apologia

America's cities depend on free and open streets.

For over 100 years cars and trucks on public streets have served the entire range of personal, commercial, and civic functions and activities.

Operators, employees, and customers of businesses and facilities, public and private, depend on normal street access and nearby parking for motor vehicles. We need to drive and park without artificial restrictions.

Rapid emergency vehicle response to fires, accidents, and medical emergencies requires unobstructed, freely accessible main streets.

In Los Angeles changes to main streets snarl traffic and obstruct emergency vehicles. (18 minutes)

Traditional traffic controls together with adequate city policing are necessary elements for public safety.

Stop signs, signal lights, crosswalks; solid or broken white or yellow center lines work well when police traffic patrols are visible throughout the city. Careless drivers who see a car stopped by a police car or motorcycle take driving more seriously and reduce speed.

Officers' presence in business districts and neighborhoods discourages criminal behavior while fostering familiarity and trust between police officers and the people they serve.

Re-fund the police!

Full-service community policing existed until 2015, when cities stopped hiring enough police officers to replace those who were retiring. Public safety has suffered badly as police departments became understaffed and traffic bureaus were eliminated.

In 2020 the slogan Defund the Police was widely broadcast to normalize cities' neglect of road and community safety.

Coming Soon . . . to Streets Near You

'Complete Streets' says the streets are for everyone . . . except the 97% majority who drive.

This agenda deprives drivers of more than half of usable road surfaces paid for by their taxes, making it much harder to get around and sometimes impossible to park. Complete Streets modifications do things most people do not want:

• Paralyze traffic by squeezing vehicles on busy main streets into one lane each way.
• Do away with curb parking.
• Increase emergency vehicle response times.
• Damage small businesses that rely on street access and adequate nearby parking for customers.
• Force pedestrians entering and leaving parked cars and moving cyclists to cross each others paths.
• Force restaurant patrons in 'parklets' and moving cyclists to cross each others paths.
• Force traffic to pile up behind buses stopped in the single traffic lane.
• Cause cyclists and drivers to avoid diffcult journeys through commercial districts.

Traffic planners criticize modifications to lower Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. (8:19 minutes)

The net effect is to make driving and parking unreasonably difficult on the streets that we all pay for.

Unwanted bicycle lanes on Valencia Street in San Francisco anger businesses. (4 minutes)

Cities advertise Complete Streets for bicycle and pedestrian safety after eliminating the traffic police that protected them.

Complete Streets turns normal streets inside-out by choking main traffic arteries so that traffic slows to a crawl.

San Pablo Avenue grinds to a halt when one lane is closed. (17 seconds)

In Los Angeles changes to main streets snarl traffic and obstruct emergency vehicles. (18 minutes)

One some streets the outside traffic lane is painted red to become bus-only, forcing all other vehicles into the remaining one lane. On others the remaining parking is moved into the outside lane, again making one lane in each direction.

When curbside parking is replaced with bicycle lanes, people going to or from parked cars must walk in front of moving bicycles to reach sidewalks. Interactions between bikes and pedestrians can result in shouting, collisions, and injuries. They are not welcomed by cyclists or people on foot.

White and yellow posts are scattered everywhere, backed by low triangular bump barriers and lots of white and green paint in confusing patterns. Cement islands extend far into intersections to bring traffic to a halt behind drivers making right turns, further retarding the flow of traffic.

Most drivers interviewed responded by saying they avoid traveling on Telegraph Avenue South of 51^st Street in Oakland and International Boulevard South of East 14^th Avenue. Businesses along those stretches made it clear to the City of Oakland that they did not want the Complete Streets changes, because they knew their incomes would suffer.

Some businesses have moved. Ohers have closed. No Public office holder has commented on the problems created by Complete Streets for the drivers who are the majority of street users, or the business owners and employees; and their former customers, who now shop elsewhere.

Damage to Local Businesses

Bicycles are a small minority of vehicles using the streets, as evidenced by mile after mile of near-empty bike lanes. The effects of the measures employed in their name have far-reaching effects.

'Bicycle infrastructure': traffic congestion + lost parking = lost businesss and jobs.

Businesses suffer when traffic is reduced to one lane each way on main streets; when traffic backs up behind stopped buses; when curb parking is removed. These are not mild or incidental effects. Where Complete Streets has been installed in commercial districts revenues have dropped and more than a few businesses have closed their doors for good.

Bicycle groups are fond of claiming that businesses are unaffected or improved but the facts speak otherwise. Bicycle partisans may not know and some are incapable of admitting that both drivers and experienced bike riders avoid driving and riding on the modified streets. Traffic is very slow, street markings and obstacles are confusing, and parked cars along 'protected' bike lanes obscure bicycles from drivers making turns onto cross streets.

Traffic engineers and cyclists criticize lower Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. (8 minutes)

In Oakland businesses on lower Telegraph Avenue and International Boulevard have suffered from the radical changes to those streets. In San Francisco businesses on Valencia Street have been hit particularly hard, with between 20 and 30 small, locally-owned businesses being forced to close.

Bicycles are Great

They work well for limited local transportation

Many people who want to preserve their free use of multi-lane main streets enjoy riding bikes when they can, or have ridden extensively in the past and love them still.

But for the majority who use the streets bikes are a third-world answer to the needs for first-world transportation.

• Bikes are too slow for schedules that demand several errands in limited time frames.
• They carry too little cargo, too few passengers, and offer no protection against rain, wind, and cold.
• If you are on a bike you cannot hop on the freeway if need exists or arises.
• Bicycles are not appropriate for many senior and disabled people and medical patients.
• Business attire and formal social wear are not presentable after riding. Physical exertion can leave riders in need of a shower and grooming upon reaching their destinations.
• A bicycle can be forcibly stopped and offers no protection from robbery or assault. A rider can be stranded in an unfamiliar district or neighborhood while a thief or assailant rides away.

Penalizing Seniors and the Disabled

Bicycle limitations make them impractical and unsafe for seniors who cannot risk falls on hard pavement and people who are temporarily or permanently disabled; have less physical strength and energy; and lack resistance to weather. Penalizing vulnerable members of our population who must drive by artificially retarding traffic and getting rid of parking is a cruel disservice.

Because bicycles are not a realistic substitute for cars and trucks, it makes no sense to eliminate curb parking and snarl traffic by narrowing the main thoroughfares into one lane each way.

Side streets that parallel main streets are available to those whose needs are well-served by bikes and who don't wish to ride on main thoroughfares.

Climate = Control

Government-watchers are wary of official anouncements that claim more control over how we live.

The history of climate predictions I.

The history of climate predictions II.

They do not tell us but there is hardly any CO₂ in the air. Carbon dioxide is one twentieth of one percent (.046%) of the atmosphere. That's five percent of one percent. If human activity accounts for half of that (which has yet to be confirmed) we would produce 2.5 % of 1 %—.0025% of atmospheric carbon dioxide.

If the level of CO₂ were to fall below .020 % the green plants we depend on to live would begin to die.

Respected scientists around the world—some are featured in the movie linked below—want people to know that carbon dioxide in the atmosphere does not affect the temperature of the air or ground, regardless of how many times the media says that it does.

What is more the present era is much colder than the majority of pre-human earth history; something no government spokesman is willing to admit.

When we consider how little CO₂ is in the air and the history of earth's climate, it really starts to look like governments greatly exaggerate its effects in order to take control over the streets and other aspects of our lives.

For those who want to know:

Climate: The Movie - a review of climate science by scientists. (80 minutes)

Sea Level Rate Constant Over 100 Years. (30 seconds)

The Road to Complete Streets

The plan in the San Francisco Bay Area and elsewhere is to restrict (evenutally eliminate) motor travel and get rid parking on all main streets. This is being done despite transit authorities full knowledge that most people do not want the proposed alterations to the streets:

‘Least bad option’: SFMTA greenlights West Portal compromise street safety plan

Radical changes to the streets are being installed as fast as possible with little or no reference to local preferences or objections. None of these changes have been put to a vote.

Chinatown leaders say bike-lane idea ‘blindsided’ them

Association of Bay Area Governments - ABAG

In the San Francisco Bay Area over 100 cities are members of the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG). ABAG is an end-run around informed consent by voting. This unelected body decides what is going to happen in member cities under the doctrine of Regional Governance. Other agencies that play a role in Complete Streets are: County Supervisors, City Councils, A.C. Transit, Alameda County Transit Authority (ACTA), San Francisco Metropolitan Transit Authority (SFMTA) and other unelected bodies.

Practically no one in the Bay Area has heard of ABAG. The mayor of Berkeley, Jesse Arreguin, boasts that he is president of ABAG. Because of this and other reasons we are not in favor of Jesse going to Sacramento for a State Senate seat.

We support Arreguin's opponent: Jovanka Beckles, who has a much better record of public service on the Richmond City Council and is endorsed by Bernie Sanders.

Every city in the Bay Area is moving toward the same transformations: inconvenient changes to main streets; dozens of high-density apartments in excess of local housing needs; surveillance cameras;. Plan Bay Area is a coordinated campaign by ABAG to shift decision-making away from voters to centralized, top-down government control.

Climate Action Plans: Policies for Social Engineering

Using high-flown language loaded with carefully tailored buzzwords, Bay Area City and County Climate Action plans lay out detailed steps to gain control over every aspect of property, resources, even our homes. You will be surprised by how far they go. Take a look and see what you think:

Alameda County Climate Action Plan

City of Berkeley Climate Action Plan (See Berkeley's 'War on Cars' in Chapter 3.)

Why is there so much high-density development in urban cores? IMPORTANT!

There is a housing glut in California. The large apartment complexes that are popping up everywhere have many vacant units. Why are more complexes being built all the time? Click here to learn the real meaning of sustainable development.

The People's Traffic Survey

Anyone can see the number of bicycles is very small compared to motor traffic. Yet we are being told that we 'have' to completely change our streets to accommondate the small minority of people who ride bicycles.

Can we know with any precision how lopsided the proportion of bikes to motor traffic on major thoroughfares actually is? Actually, yes.

We The People have counted cars, trucks, buses and motorcycles—and bicycles—during peak hours on streets where the City of Berkeley is determined to strangle motor traffic and eliminate parking.

Motor traffic is counted with mechanical counters for accuracy. Pen and paper are enough for bicycles because there are so few.

Over fifty hours of traffic surveys in Berkeley show:

During this survey no bicycle rider has exhibited difficulty riding on an umodified, conventional street.