If anyone is curious what it will be like on Geary Boulevard if the proposed Bus Rapid Transit goes through, they can spend a few minutes on the median. Parked cars provide a important barrier between pedestrians and passing vehicles. Could you imagine walking along or sitting at a cafe on Geary while trucks or buses are passing a couple feet away? Besides the horrible noise and dirt, the increased danger would be unacceptable.

The people trying to shove this project down our throats don’t care about these realities, they are looking at the money they will make off this project. Don’t trust them.

Tim Donnelly

San Francisco

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S.F. needs renewable energy

The Board of Supervisors should consider rejecting the nominations of Ryan Brooks and Dick Sklar for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. This is not a political move, but represents true policy differences. San Francisco’s best chance to increase our share of renewable energy resources and gain greater energy independence is to provide renewable energy to new developments such as at the former Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, close down the Potrero Power Plant and begin implementing Community Choice Aggregation, all supported by the mayor, the Board of Supervisors and the SFPUC staff. But Sklar’s and Brooks’ numerous negative comments at SFPUC hearings, as well as votes in opposition, demonstrate their efforts to undermine these reasonable, well-developed plans for renewable energy.

Lonnie Stevens

San Francisco

No hyperbole on waste, please

Let us start discussing the facts of our waste disposal problem, not outlandish scare tactics. First, if Janice Sitton (letters, Feb. 11) had read the 12-page Disposal Alternative Report by the Department of the Environment or attended the yearlong meetings leading up to its creation as I have, she would know that the Altamont Landfill is not closing. In fact, the report proposes several scenarios where San Francisco may continue to use the facility.

Between 2013 and 2015 is the length of time before reaching the capacity on our contract with the Altamont Landfill, hence the need to plan for the future. The report’s recommendations address the issue of transportation costs and the need to conserve them. I did not see Nevada mentioned as a viable landfill alternative.

I believe the public and businesses will be more willing to help solve our waste problem if we are not inundated with hyperbole.

Nancy Wuerfel

San Francisco

Unfair mandate on eateries

In response to your Feb. 7 story “Eateries may start counting calories for customers,” I sometimes wonder if Supervisor Tom Ammiano isn’t going to be happy until every restaurant in San Francisco is closed and turned either into a homeless shelter or a crack house. This man’s ignorance of private sector economics is appalling.

So we are now going to turn every restaurant memo in San Francisco into a document the size of the Tokyo phonebook in order to inform people of something they should take the individual responsibility to learn themselves, putting yet another job-destroying mandate on the backs of local restaurants. Why anybody would want to own a restaurant in San Francisco with the current ignoramuses on the Board of Supervisors is beyond me. San Francisco is becoming the nanny state on crack.

E.F. Sullivan

San Francisco

Join the club, Herrera

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors can welcome City Attorney Dennis Herrera into their club — the club of “Politicians Who Do Not Remember Why They Are There.” If the Board of Supervisors has some very good reason for paying their friends at Norcal an extra $3 million to haul sludge, I must have missed it; and one would’ve expected an explanation to be hastily proffered.

The low bidder in the sludge-hauling contest sued The City and won, but Herrera intends to appeal the decision because there is some concern about the supervisors having a say in how taxes are spent.

In light of the inability of the Board of Supervisors to save taxpayers $3 million without lifting a finger, in troubled financial times, no less, it would be more fiscally sound for San Francisco if they do not have any say in how tax dollars are spent. There does not appear to be much concern for spending tax dollars wisely.

The entire episode is absurd, and the highlight of this absurdity is Herrera’s decision to appeal.

Steve Grochowski

San Francisco

Bootlegging worse than drugs

One thing Paul Page forgot in his rant (“Obama no JFK,” letters, Feb. 8): Sen. Barack Obama may have used illegal drugs in his past, but at least his family’s fortune wasn’t made from the illegal distribution of an outlawed substance, as was JFK’s. Joe Kennedy was a hard-core bootlegger.

Jesse Krist

San Francisco