As everyone knows -- well, everyone but Gavin Newsom, apparently -- you can't rely on Muni to get around the city. That's probably why 60 percent of trips in San Francisco, by far the transit-friendliest city in the Bay Area, take place in cars.
On Wednesday, Muni boss Nat Ford outlined a plan to shrink car trips by 2030. If all goes according to Muni's new plan (and why wouldn't it?), the preferred method of transit in San Francisco in 2030 will be walking, biking, and to a lesser extent, Muni.
In other words, if you want to be somewhere, you'll have to get there yourself, and use Muni as a backup plan. That actually doesn't seem too different from how it works today.
Of course, Muni has decided against posting this plan online, so if you want to examine it, you're fresh out of luck.
Does SF even have the nerve to make the plan work? City officials have a long history of caving in whenever someone raises objections to convenient public transit. Most recently, Muni reduced bus access to Union Street in order to pacify merchants who didn't want bus riders to have easy access to access Cow Hollow.
Policians love to pay lip service to transit, but when it comes to actually paying for it, they tend to skip out on their tab. AC Transit is cutting service. SamTrans is raising fares and cutting service. Sacramento is raising fares and cutting service. San Diego is cutting service. Caltrain is cutting service. Anaheim is cutting service. Benicia is close to cutting service. And those are just the most recent transit cutback annoucements in the past week.
Nat Ford's plan sounds nice, but it'll require cooperation from politicians, compromises from car devotees, and also money money money money money. What do you think the odds are of San Francisco seeing any of those things?
