Notices by scott f (scott@carfree.city)

me as a Californian watching reform prosecutors continue to get elected and re-elected in other states

https://boltsmag.org/larry-krasner-wins-philadelphia-primary/

@skinnylatte No exceptions? My sense of direction is almost always strong, but was defeated by Prague's winding streets once on a pre-smartphone trip.

New report: “BART’s focus on fare evasion recovers minimal revenue, may be addressing an overstated problem, and is not effective at curbing incidents that make riders feel uneasy in the system”
https://oaklandside.org/2025/05/16/cracking-down-on-fare-jumpers-didnt-make-bart-safer-or-increase-revenue-report-finds/

less than a quarter of signers of the Harper's "free speech" letter have condemned Trump's attacks on free speech https://www.thenation.com/article/society/harpers-letter-free-speech-trump/

"'Did you take note that the whole hour we’ve been here, not a single bike has gone down the lane, but thousands of cars are backed up?' asked Joshua Arce, an advisor for the California Alliance for Jobs. He and others blamed the [Richmond-San Rafael Bridge] bike path for this gridlock, characterizing it as wasted space."

That's the 2016 SF YIMBY-endorsed D9 supervisor candidate.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/traffic-bridge-bicycle-lane-marin-20326160.php

City of San Diego spox: “Nationwide, 43 states already have daylighting laws, and most prohibit parking within 20 feet of an intersection.”

In refusing to enforce #AB413, San Francisco stands out as prioritizing parking over safety to a greater degree than most of this country.

https://www.sfgate.com/travel/article/california-city-issues-thousands-tickets-law-20305037.php

When SFMTA said they wouldn't enforce AB413, they announced they would, however, rapidly paint red curbs at every intersection. They allowed us to assume they meant 20 foot red curbs in accordance with the law.

https://www.sfmta.com/blog/making-enforcement-fair-our-new-plan-state-daylighting-law

They were lying by omission. Traffic Engineer Ricardo Olea actually ordered 10 foot curbs, which overrides AB413. They're using red paint to actively make us less safe.

Getting there! More to be done on Valencia, but soon we'll at least have decent bike lanes for most of the street. And the bad idea of running bikes down the middle can be buried for good. #bikeSF

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2025/04/28/eyes-on-the-street-valencia-curbside-protected-bike-lanes-nearing-completion

@skinnylatte Have you had to deal with the buses with undercarriage bike racks? Those stumped me.

“As Fielder put it, the city is trying to serve 500 homeless families. If HSH gave them each a $3,500 monthly housing voucher, the annual cost would be $21 million. That’s…about 20 percent of what the city spends on police overtime. It’s also, Fielder points out, less than the city is prepared to spend building a habitat for pandas at the zoo.”

https://48hills.org/2025/04/fielder-proposal-to-protect-unhoused-families-runs-into-opposition-from-moderates/

A subtle but important move is to be able to disapprove strongly of what someone is doing, but at the same time to understand what is driving them to do it — a force, or situation, that is also unjust and must be changed if we want to stop people doing the bad thing on a systemic level.

It's unacceptable that many white people in those places have embraced racism and xenophobia and that majorities of voters in those places voted for a white-supremacist, fascist candidate for president. But what do you expect them to turn to, realistically, if the attitude of liberal Democrats is that their hometowns being economically destroyed is good, deserved, and inevitable? There is a reason far-right ideologies find fertile ground.

What inspires me to post this today isn't the common observation on the left that robberies, bippings, and the like, while unacceptable, are crimes of poverty that must be addressed on a systemic level. Rather, it's today's discourse on Bluesky that people in rural small towns that have been hollowed out by globalization are irredeemable racists, and should just get over it and move to the city.

Dramatic decrease in air pollution near 4th & King in SF when Caltrain went fully electric. BC = black carbon, a proxy for diesel particulates.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c01096

@skinnylatte Only one musical instrument at a time? That's not the ambitious Adrianna I know!

@Andres4NY a dissenting perspective: https://bsky.app/profile/evangreer.bsky.social/post/3llz5dbexv22e

@skinnylatte you know if it's vegan-friendly by chance?

@skinnylatte I guess I pictured Hong Kong as being like Vancouver: less affordable than SF in the sense median incomes are lower, but not more expensive in absolute terms

@skinnylatte Ouch.

You'd said this about Singapore... Sydney and HK too?

@kingrat I'm in the process of culling many books but still have many more I want to keep that don't fit on the shelves. I think I need another bookcase.