San Antonio Petition May Stop Streetcar

San Antonio streetcar opponents submitted a petition today to allow voters to decide whether the region’s transit agency, VIA, should spend $280 million on a 5.9-mile streetcar. They needed about 20,000 signatures, and submitted well over 26,000 of which they personally pre-verified nearly 24,000.

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So, be adventurous and take a journey through what feels good and what doesn’t. order levitra online However, this creates displeasure for http://pharma-bi.com/2011/03/mixed-metaphor-line-graph-bar-chart/ levitra samples their females. In fact, the medication simply allows the body to release a chemical called nitric oxide. shop for viagra cheap Erectile dysfunction, known as Impotence affects younger and older men prefer taking kamagra 100mg tablets due to its availability, quality, viagra super store effectiveness and cost factor as well. Streetcar skeptics hold a press conference on the steps of San Antonio’s city hall as they present signatures for a ballot measure requiring that voters approve any streetcars built in city streets or rights of way. Photo by Michael Dennis.

Unfortunately, this petition still has several hurdles to leap. First, the city is claiming that signature gatherers didn’t follow proper procedures; the petitioners claim they did, and that the procedures the city wants them to follow only apply to recall petitions. Second, even if the measure makes it to the ballot and is approved by voters, VIA argues that it won’t be bound by the results.

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About The Antiplanner

The Antiplanner is a forester and economist with more than fifty years of experience critiquing government land-use and transportation plans.

23 Responses to San Antonio Petition May Stop Streetcar

  1. OFP2003 says:

    I get so mad at “leaders” that fight against the people. A genuine “leader” would be helping the people with their referrendums not fighting against them. How arrogant to get elected/apointed/promoted into a position of public leadership/trust/stewardship and then spend any time at all fighting against attempts of the “people” to organize and express an opinion.
    In the Maryland statehouse it gets worse every couple of years as they pass more and more stringent requirements and restrictions on the referrendum process. Surely noboby on either side of the aisle supports this in principle.

  2. msetty says:

    Judging from the photo, the average age of the anti-streetcar types appears to be well over 60. Wonder what the average person in San Antonio actually thinks about this.

  3. metrosucks says:

    “of the anti-streetcar types”

    Wow, listen to him. Those who oppose wasteful, useless boondoggles like these are suddenly “anti-streetcar”. Given Portland’s experience with the useless toy train that is, if that’s possible, even more useless than light rail, any proposals to build these boondoggles should be rejected out of hand.

    Unless you are a corrupt crony or consultant making money off these deals, like msetty.

  4. Dan says:

    Seeing as how there is going to be a public forum this evening on the streetcar, we may be able to get a snapshot of a cross-section of the forum-attending public’s feelings on this issue, and on the need for transit in general in SA.

    DS

  5. msetty says:

    Anti-streetcar and anti-transit extremists like Metrosucky doesn’t care whatever the results of that meeting. His “viewpoint” should be rejected out of hand on this basis.

  6. metrosucks says:

    Anti-streetcar and anti-transit extremists like Metrosucky doesn’t care whatever the results of that meeting

    Of course, the “meeting” will be ginned up, stuffed with astroturf supporters, maybe even a few streetcar execs in casual attire, opponents will be marginalized or just plain ignored, and the streetcar will be given credit for everything from world peace to solving global warming.

    Now while msetty chafes himself thinking of that fat consultant fee that will enable him to leave that exurban dystopia and move to the Nirvana of density, the rest of us should consider the real implications of wastefully spending all that money on a worthless boondoggle designed to enrich crony developers and pump up city egos.

  7. MJ says:

    I noticed the article was behind a paywall, so I wasn’t able to find the information there, but was there ever a referendum on actually spending money on this streetcar in the first place?

  8. metrosucks says:

    I think there hasn’t been yet, but all along the transit “authority” (sic) has claimed a referendum would not apply to them. Ask Gilfoil or msetty, I am not a Stalinist.

  9. gilfoil says:

    I see 20-odd fat old white people on some steps, but I have no idea why they are opposed to the streetcar, and the website that the Antiplanner provided has no information.

  10. msetty says:

    Metrosucky speweth forth:
    Of course, the “meeting” will be ginned up, stuffed with astroturf supporters, maybe even a few streetcar execs in casual attire, opponents will be marginalized or just plain ignored, and the streetcar will be given credit for everything from world peace to solving global warming.

    Well, this slathering blather coming from someone who has about the same sort of relationship with the real world as those piling on Steven Spielberg on social media because he “murdered an innocent triceratops” in 1993: http://www.news.com.au/technology/online/social-media-storm-after-steven-spielberg-murders-innocent-triceratops-and-posts-pic/story-fnjwmwrh-1226985557155.

  11. JOHN1000 says:

    Racial profiling is okay; if you profile “fat old white people”. Who cares what they think?

    But, just in case someone might be paying attention, let’s lie about who was actually there.

    Look closer at the picture; there are some younger white people – my God, there are even some blacks. But blacks who disagree with the progressive agenda are treated the same as fat old white people. Who cares what they think?

  12. msetty says:

    “Racial profiling is okay; if you profile “fat old white people”. Who cares what they think?”

    I see many people simply can’t take It when their beliefs are questioned, even by simply asking what the typical San Antonio resident thinks, as opposed to the know views of the group in the photo.

    It would also be interesting to know the distribution of where those people in San Antonio live. Downtown and central neighborhoods, the areas most impacted by streetcars? I seriously doubt it. Likely the vast majority are from outlying areas. If the group pictured is typical, I’m sure the Tea Party is over-represented.

    In the S.F. Bay Area, most of Tea Party-type opposition to Plan Bay Area were from the far suburbs such as San Ramon and similar places despite the fact that plan calls for most of the “stack and pack” (sic) housing to be constructed in places like San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley and a few other mostly downtown areas (and where there was almost no protest, e.g., in places where multiple family housing doesn’t generate culture panic).

    I’d guess the REAL reason for opposition to streetcars in San Antonio, and around here, Plan Bay Area, is the innate opposition by many to traditional urbanism and the associated culture panic, in minds long-twisted by the arcadian suburban delusion. Another tell-tale is that some San Antonio streetcar opponents also claim that “most people” (well, the people they know directly, anyway) demand even more taxpayer subsidies for their excessive driving.

  13. msetty says:

    Heck, entire books have been written on the history of anti-urbanism and fear of the city:

    http://history.osu.edu/publications/americans-against-city-anti-urbanism-twentieth-century.

  14. JOHN1000 says:

    Uh oh.
    Someone noticed that it was not only fat old white people opposing the project. What do we do?
    Le’s call them Tea Partiers.
    Name-calling is so much easier than discussing the facts.

  15. Dan says:

    Heck, entire books have been written on the history of anti-urbanism and fear of the city:

    I’d argue that the cultural conditioning that germinated the fear of the city goes further back than the book’s starting point (as likely the author would too): the roots of this cultural conditioning likely go back to the urban conditions – especially areas of new immigrants – that spawned the Temperance Movement and then the City Beautiful campaigns.

    DS

  16. metrosucks says:

    I’d argue that the cultural conditioning that germinated the fear of the city

    Planners would love that: label those who simply prefer to live in the suburbs (over 80% of the population, and climbing), as having an irrational fear of the central city that prevents them from accessing that immaculate Nirvana of density.

    If only the average Joe could hear the hate and FUD that spews out of a government planner’s secondary anus!

  17. msetty says:

    So the leading city-hater and hypocrite on this blog, Metrosucky, spews his vitriol forth again. Ho-hum. Par for the course…

    Dan, I just downloaded the book to my Kindle program. The author does begin with Jefferson’s questionable tirades against cities, and briefly goes over anti-urban sentiments during the 19th century. But the focus of the book is mainly a history of “city-hating” in the 20th and early 21st centuries. And I’m sure I’ll be able to develop excellent retorts to the cast of hypocritical city-haters that spew their venom on this blog and elsewhere.

  18. Dan says:

    Michael, I bet you can trace an increasing slope for fear of urban dwellers thru the 20th century via your new e-book, with a decrease in the slope in the 1990s. Sounds interesting, I’ll give ‘er a look.

    DS

  19. metrosucks says:

    It must be so convenient to ignore the numbers (most people don’t live in the central city and simply prefer not to as a lifestyle choice), and just pretend people have a pathological fear of the “City” and all its “wonders”. Does Pareto’s number mean anything to you government propaganda marinated imbeciles?

    No, I guess not, then you wouldn’t be able to spin all that fiction about people fearing the “City” (capital C, of course, in reference to San Francisco’s own egotistical self-image in the 19th Century) due to “propaganda” by Wendell Cox or the Koch Brothers or George Bush or whatever other bogeymen are popular in academia at the moment.

  20. MJ says:

    I see many people simply can’t take It when their beliefs are questioned, even by simply asking what the typical San Antonio resident thinks, as opposed to the know views of the group in the photo.

    The City of San Antonio and VIA are clearly not interested in what the average resident thinks, as their strenuous opposition to a referendum (and VIA’s own statement that it would not be bound by the results of such a referendum) on the streetcar suggests.

    It would also be interesting to know the distribution of where those people in San Antonio live. Downtown and central neighborhoods, the areas most impacted by streetcars? I seriously doubt it.

    Since they will be ones asked to pay for this thing, they most certainly will be impacted. Their right to register their views on the matter should not even be in question.

  21. gilfoil says:

    Msetty, thanks for the link ( http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2009/05/the-rise-of-anti-urbanism/18169/ ); interesting article.

    Uh oh.
    Someone noticed that it was not only fat old white people opposing the project. What do we do?
    Le’s call them Tea Partiers.
    Name-calling is so much easier than discussing the facts.

    What facts? What’s their argument?

  22. Tombdragon says:

    msetty, you seem to be real hard on critics when we testify to the lies we have experience by your profession. Please point to projects that work for a broad socioeconomic section of the population. Be careful I live in Portland the poster child for institutional planning, yet a majority aren’t happy with the lies, the results, or the cost of this failed planning? What has been learned from the broad failure of Smart Growth, Urban Renewal, and Transit Oriented Development. Remember don’t lie or embellish,’ll be checking.

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