Dear Journal editor:
As another long time Nob Hill resident I must say this proposal is going to destroy our and other communities and not create anything but more low wage jobs, if any at all.
We do need more mass transit but this is not a good solution unless you are a contractor looking for a quick buck. I would rather that this money be spent on low income housing, north/south bus lines, subsidizing jobs for the poor, helping our schools among a list of other more pressing problems. Heck, Nob Hill does not even have a community center but it has lots of bars.
In case the mayor has not noticed the businesses along Central have been closing for a long time now due to the fact that people don't have the luxury spending money in their pockets to spend in Nob Hill bars and shops. It is not because they don't have a bus to get there on. Raising the wages of low-end workers in the city would do more to help businesses than anything right now.
Throwing $100 million into this problem is going to solve nothing but make the Nob Hill and other communities near by area more unlivable as more and more traffic will be shifted to the horrible Coal and Lead corridors.
Lead and Coal cut like a knife through long stable communities and the increased traffic planned for them will just drive more people out and properties will be turned in to rentals by "investors", who are behind much of this project it seems. This is already happing. The noise and racing problems and intersection crashes on Lead/Coal are now causing home owners to put up walls on the street sides, making the area more of a canyon than a nice livable neighborhood.
Intensifying the traffic on Lead and Coal, one of the stated goals of the project will bleed this area of many stable long-term homeowners. What the ART will do is make the platinum condo duelers who jump from brewery to brewery along Central happier. This seems to be the class divide behind this project as it is planned.
Plus, the thousands of trees that we have planted along Central over the decades to make some shade in this hot city will be cut down too. This plan makes no sense at all and should be stopped now in its tracks before more destruction is done to our communities. We need more rapid transit but not this project.
Bob Anderson