After Election Week, SF
Continues to Support Muni over Cars
By: Andrew Noerr
With
yet another key city election concluded, San Francisco voters made their voices
heard on many of today’s important issues impacting the city. Two propositions
in particular that seemingly had contradictory goals, Proposition A and
Proposition L, were voted upon in last Tuesday’s city election. Voters approved
of Proposition A that calls for significant financial resources to be dedicated
to improving transit life along with biker and pedestrian safety. However, San
Francisco citizens also rejected Proposition L that would have declared a new
policy concerning numerous demands to make driving cheaper and allocate more
funds to make driving a more desirable option in the city.
Proposition
A specifically needed a 2/3 majority vote, and it achieved that. The city will
be borrowing $500 million through the issuing of bonds in order to improve
infrastructure and transit life in San Francisco. These changes include
building transit-only lanes, separate bike lanes, new traffic signals, and many
improvements to Muni facilities across the city. San Francisco’s Transportation
Task Force disclosed that $10 billion are needed to spur the necessary
advancements for these goals, and in a state that is trying hard to whittle
down its debt, it can sometimes be hard to convince voters that increasing debt
is a solution to any problem in San Francisco.
“(Two-thirds)
is a very high threshold. It was not for sure that it was going to pass,” said
Corey Cook, a political science professor at USF. “Even when you have the
Mayor, the Board of Supervisors, and everybody on board, 66% is still a tough
number to reach because there are people who don’t like to pay taxes, who don’t
like to borrow money… eventually that’s 25% of the electorate right there. The wiggle room is pretty small.”
Nevertheless,
Proposition A passed with a 71.3% of the votes. This outcome clearly shows that
voters care about transit in San Francisco, Cook says, noting that San
Francisco has always been a transit-first city.
To fund the bonds that
are being issued to pay for those changes, the city will be increasing the
property tax that landlords must pay. Landlords are then allowed to make
tenants financially responsible for 50% of the increased property tax. However,
Cook doesn’t believe that the potential increases to tenants’ rents will be
large, as he guessed that landlords will receive a $500 property tax at most
over a span of a year. Half of that
could be shifted towards tenants. That financial burden would then be
distributed among all of the tenants in a living area in the form of rent
increases. It would be less than $100 per person, guessed Cook.
“I wouldn’t be
surprised if rents went up, but I don’t think it will be a lot. I wouldn’t urge
panic for students, but part of the tax can be spread along (to tenants),” said
Cook.
Even with the proposed
increased property tax, Proposition A was successful in this year’s city
election. The same cannot be said for Proposition L though, as 62.42% of San
Francisco voters rejected it. That proposition did not advocate for changes to
be made to Muni and the welfare of pedestrians and bikers, but rather it wanted
to make San Francisco more car-friendly.
Specifically,
Proposition L would have created a new declaration of policy that addressed
potentially changing regulations concerning parking meters, parking tickets,
and traffic flow throughout San Francisco. The policy would have called for
parking meters to not function on Sundays and holidays, and meters would not
operate outside of 9:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m. Also, the city would stop enacting
fees related to parking garages, meters, late parking tickets, and neighborhood
parking permits for five years starting in 2015. While all of that would make
driving a lot cheaper, this proposition also triggered strong reactions about
how the lack of enforcement on parking could actually make driving a lot more
chaotic in San Francisco as well.
“I don't think SF
should make itself more car-friendly but more public transportation- friendly,”
said Anthony Castro, a senior undergraduate at USF who drives to school every
day. “The city is congested enough and parking is a rarity in some
neighborhoods, so I think making the city more car-friendly would add to the
problem.”
It is then clear that San
Francisco voters voiced their sentiments clearly through the previous city
election. The success of Proposition A and the subsequent rejection of
Proposition L confirmed the notion that San Francisco is indeed a transit-first
city. San Francisco may have more citizens driving cars these days, but the
citizens of the city still value public transportation more than ever.
“I think San Francisco
is going to stay transit-friendly for a really long time,” noted Cook. “Giving
the growing density of San Francisco, anticipating a million people in the next
20 years, we can’t get there with cars.”