[SDCBC] Fwd: UT Mid City Transit Article Saturday

[John Forester]

Abulifia is playing with words, only with words rather than facts, 
when he argues about the age of cities. The crucial facts concern 
when and how the city had its significant growth. San Diego is an 
automotive city, regardless of the age of its oldest building.

And I have been downtown frequently, by trolley, by bike, and by car; 
and during the working day, also. I know the situation, but I also 
know the situations in many other cities, and San Diego is not nearly 
as congested as many other cities, and is less centralized, also, 
because its recent growth has been in the automotive era.

Abulifia asserts that I think that San Diego need not plan for the 
future. That's just one more ignorant assertion, that depends on 
Abulifia's belief that planning for growth requires much expansion of 
the mass transit system, probably rail based. It doesn't.


At 06:34 PM 1/15/2008, Abulifia wrote:
>I see the "old cities" argument never does quite go away even when 
>it flies in the face of ::REALITY::
>
>Exactly how long does a city have to be existence in order to get 
>its mass transit act together - 100 years? 200?  If that is the 
>criteria, then San Diego, having been visited and named in 1542 by 
>Juan Cabrillo, has that covered and then some.   Now to be fair, San 
>Diego didn't really start to pick up in population until WW II, but 
>even then, we're talking over 50 years to get some kind of mass 
>transit system in place.  The city has had more than enough time to 
>plan for future population growth; It simply chose NOT to.   Whether 
>that was due to political expediency or just plain laziness,  is 
>immaterial.  San Diego did not just come into existence 10 or 20 yrs 
>ago.  It did not just discover that it had a traffic problem.  BTW - 
>If you want to get technical, then SF is actually younger than San 
>Diego having been settled in 1776 vs Cabrillo's 1542 visit.   And 
>Boston, as well as NYC are also considerably younger cities than San 
>Diego by at least almost 100 years.  But I won't quibble with 
>technicalities.  The fact remains that San Diego has had the time to 
>plan for growth.
>
>And as to your assessment that San Diego's mass transit rider 
>population is "small," let me ask you this much - Have you ever 
>taken the trolley downtown?  Or the bus, for that matter?   Have you 
>ever actually been downtown during the week and experienced the 
>magnificence of gridlock and mind numbing fees for parking?  I'm 
>guessing not in this lifetime, otherwise you wouldn't casually make 
>such a staggeringly ignorant statement.
>If the mass transit numbers were so small, Mr. Forester, then 67% of 
>the voters in 2004 would not have approved a 40 yr extension of 
>Transnet, which has been estimated to generate an addtl $14 billion 
>to improve the region's transportation infrastructure.  If your 
>statements were to be given any kind of credibility whatsoever, then 
>you would have this listserv believe that San Diego didn't have a 
>congestion problem OR need to plan for future growth.

John Forester, MS, PE
Bicycle Transportation Engineer
7585 Church St.
Lemon Grove, CA 91945-2306
619-644-5481 www.johnforester.com
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