Downtown on the Corner

As a result of some work I am doing I have gotten to spend a bit more time in downtown SF than I have up until now. Actually, I am spending a bit more time downtown anywhere than I have in a while. Years ago I worked in downtown Milwaukee for almost five years. When you work in a downtown area you start to take for granted the environment there. The noise, traffic, smells and the people.

There is no more striking example of a mix of people than standing on a street corner at the edge of a downtown's redevelopment zone. Right there where the suits and the homeless mix brings you an incredible range of the American experience. In San Francisco you get the added bonus of tourists of all stripes (from the backpacking college students to the families with their $800 strollers) digital cameras in hand.

So there I was standing on a street corner just beyond the fancy lunch spots and just where the transitional living facilities start taking in the parts of American society that are hidden from many of us. It is there that you are reminded that there are still a lot of people who are not only struggling, but are in many cases sliding backwards. Actually these folks were sliding backwards during the "Bush boom" (as Paul Krugman calls it) and are now in free-fall today. The coming cuts in social welfare programs, charitable giving and menial employment will undercut the few support systems that are left. The result will be more evocative of the third world than the shiny city on the bay that San Francisco wants to be. But SF is not alone. Go stand on a street corner in Oakland, Richmond or even Concord and you will see the same struggle for survival. Even the Safeway in my neighborhood has acquired a few resident pan-handlers, sitting outside on the bench with a constant request for small change.

You might well ask, what can be done? Well in addition to all the volunteering that is going on these days (which is laudatory) I would encourage folks to continue to donate in whatever way they can to agencies that are engaged in direct service. Also, people might want to start thinking about how the tax structure of our communities, counties and states has contributed to the current problem. Think Global- Act Local.

Bike Month and some questions

So, for those of you who are unaware, May is BIKE month. That's a whole fun month for those of us who derive spiritual bliss from those two wheeled human powered vehicles. Of course during May, and the other 11 months of year we still get to dodge traffic, put up with poorly maintained roads and the occasional moron who has confused his privilege of driving a car with a right to run everyone else off the road.

When oil prices where up to $140/barrel last year many of us in the cycling world (especially the cycle commuter set) were pretty sure that for some parts of the US northern European style cycling was just around the corner. But with the drop in oil removing the incentive for people to reconsider their driving habits (and the fact that buying a bike does not seem like a good move in a recession) one might wonder where exactly we are headed. But all of the upsides remain. More bikes=fewer cars. Fewer cars=less oil purchased from non-democratic regimes, fewer greenhouse gases and of course healthier people (which also saves a lot of money).

As many before me have noted, most of America is set up to make driving the easiest option. Big parking lots, freeways, suburbs, even office parks are all a byproduct of how people move from place to place. There have been a few stabs in the other direction. The newer bridges here in the Bay Area have bike lanes (including the new Bay bridge- whenever its finished), many cities have designated bike lanes and bike streets. All that is great, but it does not seem to be making a dent in the amount of traffic headed down I-80 each morning. So, short of uprooting 50+ years of infrastructure what can we do to effect this change? We could jack up taxes on cars or oil (a carbon tax?) but that might be a tough sell in the middle of a huge recession.

How about providing more tax incentives to cycle commuters? Perhaps a depreciation schedule for bicycles used for commuting. How about a tax incentive to live within 10 miles of your job? That alone might not only encourage smaller commutes (and more cyclists) but also help to stabilize communities in cities that are otherwise suffering from brain-drain and capital flight.

Imagine if on your tax form you had a chance to take a credit based on your distance from work? This would not be a tax on your commute, but a credit for not having one. I am sure there is someone out there who could do the math and tell me if this is practical.