Friends of Monterey gets $10,000 grant

[jonathan winston]

We're getting Banners for Monterey and funding to identify just what it is that's making our Boulevard so unsafe for its most vulnerable users.

Read on – http://bit.ly/aASbu2

--jon

[cyb...@aol.com]

I can give a short answer to this.  Most major cities have freeways or highways that circumvent their city or are a direct route through the city.  Imagine driving toward Oregon and having to stop every 1/10th of a mile for a stop sign or stoplight if you are driving.  This is what the city of SF is set up for.

There are certain streets or routes that are the most direct way to get from one part of the city to another, or are part of the freeway system.  To get from Daly City to Marin, one cannot use a freeway that circumvents the city; one must use 19th Avenue.    To drive from the Mission neighborhood to the ocean, there is no route that does not go through SF. One must use Monterey street, then Sloat.   People become accustomed to trying to make their direct route as time-efficient as possible.  It might be along the same mind-set as bicyclists who do not stop at stop signs.

I believe that one reason that the Sunnyside neighborhood isn't as well known as Glen Park is because there is no Sunnyside Bart stop.  There is a Glen Park Bart stop.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "sunnysidesf" group.
To post to this group, send email to sunny...@googlegroups.com.
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to sunnysidesf...@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sunnysidesf?hl=en.

[jonathan winston]

Rebecca, 

I have a longer response:

First, we are concentrating on the intersections kids would use if their parents thought it were safe for them to cross alone on their way to school. Scratching the surface, I can argue that freeing our children to walk independently to school as we once did in a social setting with friends far outweighs the convenience of cut-through drivers, especially since we are only talking about delays of mere seconds.

But digging deeper, having more children walk to school has other added beneficial effects to the community:

 

• It will reduce traffic in the area during the morning rush hour and in the afternoon.
• Parents will be free to continue their own commute on foot.
• More foot traffic will provide "eyes on the street" and will be a deterrent to to crime and anti social behavior.
• There will be more foot traffic benefiting local merchants and creating a market for more local businesses within walking distance of the nearby neighborhoods.
• It will result in a reduction air and noise pollution.
• It will increase friendships and acquaintances between neighbors.
• Childhood obesity is worse now than ever. Getting kids to walk even for twenty minutes a day is a step in the right direction

Anyway, Rebecca, I hope you can try to see this from a different perspective. And by the way, the grant is for identifying the problems, not prescribing the solution. We will be surveying as many people in the neighborhood to get their perception of what the safety hazards are on The Boulevard and we'll see what the result will be in September.

--jon

[cyb...@aol.com]

I agree about the unsafe intersections.  I don't even like for my husband to cross Monterey unaccompanied.

  It's too bad that Foerster & Monterey and Edna & Monterey are so dangerous.  If they were not, then I could let Scott walk by himself to catch the bus to school or walk home after the school bus would drop him off.

I'll do a jump-start (for free! no grant money needed!) on identifying the problems as i see them...

#1 - Monterey Blvd, being a prime connection road from one side of the city to the other, creates a sense of frustration when drivers are required to stop at every intersection.  Thus, when there are a few streets in a row without stop signs, drivers feel compelled to "make up" lost time by accelerating to the next intersection.  If, by some act of God or Gavin, Monterey was a free-flowing road, then rainbows and puppies would appear, and drivers would not be upset that each one-block stop sign was adding to their vehicle exhaust.  (I love doing math...imagine the exhaust put out by a car having to spend ten minutes to go five blocks versus a car spending one minute to go those same five blocks)

#2 - I warn my kids to be much more aware of bicycles coming toward them than cars coming toward them.  A car could get a police citation for rolling through a stop sign, thus a car is much more likely to at least slow down at a stop sign than a bicycle would.  A car rolling through a stop sign would probably be going about 5 mph.  A bike would be going about 30 mph.  

[John Stokes]

Congratulations on the grant. Surely a useful way to improve safe crossing is to reduce the distance a pedestrian has to cover, using a curb extension or bulb-out. I know there's some conflict with the bus stop, but there must be some adjustment possible at Edna to allow for this.
The characterization of drivers coming off or going to the freeway or from San Jose Ave as "cut-through drivers" is misguided. If one believes that then one should close the freeway ramps.
John Stokes
Hearst Ave

[jonathan winston]

Good point John and I agree with your implied opinion that the freeway ramps should not be closed and I agree that maybe my characterisation of cross town drivers as cut-through drivers was simplistic.

Still, if you look at this historically, that ramp at I280 was just one of many that were planned for the Glen Park area. The whole city was planned around a freeway grid that thankfully was not completed. In fact the Mission Freeway and the Crosstown freeway would have intersected right about where Glen Park Village is today. Houses were demolished along Bosworth to make way for the freeway before it was cancelled.

So now we have transportation grid that has been broken for fifty years with temporary fixes like Fell, Oak, Van Ness, Masonic,Geary and our own Monterey as band aids over the old Robert Moses inspired auto-centric plan.  Its my personal opinion that we should finally finish what the freeway revolt of the early '60's started and begin to reclaim the streets as the public commons. That means a lot of big goals like making transit more usable and making housing near the workplace more affordable but it can start with simple things like lowering the speed limit by five mile an hour and fixing the crossings so that kids and old  folks can get around independently.

-jon

[John Stokes]

Jon, thanks for taking my points and for the link to the freeway history.

As a supporter of public transit I've always thought it was a great pity that a BART station and a freeway exit are so close to each other: seems to me that a BART station should be surrounded by dense housing and pedestrian-friendly streets, while a freeway off-ramp will by its nature divide the neighborhood and introduce through traffic. Perhaps my comment that "one should close the freeway ramps" - or rather move them - is worth considering more seriously than I first thought.

John