Capitol Ideas: Bay Area, Abridged
Bethell, Tom
[ , 4 r • ~ INII u N I i l l ~ i . I :NNP'• by Tom Bethell Bay Area, Abridged Life is more difficult when no-growthers get their way. T he economy of the San Francisco Bay Area has been...
...Bmti-landlord measures on the November ballot threaten to make things worse...
...The result is that it's hard to find a place to rent in Berke"Mass" transit appeals to those with collectivist fantasies...
...In halting the Southern Crossing, it made traffic far worse...
...I asked him if he thought the general level of economic understanding had improved in the last generation...
...By the 196o's the tolls were accumulating to finance the new bridge...
...The transit planners made 1 6 No v e m b e r 2 o o o " The American Spectator two great errors, and they have kept right on making them- for example in Los Angeles, and wherever else legislators have been persuaded to spend billions on a few miles of track...
...N 1 8 No v e m b e r ~ o o o ' The American Spectator...
...He'd go for that, and to give him his due, he can make things happen if he wants to...
...If the city keeps up its anti-productive policies, many dot-commers will have to move on to iess expensive places...
...In 1965, an average of 135,ooo vehicles a day were using the Bay Bridge...
...Not true...
...J ohn Sma]iey saved his money and bought some rental properly' in Berkeley...
...His name is John Smalley...
...That is, until BART--the Bay Area Rapid Transit system--came along...
...So maybe they will dust offthe old plans...
...it's so bad...
...Back in the 196o's, when John Smalley worked for the Bay Toll Crossings division of the Department of Public Works, the state was about to build another bridge across the bay...
...The self-serving attempts by some actMsLs to block new development are making life harder for the rest of us," another story in the same issue noted...
...So don't even think about trotting out the old supply-and-demand arguments, say the no-growthers...
...Mass" transit, in which we must all go to a few planned destinations, appeals to those with collectivist fantasies...
...When nmch needed new lanes were added to the Mz 5 near London's Heathrow Airport recently, a very bad situation did indeed improve...
...But memoties are short, the media don't mention it, and those under 4 ~ would never have heard of it...
...It's not "sustainable," to use a favorite liberal word...
...Right onl Tenants'-rights activists use the same argument in favor of rent control that environmentalists use against roads and bridges...
...have "full rights to maintenance," he says, resigned to the indignity...
...It is of no interest to commuters to know that BART will whisk them at 60 mph under the bay if they have a 2o-minute wait for buses at both ends...
...We strongly oppose this bridge, for it would create intolerable new traffic congestion and auto pollution," the Sierra Club thundered...
...San Francisco doesn't have the space, they say, but it is twice the size of Manhattan, with half the population (800,0o0 in S.F...
...Cars, on the other hand, suit individualists (the great majority of us...
...I was surprised to see a recent cover story staring out from a Haight Street rack: "The Case for Ending Rent Control...
...They may apply everywhere else, but not in the Bay Area...
...Zoning laws that require parking spaces for newly constructed apartments make no sense for a city that is trying to get people out of their cars and into public transport...
...ribbon-cutting any day...
...The existing Bay Bridge was the "cash cow," and its tolls had seeded other bridges in the area...
...Multiply San Francisco's population by four, and BART just might make money...
...In June 1972 , the proposition was defeated by a three-to-one margin...
...As a result of the failure of Communism, there has been disillusionment about government and a greater respect for business...
...San Francisco has a vacancy rate of less than one percent, compared with Manhattan's 2. 5 percent...
...Life is increasingly politicized...
...T he economy of the San Francisco Bay Area has been booming, but the traffic has become a problem...
...The numbers are amazing...
...Why wasn't it built...
...The problem in the Bay Area is now so bad that Sen...
...Wherever powerful people think that the laws of supply and demand can be repealed, economic growth is insecure...
...In the Bay Area, Hall wrote in Great Planning Disasters, BART's effect on traffic "is so slight as to be undetectable...
...Today, the bridge averages 270,000 vehieles a day--exactly double the old number...
...They are therefore very reluctant to move...
...And Willie Brown, the mayor of San Francisco, supports her...
...One day I talked to someone who explained wh...
...We are again hearing talk of oil-company gouging, and California is "putting price controls on energy...
...But a new bond issue was now needed to build the bridge...
...leading to Silicon Valley, 35 miles away...
...Clearly not...
...That's wrong, though...
...He is 88...
...TOM BETHLL was recently a media fellow at the Hoover Institution...
...Otherwise they are treated as robbers and exploiters...
...It's a sto U I hadn't heard before, and nine out often residents of the Bay Area surely know nothing about it...
...By 197o, the San Francisco Examiner was still in favor of economic growth...
...The first was to represent journey times as time spent on the train rather than total journey time...
...The market" has a more favorable connotation...
...Even as the miles of track were sharply reduced, costs ballooned, and the legislature was reluctant to approve new taxes...
...The second error is the reiterated claim that new roads or freeway lanes don't improve a thing because they attract more traffic until the lanes fill up again...
...ley...
...It would have gone from Hunter's Point (just north of the old Candlestick Park) to Alameda Island (not far from Oakland airport...
...In Berkeley, rents remain controlled by the city even after tenants have left (if they leave: getting them to do so is not easy...
...One who still drives in the Bay Area is Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize winning economist, who moved to San Francisco from Chicago in 198o...
...As I turned the pages and looked at the drawings of the new bridge, I realized that many, many people sitting in cars in the Bay Area today would wish it had been built...
...No new taxes or bond issues would be needed...
...In short, the property rights of apartment owners are expropriated...
...The Pacific Ocean is to the west, and to the east there is just one road--that's the Bay Bridge to Oakland...
...Oakland's Port Commissioners urged its "immediate construction...
...California Governor Gray Davis said this was "clearly a step forward...
...Recently, 5,7oo low to moderate income earners applied for 55 such units in Bemal Heights...
...In San Francisco, a milder form of rent control was enacted in 1979 (with vacancy decontrol) but since then the regulations have become more and more stringent, and it's getting to be as bad as Berkeley...
...So there has been an improvement in the character of people's prejudices, but not in their economic understanding," he said...
...He showed me a 1966 study published by the Department of Public Works that he still has in his possession...
...The presidential campaign has produced "an argument about who can produce better medical care by government control of the medical system...
...The enemies of grovr are still very much entrenched, of course, and they will try to use the pressure from frustrated drivers to expand BART...
...Renters who have stayed put for five years or more are now paying about half the market rate...
...He is retired now, and he lives in San Francisco...
...Rent control came along almost immediately...
...It has been extended to the San Francisco Airport...
...In the r99o's, only 8,500 new units were added in San Francisco at a time when 6o,ooo newcomers moved to the city...
...One way to improve the chances for a new bridge is to rename it--the Willie L. Brown Bridge...
...Increases above 15o,ooo vehicles per day would be made only with accompanying congestion Iand] intolerable delays," the 1966 study mildly warned...
...But don't get him started on that...
...The Public Utility Commission voted to cap electricity bills for some customers in San Diego...
...Does anyone really think that widening the New Jersey Turnpike north of Brunswick was a bad idea, or failed to improve traffic...
...There hasn't been much change, he thought...
...If you want to go across the bay, say to Berkeley, and you go at the wrong time, it can take you an hour just to get onto the bridge...
...a chance to entice commuters from their cars and reduce traffic congestion...
...Some already have...
...When they are, politicians insist that a percentage must be "affordable...
...Supervisors should reaffirm "the city's long-held position favoring the crossing...
...Other opponents promised that "by voting 'no' on Proposition A you will be giving BART a chance to succeed...
...To get the picture, you should know that San Francisco is a cit3/with one road going to the north (otherwise known as the Golden Gate Bridge), and two to the south (Highway lOl and Interstate 28o...
...They really believed that stopping new bridges and freeways would get people out of their cars and into what is erroneously called "mass" or "rapid" transit...
...Sometimes he drives to Sea Ranch, loo miles north of the city, sometimes to the Hoover Institution, 35 miles to the south, where he is a research fellow...
...It's the vacant lot next to yours...
...This means that politicians get to decide who will occupy the few new units that open up...
...Then there was a second raid...
...You know what a nature preserve is...
...Berkeley property owners (an oxymoron...
...BART turned out to be a gold-plated jobs program for construction companies, unionized workers, and consultants...
...A rail system is inherently out of walking reach for most people, except in places that are unusual, either in population density, or shape (long and narrow, like Manhattan...
...A chapter of Peter Hall's 198o book, Great Planning Disasters, is devoted to BART...
...The editor of a new and well-capitalized business magazine in the city tells me he had to pay $1oo,ooo a year just to attract reporters to the city...
...John Smalley said...
...And the hours when you can avoid that hazard keep shrinking...
...It even had a name-the Southern Crossing...
...And there was a new player in the political arena...
...Its effect has been huge...
...The Sierra Club and its we-got-here-first, let'skeep-the-newcomers-out allies were beginning to run the show...
...As to BART, 131,ooo passengers were using it on an average weekday when it was up and running in 1976, compared to an earlier forecast of 258,ooo: little more than half...
...Yet it nearly happened...
...No one quite knew it at the time, but the Age of the Road-Haters was upon us...
...Road-haters are ideologically motivated...
...We had designed the bridge and were appraising the land on Alameda Island prior to buying it," Smalley recalled...
...No one quite puts it this way, but there's a labor shortage and San Francisco is responding by trying to keep people out...
...Dianne Feinstein recently said a study of a new bay crossing "must be undertaken promptly...
...Opinion of the Sierra Club variety is so dominant that the vaguely "counter-culture" S.K Weekly has found a niche for itself with libertarian-tinged articles...
...The Southern Crossing should be built," the paper editorialized that year...
...At that point, Smalley said, "BART got permission from the state to raid the Bay Bridge tim& being set aside for the Southern Crossing...
...Since its opening in 1972, BART has averaged 15o,ooo riders a day...
...On top of rent control, no-growth regulations allow few new units to be built in the city...
...In the years ahead, 4 ~ lanes of new fleeway in the Bay Area were also stopped...
...For years he worked as an engineer, first for the state of California, then for the cib, of San Francisco...
...Just as more and more cars will materialize and fill up the roads, so more and more people will come to "desirable" San Francisco, and fill up any new housing that is built...
Vol. 33 • November 2000 • No. 9
