SFMTA’s Bogus Survey Lets Parisians Vote on Proposed West Portal Traffic Reconfiguration

Traffic is not the problem, dysfunctional Muni streetcars are

On the morning of March 13, 2024, the Chronicle reported that San Francisco had already suffered its 199^thdrug overdose for the year-- an average of 2.7 lost lives per day.  A few hours later, a tragic traffic accident killed a family waiting for the L Taraval on a sidewalk of Ulloa Street.  Cardoso de Oliveira, his wife, Ramos Pinto, and their two children lost their lives.

As someone that commutes primarily by bike, I find it shameful how the transit-first groups exploited a family’s demise to leverage their agenda of restricting residents from driving on a portion of West Portal Avenue.  These groups never engaged with the businesses or customers that rely on various means of transportation to keep West Portal economically viable.  Instead, the transit-first groups seized the Ulloa Street accident as an opportunity to create a narrative that West Portal has the potential to be a “transit center.”   This is a disconnect from what all locals know:  Muni streetcars, unlike other US cities’ light rail systems, are notoriously slow, temperamental, unpredictable, and dysfunctional—a system that literally relies on antiquated floppy disks. 

The transit-first group presented that restricting private cars on the first block of West Portal will expedite streetcar traffic.  In a 2019 piece,  the progressive writers at the Chronicle documented a race, whereby one writer walked from Powell & Market Streets to the Chase Center and arrived before another writer taking a Muni streetcar.^[i]   As the Chronicle article demonstrated, walking is frequently a faster option than taking Muni streetcars even within the underground where there is no competition from cars.  Dedicating a lane on West Portal to the infrequent K and M trains will hardly help in accelerating passengers.

A history of SFMTA’s acute disconnect with reality and the L Taraval’s never-ending upgrades

Garrett Camp became wealthy when he sold his startup to eBay.  Camp resided in the Sunset District and was frustrated that SF taxicabs rarely ventured to the westside.  He developed a tactic of calling all the SF taxicab companies to his home and departing with the first one to arrive.  This eventually got him blackballed by all the SF cab companies.  But then the Apple iPhone hit the market.  Camp envisioned merging the new iPhone with GPS technology to create a network of summoning limousines—an online hitchhiking app.  Soon he expanded the limo service to private drivers rescuing him from the Outside Lands.   Camp took his company public in May 2019.  You’ve probably heard of it: Uber.^[ii]

Yet, as Uber prospered, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), the umbrella government agency over Muni, remained oblivious.  As I wrote in April 2018, the SFMTA decided to restrict residential driving on Taraval Street to a single lane, while dedicating the second lane to Muni and taxis-- the nonexistent taxis that were the catalyst for Camp’s $4.6 billion fortune.   Essentially, SFMTA’s wisdom was to double down on taxi protections while Uber was simultaneously antiquating the taxi industry.

Starting in 2019, SFMTA started yet another six-year, $90 million upgrade of the L Taraval Muni line.  Had there not been this Muni tweak, Cardoso de Oliveira, Ramos Pinto, and their two children would have been waiting for a streetcar tucked safely inside West Portal Station, 100% removed from vehicle traffic.  Instead, because of SFMTA’s snail-paced upgrade, the family was forced to wait on the Ulloa Street sidewalk, where they were killed.  Imagine if Muni stopped embarking on perpetual projects.  Scratch that thought, let’s punish West Portal businesses and residents instead.

SFMTA, transit-first groups, and Supervisor Melgar’s (initial) plan to reconfigure West Portal

Rather than just adding a traffic signal to West Portal, SFMTA, transit- first groups, and District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar saw the heart wrenching sidewalk accident as an opportunity to severely restrict car traffic on the first block of West Portal.

Per the proposal, every time a driver and passengers approach their parked car on West Portal Ave, the entire single lane will gridlock waiting for that car to exit.  And bicyclists will have a reduced margin of space to squeeze by.

Instead of querying the West Portal neighborhood to gauge how the proposals would affect their lives, these groups plowed forward with a three-step process.   

Step One: SFMTA created a fake survey for Parisians to weigh in on West Portal Avenue’s traffic pattern (I’m not kidding)

In response to the Ulloa Street sidewalk tragedy, SFMTA created a survey^[iii] on how the entrance to the West Portal tunnel should be updated.  SFMTA structured the survey so that:

1)        Anyone in the world could complete the survey and voice their opinion on restricting vehicle traffic in West Portal, and

2)        You were allowed to vote as many times as you wanted.  

This made it impossible for SFMTA to measure whether survey takers even lived in San Francisco, or if survey-stuffing was occurring by organized transit-first groups soliciting their followers from thousands of miles away.

See a survey response (below), accepted by SFMTA, from a person who claims to live in Paris and has never been to West Portal:

And here is a similar response from a person claiming they are a New York resident:

Really?  West Portal businesses and residents should trust a government agency like SFMTA that creates a kindergarten-level survey like this?  

Step Two: feed the fake survey to the transit-first echo chamber

As soon as the SFMTA produced their unverifiable West Portal survey, like a pyramid scheme, the transit-first/anti-car groups encouraged their thousands of member/followers to submit their responses.^[iv]  I can see the transit-first talking points now:  80% of the 4.6 million residents living in the West Portal area want to eliminate cars.

Step Three:  Have passionate transit-first advocates fabricate stats and stories

Enter Luke Bornheimer to provide a fictitious narrative.   Luke’s LinkedIn page states he is a “community organizer and sustainable transportation advocate making it safe and convenient to use active transportation for everyday transportation.”  Luke graduated from the Forman boarding school in Connecticut with a current tuition of $91,000 per year.  Then he attended Bryant University in Rhode Island with a current tuition of $51,000. 

During an April West Portal public meeting of merchants, Luke attended and made the following statement (captured on video)¹  “I do have data that within San Francisco, that people who walk, bike, and take public transportation spend more money than people that use cars.  I have that data.”   Considering that I can’t find a bike rack at Costco, Luke’s statement seemed nonsensical.  I politely asked Luke for clarification on Twitter (below):

In a March 27, 2024 Chronicle open forum Luke wrote, “The parents (killed) had previously sold their car…. The family was living up to the policies, goals, and plans our city proclaims to prioritize: transit first, Vision Zero, and climate action, all of which encourage people to shift trips away from private cars to walking, biking, and public transportation.  And the family was killed because our city failed to protect them and help people shift trips away from cars.” 

I was curious how Luke was able to gain such quick insight on the family that perished.  Coincidently, ten days before, an article in the Chronicle quoting a family friend that said the deceased family had just sold their car.  Had Luke merely guessed that the family had sold their car and transitioned to his transit-first lifestyle?   Because the next sentence in the Chronicle article quoted the same friend, “in tears, ‘They never took the bus.”’  The deceased family’s aversion to Muni pretty much refuted Luke’s wishful thinking.

I followed up my Twitter questions to Luke by emailing him the same questions.  Luke did not respond.

However, Luke responded to my Twitter request by blocking my access to his Twitter feed. 

Pretty solid evidence Luke can’t support his claims.  And he thinks he is above questioning.

I’m calling Luke out here for his lack of credibility.   We don’t need your headline numbers; we need to see your supporting data.  And Luke, when you tweet to your echo chamber, please don’t cite any studies that extrapolate the money non-driving patrons leaving businesses that serve alcohol claim to have spent.

West Portal going forward

I didn’t write this article to knock bicyclists or walkers.  I am confident that my logged bike and rail miles ranks me in the top 1% of San Franciscans.  To achieve those bike miles, I am forever grateful for the bike advocates’ accomplishments: bikes on BART, bike paths like the old Valencia green wave, bicycle valet parking at Giants’ games etc.  Life-changing improvements.

However, it seems that advocacy has transitioned from promoting bicycling and walking to demonizing people that can’t.  The recent anti-car wins appear to be an overreach designed to eliminate coexisting bike and car thoroughfares and converting them to urban playgrounds.  (See Luke’s comments below)

Personally, I no longer bike on JFK Drive (too many people walking 6 abreast) or the Great Highway (too many people biking the wrong way.)  I had commuted thousands of times on the old Valencia Green Wave.  However, now I never utilize the center lane format because of inattentive skateboarders, motorized scooters, and novice bike riders zippy by inches away on e-bikes in the opposing direction. 

I have ridden light rails all over the US, and Muni just doesn’t compete.^[v]  The light rail system the transit firsts want us to rely on is extremely inferior.  We have been isolated in West Portal, making locals’ primary goal “just get me to BART.”  Try and find a Muni timetable.  LOL.

Consider, three light rail trains (K, L, and M) converge at West Portal, yet the SFMTA has assigned the nonstop Giants’ games train to the smaller N Judah line.  By SFMTA’s logic, United Airlines should replace their Denver and Chicago hubs with hubs in Reno, Nevada and Battle Creek, Michigan.  This is not a computer issue; this is a failure of SFMTA to employ logic. 

Supervisor Melgar has tempered her stance and is now collaborating with West Portal merchants to mitigate the potential inconveniences to residents and the damage to their businesses caused by compressing cars to a single lane.  Still, before Melgar considers reconfiguring West Portal, she must first advocate for fixing the monumental logistical problems with the Muni light rail system, and second, wait for the completion of the forthcoming periodic closures.

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^[i] Swan wrote, “Fortune had smiled when the T-Third arrived in a shockingly 1 minute, standing-room only.”   This means that because the Muni train arrived immediately, Swan’s slower trip to Chase was solely attributable to Muni’s slow speed and not waiting for a streetcar to arrive.

^[ii] From the book The Upstarts, by Brad Stone.

^[iii] The SFMTA survey ended Sunday April 28, 2024

^[iv] SF Bicycle Coalition. 30,000+ followers

Friends of Slow Lake Street. 1,300+ followers

^[v] Seattle, Portland, San Diego, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, Nashville, D.C., Sonoma Smart train, Amtrak, BART, and Caltrain. 

1. Original video produced by Alan Burradell