SAN FRANCISCO BICYCLE COALITION
November 2011 Mayoral Candidate
Questionnaire
Download a digital version of this document at
www.sfbike.org/2011candidate
* Please return your answers to this questionnaire via
email no later than Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 4:00pm.
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questionnaire responses along with input from our current dues-paying members.
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1. How often do you ride a bicycle in San Francisco (for
any purpose), and for what kinds of trips?
Answer: I used to ride about once a week, but have not done so, lately. First, two years ago my bike was stolen. Second, I developed a case of “vein stasis” and when this clears I will start riding, again.
2. The City has established a goal that 20%
of trips in San Francisco be made by bicycle by 2020. Do you endorse this goal?
Answer: Yes, I do endorse it.
What will you do as Mayor to realize this goal, providing a better San Francisco biking experience for locals and visitors?
Answer: We will need more streets with just walkways, and no cars. And, we will need stuff to boost the merchants that have stores in these areas, if they lose business due to the initial lack of automobiles. Outside of this, bicycle traffic can grow.
3. It has been repeatedly shown that the most effective way to
boost the number of people bicycling in San Francisco and improve the bicycling experience is to designate dedicated space for bicycling through physically separated bikeways and traffic-calmed streets.
Answer: Here, we have to talk about training and more training. There is no free ride. Bicycling in a city rolling with automobiles is a dangerous affair. Once the rider understands this, learns to observe what he or she is doing, while riding at all times, learning like a boxer to be on he defensive…ridership without hazards will come.
The SF Bicycle Coalition has set out its
Connecting the City initiative (www.connectingthecity.org), an ambitious and achievable
vision of crosstown bikeways that are comfortable and inviting for people of all ages and
abilities, connecting neighborhoods and helping locals and visitors to shop, work, and
play more often by bike.
Reconfiguring our streets to include crosstown bikeways and
other "low stress" bike routes, thereby improving the safety and quality of
life for hundreds of thousands of San Franciscans who currently ride a bike, will draw
concern from some neighbors unused to this next-generation infrastructure and the
reprogramming of some on-street car parking and traffic lanes (though the City is often
able to add parking close to project areas to balance the change). Understanding this,
will you commit to bringing a mayoral mandate and urgency to completing 25 miles of
continuous crosstown bikeways within four years, directing City staff to complete them on
streets such as Oak, Fell, Polk and Valencia Streets, San Jose Avenue and the
Embarcadero?
Answer: All of this is an ambitious plan, but safety is paramount. And, this City is a long shot from a safe bicycle route. Mandatory bicyle training would help us get there.
4. Market Street, in addition to many other attributes, is centrally
important for Muni and bicycle travel, with a quarter of a million daily transit vehicle
boardings on or under it each weekday, and more daily bike trips than almost any other
street in the United States. The City and community partners have commenced a series of
trials to test ideas for improving Market Street, for the sake of transportation
improvements as well as public realm and economic enhancements. Do you support continued
and expanded trials to speed up Muni and create safer conditions for walking and biking,
such as additional required turns to reduce traffic congestion on the street,
"through streets" (e.g. Montgomery Street) which would permit private vehicles
to cross but not turn onto Market Street (commercial, taxi and paratransit vehicles would
be exempt, as they are now), extending the separated green bikeway further eastward, and
other such ideas?
Answer: I am for adding more green zones, as long as more training for bike riders takes place. I cannot tell you how many times I have almost run over a bike rider, because the rider expected me to see him, when he or she had no lights, helmet, blah, blah, blah.
5. Market Street is scheduled for full repaving in 2015. The City has
begun a public process to plan for and deliver a Better Market Street when the repaving
work takes place. Do you support a continuous, physically separated green bikeway the
full length of Market Street (maintaining/enhancing Muni and the pedestrian realm)?
Answer: At the moment, yes.
6.
Sunday Streets is a popular program, now in its fourth year, which the SF Bicycle
Coalition is proud to have helped launch. Sunday Streets creates miles of temporary
car-free streets for people to get physically active in diverse SF neighborhoods, on
bicycles, on foot, on skates, in wheelchairs, with dogs, with hula hoops, etc. Will you
work to continue and grow Sunday Streets by integrating it into the City budget to ensure
steady funding?
Answer: I have not seen what the funding is for Sunday streets.
7. Will you support the launch of a trial of an every-week Sunday
Streets route between April and October beginning in 2012, and a second trial in 2013, with a citywide network of Sunday Streets by 2017?
Answer: I would have to know more, but the plan looks admirable.
8. San Francisco has begun a Safe
Routes to School program, encouraging students and their families to walk and bike to
school, through a well-developed program of education and collaboration with schools and
parents, led by the SF Department of Public Health and carried out by the SF Bicycle
Coalition and other public agencies and community groups. Though funding has been
limited, in its two years of existence the program has taught bicycle and pedestrian
safety to over 2,500 children in classrooms across the city. Will you commit to
supporting a more robust Safe Routes to School program by expanding it to all schools in
the city?
Answer: All schools would have to be checked.
9. Thanks to advocacy from the SF Bicycle CoalitionÕs Great Streets Project
and leadership by the SF Planning Department, the city has seen a wave of popular public
realm enhancements over the past few years, from "Pavement to Parks" plazas to
sidewalk-extending "parklets" to on-street bicycle parking "corrals"
(installing bike parking racks along curb space often used for car parking). These
projects are partnerships between local groups, including business groups, and the City.
Do you support continuing and growing the Pavement to Parks program with three new major
projects a year beginning in 2012?
Answer: I accept the program on it merits, but would have to see more.
10. Do you support the ability of businesses to
continue to apply for and install parklets and bike parking corrals near their businesses?
Answer: Yes, if they do not obstruct pedestrian traffic.
11. Do you support the installation of at least 25 bike parking corrals a year, according to local demand?
Answer: The number of corrals, I am not sure.
12. A group of city agencies has come together to
create an Innovations Working Group, with the goal of testing new ways to more easily and
inexpensively improve streets. They have begun looking at less-expensive versions of curb
extensions and would like to develop and test similarly "lightweight" new
traffic calming techniques, such as wider sidewalks and shared streets (on which the
street level is flush with the sidewalks and cars are permitted to travel but at a
pedestrian pace). Do you support testing such new and innovative streetscape improvement
measures to help the City to more easily partner with local groups to improve the safety
and appeal of streets?
Answer: Having to many plans is not a great idea.
13. Pavement quality is an essential issue for safe comfortable
bicycling in San Francisco ÐÊpotholes can make biking not merely uncomfortable but often
hazardous. With the city's streets in such a desperately poor state of repair, more
funding is needed to keep our streets in a stable condition and begin to reverse the
downward trend. At the same time we need to accelerate major streetscape enhancements for
biking, walking, and transit on streets like Masonic Avenue, Second Street, and of course
Market Street. Do you support Proposition B, the Road Repaving and Street Safety Bond
measure, on the November ballot?
Answer: No.
14. Do you support bringing more funding to bikeway
construction and maintenance by prioritizing at least 50% of the streets in the repaving schedule to be streets that are designated bike routes?
Answer: Yes
15. What are your ideas for ongoing funding sources and mechanisms for pavement maintenance and repair?
Answer: I do not know what funding sources and mechanisms entail here.
16. Funding for bikeways and other bicycle improvements and programs in San Francisco is presently made up from an array of local, regional, and federal grants, with a tiny fraction coming from the SFMTA's operating budget. Given the City's policy commitments to increasing
everyday bicycle transportation, and the already significant number of trips taking place by bike (6% by SFMTA's estimate in 2009), would you support an increase for bicycle project and program funding from SFMTA's budget?
17. What are your ideas for other
funding sources for bicycle projects and programs in San Francisco?
Answer: Possibly tax rebates.
18. Will you include funding for San Francisco bicycle projects and programs in prospective funding requests to regional, state and federal entities as part of the City’s transportation funding agenda?
Answer: Yes, based on percentage
19. The California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) was designed to
help citizens and policy makers understand the environmental impact of proposed projects by requiring structured analysis for such projects before permitting them to go forward. Under the current practice of CEQA by the SF Planning Department, projects that reduce traffic speeds and make streets safer for walking, biking and transit (e.g. transit
lanes, bike lanes, wider sidewalks) are often required to complete lengthy and expensive analyses, increasing the cost of such proposals and delaying their implementation, even though these projects have a clear benefit to the environment. Would you support changes
at the local level to evaluate transportation impacts differently, exempting projects which prioritize sustainable transportation modes and allowing them to come forward
faster and more affordably?
20. Will you direct the SF Police Department to more
energetically cite aggressive/dangerous driving and speeding within the city, placing traffic safety as a high priority within the Department, and supporting prioritized measured enforcement to protect people biking and walking?
Answer: First, the SFPD is already under pressure from excessive salaries and pensions. Bike traffic safety will never be a high priority because the SFPD has their hands full with many real crimes.
21. The AmericaÕs Cup series of regattas will be bringing hundreds of thousands of visitors and locals to San Francisco's waterfront during the summers of 2012 and 2013. Due to the large numbers of people attending, excellent bicycling conditions to and through the event area will be essential for the events' success as a transportation practicality. Will you work to ensure that bicycle access and bicycle parking are given high priority in America's Cup planning and investment?
Answer: I am a veteran of the United State Navy. I think boats and bikes do mix well.
22. Will you support permanent post-America's Cup legacy
improvements for key bicycle routes such as the Embarcadero and Polk Street, at a high level of comfort and continuity for bicycle riders as envisioned in Connecting the City
(www.connectingthecity.org)?
Answer: I support riders in this city.
23. The SFMTA Board of Directors oversees Muni, taxicabs,
bicycle and pedestrian programs, parking policy and enforcement, and traffic enforcement, as well as having authority over all traffic changes to the city's streets, from stop signs to speed limits to bike lanes. Clearly the SFMTA Board of Directors is critically
central to providing safe, sustainable mobility and access for all. The entire SFMTA Board is appointed by the Mayor. What are your priorities for SFMTA Board appointments and what do you want to accomplish with the Board?
Answer: If I am elected to the Mayor’s Office, I am going to dissolve the present MTA Board, with the exception of the new CEO. The present Board has done a terrible job overseeing the MTA, the taxis, jitneys, bikes, motorbikes, motorcycles, trucks, buses, parking spaces, yellow and white zones, walk ways and other city transit issues, because they have been too involved with giving upper management a “Horse and Pony Show” while they were sucking up fantastic paychecks for very simple jobs. Bicyclists will be on this new Commission. They will be on the old MTA Commission as well.
The present MTA Board has too many sycophants and attorneys and not enough accountants and City laymen, bicycle riders and real bus users. The MTA Board needs taxi drivers that have no pensions, medical and dental plans, day offs with pay, and more real City residents that actually live and work here. They need to know that there are real costs involved in everything Muni does, and these costs will affect their income, if they go into orbit. As mayor, I will split the MTA in half and create a new Taxi, Limousine, Jitney, Shuttle, Motorcycle and Bicycle Commission, with 12 Commissioners. It will have only taxi, limousine, jitney, shuttle and bicycle and motorcycle riders, (real ones) for the board. And, this board will have these people as accountants, doctors, lawyers and laymen, administrators and women from the City voting roles. All the phony appointments will be history.
I have been a speaker before the MTA since 2006, and they know my views well. We need bicyclists as MTA Commissioners so that he whole City can get involved in bicycle training, at either high school or City College of San Francisco. One Commissioner on the Board is Tom Knowlton from San Mateo County, who claims: I ride the Muni regularly.” But, in reality, he drives in from San Mateo, parks in the City Hall garage, then drives back. He also claimed, “Nate Ford’s personal problems of embezzlement and other issues would not follow him here. Before Ford was fired, yes fired, Ford awarded one of his Atlanta friends, a City garage contract, and this garage contract dude left shoeboxes full of cash in Ford’s office.
Emil Lawrence MBA
Lawrence2011Campaign
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