San Diego Mayoral Candidate Turner Gets Schooled on Bike Lanes

Financial Literacy and Infrastructure Can Be Hard

When politicians have little to offer in terms of vision, their campaigns for office revolve around fear, based on things they (should) know to be untrue. “Taking” plays a central role in these campaigns as opposed to “making,” as in “they” must be stopped from doing something instead of “we” can do something to make life better.

In the case of Mayoral candidate Larry Turner, the “war against cars” is one issue he sought to get traction with via a social media video claiming $446 million has been spent on bike lanes across the city. 

He then drops the bombshell question:

• Do you think there’s a better way to spend that money, San Diego?

Activist and mayoral aide Britany Bailey wasn’t about to let this claim go unchallenged. 

I’d like to make sure her response goes further than Xitter. Following is a slightly annotated version of her (righteous, but not official) response:

• Road money can’t be used for other infrastructure, you would think a mayoral candidate would know that

• $446m isn’t the CITY it’s SANDAG, you would think a mayoral candidate would know that

• Also “let’s have more people die on the road” isn’t the campaign slogan you think it is

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Aside from observer: Plus isn't it $446m over like a few decades?
Bailey:  yes! we're not talking a single year people

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• Only 2% of SANDAG’s funding goes to bike lanes. That means you’re literally whining about 2 cents of every $1 of taxpayer funding for transportation projects

• Not only that, but $200m is from Transnet and the rest of that $446m is grant awards, because SANDAG successfully leveraged their funds to win state and federal funding for their projects. That’s good governance!!!

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• Further, each one of these projects is pumping millions of dollars into local JOBS that will support living wages for middle class workers. Good paying jobs that support families. We like that!

• Now let’s REALLY get into it

• “a bike lane” is not a bike lane

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• Every single one of these projects is multiple millions of dollars in right of way infrastructure and often times correcting DEFICIENT infrastructure – you bet your sweet tiddlywinks they ARE being spent on replacing/upgrading storm drains, repaving the roads…

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• …adding new streetlights, roundabouts, ADA ramps, adding new ADA parking spaces, planting new street trees and landscaping, retaining walls, bus islands, and community placemaking like neighborhood signs. They are even using bike lane funding to build a parking lot! 

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• Many of these projects ADD parking – 4th and 5thBike Lanes added 100 parking spaces to Bankers Hill, Eastern Hillcrest Bikeways are adding 35 parking spaces, Washington Street is getting an actual literal parking lot

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• Again, the actual bike lane is a small portion of the overall project!!

• Not a single one of these is “a bike lane”

• These are INFRASTRUCTURE projects

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• the reason you think that “all the City does is bike lanes” is because of the sheer amount of rage bait posted on bike lanes – for less than 10 miles offensive bike lanes in the last year, you’ve happily ignored the $100’s of millions and 100’s of miles of roads paved!

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• Seriously – how many news stories have been run about 300 feet of bike lane? How many community outreach meetings for a 1.2 mile stretch? You don’t see that level of coverage when parking is removed for fire lanes. You don’t question the impact to someone’s life when ADA ramps go in. You don’t argue against sidewalks because they’re not covered in bumper-to-bumper pedestrian traffic.

• More importantly, each of these infrastructure projects makes the road safer for everyone – drivers, pedestrians, ADA, and yes, cyclists

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• Given the stories reported of the number of crashes and traffic fatalities on today’s UT, I would posit that even MORE funding needs to go toward these projects

• You think there is a powerful “bike lobby” but the car lobby is real, comprises every American with a driver’s license, and spent over $80m in federal lobbying in 2022.

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• Consider (a) more people are biking because climate change is happening at a rapid pace (b) many people bike or take transit to save costs (c) some people do it to commute while exercising (d) in Downtown/Uptown/ Mid-City, it really is way more efficient than driving a car. 

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• With ebikes, it’s easier for nonathletic people. There are more commuters, families with kids, and seniors augmenting their travel with bikes than ever before.

• Consider also that at some point it gets difficult to continue defending preventable, systemic deaths. 

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• What do you say to Matt Keenan’s 3 year old Evan? What do you say to Swati Tyagi’s baby Miransh? Ryan Currie’s 4 kids? Whether riding a bike to work, dropping kids off to school, riding to the park w family, or merely getting exercise, NO ONE deserves to die on the road. 

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• This isn’t about politics. This is Life Safety.

• Walking, Biking, Skating, Rolling, or yes, even Driving – it is local governments’ responsibility to build infrastructure that supports ALL of these to be done safely.

• And right now, you can’t.

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• So all in all, we’re:

• saving lives

• reducing crashes

• providing good paying jobs

• supporting the local economy

• promoting sustainability

• leveraging our local $$

• and fixing our deficient infrastructure

• Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

The often understated premise for promoting and enabling non-automotive transportation is the need to reduce the single largest source of greenhouse gasses as part of responding to climate change.

Climate change is real, and it takes a willful blindness not to acknowledge the increasing numbers of adverse weather events occurring. And, if you do a little digging, fallacious rhetoric about bike lanes is tied to a) climate change denial and b) propaganda from fossil fuel-based industries.

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Over at Fox News, the cast and crew twisted themselves into pretzels on Tuesday, trying to impose their reality while reporting on the tragic story about a cargo ship experiencing a catastrophic power loss crashing into a major bridge. 

There was the initial assumption that DEI was responsible (code for saying a less than qualified minority was at the helm). Then knives were drawn on Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and President Biden’s infrastructure plan. When that thinking fizzled, “wide open borders” were blamed. And, as always, when nothing else nonsensical sticks, the “false flag” stories make the rounds.

Truth telling is a powerful tool. We live in a world where Donald Trump’s kind are treated better than we temporarily embarrassed wanna-be millionaires. The right in this country has spent five decades-plus undermining the institutions of democracy to further their avaricious aims. The perception of wealth has become the definition of success, no matter how it’s obtained or what the consequences are.

The Biden campaign has come around to understanding that much of Trump's power over his followers is based on the illusion of his success. After the former president blustered his way through an angry press conference following Judge Merchan setting a date for the start of the election interference case, the Biden camp replied:

• “Donald Trump is weak and desperate – both as a man and a candidate for President. He spent the weekend golfing, the morning comparing himself to Jesus, and the afternoon lying about having money he definitely doesn’t have.

• “His campaign can’t raise money, he is uninterested in campaigning outside his country club, and every time he opens his mouth, he pushes moderate and suburban voters away with his dangerous agenda,” Singer said in a statement.

• “America deserves better than a feeble, confused, and tired Donald Trump.”

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Wednesday News to Peruse

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Immigration Is Fueling US Economic Growth While Politicians Rage Via Bloomberg News (Quotes from economists)

• JPMorgan:"The jump in immigration helps resolve several of the puzzles about the macroeconomy over the past few years." "The most immediate implication is an increase in the potential workforce and pace of job growth."

• Morgan Stanley: "The rise in immigration has important ramifications for growth. Faster working-age population growth suggests faster overall growth; productivity growth may be slightly slower because of the different characteristics of the new workforce; but on net the result is faster growth.

• BNP Paribas: An influx of immigration has supported growth in jobs, particularly in the sectors that remain in deficit relative to their pre-pandemic trends such as health care and leisure/hospitality."

• Congressional Budget Office: "A surge in the rate of net immigration that began in 2022 will continue through 2026. That rise in the number of people who enter the United States minus the number who leave is projected to expand the labor force and increase economic growth."

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Women are getting off birth control amid misinformation explosion Via the Washington Post:

• Prominent conservative commentators have seized upon mistrust of medical professionals, sowing misinformation as a way to discourage the use of birth control. Some commentators inaccurately depict hormonal contraception as causing abortions. Others say they’re just looking out for women’s health.

• Brett Cooper, a media commentator for the conservative Daily Wire, argued in a viral TikTok clip that birth control can impact fertility, cause women to gain weight and even alter whom they are attracted to. It racked up over 219,000 “likes” before TikTok removed it following The Post’s inquiry.

• In a Daily Wire video, Cooper and political commentator Candace Owens denounce birth-control pills and IUDs as “unnatural,” with Owens saying she’s a “big advocate of getting women to realize this stuff is not normal,” and claiming that viewers of her content told her copper IUDs can harm women’s fertility. Medical experts say there is no evidence birth control impacts fertility long term.

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Boeing's big green disaster by Arielle Samuelson at HEATED

• And once accidents and tragedies began to plague the 737 Max—in large part because the new engines compromised the aerodynamics of the plane—the company’s sustainability marketing soared further. In a coordinated media push over a few short years, Boeing rolled out a new ESG department, hired a chief officer of sustainability, and published sustainability reports. Mike Sinnett, head of Boeing product development, told reporters at an event in 2021 that reducing greenhouse gas emissions had become a “requirement of entry” for the aviation market. That same year, Boeing held a conference in its flight test hangar in Seattle to showcase its environmentally-friendly products. The conference served as the debut for Boeing’s latest re-engined old airplane: the Alaska Airlines 737 Max 9.

• What Boeing didn’t say, but was apparent to anyone in the industry, was that the company was still trying to compete with more successful rival Airbus. Airbus had just unveiled its own even more fuel-efficient engines one week prior, advertising them as part of the company’s commitment to “sustainability and decarbonization.” Boeing looked for opportunities to distinguish itself and recoup some of its losses. One of those tactics involved Boeing advertising an experimental, even more fuel efficient version of the 737 Max 9 dubbed the “ecoDemonstrator” to Glasgow, right before the United Nations met for its annual climate conference.

• By 2023, the company was using even stronger language to describe its sustainability efforts. Boeing’s efforts “to advance environmental stewardship” are “underpinned by transparency at every level as we strive to make aerospace more sustainable,” it said in its annual report.