Hit ‘em With The Double Whammy
Building on a bunch of the previous posts, I wanted to offer what I think is one of the ways we can look at how to restore livability to our cities. It’s called The Double WhammyTM.
It means, in effect, doing exactly the opposite of what the auto industry, and GM in particular, did so many years ago - but we will do it without breaking the law.
The car people did two things:
- Flooded cities and towns with cars.
- Took away transit.
The car people accomplished 1. in any number of ways — by selling junky, low-quality cars that were dangerous not only to streetcars and horses and walkers and bikers, but even to the car drivers themselves, by buying city councils to make sure anti-human, car-friendly city laws were passed, by buying off regional and national politicians to gain their support for subsidizing the building of local, regional, and national highways, by buying off regulators, by illegally monopolizing the market, you name it — they did it all.
The car people accomplished 2. by buying up and then dismantling the streetcar operators, tearing up all the tracks and destroying most of the railcars in the process.
So, here’s how we will reverse the destruction of our cities:
- Greatly restrict the number of cars in the city.
- Provide transit.
To accomplish 1., we can use decongestion pricing to start, but also increase tolls, increase parking costs, etc. — essentially, start charging cars for the true value of the goods and services and humans they are using and destroying, to continually reduce the harm we allow cars to do to the city and its residents. We will continue to improve the city gradually, step by step, until all of its cancers have been removed, including all cars.
To accomplish 2., we can continue to build more and better walk, bike, and rail infrastructure (buses are not transit). To achieve success in the shortest amount of time possible, we need to think politically, which means we need to provide real transit to people, and buses are not real transit. By the time we’re done, every person in San Francisco should live within a mile of a streetcar/light rail/metro line. We will continue to take space dedicated to automobiles and hand it over to pedestrians, bicycles, and rail - in that order. Will will continue to build more and better rail solutions. We will look at decongestion pricing for transit to make sure that transit is super-high quality and always improving. Human-powered transport should be given very high priority over motorized transport. We will look at instituting more real transit from every direction headed into San Francisco, including and especially North Bay. We’ll remove traffic lanes from the Bay Bridge and replace them with rail. We’ll look at doing the same on the Golden Gate Bridge, else we’ll hand over more space to walkers and bikers, and we’ll look at running the SMART train down from Larkspur all the way to the Transbay Terminal.
The end goal is to remove most automobiles from most cities - to make room for humans, just like GM and crew removed most streetcars from most cities - to make room for cars. We are going to carry out the same exact process GM did, but in reverse, and at every step of progress towards this goal, we will be achieving a healthier, safer, more vibrant, exciting, fun, and livable city.
It has to be both whammies at the same time — it can’t be only one of them: 1) Restrict cars and 2) Build more and better transit.
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