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How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history

seungylee14.substack.com

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Re: How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history

#81

Post by Symbiote »

laurencerowe wrote: post #52
tomc1985 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cost disease. Other countries have been completing public works projects of similar-or-larger scope for dramatically less than it costs here. How can anyone rationally accept $175 MILLION (pinky finger) for bridge planning? There are two many people sticking their hands out in American projects.

Most other counties don’t attempt to build motorways through cities the way we do in the US. Until moving to San Francisco I’d never seen a 6 lanes each way motorway. Gained a new appreciation for the public transit in U.K. cities outside of London which I’d previously considered shitty.

M25 from J14-J15 (Heathrow Airport), but I think that's the only place. And it's not through a city.

Re: How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history

#82

Post by Lammy »

teakettle42 wrote: post #68
Lammy wrote: post #65

> But Jenkins vehemently opposed BART’s extension on the “human aspects involved in such a project.” You don’t say? http://radicalcartography.net/bayarea.html That little spot of blue there in Marin County is Marin City, the remnants of the World War 2 ship-building company Marinship’s company town. > In a 1960 letter to a bridge district board member, Jenkins argued that the only hope for BART to succeed was with en…

Imagine if Marin looked like the rest of the areas surrounding SF: endless, endless suburban sprawl. They made the right choice to prioritize open space and minimal development. You can ascribe whatever motives you like, but we know what the result would have looked like, and it was not a winning idea.

False dichotomy imo since the sprawl is a direct result of the same exclusionary mindset that economically disincentivizes (and often outright forbids) upzoning. Remember that the very concept of single-family zoning / minimum parcel sizes was a Californian invention, first codified in 1916 in Berkeley shortly after the state passed a law prohibiting land ownership by nonwhites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Alien_Land_Law_of_1...

Re: How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history

#83

Post by Lammy »

warning26 wrote: post #71
gumby wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember the elevated freeway above what is now Hayes Valley, or the huge elevated freeway that blocked the view of the bay and made the embarcadero dark and grungy? And they wanted to build more .

Yup, this plan called for not one but two freeways through golden gate park. After all, why waste space on a park when it could be freeways?

To be fair it was going to be underground through the park

Re: How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history

#84

Post by Lammy »

russellbeattie wrote: post #44

I wonder if this decision contributed to San Francisco's population declining year after year from 1950 until 1980, before growing again. SF's population today is only about 12% larger than it was in 1950. Basically, SF has looked the same from a traffic standpoint for the past 70+ years, which is pretty astounding. Reading the article, it mentions that "traffic control" for buses was one of the reasons pushed for wh…

And on top of that, the rebound is not evenly distributed: https://www.forbes.com/sites/priceonomics/2016/05/11/the-afr...

Re: How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history

#86

Post by CPLX »

teakettle42 wrote: post #40
pvg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're conflating several different strands of this story - the idea that San Mateo withdrew from BART in part for NYMBY-ish and exclusionary reasons is fairly well supported.

It’s fascinating how quickly “NIMBY” has become a very generic and rather vicious moral pejorative applied to anyone that does not support development. It previously described people who did not support development in their neighborhood, but would support it elsewhere. Now it just means “anyone opposed to any development I deem a moral/ethical/equity imperative”. I remember when pro-development sentiment was recogniz…

The three choices are mandate sterilization or birth control, restrict movement with internal borders, or build more housing.

Until the anti-development types acknowledge this they are completely full of shit.

We’ve literally created a situation where the next generation has nowhere to live. That’s why people are mad.

Re: How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history

#87

Post by pjc50 »

jacobolus wrote: post #19
ethbr0 wrote: post #13

It seems like every major infrastructure folly, at its heart, simplifies to "Someone made their career espousing a certain worldview, and when facts changed in future decades, were unwilling or unable to change their now-famous beliefs." In this case, car > rail. Which was true and progressive, for a period! Say, 1950 to 1970? But then became false as the growth rate of cars outscaled roads.

> car > rail. Which was true and progressive, for a period! Say, 1950 to 1970? What does “true and progressive” mean? The freeway expansions of the mid 20th century cutting through city centers were disastrous all over the USA, right from the start. Horrible for urban society, economy, equity, ... Thankfully San Francisco was never turned into https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~2... Great for…

> What does “true and progressive” mean?

"For whom" may be the more pertinent question. It's impossible to untangle mass the politics of transit in that era from the politics of segregation. Hence the famous bus incident.

Re: How BART on the Golden Gate Bridge died: A new history

#90

Post by Doctor_Fegg »

ethbr0 wrote: post #13

It seems like every major infrastructure folly, at its heart, simplifies to "Someone made their career espousing a certain worldview, and when facts changed in future decades, were unwilling or unable to change their now-famous beliefs." In this case, car > rail. Which was true and progressive, for a period! Say, 1950 to 1970? But then became false as the growth rate of cars outscaled roads.

See also John Forester and the cult of “vehicular cycling”.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forester_(cyclist)

https://www.bicycling.com/culture/a32257789/vehicular-cyclin...

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