San Francisco's 'war on cars' gets even more intense as threats of violence fly

By Nora Mishanec | San Francisco Chronicle (TNS)

Soon after Supervisor Myrna Melgar backed plans to overhaul a section of streets in San Francisco's West Portal neighborhood this year after a driver killed a family of four, a man called her office asking to speak to her legislative aide, Emma Heiken Hare. The man complained to Heiken Hare about the proposed changes to the street.

"He said, 'I have a concealed carry permit and I know where you live,'" Heiken Hare recalled in an interview. Alarmed, she reported the man to the police.

The interaction was an extreme example of the ugliness that transportation projects and proposals appear to invite in San Francisco, part of a rising resistance to the city's ongoing efforts to prioritize train and bus service over personal vehicles.

The tension comes at a precarious time as the city tries to balance the competing needs of drivers, business owners and pedestrians. As complaints about public transit and the scarcity of parking reach a boiling point, BART and Muni are facing financial troubles that could spur cutbacks in service. Those cutbacks could give more ammunition to drivers who say it's already impossible to take public transit around San Francisco and insist they should be allowed to use private vehicles to get where they're going.

While city officials are accustomed to some measure of pushback, many told the Chronicle that transit projects seemed to generate not just furious debates but also threats of violence toward city employees.

City employees say the hostility surrounding transit projects and changes to streets and parking represent an unsettling chapter in the city's ongoing efforts to improve street safety and reduce traffic deaths, one in which public discourse often devolves into personal attacks.

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They were careful to specify that the enmity generated by transit and streets projects goes beyond the usual criticism, and that much of it appears to be an outgrowth of the city's conflict over street usage. Some drivers and merchants believe San Francisco is waging a "war against cars" in part by eliminating parking spaces, adding bike lanes and prioritizing public transit. Meanwhile, Muni is increasing fares amid looming budget cuts that could lead to cuts in service as soon as summer.

The list of recent projects that have inspired vitriol is lengthy. Merchants argue that the center-running bike lane on a section of Valencia Street has hurt business. Proposed changes to the streets surrounding Muni's West Portal Station have angered drivers. The push to make Golden Gate Park's JFK Drive car-free and the network of Slow Streets has prompted criticism from seniors and people with disabilities. The closure of the Upper Great Highway to cars angered families who said it made their lives more difficult. The scuttled expansion of parking-meter hours into the evening and on Sundays upset residents and businesses. Meanwhile, bus-only lanes on the Richmond District's Geary Boulevard sparked fights over who gets priority on the city's roads.

Supervisor Joel Engardio, facing a backlash and potential recall over his support of a controversial proposition to close the Great Highway to car traffic, said he has received multiple threats since the measure passed. In late November, a man approached Engardio at Lakeshore Plaza, screamed "a string of profanities and threatened physical harm" over Prop K, the supervisor said.

"It certainly felt like a threat on my life, though I cannot recall the exact words the man used between the torrent of obscenities he hurled," Engardio said.

In early December at the same location, Engardio said a woman approached him, yelled obscenities and threatened him over the same issue. The supervisor did not report either incident to police and said he had not requested additional security, noting that positive interactions with constituents outnumber the negative ones.

"Most of your constituents know where you live now. Remember that. ... Most old-school Sunset people wouldn't think twice about treating you to an old school Sunset welcome," according to one of several hostile emails sent to Engardio that the Chronicle reviewed through a public records request.

Videos of confrontations over agency projects have circulated on social media, including one in which a man filmed himself angrily yelling at construction workers he said were making noise on his street before dawn on a September morning last year. In the accompanying post, the poster said the outburst was prompted by his anger over SFMTA's removal of "parking spaces of the residents who fight tooth and nail daily to live here."

"Now it's unfortunate that the city workers had to receive that wrath but fortunately their superiors weren't present so in war there must be casualties. A war you want well a war you shall receive," he wrote in the caption that began with the name and email of an SFMTA project manager.

SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin said he believes transit is a particularly divisive issue in part because it pervades residents' daily lives.

"Transportation is the only government service that nearly everyone uses every day," Tumlin said Monday in an interview. "It is challenging to create positive change in transportation in part because we personalize it."

Tumlin, who is set to step down at the end of 2024 after leading the agency for five years, said his public positions had drawn scrutiny that at times made him fear for his safety.

"When we make changes to improve safety, people get angry because we are directly impacting their convenience in order to solve a safety or climate goal," he said. "It's one of the reasons why few (people in my field) stay in their jobs very long. At a certain point, if they have been successful in creating change, they have created resentment from people who prioritize the status quo over the environment or the next generation."

None of the seven members of the transit agency's board of directors responded to questions about threats directed at SFMTA employees.

But bike and transit advocates said they have witnessed transportation workers face a steady stream of abuse that at times has resembled an intimidation campaign designed to hamper or altogether halt the city's long-standing transit goals. While advocates focused mainly on threats to transportation planners and engineers, bus drivers and other frontline staff have also faced abuse and violence from riders.

"SFMTA staff have been verbally accosted, aggressively surrounded or approached," said Dylan Fabris, who leads regional policy and advocacy efforts at the nonprofit San Francisco Transit Riders. "It does seem like things have gotten worse."

Christopher White, executive director of San Francisco Bicycle Commission, condemned attacks on the agency's planners and engineers during an SFMTA meeting late last month.

"They believe in the goals the city has given itself, they want to do their jobs," he said. "But I have heard from them that they feel traumatized by the amount of ire and rage that is directed toward them, with little political cover or backup. That rage comes not only from opponents of bike and roll infrastructure but sometimes from advocates themselves."

While tensions spill out at community meetings and other in-person forums, Fabris said he believes much of the animosity is fomented on social media websites like NextDoor and X, where "outrage is weighed higher than civil dialogue." Twice last month the SFMTA took to X to urge residents not to use online platforms to spread "misinformation" about road closures that the agency said in its tweet seemed to be "designed to inflame tensions in our city."

A common criticism levied at the SFMTA is that it undervalues or ignores community feedback — an assertion that the agency tries to counter by conducting online surveys, pop-up events and town halls. But citywide priorities often outweigh criticism, and city policy has privileged public transport over cars since 1973, when the Board of Supervisors adopted "transit-first" guidelines.

Several opponents of recent transit proposals told the Chronicle in interviews that they believed the agency's community meetings are not sincere attempts to understand public sentiment. Fabris said this belief has a tendency to morph into conspiracy on online forums.

"Some people think there is some evil power, some conspiracy in the San Francisco government" to wage a war on cars, Fabris said. "There is nothing going on behind the scenes. There is no conspiracy going on."

Some San Francisco drivers feel otherwise, and insist that car owners are shouldering the consequences of efforts to make streets safer for bicyclists and pedestrians. Older adults who rely on their cars said their way of life is under attack in a city where parking spaces are disappearing. And for some people with limited mobility, using paratransit or taking a private car is the only option without better seating and shelter at bus stops, according to some disability advocates.

White said changes to the city landscape have long engendered fury, noting that the San Francisco Bicycle Commission's headquarters received bomb threats early in his seven-year tenure with the organization. The threats are an extreme way opponents attempt to express their discontent over changes to the city's infrastructure, he said.

"Rage becomes a way that people try to make change in the world," White said. "In San Francisco we think we are immune to that, when in fact we are not."

Reach Nora Mishanec: [email protected]

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