A prime example is the Liberty Hill Neighborhood Association, who recently stopped a 5-story development on Valencia that would have added much-needed housing to the neighborhood, all because it supposedly wasn’t in keeping with the rest of the neighborhood (too tall). If wealthy SFers want to turn our city into a rich, white, suburban bedroom community, by all means, they should continue with ridiculous protests like this one. But if they want to keep the city as diverse and funky as the city they fell in love with (because presumably that’s the reason they moved here in the first place) they’ll start supporting the building of more and taller housing, which any city worth its salt needs, and quit the NIMBY bullshit.

Just wait till it happens, guys. there is no such thing as a free driveway.

today there was a guy – literally – passed out IN MY DRIVEWAY. no poop that i could see. but he was sprawled right up against a car, right in my god-given, paid-for-with-taxes, MUNI subsidizing, racist, imperialist, built-on-the-backs-of-workers curb cut-out.

then i got to thinking…can i get the city government subsidies that SROs get?

it would be safer, and cleaner (because i patrol and sweep) than the SROs on Mission, from what i hear.

or is that just in bad taste?

I say we get rid of all curbs. That nice a quality of stone is very expensive per linear foot and makes for a bumpy jump on my bike.

i am staying out of the driveway kerfuffle. i like having a driveway.

that said, call me when we’re talking about poop in the driveway. that part, i have something to say.

PS it takes me 7 minutes to drive to work. takes me 45 minutes on BART. go figure. i don’t have the time. makes me an asshole? OK. it’s not the only thing that makes me an asshole.

Please look at

http://208.75.85.105/ebudget/transitfirst.html

That’s where my figures came from. Where are *your* references?

It clearly shows parking/traffic fees accounting for 32%. Sorry I rounded up to a third.

32% – parking/traffic fees
29% – general fund
19% – operating grants
18% – transit fees
2% – advertising

Yes, MTA’s budget isn’t all transit, the fact of the matter is transit is *heavily* subsidized and there is a deficit, or do you deny that? Yes, there is a cost of cars, and roads don’t build themselves, but taxes on those cars pay for a lot of transit, like it or not. Curbs just aren’t the issue.

For starters, you’re a little off on MTA’s revenue:

Operating Grants
18.9%

Transit Fares
20.2%

Parking and Traffic Fees & Fines
24.7%

Transfers and Fund Balance
34.8%

Rents and Advertising
1.5%

So that’s 20% vs 24%, not 20% vs ‘a third’

Remember that this is the budget for the entire MTA (Muni+DPT) not just for muni. To simplistically say that since less than 100% of the MTA budget is from fares, cars are paying for our buses is wrong. That’s like saying Muni passengers are paying for your roads. You’ve got to look at both sides of the ledger.

Now, if you want to talk about the increases in property tax a parking space generates, you should also properly compare the taxes generated if an apartment was in place of the garage, or a park or streetcar in place of a curb cut. Those are the analogues, not the comparison of “could have” taxes generated by driveways to actual costs of maintaining roads and enforcing curb cuts.

As they say: figured don;t lie, but liars can figure.

Math is your friend, it wants to help you.

And I hope everyone realizes I want transit increased. All things being equal, I’d rather not drive (big reason I live in the Mission), but sometimes things aren’t equal.

Of course, taking away the 26 Valencia bus isn’t helping, but that’s a different subject.

good thinking though. thanks for the math lesson.

“Cars are paying for your bus. Be careful what you wish for.” i LOVE it.

http://208.75.85.105/ebudget/transitfirst.html

So let’s do some math. If we take a look at the SFMTA and city budgets:

http://www.sfmta.com/cms/rhome/documents/SFTransportationFactSheet2008.pdf
http://sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/controller/reports/CAFR/07/BasicFinacialStatements.pdf

Car-related revenue is:
- $89 million in parking ticket revenue
- $43 million through city-owned lots
- $30 million in meter revenue
- $5.7 million in parking permits

= $168 million

We see that in 2006:
- there were 322,547 households in the city.
- there were 382,341 cars in the city.
- there were 529,325 drivers licensed.

For the sake of a back-of-the-napkin calculation, let’s say there are 200,000 houses with garages in San Francisco. At $600 worth of garages in property taxes, this equals $120 million, but let’s just say $100 million to keep the math easy. (For reference, total property tax revenue for SF was $894 million in 2007.)

$100 million + $168 million = $268 million.

If every one of those 200,000 driveways that you think are tax-free gifts were in fact street parking, and if everyone parking in those spots paid for a parking permit, the city could theoretically get another $10 million (but given they only now get $5.7 million from permits now, a bit of a stretch.) That’s about one month worth of Muni deficit.

I can’t find any specific figures for road construction and maintenance, but given what SF car owners are paying, and that buses use the same roads, I don’t see a lot of car-specific infrastructure (other that parking garages which is worth $43 million to the city). Networks are funny in that they can be used for all sorts of purposes. I like to ride my bike on the newly smooth Valencia. The food at Bi-Rite and the farmers markets isn’t parachuted in. And I presume you receive packages from Amazon via UPS?

Sod costs about $3 a roll at Home Depot, or 25 cents a square foot. The city estimates there are 320,000 street parking spaces. If you assume 12 x 5 feet per street parking space, to grass over every spot it would cost

60 sq.feet * $0.25 * 320,000 = $5 million. (Pretty cheap, actually.)

This of course ignore the cost of digging up the asphalt or landscaping fees, or watering, or mowing (and if you look at Dolores we know how often that happens). But the city would lose that quarter billion dollars in car related revenue that is not even covering SFMTA operating expenses…

I have no problem that my property taxes and meter fees and parking tickets heavily subsidize Muni. Taxes = civilization. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if those fees were increased slightly to put Muni in the black. But remember that in order to pay for the operating deficit alone, fares would have to jump by about $5 = ($150,000,000 yearly deficit / 680,000 rides per week * 52 weeks a year), and that’s *with* cars subsidizing the SFMTA.

Cars are paying for your bus. Be careful what you wish for.