A weekend walk through Hayes Valley, Civic Center, Russian Hill and elsewhere turned into an ambush of bodily humours, the nose giving me information the head wishes to forget.
Later in the week, a driver ran into me on my bike. It was more of a lovetap – one that I guess I could have avoided if I heeded the advice of a witness waiting at the bus stop and “stayed the hell off the road”.
Of course, every day is a golden day for a MUNI story, but this week felt mired in the same slow crawl of a city bus. Recently, a report stated that by shifting roadway priority to MUNI’s streetcars and buses on just 10 corridors, 3 out of 4 riders (out of a daily 600,000+) would see a speedier commute.
But to do this, you have to change the way the average person sees the city street.
It’s not a freeway…
It’s a fantastic walkway and a thriving marketplace for local foods.
It’s not an offramp…
It’s not a parking space…
It’s a PARK(ing) space
It can be done. Convincing people of the value of the land in an urban landscape may be as slow-going as MUNI, but a paradigm shift is possible.
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