored method of WAG (wild-ass guessing).

So what to do?

The Examiner takes a moderate approach:

The most reasonable new approach might be for BART to delay collection of a substantial portion of the operating subsidy. Then, if and when the SFO extension ever begins turning a profit, those revenues would first go toward paying the uncollected subsidies before SamTrans gets a cent. For the sake of the riders, the agencies must get their act together and move forward with a realistic plan.

That would be nice for starters.  But considering how BART took Samtrans to the cleaners, Urbanities suggests that it the time for moving forward with realistic plans is long past.  BART cruelly hoodwinked the Peninsula transit agency; We recommend that Samtrans file a lawsuit to keep BART from sucking any more of its revenue.

When Smart Growth Isn't

Today's Chronicle carried a provocative opinion piece about the high price of land use planning.  It makes a persuasive argument that restrictions such as urban-growth boundaries, regional parks, open space and restrictions on building permits are responsible for driving home prices sky-high, making homeownership in the Bay Area unaffordable for the majority of people.  This left-wing elitism keeps poor people poor, since they are consigned to the gulag of being renters and can never reap the financial benefit of equity that homeowners enjoy. Businesses choose lower cost areas in which to locate and the cost of goods go up because of high land costs for store locations.  The growth that is checked by land use controls doesn't go away; it simply moves to the urban fringe where land prices lower, causing commuters to buy further and further out, which in turn puts more cars on the roads.

But one thing in particular struck home (no pun intended):

Predictably, planners' solutions to the housing affordability problem often make the problem worse. Planners typically require that homebuilders sell or rent 15 percent of their homes at below-market rates to low-income families. The homebuilders simply pass that cost on to the buyers of the other 85 percent of the homes they sell. Existing homeowners, seeing that new homes suddenly cost more, raise the price of their homes when they sell. The result: A few people benefit and everyone else pays more.

The solution to the Bay Area's housing affordability crisis is not a few units of affordable housing, but widespread land-use deregulation that will make housing more affordable for everyone.

In 1997, I bought a condominium in a moderate income complex for first-time home buyers under the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing.  Properties in the development can only be sold to first-time homebuyers and the sale price is indexed to income levels.  When I bought, the indexed sale price was somewhat below market.  Today, because of the housing boom, the units are far below market. The maximum allowed sale price for a unit in my complex is less than 50 percent of an almost identical non-regulated complex across the way.  Buyers were promised a fair return on their investment, but one recent homeowner actually lost equity in his home because the indexed sale price dropped $10,000.

Indexing the sale price to income levels may have made sense in the 1980's when the program started.  Back then, income levels rose faster than they do now because of high inflation and property values were relatively low,  but today the indexed sale price bears no relation to today's housing market.  Consequently, it is almost impossible to trade up. This isn't a problem if you intend to stay where you are, but it could be a real problem for someone who needs to move because of their job or because of a new baby, since the value of their moderate income property hasn't kept up with non-regulated properties.  Consequently, many homeowners in my complex are choosing to rent their units rather than sell. This is not good for a condominium association, because lenders won't make loans to complexes where the number of renters is too high.

We've been told for so long that sprawl is a bad thing, that perhaps we've gone too far in the other direction to prevent it, something I explored in this post.  Maybe there can be too much of a good thing.

The author is Randal O'Toole who is described in the article as "a research fellow with the Independent Institute, an Oakland-based think tank, and director of the American Dream Coalition.  His recent report The Planning Penalty: How Smart Growth Makes Housing Unaffordable is available at www.independent.org". 

Bike to Work...or Not

The week of May 15-19 is being promoted as Bike to Work Week by the League of American Bicyclists. According to the League, Friday May 19 is Bike to Work Day, but for some reason, it's being observed on Thursday May 18 in the Bay Area (just gotta be different, I guess). On that day, we will be treated to the sight of politicians teetering on ten-speeds to demonstrate their support of this worthy cause. These are the reasons why the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition thinks you should bike to work:

Energizer Stations

Volunteers will cheer you on at 24 Energizer Stations around San Francisco! Stop by one of the stations to load up on free coffee, snacks, and convenient tote bags for future commutes. We'll also be passing out info about how you can get involved in making San Francisco a better bicycling city.

This is a good reason if you are already a bicycle commuter, but what about the other 364 days of the year when there are no volunteers to hand out free coffee, snacks, tote bags and Bicycle Coalition propaganda? What then?

You'll be in good company

You'll be joining bike commuters new and old in making a statement about the importance of supporting the two wheeled way. Join our mayor, supervisors, and thousands of San Franciscans in moving proof that bicycling is a viable form of transportation in this city.

This is revealing. It shows that Bike to Work day is nothing more than a propaganda event for the Bicycle Coalition..."making a statement"..."the two wheeled way"... since when did bicycles become an ideology? And just how viable is bicycling as a form of transportation, anyway?...Not very.

• It's expensive. Check out this Gary Fisher Montare at Lombardi Sports marked down from $1,099 to $999. Bicycle Coalition propaganda may be populist, but bicycle prices are anything but. Plus, add to that all the accessories that a well turned out bicyclist needs: jerseys, tees, shorts, tights, shoes, helmets, car racks, trainers, watches, computers, headlamps, etc.  It all adds up.
• It's not practical. Bicycling is a great recreational activity and a fine sport, but as a form of every day transportation it is distinctly lacking. Extremes of heat, cold and elevation change make bicycling unsuitable for daily commuting. It may be possible to bike to work in level terrain on a fine spring or autumn day when it's sunny and mild, but what about when there is torrential rain, snow or searing heat? Or what about hills, like the one I live on in San Francisco where it's a 160' change in vertical elevation in the two blocks from my house to the store?
• It's not for everybody. Bicycling requires that one be in fit physical shape. It may be a great way to get into shape, but it's not for anyone who is physically impaired as the result of disease or disability. Plus, bicycling requires that one have a degree of mechanical ability.  When your derailleur goes out on the road, you can't call AAA; you need to fix it yourself.

But this doesn't stop bicycle advocates from diverting transportation funds to projects that will benefit an elite few.  Like the $25 million in federal TEA funds that will be spent over the next four years to build a network of bicycle trails in Marin County--one of the wealthiest counties in the United States where average home prices are in excess of $900,000.  If the people of Marin want a network of bicycle trails that is second to none, fine, but they should pay for it themselves, through property tax assessments or bond initiatives.  If bicycle advocates were really serious about bicycling as a form of transportation, they would support a tax on bicyles and bicycle-related gear.  After all, motorists pay gasoline taxes that support the roads and public transit riders pay fares--why should bicyclists get a free ride?

It doesn't help that bicycle organizations (and many bicyclists) take such an inflated view of themselves.  They align themselves with pedestrian and public transit organizations, yet they compete with public transit for scarce federal transportation funds.  Bicycle organizations are avid supporters of the "rails to trails" movement, which converts unused railroad easements to bicycle trails, thus making them unavailable for use as light rail lines. Bicyclists constantly attack automobile drivers for poor driving manners; yet from what I've seen, they routinely ignore traffic rules, run down pedestrians and behave badly themselves.

And the Bicycle Coalition's final reason for biking to work?

It feels good!

Do you need a better reason?

Frankly, yes.

Rite of Spring

Early this morning, just after midnight I trundled down to Safeway to get some cereal and milk for breakfast.  As I approached the parking lot, I heard music and shrill, whooping sounds.  Upon closer inspection, I discovered that the strange noises were being produced by a group of six or eight blonde, college girls who had taken off their blouses and were dancing in their bras in the parking lot to the sound of rap music from the stereo of a car parked nearby with its windows rolled down. Girls gone wild right in my very neighborhood!  Who knows what possessed them to engage in this bizarre, primitive rite?  The warm (for San Francisco) spring night?  The consumption of multiple apple martinis?  Your guess is as good as mine. 

When I went in the store, I offhandly mentioned the strange activities going on in the parking lot to a Safeway clerk stocking shelves.  I heard him call out to his coworkers "you've got to get a look at this" and soon every young male working the night shift was standing at the front of the store in rapt attention at the dancing girls outside.  Perhaps overcome by a fit of modesty at being on the receiving end of the attentions of Safeway's night crew or because the night air was starting to grow chill, the girls ended their dance; the tops went back on, the music stopped, the stock clerks went back to stocking shelves and the night resumed its normal course. 

Update on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 11:13AM by Patrick Carroll

I emailed Leah Garchik in the San Francisco Chronicle with this item, and it made her Friday May 12 column!