
The Worst-Run Big City in the U.S. – San Francisco (2009) - anemitz
http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-city-in-the-u-s/
======
rayiner
San Francisco's budget last year was $6.8 billion. Chicago's was $6.3 billion
San Francisco has 800,000 people. Chicago has 2,700,000 people.

Oh, and this is a map of the Muni:
[http://0.tqn.com/d/sanfrancisco/1/0/U/N/-/-/sanfranciscomuni...](http://0.tqn.com/d/sanfrancisco/1/0/U/N/-/-/sanfranciscomunimap800.jpg)

This is a map of the CTA elevated line:
<http://www.transitchicago.com/assets/1/maps/ctatrainmap.png>

This is a map of Caltrain:
<http://www.caltrain.com/Assets/maps/Caltrain+Zone+Map.jpg>

This is a map of Metra:
[http://www.mrl.ucsb.edu/~yopopov/rrt/us/chicago/rr_chicago_m...](http://www.mrl.ucsb.edu/~yopopov/rrt/us/chicago/rr_chicago_metra.gif)

I found this quote interesting: "For all its scotch-soaked flaws, the city of
yore did not suffer from these problems. While archaic and stridently
antidemocratic by today's standards, the system of government cobbled together
by a citizens' commission in 1931 largely did what our forebears wanted it to
do — mind the store and eliminate rampant corruption."

I think municipal governments should be run by benevolent dictators. If you
leave everything up to the market, you get disasters like Northern Virginia.
If you go to the ballot for everything, you end up with disasters like San
Francisco. No, benevolent dictators are the way to go. I'm a huge fan of
Guilliani and Bloomberg's work in NYC. Love them or hate them, you'd rather
live in NYC circa 2013 than NYC circa 1993. I have high hopes for Rahm
Emmanuel in Chicago. He apparently came up with his last budget using a
process for soliciting input from others in the government that boiled down to
"fuck you!"

~~~
mmanfrin
Not quite an apples to apples comparison, though. Chicago is a prime example
of purely flat, grid design; whereas SF has to contend with a geography of
nightmares for public transit. It is _tremendously_ easier to build transit
systems in Chicago.

~~~
greggman
Japan has no problems and look at a map of Tokyo. There are few straight
streets in the entire city. It's also got plenty of hills. So does LA and they
used to have an amazing transit system.
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Electric_Railway>)

So no, you don't need a flat grid to have great public transit.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
Whoa, Tokyo is totally flat! No comparison, and also Japan cities spend a lot
more money on infrastructure than even American cities do.

Best to compare San Francisco with...Lausanne...or Chongqing (or any city with
a bunch of hills that is fairly vertical).

~~~
cousin_it
Doesn't Lausanne have pretty good public transport? Here's a live map:
<http://simcity.vasile.ch/lausanne/>

~~~
bhickey
The Lausanne metro is fantastic. The M2 cuts straight through the hills and
the M1 runs parallel to Lake Geneva and can get you to, say, EPFL in no time.
On top of this there are the commuter trains which can get you to Geneva in
about thirty minutes.

How fast can you get from 4th & King to the SJC?

Nevertheless, comparing San Francisco to Lausanne is unfair. Lausanne provides
better infrastructure for a smaller population.

~~~
seanmcdirmid
They have similar topologies, that was my only point (and that I've lived in
both cities to know...).

------
Cushman
> You can't get San Francisco running efficiently, because that would require
> large numbers of unionized city workers to willingly admit their redundancy
> and wastefulness. Inefficiency pays their salaries.

I predict we will all have this problem before too long. Every time you hear a
politician talk about "creating jobs", this is what they are talking about:
work as welfare. Gotta right to live, gotta work to live, so you gotta right
to work-- never mind if, by working, you're actually damaging the economy.

Right now it's only a few obsolete unions and they sound crazy, but the robots
will come for all of us eventually. We need to start working yesterday on a
society that can conceive of supporting even those who contribute nothing, or
I fear that the era of free food will see us all starve to death.

~~~
capisce
I think a lot of people will be more productive under basic income by working
on things they're actually passionate about rather than compromising (with a
9-5 office job where they're paid mostly to show up and play the game of
appearances) to pay the bills.

~~~
Cushman
Yeah, my prediction in that scenario is we would see less nominal growth, but
more actual innovation in the things people care about.

------
ajays
MUNI is just one of the problems with SF. There are many more.

Firstly: this is a city of transplants. You'd be hard-pressed to find a native
SF'an in your daily interactions. (I know just a couple, and I've been here 6
years). As a result, many of them don't vote; or if they do, they don't have
the context to see through the bullshit that is put out there. They'll take a
politician's word, when a long-term resident will remember that that fucker
has been lying for 20 years. As a corollary to this, you can control the City
if you can put together a decent-sized voting block. So, for example: the City
has 25,000 employees. If you can get the City employees on your side, then
their votes alone are enough to swing most elections in your favor. For
example: many years ago, the MUNI drivers got the City Charter amended to
guarantee that they would be at least the second-highest paid drivers in the
nation! Can you even imagine the clout they had to modify a city's
constitution? (Thankfully, this was repealed a couple of years ago).

Secondly: the City has a lot of money to spend. The people in power stay in
power via a huge game of doing (and getting) favors. For example: the City
spends over $500 million/year on various "non profits". Your non-profit won't
get a dollar unless you employ "consultants" who will help you write the
proposal; and these consultants are very well-connected people. And they get a
ton of money for a few days work (it's not uncommon to see such consultants be
on payroll making $300K at a non-profit, but noone ever sees them at work).

Thirdly: the City is exceedingly corrupt. If you know the right people, you
can get away with anything. This is why you have leeches like (Slick) Willie
Brown and Rose Pak running the show. They know how the system works, and make
a living just by greasing the wheels and pulling strings.

This is why, during elections, I vote for the people who are the most removed
from the corridors of power. Anyone who has had anything to do with the System
doesn't get my vote. It may be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater,
but the City needs an enema.

~~~
JPKab
The homeless problem in the city is freaking insane, and I'm sorry to say, but
the more they spend on it, the more they simply attract them from other
places.

My mother is a chronically homeless drug addict. Obviously, despite attempts
from my family over the years to help her, she is beyond our help. Money is
poured into drugs, she refuses to work, and her mental illness contributes to
the problem. One thing that she, and many, many homeless people I have
encoutnered in my visits to shelters, are good at is finding cities that offer
handouts and finding a way to get to these cities. My mother is a member of an
entire counter/sub/culture which bounces from city to city, moving when the
city's time limit on free handouts runs out. When conservatives criticize
welfare dependency, this is what they point to. I don't agree with them, but
this is a real problem.

San Fran draws homeless drug addicts like a moth to a flame. As a city, the
thought is that these programs are a compassionate thing to do. Enabling drug
addiction is not compassionate to the homeless, and it certainly isn't
compassionate or caring to the citizens of the city who have to fund this
ridiculous garbage. When you provide a soft landing to drug addicts, you are
enabling them.

Its not just the Tenderloin. My first time in the city in many years, back in
2004, I got off the BART with my brother, who had never been to the city.
Literally, within minutes of us arriving near Fisherman's Wharf, (I wanted to
show him some sights) a drunk homeless man attempted to punch me in the face.
He was much smaller than me, so it wasn't dangerous, but it certainly would
have been bad for a smaller person or a woman.

My niece is in fashion school in the city, and has been groped and grabbed by
homeless on multiple occasions. It is out of control, and it gives liberalism
a bad name.

Are conservative cities assholes to homeless? Yes. Do they treat them like
human beings? No. Do citizens of said cities get harassed? No.

Many cities have a middle ground, such as having zero tolerance for homeless
intimidating/touching citizens. If you touch, you are no longer welcome.

There are many who would call me heartless. But when a mentally ill/drug
addicted person becomes a predator, and attacks a loved one, they quickly
change their tune, especially when they find out that the predator was
attracted to their neighborhood by handouts purchased with their own tax
dollars.

~~~
Cieplak
Reminds me of:

 _Homeless Are Fighting Back Against Panhandling Bans_

[http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/us/homeless-are-
fighting-b...](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/06/us/homeless-are-fighting-
back-in-court-against-panhandling-bans.html?_r=0)

------
dmckeon
The url for all 6 pages of the article in one is:
[http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-
ci...](http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-city-in-the-
u-s/full/)

~~~
raldi
How'd you find it?

------
nestlequ1k
Worst run transportation system in the country. But on the good side, it's
what has enabled Uber and Sidecar to thrive.

In SF, even the disfunction is startup friendly.

~~~
codewright
Dysfunction! The prefix comes from dys- which is the Greek for adding a "bad"
sense to the word.

Dis- is from the Latin for "apart, between".

You like this? On-demand editing services: chris@edithero.com

Clickable: <http://www.edithero.com/>

~~~
davelocity
Do a Show HN post instead of spamming in the comment section

------
spc476
I find it hard to believe that any city could be run worse than Detroit.

~~~
saturdaysaint
It doesn't help that it's much poorer than any of the other cities mentioned
yet is far bigger than SF and Chicago combined...

~~~
refurb
But it didn't start out poor.

------
pbreit
From 2009 but a good read and I'm sure as valid as ever.

------
tyang
Why is this 2009 article trending now?

People want to live in San Francisco in spite of the city government, just
like the summers there.

------
beatpanda
We actually do this on purpose. It's a hazing ritual. And it's how we keep the
city weird. You are free to leave!

~~~
spitx
This won't last for long. The influx of "tech transients" will force changes
on the landscape and the machinery.

[http://www.missionmission.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/08/fuc...](http://www.missionmission.org/wp-
content/uploads/2012/08/fuck-off-yuppies-560x560.jpg)

[http://www.missionmission.org/2012/08/22/fuck-off-yuppies-
sa...](http://www.missionmission.org/2012/08/22/fuck-off-yuppies-says-new-
graffiti-on-299-valencia-condo-complex/)

So I'd say, count your days. They're numbered. Your anti-gentrification rage
is pointless.

~~~
beatpanda
Right, until they all move away to the suburbs in < 10 years because 'It's
just a lot _nicer_ out there, you know what I mean? Not so many homeless
people.'

If you think this bubble is going to force any permanent change on San
Francisco, youre delusional.

------
hisabness
yes, blame the city's problems on the head of the San Francisco Recreation and
Park Department. is this supposed to be journalism?

------
ahoyhere
Philadelphia is so much worse. Bigger, poorer, more corrupt. There is good
reason to believe that the political "ruling families" trade off power, and
pay each other not to run.

Here's an example: City infrastructure like sewer pipes and water mains are
owned by a private company, who doesn't appear to ever do maintenance. And
when the 100+-year-old pipes inevitably break, causing sinkholes in major
roads, the city pays the company to "fix" them. Which is why a major
intersection 3 blocks from my house, in one of the busiest & most touristy
parts of the city, has been closed for 4 months aaaand counting.

Also… Public transit? Ha!

School funding? HA! There's an epic budget shortfall for education but city
hall is spending something like $40-50 million to build a park in front of
city hall: [http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/Bids-
due-...](http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/inq-phillydeals/Bids-due-
for-50M-rebuild-on-City-Hall-park.html)

Comcast and other major corporations pay zero taxes.

Still a better place to live than SF though, if you ask me, but I avoid all
talk about politics like the plague, and I take taxis and donate a car
payment's worth to local DonorsChoose projects every month.

~~~
metl_lord
Sewer pipes and water mains in Philadelphia are owned and maintained by the
Philadelphia Water Department, a government organization.

SEPTA bus, trolly, and train service is not too bad. There are parts of the
city that are not well covered, but with Regional Rail, it's somewhat easy to
get around.

I'll give you school funding, but Dilworth Plaza was a pretty awful place and
the remodel looks nice.

Philly's not perfect, but with it's size, age, and location in the rust belt,
it's not doing too bad.

------
spitx
Richly pertinent here is a recent post on the Muni by Bryan Goldberg.

"As I’ve written before, and will write more about in the future, California
and San Francisco suffer from “The Italian Complex”.

Our state is a lot like the nation of Italy. It has a beautiful natural
landscape and weather that most people would envy. It is geographically
diverse — we enjoy great sunshine and great skiing in relatively close
proximity. The people are culturally pleasant, love life, and you can strike
up conversation with gentle strangers. We are intellectual and passionate
about both arts and science. They gave us the Renaissance, and we gave the
world the Digital Age. But for all the natural and cultural brilliance, we are
held down by an incompetent and pathetic government.

And if the city of San Francisco is at the heart of our political
incompetence, then the Muni system is like the left and right ventricle.

The problems with Muni are so tremendous and infuriating that I don’t even
know where to begin. But here are a few points off the top of my head (with a
little help from Google).

Muni generates a mind-bogglingly small proportion of its own funding…

Muni charges people fares to ride, and you would think that these fares could
cover at least a meaningful portion of their immense operating costs. But no.
They cover a measly $198 million of the $821 million budget. That’s not even
one quarter of the cost. The biggest contributor to Muni’s budget is parking
tickets and fines, which should surprise nobody. But this is really just an
accounting gimmick to charge taxpayers for Muni, because in most cities
parking tickets would be used to fund an array of services.

Nobody is saying that Muni should operate at profit. Or that it should come
even close to profit. But how about covering half of its costs through revenue
from its users?

In comparison, the NYC MTA generates over $7 billion from fares and tolls,
which covers more than half of its $13.4 billion annual budget.

The Chinatown political machine ensures that they get the lion’s share of the
benefits

The epicenter of Muni is on Stockton, Powell, and the other major arteries
that run through Chinatown. By ‘coincidence,’ this is also where the new
super-expensive subway will run. People who ride the bus know about the “Dirty
30” and “45” lines that needlessly take Marina and Pac Heights commuters
through the congestion of Chinatown en route to their jobs downtown or in
Soma.

This is not because such routes and investments serve the people of San
Francisco. It is because the Chinatown political machine controlled by Rose
Pak — who basically put our mayor into office — decrees it to be the case.

The political machine keeps rolling. The big infrastructure money goes to
Chinatown. Naïve hipsters with high salaries have no idea it’s going on. And
the virtuous cycle continues.

But I’m sure that the camera shops, trinket stands, and street-side produce
markets of Chinatown are the ones providing the city with most of its tax,
jobs, and commerce income.

Muni is basically useless, anyhow. Walking is better.

Taking Muni is basically a waste of effort and money. You will be stunned by
how little time you save by riding the bus vs. just walking. Riding a bike is
so much more effective than taking the bus that it’s laughable.

This is a tiny city, and you can walk from any one point to another in 45
minutes most of the time.

But, back to walking. Anyone who is traveling in a North-South direction to
commute (i.e. Marina to Downtown) knows that by the time the 30 or 45 bus gets
to Chinatown, you can get out and walk faster, plus you don’t feel like a
sardine. That walk is a no-brainer.

But what about East-West commuters (i.e. Lower Haight to Downtown)? To
illustrate, I will use my old commute and Google Maps. I used to live at
Fillmore/Hayes, which was two full miles from my office at Kearny/Sutter. By
San Francisco standards, this is a fairly typical distance from work.
According to Google Maps, the walk will take 34 minutes. If you take the
N-Judah, the absolute fastest you can do the ride is in 20 minutes, but that
assumes no wait for the bus, which is unlikely. Throw in a reasonable wait for
the bus, and now you save maybe five minutes door-to-door. Plus it costs money
and you get way less exercise. And you may get sick from having twenty people
within two feet of you. So there’s that cost too.

In short, Muni is basically useless."

I agree in full.

Source: [http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/29/muni-is-100-years-old-
too-b...](http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/29/muni-is-100-years-old-too-bad-it-
wont-die-like-a-human-that-age/)

~~~
liber8
Part of the problem is San Francisco's (and Phoenix/Tampa/etc/etc) fascination
with rail. They spend billions and billions of dollars to construct and
maintain rail systems that simply don't attract that many riders. And of
course since the fares don't come close to covering the cost of the rail, the
cities are forced to suck that money away from other areas like buses (which
are far cheaper and have the added benefit of being more flexible). So, cities
like San Francisco end up with monstrous rail costs and a resulting inability
to fund fundamentally better transportation, like buses.

~~~
rayiner
The problem isn't rail. Chicago and NYC have perfectly functional systems
built on rail. The problem is that the rail doesn't go anywhere you want it to
go.

~~~
liber8
You don't see this as a problem? I find that akin to saying "The Soviet Union
had a perfectly functioning economy. The problem was just that half its
citizens were starving."

One of the best aspects of buses, aside from the cost, are they can go
anywhere you want. If a lot more people move into the Mission, you can spend a
few million dollars and double the number of buses (as opposed to literally
billions of dollars to build a rail line). If people move away from the
Tenderloin, you're not stuck with billions of dollars of infrastructure that
now isn't needed. Just move the bus routes.

Also, lets look at NYC, one of the most successful rail systems in the world.
As OP states, it costs nearly $14B a year to operate and only generates $7B a
year. That means people who don't use it are paying $7B/year to the people
that do use it. I wouldn't call this "perfectly functional". And as I
mentioned above, the more rail you build, inevitably the less resources you
have for more efficient and economical transport.

~~~
rayiner
"The rail doesn't go where you want it to go" comment is directed at Muni, not
Chicago's or New York's system. Chicago's and New York's largely goes where
people want it to go because development springs up around the transit.

The problem with buses is capacity. If you city is relatively sensibly laid
out and commuters tend to follow certain predictable routes, you can get far
more capacity on a rail line than on roads. Not only does a bus carry a lot
fewer people (an NYC reticulated bus can carry about 120, a full NYC subway
train about 2,000), but as a practical matter you can't run the buses as fast
or as frequently as you can run trains.

Predictability is also a problem. Buses are at the mercy of street traffic.
Trains run on a schedule. My commute from northern Virginia to d.c. by highway
used to take anywhere from 40 minutes to 80 minutes depending on traffic. My
commute from westchester to new york city by train (which is actually 2 miles
longer) takes exactly 34 minutes almost every day. About once a month a train
will be 5-7 minutes late (which is consistent with the ~95% on-time
performance of Metro North). I can leave my house 5 minutes before the
expected departure time (with a 3-4 minute walk to the station) because I can
count that the train will arrive within a minute of its scheduled time. You
can't replicate this by car or bus in a dense metro area.

Pollution is another problem. Air pollution has huge externalize costs in a
city because of the density. With electric rail, you can build the power
plants out in the country where the pollution affects fewer people. With
buses, you're clogging up the air breathed in by several million people in
close proximity. Buses are prime contributors to sulfurous and particulate
pollution in cities.

Moreover, it's not like bus infrastructure is free. You have to build and
maintain the roads, and if you want to replicate the capacity of trains you
need to build isolated bus highways through the city. These are not cheap, and
have a very damaging effect on the communities they run through by cutting
them in half. Highway construction inside a city is an absolute terrible idea
from an economic point of view.

It's wholly inappropriate to compare the operating costs of transit to
revenues. First, the shortfall in the MTA isn't because it can't charge high
enough fares, but because the ticket prices are kept artificially low ($100
for unlimited rides per month!) as a subsidy to low-income people. Second,
transit infrastructure generates high positive externalities. You have to look
at the net impact on the whole economy instead of looking at just a piece of
it. E.g. consider the highway system. It brings in a few tens of billions in
revenue each year via gas taxes. Is that the whole of the economic benefit of
the system? Are people like me, who don't drive, subsidizing people who do?
Imagine if we got rid of the highway system. What would be the impact on GDP?
A hell of a lot more than a few tens of billions, I can tell you.

~~~
bane
_because development springs up around the transit._

bingo, and with SF's difficult at best development issues, it simply hasn't
been possible for the city to develop as it should have around the rail.

~~~
malandrew
Exactly. If the commissions that regulat how many new housing units were both
competent and not corrupt, I reckon the rail options would be far more
profitable.

------
L0j1k
This person has clearly never been to Honolulu, as our system load and human
capacity problems are evident even to tourists on a weekend-long stay. And
yes, folks, it's directly the fault of the city and county of Honolulu for not
creating infrastructure to accommodate the growth. It's a very backwards
political system; one that dreams of a long-gone Honolulu from the 1940s. This
island is pushing a million people, and our systems simply cannot withstand
the amount of friction being applied to them. The whole system breaks down
continually.

