After Election Week, SF Continues to Support Muni over Cars

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.”