For a price tag of $621 million, Luberoff shows, based on 2004 state estimates, these [mass transit] projects would eliminate no more pollutants than could be accomplished by giving tune-ups to a couple of hundred automobiles that don’t meet current emissions standards. ”In fact,” he writes, ”the state [of Massachusetts] probably could identify and replace each of those 200 cars with a Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle for about $5 million, which is less than 1 percent of the cost of the three transit projects.”
The pollution and congestion has always been a pretext, not an issue.
San Francisco has the smallest share of small-fry of any major U.S. city. Just 14.5 percent of the city’s population is 18 and under.
It is no mystery why U.S. cities are losing children. The promise of safer streets, better schools and more space has drawn young families away from cities for as long as America has had suburbs.
But kids are even more scarce in San Francisco than in expensive New York (24 percent) or in retirement havens such as Palm Beach, Fla., (19 percent), according to Census estimates. […]
Determined to change things, Mayor Gavin Newsom has put the kid crisis near the top of his agenda, appointing a 27-member policy council to develop plans for keeping families in the city.
“A 27-member policy council” – yeah, that’ll get something fixed in a hurry. I suppose in San Francisco seriousness is judged by the number of people on the committee. Or did it have to be that big to be properly inclusive?