Scott.mn2024-03-23T23:45:54-07:00https://scott.mn/Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/https://scott.mn/2024/03/05/reflections_election_lit_dropReflections after a rainy morning lit drop2024-03-05T00:00:00-08:002024-03-05T00:00:00-08:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<p>This morning I got up before dawn to drop lit for the primary election in San Francisco. As drizzle fell on my head, the sun rose, then hid again behind mist. The last time I did this — an early morning lit drop on Election Day — was in 2016. There’s been a dramatic increase in networked, front-door surveillance cameras (the Ring brand and others). It’s a trend that worries me: the abuse potential of all that video, concentrated in the hands of a few tech companies, is enormous. Installing them seems like a statement that convenience (and a security blanket against package theft<sup id="fnref:package" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:package" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>) matters more than basic privacy. Were those houses a lost cause? Seeing the cameras everywhere, I struggled against demoralization.</p>
<p>For the third year running, San Francisco is in the grip of a wave of reactionary politics driven by fear of crime, and specifically crimes of poverty. Homeless people are not treated as unlucky neighbors who need help, but conflated with dangerous criminals. When someone who is hungry shoplifts from Walgreens to eat, all our empathy is with the owners and managers of Walgreens, and it’s not the <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/10/sf-marin-food-bank-to-cut-staff-all-pop-up-pantries-by-2025/">food bank</a> that receives funding, but the police and jails, so these individuals who refuse to starve quietly can be prevented from interfering with the city’s business recovery.</p>
<p>Maybe the most galling example of the mindset is how fentanyl overdoses have been weaponized. Mayor Breed mothballed her own administration’s evidence-based <a href="https://www.sf.gov/reports/october-2022/overdose-prevention-plan-2022">overdose prevention plan</a>, which emphasizes availability of treatment, harm reduction, and social support, in favor of punitive measures that have predictably backfired and led overdose deaths to continue to surge to record highs. Prop F — we’ll find out tonight/tomorrow if we managed to beat it — would <a href="https://sfstandard.com/2024/02/23/san-francisco-drug-testing-measure/">drive those deaths even higher</a>. The cruelty seems to be the point.</p>
<p>A mailer I got from GrowSF justified endorsing Prop F by saying, when they polled the idea, it got 74% support. That’s the whole argument. Not: It works, it’ll actually solve the problem. Just: It polls well. So it <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum">must be right</a>.</p>
<p>As ambitious moderate activists chase those polls — and progressives, looking at the same polls, shy away from calling BS — we seem to be on a runaway train of radicalization to the right. I used to identify as a YIMBY, and I know people who do bicycle as well as housing advocacy and tend to support the mod side of the city’s moderate/progressive divide. They reassure me that mod politicians don’t <em>really</em> believe in these policies that resemble the disastrous <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violent_Crime_Control_and_Law_Enforcement_Act#Legacy_and_impacts">1994 crime bill</a>; rather, the politicians are only professing to support this stuff to get elected. They tell me they’re uncomfortable with these policies, but can’t be expected to turn on their allies.</p>
<p>When the city voted to recall our reformist DA Chesa Boudin in 2022, I thought: At least the wave has crested now, and it’ll get better from here. I was wrong. Polls show more than twice as many of us worry about crime as our top priority as did so when Boudin was office. That could be interpreted as vindication of Boudin’s approach and proof the “tough” policies since pursued by Mayor Breed and DA Jenkins aren’t working. But progressives still aren’t telling that story effectively, and the <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2024/02/explore-big-money-san-francisco-growsf-togethersf-neighbors-larsen-moritz-tan-web/">big spenders</a> aren’t slowing down but pushing for ever more right-wing policies, now, preposterously, pointing a finger at judges and trying to persuade us to install conservative judges.</p>
<p>This mood of fear won’t pass on its own, like a wave, I realized. We have to fight back, or people like Dorsey, Moritz, and Tan will keep repeating their fact-free, populist appeals and passing worse and worse stuff.</p>
<p>That’s why I was running up steps at 5 in the morning putting <a href="https://www.theleaguesf.org/voter_guides">League voter guides</a> and <a href="https://www.laborandworkingfamilies.com/">Labor and Working Families slates</a> on doors. It’s not that either the League or the slate is perfect. But we badly need people in politics who, however flawed they might be, stand for something more than chasing polls. We need to come together on real solutions to our problems, not reaction and division.</p>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/palm.jpeg" alt="A view down a steep hill on a sidewalk lined with palm trees on an overcast, drizzly day." />
</figure>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:package" role="doc-endnote">
<p>I’ve had the experience of having clear surveillance footage of my bike being stolen including the license plate of the getaway vehicle, and SFPD not doing jack and me not getting my bike back, so unlike a lot of people I get that surveillance is not magic. <a href="#fnref:package" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
https://scott.mn/2023/10/01/long_emergenciesLong emergencies: Covid, climate, homelessness2023-10-01T00:00:00-07:002023-10-01T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<p>At first, U.S. society treated the Covid-19 pandemic as an emergency
requiring collective solutions. Now we pretend it’s over and treat
staying healthy as an individual matter. I live in San Francisco and
hang out in progressive spaces that were some of the last holdouts in
urging and giving out masks. Now, even though the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/01/health/covid-case-data-wave/index.html">new Covid
surge</a>
is making more of my friends sick than ever, masks are a rare sight.
Anywhere <em>outside</em> SF, they’re unheard of. Collective health is out;
rugged individualism is in. If you’re immunocompromised: sorry, but
everyone’s tired of being inconvenienced just for the small matter of
your survival. We’re living in the <a href="https://www.npr.org/2022/09/08/1121706249/new-york-subway-mask-policy-you-do-you">“You do you”
era</a>.</p>
<p>The shift is troubling. Not only in its own right, but for what it
suggests might be coming with climate change. As disasters make
<a href="https://apnews.com/article/canada-wildfires-northwest-territories-7b8c327876d86a483c8e25df7bc2c566">entire cities
uninhabitable</a>,
I’d hope that people would respond with solidarity, helping one
another survive. What’s happening with Covid suggests the dark
possibility that we might get all solidaritied out. We might try to
help one another for a little while, but then as the more fortunate
among us return to a semblance of normality, maybe we’ll get tired of
all that and decide to shun the least resourced, who are still
struggling to get back on their feet.</p>
<p>Maybe Covid is not the first example. Homelessness, as we understand
the word today, was a new phenomenon in the U.S. in
the late 1970s and early 80s. In <em><a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520383784/homelessness-is-a-housing-problem">Homelessness
Is a Housing
Problem</a></em>,
Colburn and Page write that homelessness was believed to be “a consequence of
the economic downturn of the late 1970s and would evaporate once the
economy rebounded. Consistent with this perception, early efforts to
manage homelessness were managed by the Federal Emergency Management
Agency (FEMA)—as if the crisis were temporary; akin to a flood or
earthquake” (46-7).</p>
<p>Homelessness, once treated as a shocking misfortune we as a
society would surely quickly overcome, is now considered an individual
problem and a condition to be managed for the comfort of
those lucky enough not to be experiencing it. Toro Castaño, a homeless
man in SF, was jerked around by City-funded nonprofits with fake
offers of shelter. Then City workers threw out all his belongings (a
<a href="https://www.stolenbelonging.org/">common story</a>). <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/homeless-encampment-sweeps-lawsuit-18275300.php">As the
<em>Chronicle</em>
reports</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The things I lost that day were irreplaceable,” he said. In all,
Castaño said, about $10,000 worth of his belongings — including a
tent, a MacBook Pro computer and a road bike — were destroyed. Most
painful were the hundreds of photos and documents on his laptop and
his mother’s wedding Kimono.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Far from empathizing with Castaño’s losses, city supervisor Rafael
Mandelman blamed Castaño for being homeless: “This is a guy who’s
flagrantly breaking the law.<sup id="fnref:law" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:law" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> The frustration of folks in the
neighborhood is rooted in the sense that he is taking the city for a
ride.”</p>
<p>In <em>Housing Is a Homelessness Problem</em>, Colburn and Page point out
that homelessness is eminently solvable. We know what policies work.
We just aren’t doing them enough. But the tendency toward
dehumanization and othering stands in the way (177). To make solutions
politically possible, we’d probably have to shift perceptions of
people experiencing homelessness.</p>
<p>That’s easier said than done, but in the early Covid era, when there
was widespread support for social distancing and masking and when we
clapped for healthcare workers, solidarity seemed possible. At a very
dark time, there was, at least, a popular understanding that we were
all connected and had to get through this together. If we can find a
way to undo the process of normalizing Covid sickness,
maybe we can also do it for homelessness and climate disaster, and
work toward solutions for all these long emergencies.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:law" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Actually, a judge found the City of San Francisco to be flagrantly violating the law by <a href="https://nextcity.org/urbanist-news/san-francisco-is-fighting-to-keep-its-homeless-sweeps-going-with-or-without">displacing homeless people without offering anywhere to go</a>. Castaño is a plaintiff in that lawsuit, which seems to have triggered Mandelman’s especially vicious remarks toward him. Considering SF’s many examples of housed people committing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/apr/26/san-francisco-bear-spray-attacks">violent attacks against homeless people</a>, I consider Castaño brave for putting himself forward in this way. <a href="#fnref:law" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
https://scott.mn/2023/08/26/aad_matterNew album: Matter for the Bicycle Research2023-08-26T00:00:00-07:002023-08-26T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<p>This past week, I recorded an <a href="https://oceanbase.org/scrap/matter/">album-a-day called Matter for the Bicycle
Research</a>, which you can now
stream or download at that link. Recommended if you like Guided by
Voices, Magnetic Fields, or guitar-and-boombox-era Mountain Goats.</p>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/aad-matter.jpeg" alt="Album cover for Matter for the Bicycle Research. Underside of a bridge over a body of water." />
</figure>
<p>An <a href="http://crapart.spacebar.org/aad/">album-a-day</a> is when you write
20+ minutes of new music, record it, and produce it, all in a single
24-hour period, with no ideas from before the day and no outtakes.
Actually, this album gets <em>-1,000 points</em> for taking a bit more than
24 hours of clock time over two days, due to poor planning WRT social
engagements in the middle. But my total time working on it was like
12-14 hours, so it’s still in the spirit of the thing!</p>
<p>In a way, this is a return to form for me. I made more than 20 AADs
you can find on the AAD site under the name Scrap Heap, and a slightly
more recent one
<a href="https://scrapheap.bandcamp.com/album/listen">Listen</a> on Bandcamp, but
none for a while now.</p>
<p>But this feels brand new, because unlike those old albums that
were mostly computer music, I played all the songs on guitar and
sang. I also tried to go for “many short songs [rather] than long
songs which drag on forever.”</p>
<p>It turns out this makes the project a lot harder! There were moments
of near despair where I thought all my songs were sounding the same,
or that I would never record an acceptable quality take (I ended up
having to accept that the takes I used would contain mistakes, some of
which may even be endearing, like when the singer comes in too early
on “Louie Louie”). But it’s also more rewarding, and I really like
some of the results. Many thanks to <a href="http://tom7.org/">Tom 7</a> for
describing the <a href="http://crapart.spacebar.org/aad">album-a-day concept</a>
and inspiring my songwriting approach, including the use of weird or
awkward-sounding titles as prompts. Thanks to Steve Landey for making
a <a href="https://namegenerator.band/">band name generator</a> that I used as a
song title generator. When you go to Steve’s website it prints out
like 50 randomly created band/song names, many of which sound quite
silly, and I basically made this album by selecting names that tickled
me and writing songs for them.</p>
<p>Notes on songs (<a href="https://oceanbase.org/scrap/matter/">listen here</a>):</p>
<style type="text/css">
.sn {
font-size: 0.9em;
}
</style>
<p><strong>Sarcastic Recognition</strong>. <span class="sn">This is the song I wrote
first and it has way too many chord changes, which made it take two
hours. For some reason I sang the title lyric as “<em>somatic</em>
recognition,” and by that point it wasn’t worth recording another
take.</span></p>
<p><strong>Editor-Insect</strong>: <span class="sn">With that title, who could resist
the Kafka reference.</span></p>
<p><strong>Sense of Gruesome Hotels</strong>. <span class="sn">A favorite. Love to
sing
a cheery, jaunty song about the macabre.</span></p>
<p><strong>Assistant for the Counter Mistake</strong>. <span class="sn">First of several start-stoppy
songs.</span></p>
<p><strong>Matter for the Bicycle Research</strong>. <span class="sn">Tight rock
sound, but it’s a bit generic.</span></p>
<p><strong>Excitement-Judge</strong>. <span class="sn">One of 4 or 5 obvious filler songs with no
interesting idea, but at least it’s brief and not self-serious.</span></p>
<p><strong>Palatable Masculine Press</strong>. <span class="sn">A dude wants to buy a
tofu press, but can only find them for sale in girly colors. It’s a
problem I think we can all relate to.</span></p>
<p><strong>Wonderful Transition</strong>. <span class="sn">Bitter irony? Lyrics are
upbeat, but the music sounds angry.</span></p>
<p><strong>Weekend of Frugal Insects</strong>. <span class="sn">After the style of Guided by Voices’
quieter acoustic songs.</span></p>
<p><strong>Performance</strong>. <span class="sn">A seemingly saccharine, dead simple
song ends up in a scathing satire of managerialism.</span></p>
<p><strong>The Light Outcomes</strong>. <span class="sn">Earnest song about my sunrise
photo project.</span></p>
<p><strong>Complex Nhealthy Child</strong>. <span class="sn">Short song. Makes its
point and gets you on your way.</span></p>
<p><strong>Playful Thick Theory</strong>. <span class="sn">I like this chord
progression, but struggled to stay in time. Whenever I’d reach for B
minor I’d screw up or worry that I was going to screw up and
then compensate by speeding up.</span></p>
<p><strong>Bus Above Me</strong>. <span class="sn">Another complicated early song.
Its energy suffered somewhat for the large number of takes.</span></p>
<p><strong>Sure-Footed Percentage</strong>. <span class="sn">The last song I recorded,
I stuck it here because it captures my euphoria at being 100% done.
Plus, by leaving a good song at the end, I force you to listen to the
unsuccessful and filler songs I’ve been unloading just before
this.</span></p>
<p>Now <a href="https://oceanbase.org/scrap/matter/">stream or download the
album</a> and enjoy!</p>
<p>(I wish my blog had a comments section for your feedback, but since I haven’t
gotten around to making one, you can
<a href="https://carfree.city/@scott/110960142037879872">comment on Mastodon</a>
or email me your thoughts at scott at this domain.)</p>
https://scott.mn/2023/08/19/bad_incentives_make_autonomous_vehicles_unsafeBad incentives will make autonomous vehicles unsafe2023-08-19T00:00:00-07:002023-08-19T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<p>Occasionally, friends have been surprised I don’t support expansion of autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. Even though they know I support changing our transportation system to remove car dominance, some think robotaxis will be a lesser evil than cars driven by humans because they’ll be safer.</p>
<p>Recent news makes it harder to defend this AV industry talking point. There have been increasing reports of erratic behavior and, recently, a serious crash where a <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/18/cruise-told-by-regulators-to-immediately-reduce-robotaxi-fleet-50-following-crash/">Cruise ignored a siren and entered the path of an emergency vehicle</a>. At least in its current state, the technology doesn’t seem especially safe.</p>
<p>And since so much has been written about the robotaxis at this point, I usually point to an existing explanation of the problems with robotaxis, like <a href="https://www.safestreetrebel.com/conesf/#problems-with-avs">Safe Street Rebel’s statement</a>, instead of winging it myself. The SSR statement highlights the labor, surveillance, accessibility, and car-trip-generating aspects of autonomous vehicles, as does the <a href="https://sfbike.org/news/the-sf-bicycle-coalitions-stance-on-robotaxi-expansion/">SF Bicycle Coalition’s statement</a>.</p>
<p>But there’s a more subtle safety issue I want to draw out. It comes down to incentives and human responsibility.</p>
<p>The autonomous vehicle companies have decided to operate as urban taxi services<sup id="fnref:truck" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:truck" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>, which means they have to offer fast trips in the city to be competitive. There’s an inherent tension between that and pedestrian safety.</p>
<p>Let’s say you’re a driver waiting to turn right on red, but there’s a pedestrian crossing in front of you. If, instead of completely stopping, you creep toward that pedestrian like you’re going to hit them, there’s a good chance they’ll get nervous and increase their pace, even breaking into a run.</p>
<p>Human drivers know they can save time by behaving aggressively like this. I’ve had a near miss where I had to scream at one who was creeping at me without looking. If you’re attuned to it, you’ll see this every day, all over the city.</p>
<p>Lo and behold, robotaxis <a href="https://www.vice.com/en/article/bvjv48/week-of-cone-activist-group-is-protesting-driverless-cars-by-disabling-them-with-traffic-cones">have learned this technique</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…the group [SSR] has noticed increasingly aggressive behavior from the driverless cars. Whereas the cars used to come to complete stops before crosswalks if a pedestrian was detected, they now do “the creeping slow charge thing,” the member said, and “kind of inch into the crosswalk” to bully people out of the way. “It’s kind of intimidating and menacing,” the member said, and a potential harbinger of how the cars will behave if they become more prevalent and accepted as part of the city streets.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Robotaxis also roll stop signs, as I observed sitting out at <a href="https://www.robinscafesf.com/">Robin’s Cafe</a> one afternoon while empty Cruise cars made 10 passes in the course of me sipping a single coffee. And, just like SF’s most inattentive or aggressive human drivers, they’ve been <a href="https://www.safestreetrebel.com/conesf/#av-failures-crashes-stalls">documented</a> stopping ahead of the stop line and blocking crosswalks on red lights.</p>
<p>It’s impossible to say for sure if these behaviors are glitches or intentional aggressiveness, but here’s my point: even if the software driving these cars were technically perfect—which it’s obviously not!—there will <em>always</em> be a strong incentive to program in as much aggressiveness as Cruise, Waymo and Zoox think they can get away with, because they are a business and have to return profits to their investors, and once the novelty wears off, no one will use them if they’re slower than Uber, Lyft and traditional taxis.</p>
<p>And they can get away with a lot of aggressiveness! Robotaxis have <em>less</em> accountability than humans driving cars. They <a href="https://sfstandard.com/2023/06/16/san-francisco-wants-robotaxis-to-get-tickets-for-moving-violations/">can’t be cited for moving violations</a> in California. At all. Ever.</p>
<p>Now I’m not one to promote policing as the solution for car crashes—that raises equity issues and can <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/07/sfpd-use-of-force-racial-disparities-skyrocket/">end very badly for Black and brown drivers</a>—the emphasis should be on street design. But SFPD did <a href="https://www.sanfranciscopolice.org/sites/default/files/2023-07/SFPDTrafficViolationReport_June2023_20230717.pdf">write 780 tickets</a> for moving violations in June, and was not authorized to write a single ticket for a robotaxi. At least in theory, a human driver who repeatedly endangers others can lose their license and be taken off the streets. Cruise and Waymo can’t. No matter what they do, we have no recourse except to petition the state DMV and CPUC.<sup id="fnref:recourse" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:recourse" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup></p>
<p>Another way autonomous vehicles evade accountability is by hiding who’s responsible for the safety-versus-speed tradeoffs they make. If a human-driven car hits you while creeping into a crosswalk, as almost happened to me, there’s a person right there who’s obviously responsible for the decision to drive that way.</p>
<p>If a robotaxi does the same, there’ll still be a human who made the decision that the car would behave that way. But who? A middle manager who ordered the company’s engineers to reduce dwell time at intersections to hit their KPIs that quarter? A reluctant engineer, themself a bicyclist and transit rider, who’d joined the company hoping their perspective would make AVs safer, who had a sick feeling in their stomach as they implemented the more aggressive behavior, but did as they were told because they feared layoffs?</p>
<p>Whoever it is, that person will probably never be identified and connected with the crash they caused. Instead, the behavior of the car may be falsely viewed as objective and correct, since it followed its programming exactly and can’t get distracted. It must have been the pedestrian’s fault. By concealing human agency like this, along with an advertising and lobbying campaign, robotaxi companies could change cultural and legal norms around the use of streets and make it our fault if we do anything that slows down their cars.</p>
<p>It wouldn’t be the first time technology reprogrammed the streets. It’s how we ended up with the so-called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s">crime of jaywalking</a> in the United States. People used to walk freely anywhere on the roads, but that posed problems for the nascent car industry, as it made their product too slow to be attractive for city trips, and got them vilified for being a hazard to other road users. Sound familiar?</p>
<p>If robocars are to be allowed on public streets at all—which I can’t stress enough is a <em>choice</em> we make, it’s <em>not</em> inevitable we’ll consent to this—then strong accountability mechanisms will be needed to protect against these bad incentives and tendencies. That, on top of the fact that they generate car trips, erode support for public transit, disempower workers, aren’t accessible, surveil us, and are currently very glitchy, is why I support <a href="https://sfist.com/2023/08/17/sf-city-attorney-files-motion-to-halt-roll-out-of-more-self-driving-cruise-and-waymo-robotaxis/">efforts to rescind</a> the blank check <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/robotaxis-cruise-waymo-san-francisco/">CPUC just issued</a> to Cruise and Waymo.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:truck" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Waymo <a href="https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/07/waymo-kills-off-autonomous-trucking-program/">shut down its trucking division</a>, which is a bit surprising since one might think the lack of pedestrians on controlled-access highways would give autonomous vehicles a greater advantage in that context. Apparently technical limitations of Lidar make operating at freeway speeds challenging. <a href="#fnref:truck" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:recourse" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Or engage in <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/07/driverless-cars-unicorns-a-night-with-the-group-coning-cruise-amp-waymo/">direct action</a>. See also Tom Humberstone’s <a href="https://thenib.com/im-a-luddite/">brilliant cartoon urging us to reassess the original Luddites</a>. <a href="#fnref:recourse" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
https://scott.mn/2023/08/11/bikes_transit_freedomBikes and public transit mean freedom2023-08-11T00:00:00-07:002023-08-11T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<p>Bikes and public transit mean freedom.</p>
<p>On a bicycle, you’re fast but nimble. You can easily match or exceed the average speed, if not top speed, of a car in an urban environment. You never get stuck in traffic. Even if the whole road is blocked, you can walk your bike on the sidewalk and be a pedestrian. And you don’t have to fill up on gas, or convince your landlord to install EV chargers in your building, or go into debt, financing a car purchase that’s orders of magnitude more expensive than a bike.</p>
<p>Transit has different advantages. It can be slower than bicycling, especially in the case of buses. You might have to wait. At home in San Francisco, I admit I bike more often than I ride transit, to save time. But when you ride transit, you don’t have to worry about a bike or car parked in a fixed location. You can walk from one place to another, boarding a totally different line at a totally different stop to get home. You can still get home safely if you’re tired or have indulged in substances. Or, if you’re mentally sharp, you can read a great book or catch up on emails along the way. And transit can accommodate more types of disabilities, including temporary ones most of us will experience at some point.</p>
<p>Together, bikes and transit, and a transportation system that makes them safe and practical, offer freedom. Cars could never.</p>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/ride-and-relax.jpg" alt="People bike alongside a historic streetcar that says "Ride and Relax" on its livery. Photo by Jef Poskanzer." />
<figcaption>People bike alongside a historic streetcar that says "Ride and Relax" on its livery. Photo by Jef Poskanzer.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The association of cars with freedom is a marketing myth. It can never be realized. Car ads depict “the open road,” where there’s nothing but you and your car, speeding along. That’s not our reality. The days of the frontier are over. We live in cities (and suburbs, but they’re just sprawled out, space-wasting cities). Unless you’re in a depopulated, disinvested place—and that comes with its own problems—there’s going to be congestion. Driving a car is going to get you stuck in traffic. You have to worry about parking that huge thing. About it getting scratched or burglarized while parked. And you have to ultimately get back to your car, which limits your options for where you can go in the city, what you can do.</p>
<p>For the supposed freedom of driving to be real, there would need to be only a few people with cars. If only 1 in 50 city dwellers had cars, there would be enough space for parking. Traffic wouldn’t back up. It would offer a big advantage over everyone else in getting around (provided that everyone else was prevented by law, custom, or the threat of violence from getting in the way). But as soon as car ownership becomes widespread, that’s gone. The cars overwhelm the space. It’s a geometry problem. It’s why 50 years ago, <a href="https://unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/">André Gorz observed</a> that “the car is a luxury good. And the essence of luxury is that it cannot be democratized. If everyone can have luxury, no one gets any advantages from it.” By coincidence, that same year, 1973, San Francisco passed its <a href="https://www.sfmta.com/blog/san-franciscos-transit-first-policy-turns-50">Transit First</a> policy.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, few people in charge of transportation planning in the United States heeded Gorz’s warning. Even my city <a href="https://scott.mn/2023/04/26/bike_transit_car_streets_valencia/">often ignores</a> its Transit First policy. So now we’ve got a society where the car is mandatory for many people, where transit is often slow and infrequent if it goes where one needs to go at all, where there’s no safe place for a bicycle on busy roads. In this system, of course it feels like a burden lifted when you go from lacking car access to having it.</p>
<p>But that’s not freedom, just coping with a fundamentally unfree system. If we want real freedom of mobility, it will come from bikes and public transit.</p>
https://scott.mn/2023/05/24/leave_twitter_nowIt's time to leave Twitter2023-05-24T00:00:00-07:002023-05-24T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<p><em>Note: I wrote the following post on November 4, 2022, the day I deleted
my Twitter account, but decided not to publish it. It seemed
unnecessary because there was already a huge wave of migration off
Twitter. Unfortunately, lots of people I know have stayed on, too,
and seem in denial about what Twitter now is. Charlie Warzel’s
piece, <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2023/05/elon-musk-ron-desantis-2024-twitter/674149/">Twitter Is a Far-Right Social
Network</a>,
made me reread this draft and realize it’s only become truer in the
past half year. I still prefer Mastodon and compatible fediverse
services, but Bluesky, despite <a href="https://rys.io/en/167.html">its
issues</a>, is now another less-bad
alternative.</em></p>
<p>I encourage everyone to rip off the bandaid and leave Twitter sooner
than later. It’s <a href="https://popular.info/p/the-first-five-days-of-elon-musks">Truth Social
2.0</a> now.</p>
<p>Not only does Elon Musk have an <a href="https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/11/elon-musk-and-right-wing-extremism-part-of-the-problem-not-the-solution/">obvious affinity for the far
right</a>,
but he’s <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-faces-backlash-over-saudi-financing-1755606">indebted to a Saudi
prince</a>
for his purchase. Plus, with <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/11/3/23439802/elon-musks-twitter-layoffs-start-friday-november-4">half the company laid
off</a>,
and <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-executives-fired-quit-takeover-agrawal-segal-edgett-2022-11">most executives fired
immediately</a>,
Twitter won’t have the institutional memory or capacity to keep itself
well moderated and running smoothly, even if the new owners wanted
that.</p>
<p>Truth Social 2.0 doesn’t deserve you lending it legitimacy with your
presence. It’s fine if
<a href="https://gizmodo.com/how-to-join-mastodon-twitter-alternative-elon-musk-1849739031">Mastodon</a>
is too nerdy and weird for you, but then give Facebook a fresh
look—start Facebook groups. As much as you hate Facebook the
company, they are now more trustworthy than Twitter. That’s a fact.
Maybe it’s even worth dusting off Nextdoor, whose thinly-veiled NIMBY
racism is about to look like <em>Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood</em> compared to
<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2022/10/28/musk-twitter-racist-posts/">what Musk will allow on
Twitter</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.tumblr.com/">Tumblr</a> is still around, and you can write
<a href="https://substack.com/">Substacks</a>, or put your thoughts on
<a href="https://medium.com/">Medium</a>. You can start a blog on
<a href="https://wordpress.com/">WordPress</a>, or
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/">Blogger.com</a>, and you can use an <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/best-rss-feed-readers/">RSS
reader</a> like
<a href="https://feedly.com/">Feedly</a> or <a href="https://theoldreader.com/">The Old
Reader</a> to keep up with other people’s
blogs and Substacks (that’s right, Substack supports RSS, for now at
least until they make the business decision to shut it off).</p>
<p>Instagram. You can share political events, news and happenings on
Stories. Even if it’s annoying with how aggressive the volume of ads
has gotten, and how badly it wants you to use its TikTok clone. It’s
still a better option than the Musk phase of Twitter. It’s a social
network whose owners, while they aren’t exactly benevolent, aren’t
going to <a href="https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/01/elon-musk-twitter-ownership-changes-first-days/">deliberately sow far-right
misinformation</a>.</p>
<p>Some of the activist communities I organize with use Slack. I actually
think it’s kind of terrible, because none of us can afford to pay for
it, so the messages all disappear after 90 days. Still better than
Twitter.</p>
<p>Your group DMs can move to <a href="https://signal.org/">Signal</a>.</p>
<p>When I said I was deleting my Twitter account, someone suggested I
delete my tweets but keep an inactive account, so as to hold onto my
username, @graue. That way I could be sure that Musk wouldn’t release
the handle and allow someone else to tweet as @graue.</p>
<p>And I responded: I never tried to claim @graue on Truth Social; why
would I want it on Elon’s Twitter?</p>
<p>The most frustrating thing I’m seeing is people making fun of Musk and
the devolution of Twitter—<em>on Twitter</em>. I even saw a detailed thread
from a legal scholar, explaining how Musk will get penalized for doing
layoffs without proper notice—<em>on Twitter</em>. Why would you write such
interesting content and then solely publish it in the place he
controls? Why would you mock him while at the same time giving him
strong engagement numbers he can take to advertisers to show them his
leadership is going great? That’s as impotent a form of protest as
Nancy Pelosi responding to the overturning of Roe v. Wade by reciting
a poem.</p>
<p>None of the apps and websites I listed above perfectly replace
Twitter. They all have their problems. And I admit, I included
Nextdoor and Facebook more to make a point than to actually recommend
them. The point is this: Even apps that you’ve been avoiding because
they suck, suck less than Twitter now. Twitter as a place worth being
is already gone.</p>
<p>I’ve made it clear <a href="/2022/10/29/twitter_features_mastodon_is_better_without/">I like
Mastodon</a>.
I’m optimistic for it and community-controlled social media in
general. I don’t think it’s too early to succeed with certain niche
communities, like activists; <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/11/03/decentralized-social-network-mastodon-grows-to-655k-users-in-wake-of-elon-musks-twitter-takeover/">its rapid growth
suggests</a>
it has its appeal for some. But I admit Mastodon is not yet ready to
become a mass platform with hundreds of millions of people. It’s not
for everyone. And if Mastodon is not for you, I’m not here to give you
the hard sell.</p>
<p>But please: leave Twitter. Now. Don’t be in denial about what it
already is: a disinformation platform and a far-right–enabling
cesspool. Don’t wait around for that vision to be fully realized. No
savior is coming to take Twitter back to the way it used to be. There
is no deus ex machina. Musk’s purchase will not be annulled. The
laid-off workers who knew how to keep the thing humming will not be
re-hired. It stings to lose a place where we made friends, built
community, learned a lot, and (sometimes enjoyably) wasted lots of
time. It hurts. But the sooner you accept it’s over and move on, the
better.</p>
https://scott.mn/2023/04/26/bike_transit_car_streets_valenciaThe myth of “transit streets, bike streets and car streets”2023-04-26T00:00:00-07:002023-04-26T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<p>At a February workshop called “<a href="https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-documents/2023/02/02-07-23_mtab_item_6_building_trust_-_slide_presentation.pdf">Building Trust With Our Communities</a>,” San Francisco’s MTA board reflected on the importance of trust and how to earn it. What the board came up with isn’t clear, but it didn’t stop them from, two months later, unanimously <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/valencia-center-bike-lane-pilot-approved/">approving center-running bike lanes on Valencia</a>, a design that increased crashes in Washington, DC<sup id="fnref:dc" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:dc" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup> and which only 13% of respondents supported.</p>
<p>Valencia Street is often described as one of a triplet of parallel streets segregated by mode. Where Valencia is the “bike street,” Mission, with bus-only red lanes for the 14 and 49, is the “transit street,” and Guerrero (or South Van Ness) is the “car street.” In 2018, Streetsblog San Francisco reports that an SFMTA planner explicitly <a href="https://sf.streetsblog.org/2018/08/16/advocates-explore-valencia-fixes-with-d8-supervisor-rafael-mandelman/">cited this as the City’s philosophy</a>: “Mission should be the transit-priority street, Guerrero Street should be for cars, and Valencia is the bike street, the people street.” A similar formulation is sometimes heard in the Haight-Ashbury, where Haight is the transit street, Page the bike street, and the one-way couplet of Oak and Fell are the car streets. A third potential example of this philosophy is seen between Civic Center/Hayes Valley and Fort Mason, with Polk as the bike street, Van Ness the transit street, and the Franklin/Gough couplet the car streets.</p>
<p>If you squint, you can sort of see this pattern on the west side: In the Richmond, Geary is the transit street, California the car street, and Lake the bike street (but you have to skip Clement). In the Sunset, Kirkham is the bike street, Judah the transit street, and Lincoln the car street (jumping over Irving).</p>
<p>The problem with this formulation? All of these are actually car streets.</p>
<p>Every one of these so-called bike streets and transit streets lets cars park on both sides for most of its length. They all allow cars to through-travel for a mile or more in at least one direction, if not the entire length of the street.<sup id="fnref:throughtravel" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:throughtravel" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> With the possible exception of Page, none meet NACTO low-stress criteria of fewer than 1,000 vehicles per day at speeds under 15 mph.<sup id="fnref:slowstreet" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:slowstreet" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup></p>
<p>And none of this was even up for debate on Valencia, “the bike street, the people street.” Instead, staff, acting under dictates from Mayor London Breed, forced board members and advocates to reluctantly back the questionably safe, unpopular center bike lane design as the only available option.</p>
<p>“I wish we had more options here, but we have what we have,” said SFMTA board director Steve Heminger. “The pilot is the only option on the table,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director Janelle Wong concurred.<sup id="fnref:endorsements1" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:endorsements1" class="footnote" rel="footnote">4</a></sup> “Is this my first choice? Absolutely not, [but I’m] desperate for improvements,” said Valencia resident and former SF Bike Coalition board member Amandeep Jawa. SF Bike’s Nesrine Mazjoub said, “While we do have hesitations… we aren’t being given any other option.”<sup id="fnref:endorsements2" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:endorsements2" class="footnote" rel="footnote">5</a></sup> “Many of us aren’t in love with a center-running bike lane, but something needs to be done,” summarized Supervisor Hillary Ronen, who represents the street.<sup id="fnref:endorsements3" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:endorsements3" class="footnote" rel="footnote">6</a></sup></p>
<p>Those are the endorsements of people who <em>supported</em> the plan.</p>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/valencia-carfree-2022.jpg" alt="People bike, walk, and dine on a temporarily car-free Valencia Street in San Francisco in July 2022." />
<figcaption>People bike, walk, and dine on a temporarily car-free Valencia Street in San Francisco in July 2022.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Officially, side-running protected bike lanes were ruled out because they interfere with outdoor dining (in the form of parklets). But there are other options that don’t. Valencia could become a full or partial car-free promenade, as piloted on Fridays and Saturdays from 2020 to 2022. Cars could be restricted to one-block, local access only via concrete barricades, which the City didn’t hesitate to <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/steel-posts-may-become-capp-streets-newest-barriers-did-they-work/">quickly install on Capp</a> in response to nuisance complaints about sex work. Or Valencia could be made <a href="https://sfstandard.com/perspectives/perspective-introducing-the-burrito-plan-one-way-to-safety-on-valencia-street/">one-way for cars</a>, freeing space for a truly protected bikeway, commercial loading, <em>and</em> more al fresco dining. Any of these options or a mix of them could create a truly safe, welcoming “bike street, people street” we’d fall in love with.</p>
<p>Center-running bike lanes weren’t the only option. They were the only option that kept Valencia a car street. For the mayor, that was the point.</p>
<p>Meanwhile on Haight Street, a supposed “transit street,” <a href="https://www.sfmta.com/projects/upper-haight-transit-improvement-pedestrian-realm-project">traffic signals that replaced stop signs</a> in 2021 were pitched as a way to speed up the 7 bus. <a href="https://twitter.com/chrisarvinsf/status/1514796338231185410">They didn’t</a>. But they do allow <em>cars</em> to move faster through intersections, putting pedestrians and bikes at greater risk in a collision, <a href="https://hoodline.com/2015/01/here-s-sfmta-s-case-for-the-haight-street-traffic-lights/">exactly as residents feared</a> when the signals were first proposed in 2015. What would a real “transit street” look like? It might have <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im0HBd2WFXA">bus gates</a>, allowing Muni buses but not cars to pass through key intersections, so that the signals don’t end up encouraging private car through-travel.</p>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/haight_bus_times-chris.png" alt="Trip times on the 7 bus on Haight from Stanyan to Masonic actually increased, rather than decreased, between April 2019 and April 2022, during which time traffic signals were added that were supposed to speed it up. Image by Chris Arvin." />
<figcaption>Trip times on the 7 bus on Haight from Stanyan to Masonic actually increased, rather than decreased, between April 2019 and April 2022, during which time traffic signals were added that were supposed to speed it up. Image by Chris Arvin.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>To be fair, SFMTA did remove access onto the Central Freeway from both Haight and Page streets in early 2020 as part of the <a href="https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-documents/2019/12/fact_sheet_pilot_-_fact_sheet_dec_2019_1.pdf">Page bikeway improvements</a>. It was a welcome start, an example of what taking “transit streets” and “bike streets” seriously might look like.</p>
<p>And while I call Van Ness a “car street” since it has curb parking and four car lanes its entire length—instead of, say, a bike lane, which would be handy at the north end where it’s flatter than Polk—it’s also true that <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/S-F-s-Van-Ness-BRT-created-a-ridership-boom-17556984.php">Van Ness BRT has been wildly successful</a>. Maybe Van Ness qualifies as a transit plus car street.</p>
<p>But examples like these are the exception, not the rule. Reflecting on 11 years on the SFMTA board, <a href="https://sf.streetsblog.org/2021/08/04/exit-interview-with-sfmta-director-cheryl-brinkman/">Cheryl Brinkman called Polk Street</a> “the most missed opportunity… It still makes me angry and sad. We still don’t have that cross-city bike connection. Polk Street is still just not a good bike street.” As Brinkman said that, the City was actively resisting making what turned out to be <a href="https://sf.streetsblog.org/2022/01/10/eyes-on-the-compromise-plastic-and-paint-on-one-block-of-polk-is-not-how-you-save-lives/">bare-minimum safety improvements</a>, even after a death.</p>
<p>“Transit streets, bike streets, and car streets” are a fiction. From Valencia to Polk, to Haight, to watered-down Slow Lake, they’re all car streets.</p>
<p>And if we took the <a href="https://www.sfmta.com/blog/san-franciscos-transit-first-policy-turns-50">Transit First policy</a> at face value, they’d <em>all</em> be bike streets and transit streets. None of them would be car streets, at least not to the extent of Guerrero, Franklin, or Oak. But that’s <a href="/2021/03/22/recommitting_transit_first_sfmta/">a whole nother essay</a>.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:dc" role="doc-endnote">
<p>According to <a href="https://ddot.dc.gov/sites/default/files/dc/sites/ddot/publication/attachments/ddot_bike_facilities_poster_96x48in_0.pdf">a report co-authored by Jamie Parks</a>, who now directs the SFMTA department that designed the Valencia plan and was tasked with <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/01/police-bike-lane-future-valencia-street/">defending it to an SF audience</a>. <a href="#fnref:dc" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:throughtravel" role="doc-endnote">
<p>From 2020 to 2022, Page and Lake were Slow Streets that didn’t allow through traffic, but while they are still nominally Slow Streets, SFMTA has removed the “local traffic only” signs, and <a href="https://streamable.com/pdls5g">Jeffrey Tumlin told drivers</a> the rule no longer applies. Page’s diverters are great, but none affect the westbound direction from Octavia to Stanyan. Mission Street has forced right turns for non-Muni vehicles, but even if those were actually obeyed, they only apply to northbound traffic. <a href="#fnref:throughtravel" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:slowstreet" role="doc-endnote">
<p>This is the <a href="https://www.sfmta.com/projects/slow-streets-program">official goal for the Slow Streets program</a>, which Lake is technically still part of. Lake and Page met both criteria in the <a href="https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/reports-and-documents/2021/10/slow_street_eval_summary_final_10202021_update.pdf">summer 2021 evaluation</a>, but Lake only barely met the speed criterion, and both streets have seen increased traffic volume and speed after <a href="https://sf.streetsblog.org/2023/02/08/open-letter-to-sfmta-stop-watering-down-slow-streets/">implementations were watered down</a>. I’m confident enough to assert now that Lake fails the speed goal; a forthcoming evaluation will reveal just how badly it misses it. <em>Update, April 28, 2023</em>: <a href="https://www.telraam.net/en/location/9000004855">Data gathered by a Slow Lake supporter</a> via a Telraam camera shows that the 85th percentile speed is actually below 15 mph most times of day, but that the volume of cars greatly exceeds the 1,000 threshold: it was 1,617 cars on April 26th. <a href="#fnref:slowstreet" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:endorsements1" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Quoted in Lingzi Chen, <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/04/valencia-center-bike-lane-pilot-approved/">Valencia center bike lane pilot approved</a>, <em>Mission Local</em>, April 4, 2023. <a href="#fnref:endorsements1" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:endorsements2" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Quoted in Eleni Balakrishnan, <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/03/center-bikeway-valencia-sf-to-pass-without-support/">Valencia center bikeway likely to pass, despite weak support</a>, <em>Mission Local</em>, March 30, 2023. <a href="#fnref:endorsements2" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:endorsements3" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Quoted in Garrett Leahy, <a href="https://sfstandard.com/transportation/valencia-street-bike-lane-san-francisco-transit-approval/">Controversial bike lane in middle of SF’s Valencia Street approved by transit bosses</a>, <em>SF Standard</em>, April 4, 2023. <a href="#fnref:endorsements3" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
https://scott.mn/2023/04/05/monkeybrains_mission_kids_harassment_intimidationOne day of harassment, intimidation, and vandalism from Monkeybrains and Mission Kids2023-04-05T00:00:00-07:002023-04-05T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/gwy-destroyed-beds.jpg" alt="The aftermath of someone associated with Monkeybrains or Mission Kids upturning and destroying two garden beds in which seedlings were planted and cared for by volunteers. Picture from an anonymous volunteer, used by permission." />
<figcaption>The aftermath of someone associated with Monkeybrains or Mission Kids upturning and destroying two garden beds in which seedlings were planted and cared for by volunteers. Picture from an anonymous volunteer, used by permission.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Recently I’ve been volunteering with <a href="https://missiongreenway.org/">the Greenway Project</a>, a community effort to turn an unused industrial lot in the Mission District with no known owner into a public green space for all, lined with trees and pollinator habitat, growing free food, and serving as an educational resource. The project is overwhelmingly popular with neighbors. Most are surprised to learn the land isn’t private property, since a few adjacent business owners have long fenced it for private parking, doing nothing to steward the land.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, our efforts are strongly opposed by two newcomer businesses that feel entitled to park there for free, indefinitely: the private preschool <a href="https://missionkidssf.org/" rel="noreferrer">Mission Kids</a> and the ISP <a href="https://www.monkeybrains.net/" rel="noreferrer">Monkeybrains</a>. This Tuesday, their opposition crossed over into personal insults, harassment, intimidation, threats of violence, and the destruction of two of our garden beds—all over the course of three hours from noon to 3pm.</p>
<p>These businesses know they have no serious legal argument to any rights to the parcel and that the neighbors don’t support their land grab. They’re desperate to hold onto their free parking, so they’re trying to create a toxic environment for our volunteers and visitors so we give up.</p>
<h2 id="background">Background</h2>
<p>For the full story of the land, parcel 36, and the Greenway Project (formerly Mission Greenway), see our <a href="https://missiongreenway.org/">project website</a> and:</p>
<ul>
<li>2017: <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2017/12/parcel-36-the-lot-san-franciscos-county-city-and-tax-collector-forgot/">Parcel 36: the lot San Francisco’s county, city and tax collector forgot</a>, <em>Mission Local</em></li>
<li>March 2018: <a href="https://missiongreenway.org/the-mission-greenway-is-born/">The Greenway is born</a>, Greenway Project blog</li>
<li>October 2022: <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2022/10/mission-greenway-mission-kids-parcel-36-railroad-right-of-way/">Guerrilla gardening action on unclaimed Mission parcel draws joy, anger</a>, <em>Mission Local</em></li>
<li>November 2022: <a href="https://missiongreenway.org/october/">October action</a>, Greenway Project blog</li>
<li>January: <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/01/tensions-planters-guerrilla-gardeners-mission-greenway-neighbors-businesses/">Tensions mount between guerrilla gardeners and neighboring businesses</a>, <em>Mission Local</em></li>
<li>February: <a href="https://missiongreenway.substack.com/p/vandalized-planters-new-neighbor">Vandalized planters + new neighbor might park trucks on greenway</a>, Greenway Project newsletter</li>
<li>February: <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2023/02/monkeybrains-heinzer-warehouse-parcel-mission-greenway-parcel-36-dispute/">Monkeybrains buys Heinzer warehouse, butts heads with gardeners</a>, <em>Mission Local</em></li>
<li>March: <a href="https://missiongreenway.substack.com/p/spring-time-on-the-parcel">Monkeybrains’ falsified building permit to fence off the greenway and our appeal</a>, Greenway Project newsletter</li>
</ul>
<p>We’re most active on the Greenway every Sunday afternoon, when typically lots of people are there and there’s no drama. This past Saturday we partnered with <a href="https://mappsf.com/">MAPP</a> on a lovely <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Cqjco-lJCJD/">community event</a> with singing, flowers, and pottery.</p>
<p>But some volunteers come to maintain the garden and grounds almost every day. We’re also trying to create regular public hours during the week when the neighborhood can count on the space being open and come enjoy it. Public schools have reached out to us to bring students as an educational outing. And specifically, this Tuesday we were joined by a young volunteer working towards community service credit at an SF high school.</p>
<p>That’s why I went in at noon, bringing my laptop so I could tether and get some work done as well.</p>
<p>I knew there might be some hostility from the opposing businesses, but figured with several of us there, it would be manageable. I was completely unprepared for the level of escalation. I didn’t end up getting much work done.</p>
<h2 id="unpermitted-construction-and-a-jeer-from-a-window">Unpermitted construction and a jeer from a window</h2>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/gwy-heinzer-vehicles.jpg" alt="Large number of vehicles parked on parcel 36, mostly behind the Heinzer warehouse, owned by Monkeybrains." />
</figure>
<p>We were locked out at the Treat Ave gate. We co-operatively daisy chain our lock with one Mission Kids has access to, but they recently stopped returning the favor and began locking us out, including today.</p>
<p>So I entered the parcel from 22nd St, finding the gates open. Immediately I saw an unusually large number of parked vehicles including trucks around Monkeybrains’ warehouse. Another truck drove in past me and parked by the warehouse right after I took this picture. I heard sounds of construction inside, though no permits have been issued:</p>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/gwy-no-permits.png" alt="The San Francisco Property Information Map website shows no active permits for 933 Treat Ave." />
<figcaption>The San Francisco Property Information Map website shows no active permits for 933 Treat Ave.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ignoring this, I sat down and opened my book to read for a bit while waiting for other volunteers to show up.</p>
<p>I was surprised by a voice behind me calling out, “It’s over, Scott.” I turned around, confused, and a man I’d never seen before was poking his head out the upper-story corner window of the warehouse. He added, “Time to get a job,” and laughed. I asked who he was and started to get my phone out to take a picture, but he ducked inside. I later learned it was Rudy Rucker, owner of Monkeybrains. I went back to my book, but it was hard to focus.</p>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/gwy-heinzer-window.jpg" alt="The window Rudy Rucker, owner of Monkeybrains, jeered at me from." />
<figcaption>The window Rudy Rucker, owner of Monkeybrains, jeered at me from.</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2 id="locked-in">Locked in</h2>
<p>As two other volunteers arrived, I saw a car that seemed to be heading out via the Treat gate and went over there to see if I could make sure it stayed open for our Tuesday afternoon open hours. As the car drove out, I placed myself and my bicycle in the entryway across the path the gate would have to travel to close. The woman who’d opened the gate, who was later identified to me as Mission Kids’ co-director Christina Maluenda Marchiel, explained that she was trying to close the gate. I told Christina we are working to maintain the garden every day and need access. She said we could get access via the 22nd St gate, which was open. I said we like to have it open on both sides. She said, “OK,” and we stood there looking at each other smiling and saying nothing for a while. She started texting and then walked away in silence and entered the school. I sat down.</p>
<p>Soon after, Christina and the other co-director of Mission Kids, Heather Lubeck, came back over and closed the gate again, locking us in. Heather came over to confront us. She told us because we were “strangers,” we couldn’t be there while the school is in session, and some crazy story about there having been a shooting (we’re not aware of any such incident on or around the parcel), and finally demanded we “leave this property.” As soon as I started recording video, however, Heather immediately stopped talking, looked down, and walked away. The only further thing she said was after my fellow volunteer narrated, “This woman’s been policing the parcel. She doesn’t own this parcel,” Heather cut in with, “And neither do you” before continuing to walk away.</p>
<p>Our high schooler volunteer was there in the middle of all of this. They knew it was a contentious, political project, but we apologized for the rude introduction. This was already a lot more than any of us were expecting but it was about to get worse.</p>
<h2 id="monkeybrains-owner-yells-at-us">Monkeybrains owner yells at us</h2>
<p>I was writing a social media post about the harassment that had happened so far when the Monkeybrains owner Rudy Rucker walked over to yell at me again, now from the other side of the Treat Ave fence. He told us to “stop fucking with Mission Kids” (yes, he used that colorful language next to a preschool). At this point I only knew he was the same person who’d yelled at me from the window. He again called me Scott several times, but still wouldn’t tell me his name, saying only “I’m the owner of the warehouse.” I started recording which resulted in this:</p>
<video src="/images/gwy-rudy-threat.mp4" controls=""></video>
<p><em>Me</em>: You’re in a public space. [Just as I hit record, Rudy said he didn’t consent to being recorded, which is not legally required when someone is in a public space.]</p>
<p><em>Rudy</em>: You’re trespassing [inaudible], get out of here.</p>
<p>He begins to walk away, then turns back and points at the camera.</p>
<p><em>Rudy</em>: This man Scott who’s filming me was confronting the, uh, local… preschoolers… and being a jackass.</p>
<h2 id="mission-kids-directors-husband-threatens-us">Mission Kids director’s husband threatens us</h2>
<p>Moments after this, another man drove up and, out of nowhere, demanded to know who touched his wife. We all told him we had no idea who he was, who his wife was, or what incident he was referring to. He said that one of us had touched his wife, and that crossed a line, and when he found out who it was, he was going to put a stop to it. He was kind of all over the place, saying the cops were on their way, but also motioning for me to come out and fight him, and finally saying he was going to wait as long as it took for the gate to be opened (recall that we were locked in by Mission Kids and didn’t have a key, which we told him), and he would kick our asses and he could take all three of us.</p>
<p>After I took out my phone, he, too, stopped talking, but stood hovering at the fence, staring at us. We moved seats to a different location in the garden to get further away from him and went back to carrying on our conversation. Or tried to. I tried to keep calm, but was shaken knowing that Brian might follow through on his violent threat. Eventually he disappeared into Mission Kids and emerged holding a sandwich, which he ate, looking satisfied. Then he returned to standing at the fence menacingly.</p>
<p>Finally, about an hour after the man arrived, police officers did show up at the fence. A fellow volunteer went and explained the situation to them. The man turned out to be Brian Marchiel, the husband of Christina Maluenda Marchiel, the Mission Kids co-director who had tried to close the gate on me. He told an embellished version of that incident with a false detail in which I had touched Christina, which wouldn’t have made any sense. Based on that, he tried to get the officers to press charges against me for battery. The officers didn’t appear to take the allegation very seriously, especially after Brian admitted the school didn’t own parcel 36 and my fellow volunteer explained the situation and Mission Kids’ history of harassing us. In fact, an officer told us that because Mission Kids doesn’t own parcel 36, their putting locks on the gate is illegal.</p>
<h2 id="garden-beds-vandalized">Garden beds vandalized</h2>
<p>At this point I was desperate to use a restroom. Normally, we can just go across the street to the public restroom at Parque Niños Unidos, but because Mission Kids locked us in on the Treat side, and because I didn’t want us to split up given all the threats and harassment, it wasn’t that simple. So, unfortunately, I left along with two of the three remaining volunteers/visitors, leaving one talking to the officer and cleaning up.</p>
<p>As they walked out a few minutes later, that volunteer noticed the overturned garden beds and took the photo that opens this post, above. I don’t know for sure who committed that act of vandalism, but given the timing and the threats that were made, I believe it was Rudy, Brian, or someone else connected to Mission Kids and/or Monkeybrains. Whoever did it also ripped out the seedlings in several other garden beds, all on the 22nd St side of the parcel.</p>
<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/gwy-bed-22nd-harrison.jpeg" alt="One of the destroyed garden beds when it was still intact, in the northeast corner of the parcel near 22nd St and Harrison, beside a small tree also planted by a Greenway volunteer, seen on Sunday, March 26." />
<figcaption>One of the destroyed garden beds when it was still intact, in the northeast corner of the parcel near 22nd St and Harrison, beside a small tree also planted by a Greenway volunteer, seen on Sunday, March 26.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Monkeybrains has a history of moving the two beds that were overturned. Originally sited near the 22nd St gate, in the first week after Monkeybrains bought the Heinzer warehouse in February, they moved them to the middle of the parcel. Recently, volunteers moved one of them back to its intended spot near 22nd St and Harrison, seen above. We found it moved back to the middle of the parcel the next day, where it stood until it was destroyed.</p>
<p>Besides the destruction of the planter bed itself, the mint, oregano, and strawberries that were growing in those beds could have fed Mission District neighbors. They were still seedlings, but we’ve already given away other Greenway-grown food at the <a href="https://freefarmstand.org/">Free Farm Stand</a> on Sundays. It’s the undoing of months of caring work by volunteers trying to improve their neighborhood and create a green space for all.</p>
<p>All that, because Mission Kids and Monkeybrains want free parking on land that’s not theirs.</p>
<p>Legitimate businesses don’t do any of this. When a legitimate business needs parking, it pays for a location that has parking, rather than trying to destroy community gardens.</p>
<h2 id="how-to-help">How to help</h2>
<p>If this motivates you to help us build back, we’d love your help. As I said up top, these businesses are doing this because they’re desperate. They know they have no serious legal case to any rights to parcel 36, and they know neighbors prefer a public green space, not a private parking lot. Their last resort is to harass, intimidate, and threaten and hope they make it so toxic that our volunteers will burn out.</p>
<p>On the <a href="https://missiongreenway.org/">Friends of the Mission Greenway</a> website, you can subscribe to our newsletter, sign our petition, and find out about <a href="https://missiongreenway.org/events/">free events</a>. We are also inviting neighbors to send comments in support of our <a href="https://missiongreenway.org/wp-content/uploads/APPEAL-FILED-NO.-23-008-@-957-TREAT-AVENUE-1.pdf">appeal</a> of another Monkeybrains scheme—a fraudulent building permit that would allow Monkeybrains to build an iron gate to keep us out of the Greenway, which was issued even though they don’t own the property.</p>
<p>You can come to the Greenway on any Sunday afternoon, when volunteers are around, and help out with gardening or other things if you want or just socialize. If you’re in the neighborhood and have a flexible schedule and are not too conflict-averse, we could also really use more people during weekday events/work times just to be in the space and observe anything that happens. The afternoon of harassment I describe would probably have been much less eventful if we’d had 10 or 20 neighbors there with us versus 2 to 5 people.</p>
<p>I also hope you’ll share this story with people you know who have a connection to Mission Kids or Monkeybrains. A lot of neighbors use Monkeybrains as their ISP because they want to support a local business that seems cool. I did: I’m an 8-year customer and recommended them until recently. And I can’t imagine Mission Kids preschool parents would feel reassured to know that the preschool director’s spouse comes in trying to start fights next door while school is in session. These actions are outrageous and I hope publishing them brings some pressure on these businesses to stop behaving so badly.</p>
https://scott.mn/2023/03/29/bike_safety_gig_workBike safety and gig work2023-03-29T00:00:00-07:002023-03-29T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<p>I was happy to see Kate Wagner’s piece in <em>The Nation</em> <a href="https://www.thenation.com/article/society/bicycles-cycling-bike-safety/">calling for a systemic approach to bicycle safety</a>. The status quo is intolerable: drivers are killing bicyclists on an almost daily basis. “Each of these unnecessary deaths is blood on the hands of feckless politicians who refuse to do the necessary work to create streets that would ameliorate the carnage because it requires inconveniencing a certain type of crank who thinks the city exists as a place to park their car.”</p>
<p>But bike advocates can fall into a trap of individualizing the problem too much, calling “car drivers… the villains, those who bike and use public transit their virtuous foils.” More than blaming “someone’s lapse of attention” for a near-death experience, we should look at “the fact that the way our streets and cities are designed creates scenarios in which a lapse of attention can prove deadly.”</p>
<p>The solution: “mass action and solidarity” in the vein of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/05/amsterdam-bicycle-capital-world-transport-cycling-kindermoord">Amsterdam’s 1970s die-ins</a>, of which Kate sees an echo in Chicago’s contemporary <a href="https://bikegridnow.org/posts/CBGN-direct-action-101">Bike Grid Now protests</a>. (See also <a href="https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/10/04/the-brake-how-to-start-grassroots-safe-streets-movement-in-your-city/">Safe Street Rebel</a> in San Francisco.) That’s how we force the powers that be to change our streets and guarantee “the right to the city… a right to free movement.”</p>
<p>I think she’s absolutely right, particularly in her point about not demonizing the gig delivery driver who double-parks in a bike lane, because they’re a cog in a brutally exploitative machine that expects them to meet quotas or else. That’s why when Safe Street Rebel did a <a href="https://sf.streetsblog.org/2022/01/26/valencia-street-just-a-minute-pilot-protest/">“Just a Minute” protest on Valencia Street</a>, we didn’t yell at double-parked drivers or key their cars. Instead, we blocked the travel lane <em>around</em> the double-parked car, creating a temporary protected bike lane so bicyclists could safely proceed (and, as a side effect, traffic was blocked) for the duration of the dropoff or pickup.</p>
<p>It’s not that I don’t understand the urge to punish drivers who park in bike lanes. Drivers definitely think that’s less of a big deal than double-parking blocking the traffic lane (but leaving the bike lane open)—which would get them honked at by other drivers. One of the strongest motivators for a driver is to avoid angering other drivers and getting honked at. The result is that when they can’t or don’t want to find a legal parking spot, drivers opt to imperil bicyclists rather than inconveniencing other drivers. Clearly a bad outcome. Siccing the cops on drivers to write an expensive ticket is an attempt to change this calculus. But there’s a practical problem with this approach.<sup id="fnref:problem" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:problem" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup></p>
<p>A worker for a so-called “platform” like Uber, Lyft, Doordash, or Postmates is essentially disposable to their employer.<sup id="fnref:employer" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:employer" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup> The gig economy <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/jia-tolentino/the-gig-economy-celebrates-working-yourself-to-death">celebrates working oneself nearly to death</a>, and with earnings <a href="https://transform.ucsc.edu/on-demand-and-on-the-edge/">as low as $270 a week</a>, bringing home enough to make rent is a matter of completing as many rides/deliveries as possible, as fast as possible. When a worker can’t keep up due to declining health, crashes their car, or gets their car repossessed after missed loan payments, gig companies simply get another worker. There is always another person desperate for work.</p>
<p>Even if we imagine a world in which police rigorously and non-racistly give citations for blocked bike lanes, that citation goes to the worker struggling to make ends meet—not the platform employing them. The platform replaces them with another worker and continues to demand a level of performance that’s impossible to achieve without illegal, hazardous parking.</p>
<p>For this reason, I viewed the passage of California’s Prop 22, which classified gig workers as “independent contractors” not subject to a guaranteed minimum wage, as a blow not just to labor, but to safe streets. As SF State Professor <a href="https://www.sfpublicpress.org/what-s-f-could-do-better-to-decarbonize-transportation/">Jason Henderson said in a podcast appearance in March 2020</a>, for parking citations to have an effect here, we would need a legal way to pass over the precarious worker who Uber, Lyft and their ilk use as a human shield,<sup id="fnref:shield" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:shield" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup> and instead give a “billion-dollar parking ticket” directly to the companies that expect and profit from this behavior. Prop 22 made that much harder.</p>
<p>A big part of improving bike safety, of course, is to emphasize infrastructural change over enforcement, in keeping with the CDC’s frequently cited <a href="https://lmb.org/2022/01/bike-safety-and-the-hierarchy-of-controls/">hierarchy of safety controls</a>.<sup id="fnref:hierarchy" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:hierarchy" class="footnote" rel="footnote">4</a></sup> But we do need to change the culture of driving that sees blocking a bike lane or crosswalk as no big deal. It’s just that it won’t work to change that culture on the backs of precarious workers who don’t <em>have</em> the freedom to take their time and park safer even if they want to.</p>
<p>One specific way bike advocates can express the solidarity Kate calls for, then, is to support efforts to <a href="https://gigworkersrising.org/">organize gig workers</a> (a <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2022/07/labor-organizers-sf-gig-workers-tough-target/">notoriously difficult effort</a>), and help stave off adoption of Prop 22–like laws in other states. The bicyclist and the gig driver, much as we might appear to be enemies on the street, actually have something in common: our health is endangered by the cheap labor and high productivity gig employers demand.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:problem" role="doc-endnote">
<p>Actually, several problems. The first is that the bike community has no actual ability to control the police, who not only display patterns of <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2022/03/sfpd-stop-and-searches-are-down-but-black-people-are-still-disproportionately-targeted/">extreme racial bias</a>, not only <a href="https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/bayarea/heatherknight/article/sfpd-traffic-tickets-17355651.php">barely write traffic tickets for actually dangerous infractions at all</a>, but themselves harbor strong anti-bike, pro-car biases. In fact, I participated in a “Just a Minute” action on Valencia where one of the cars we had to create a temporary people-protected bike lane around was… a cop car, stopping in the bike lane to get coffee two blocks from Mission Station. So if you call for more traffic cops, they’re more likely to cite bike riders, especially of color, who are <a href="/2023/03/13/bicycles_and_stop_signs/">safely rolling stop signs</a> than to do anything about dangerous driving. <a href="#fnref:problem" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:employer" role="doc-endnote">
<p>I refuse to accept gig companies’ line that their employees are in fact “independent contractors,” even if they have so far <a href="https://calmatters.org/economy/2023/03/prop-22-appeal/">gotten away with writing that absurdity into law</a> in California. <a href="#fnref:employer" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:shield" role="doc-endnote">
<p>When gig workers <em>are</em> ticketed for blocking bike lanes, the fine is sometimes later waived due to financial hardship. It’s hard to disagree with this, but it’s infuriating that their bosses, who are getting richer than ever, aren’t asked to make up the difference. <a href="#fnref:shield" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:hierarchy" role="doc-endnote">
<p>A popular graphic often shared on social media and <a href="https://www.freestylecyclists.org/hierarchy-of-controls/">reproduced on FreestyleCyclists.org</a> provides examples of applying the hierarchy to streets: at the highest level is elimination of the hazard (ban cars), then substitution (smaller cars, buses), then engineering (curb- and bollard-protected bike lanes), then process (signs, enforcement and educational campaigns) and lastly personal protective equipment (helmets, hi-viz clothing). <a href="#fnref:hierarchy" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>
https://scott.mn/2023/03/13/bicycles_and_stop_signsBicycles, stop signs, and scofflaw motorists2023-03-13T00:00:00-07:002023-03-13T00:00:00-07:00Scott Feeneyscott@oceanbase.orghttps://scott.mn/<figure class="image">
<img src="/images/stop.jpg" alt="An all-way stop sign at an intersection of residential city streets." />
</figure>
<p>What do you do at an all-way stop? Three things:</p>
<ol>
<li>Let any pedestrians who are crossing the street go first.</li>
<li>Let any traffic that got to the intersection before you, and that is crossing your path, go first.</li>
<li>Come to a complete stop, regardless of whether there are pedestrians and cross traffic.</li>
</ol>
<p>On a bicycle or scooter, #1 and #2 still make sense, but #3 doesn’t.</p>
<p>Walking, the most fundamental, slowest form of transport, deserves priority. And when you have a large number of people moving through a space—even if they’re all on bikes, as with a busy intersection of two trails—taking turns makes sense.</p>
<p>But coming to a complete stop is far less justifiable when you’re not in a car. The car driver has far less visibility around them, has less ability to hear people approaching the intersection, and does more damage if they hit somebody because their 5,390 pound car<sup id="fnref:carweight" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:carweight" class="footnote" rel="footnote">1</a></sup>, going as little as 3 miles per hour, has three times the momentum of a 200 pound bike+rider going 25 miles per hour.</p>
<p>And in particular, a bicycle rider who comes to a complete stop will be going much slower when they do enter the intersection, making it harder to avoid collision when a driver goes out of turn or fails to stop. A complete stop can actually put you more at risk.</p>
<p>That’s probably why states that adopted “bicycle stop as yield” laws, aka “Idaho stop” or “safety stop,” <a href="https://cal.streetsblog.org/2022/05/06/nhtsa-releases-the-facts-on-bicycle-stop-as-yield-laws-they-increase-safety/">saw improvements in safety</a>.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, in California car dominance has powerful allies, and our state has failed to pass such a common-sense law. Assembly Member Tasha Boerner Horvath’s <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB73">AB 73</a> currently aims to move in that direction. It’s her third attempt to fix this bad law, with each iteration having been more limited in scope than the last.</p>
<h2 id="mayors-and-governors-block-progress">Mayors and governors block progress</h2>
<p>In 2016, San Francisco’s <a href="https://www.kqed.org/news/10839061/san-franciscos-mayor-vetoes-rolling-stop-policy-for-bicyclists">Mayor Ed Lee vetoed a bicycle stop-as-yield ordinance</a> after it passed the Board of Supervisors 6-5, championed by Supervisor John Avalos. The votes in favor included then-Supervisor, now-Mayor London Breed. It might be worth trying again, since Governor Gavin Newsom has stymied efforts at the state level.</p>
<p>In 2021, Newsom <a href="https://cal.streetsblog.org/2021/10/12/newsoms-deeply-disappointing-vetoes-of-traffic-safety-bills/">vetoed AB 122</a>, a bicycle stop-as-yield law introduced by Boerner Horvath with support from SF’s Phil Ting and Scott Wiener. Newsom’s veto message called the bill “especially concerning for children, who may not know how to judge vehicle speeds or exercise the necessary caution to yield to traffic when appropriate.”</p>
<p>While no data supported this emotional appeal to children, Boerner Horvath obliged the governor and made the 2022 version of her bill, <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202120220AB1713">AB 1713</a>, apply only to bike riders 18 and over. It again passed the Assembly, but was never called to a vote in the Senate because the author received word <a href="https://www.calbike.org/calbike-statement-withdrawal-of-bicycle-safety-stop-bill-ab-1713/">Newsom planned to veto it again</a>—confirming that his reference to children had been empty concern-trolling.</p>
<p>The series of vetoes shows how much elite resistance there is, even today, to reforming the laws that made the car king of our streets. Stop signs, after all, had no place in the pre-car streets of American cities, where people walking, bicycling, and riding horses freely mingled and the pace of traffic was much less. Like traffic signals, stop signs were introduced as part of the automobile industry’s highly successful effort to redefine streets as places where only cars belonged—not people on foot, who were “jaywalking,” a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AFn7MiJz_s">newly invented crime</a>, and were blamed for their own deaths if they stood in the way of cars<sup id="fnref:carindustry" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:carindustry" class="footnote" rel="footnote">2</a></sup>.</p>
<p>So we plod along and try again to move the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3345366">legal regime of car culture</a>, like a parked SUV that we must combine our strength to push out of the bike lane.</p>
<p>The third iteration of Boerner Horvath’s bill, <a href="https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240AB73">AB 73</a>, states intent to enact a “stop-as-yield pilot program.” Perhaps that means certain cities would legalize bicycle stop as yield, collect data, and report back on how it’s working before taking the change statewide. You could be forgiven for thinking this an asinine, redundant exercise considering that the change was <a href="https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2022-03/Bicyclist-Yield-As-Stop-Fact-Sheet-032422-v3-tag.pdf">already found by NHTSA to improve safety in nine states where it was implemented</a>, including Washington, Oregon, North Dakota, and Arkansas. But pilots and studies are often the price of progress when an executive like Newsom resists change. California Bicycle Coalition has already indicated support for <a href="https://www.calbike.org/calbikes-2023-legislative-agenda/">AB 73 along with a slate of exciting, ambitious bills</a> that will perhaps themselves be vetoed and then watered down into pilot programs in the future.<sup id="fnref:calbike" role="doc-noteref"><a href="#fn:calbike" class="footnote" rel="footnote">3</a></sup></p>
<h2 id="motorists-and-the-law">Motorists and the law</h2>
<p>Meanwhile, motorists roll stop signs every day. The “California roll” is bad enough, but increasingly, walking and biking around San Francisco, I see drivers blow stop signs entirely. It might have caused a tragedy in my neighborhood last year.</p>
<p>People who knew Abraham Joshua, a <a href="https://missionlocal.org/2022/03/traffic-victim-abraham-joshua-son-of-refugees-princeton-graduate-teacher-was-at-the-center-of-it-all/">popular teacher at Mission Preparatory School</a>, recently remembered him on the one-year anniversary of his death, placing flowers on a street pole at 22nd and Harrison streets. That’s where, on the morning of March 2, 2022, he was riding a scooter to school when a truck driver hit and killed him. He would be 24.</p>
<p>After the collision, the truck driver blamed Joshua, known as Abe to his students, for running a stop sign at the four-way stop intersection. I talked to witnesses of the crash scene, and they weren’t buying it. Based on how far Abe’s body was found from the intersection, the truck had significant speed. It’s almost certainly the truck driver who ran the stop sign, thinking that this would be a great way to make up some time and not expecting cross traffic early in the morning.</p>
<p>Among motorists, there’s a popular myth that bicyclists are always breaking the law. In reality, <a href="https://www.outsideonline.com/outdoor-adventure/biking/cyclists-comply-traffic-laws-more-drivers/">drivers break the law more often</a>, and in particular, as NHTSA writes in its fact sheet, drivers are “mostly noncompliant with the law on yielding to bicyclists’ right-of-way.” And drivers who break the law pose much greater dangers to those around them than cyclists who do. Just look at Abe’s crash: who was around to tell their side of the story, and who wasn’t?</p>
<h2 id="changing-law-and-culture">Changing law and culture</h2>
<p>With this in mind, I’m loath to police the behavior of other people who ride bikes. After all, it was motor vehicle drivers who <a href="https://sfbayca.com/2023/01/11/as-traffic-deaths-mount-san-francisco-launches-online-tool-to-track-fatal-incidents/">killed 34 people in San Francisco last year</a>. Bicycle and scooter riders killed zero people.</p>
<p>But while it’s not <em>deadly</em>, it’s still frustrating when people on bikes don’t observe the yielding aspect of stop sign behavior—especially when cutting off pedestrians or bicycle cross traffic. It represents bringing the <a href="https://unevenearth.org/2018/08/the-social-ideology-of-the-motorcar/">me-first, ultra-individualistic attitude of driving</a>, over to bicycling.</p>
<p>Sustainability requires those of us living in rich countries not just to switch to electric cars, <a href="https://logicmag.io/nature/what-green-costs/">which have their own damaging environmental costs at scale</a>, but to phase out the mass driving of personal cars in favor of bicycles, scooters, and public transport whenever we can.</p>
<p>That switch gives us a chance to rethink how we move through space. Instead of traveling as fast as possible at all costs, we can take it easy and cooperate more with each other. As we seek to change laws that bolster car dependency, let’s also change the culture to one where we ride friendly and take turns.</p>
<div class="footnotes" role="doc-endnotes">
<ol>
<li id="fn:carweight" role="doc-endnote">
<p>In the case of a Tesla X, whose “self-driving” mode was designed to <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2022/2/1/22912099/tesla-rolling-stop-disable-recall-nhtsa-update">deliberately perform rolling stops</a> until ordered to stop that by NHTSA. <a href="#fnref:carweight" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:carindustry" role="doc-endnote">
<p>The industry’s fight to reconfigure the streets for cars is well summarized in, for example, Paris Marx: <a href="https://www.versobooks.com/books/3995-road-to-nowhere"><em>Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong about the Future of Transportation</em></a>, Verso Books, 2022, ch. 1. <a href="#fnref:carindustry" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
<li id="fn:calbike" role="doc-endnote">
<p>I’m being snarky toward our state’s tepid legislative culture, not toward CalBike, who do great work within the system we have. <a href="#fnref:calbike" class="reversefootnote" role="doc-backlink">↩</a></p>
</li>
</ol>
</div>