We heard today that the Biking and Rolling Plan, originally slated to be presented for final approval to the SFMTA Board of Directors at their Tuesday Feb 18 hearing, is being postponed to the March 4 hearing. We’re extremely disappointed with this last-minute decision.
We know that SFMTA staff is ready to present the BRP for final approval on Tuesday, Feb 18 because funding agreements required that they do so by this deadline – and we had every expectation that the SFMTA Board of Directors was ready to approve it. Approving the Plan is only the beginning, and moving quickly towards implementation is crucial. This unnecessary delay will have consequences for the life-saving improvements we have waited too long for already.
The apparent reason is to give the Board complete focus on the crisis facing Muni — a topic that certainly demands attention. We’re acutely aware that the SFMTA is facing a fiscal cliff and that additional Muni cuts are coming and will be painful and destabilizing. We also know that ignoring the all-but-finalized and already delayed Biking and Rolling Plan won’t improve material conditions for people trying to get around SF, and failing to prioritize active and sustainable transportation choices will only push more people to become car-dependent.
This means the agency must work towards avoiding the fiscal cliff while also passing, and then continuing to strengthen, the Biking and Rolling Plan. It is the duty of the SFMTA Board of Directors and city leadership to do both, and to do them simultaneously. As the saying goes, we have to walk and chew gum.
The delay is a missed opportunity for city leaders to educate the public that investing in robust transit and in a vision for safe streets are not mutually exclusive, and are indeed sourced from entirely separate funding streams. In explaining this, City leaders could counter the disinformation that investing in biking and rolling somehow saps Muni’s resources.
Delaying the approval of the BRP gives more time for the opponents of sustainable transportation to muster their forces and continue their strategy of disingenuously pitting safe biking, rolling, and even walking against Muni, in hopes of tanking all of it – we cannot let them. When the BRP does finally come forward for a vote in early March, we must show up in numbers that leave no doubt to city leaders that we are the voices they should be concerned about and listening to; that we remain united in our commitment to demanding the strongest possible Biking and Rolling Plan, to make San Francisco streets safer for everyone.
