SF bike injunction lifting…so where’s the EIR for cars?

As I’ve written about before, San Francisco has been embroiled the last three years in a tormenting struggle between the city’s desire to install bicycle infrastructure, and Rob Anderson’s personal crusade against it. Rob’s ammunition was the city’s own EIR (Environmental Impact Report) process that evaluates whether a project is detrimental to the environment. Yes, a court of law actually took a case that bicycle improvements cause detrimental harm to the environment and even worse, agreed.

FINALLY, three long years later, the injunction that prevented SF from building bicycle improvements has been partially lifted and expected to be fully listed early 2010.

At this point, amongst my sheer joy that bike lanes are being installed on SF streets again, I also can’t help but reflect on this whole debacle.

A letter to the editor by Rob Bregoff at SFGate reads:

I’m so glad that the bike injunction has been loosened to permit many much-needed new bicycle projects ("Decision leads to new bike lane," Dec. 1).

What I’d like to know is, why wasn’t there an environmental impact report when cars destroyed the safety of our urban public space. Why no mention of the tons of pollutants and degradation of our neighborhoods when the streets filled with motor vehicles? Was there any evaluation when transit lines were torn out to accommodate autos? How about the 40,000-plus Americans killed each year in car-related incidents?

Perhaps we should evaluate in a public document the real damages that auto-centric development has brought to our communities, our safety, our environment and our health. Just the idea that some judge seriously considered bike lanes an environmental threat is pure lunacy.

What I wonder is: if the courts will listen to an argument about whether bike improvements are a harm to the environment, why not cars? Where’s the EIR for cars and their infrastructure? I’ve never heard of any court ruled injunction over infrastructure for cars being expanded yet a case proving their environmental impact would be a slam dunk. Makes ya’ think don’t it.

09.Dec.09 Car-free, Editorial, Uncategorized