Housing problems worsen gridlock

One didn’t have to look far into Wednesday’s Examiner to see that the rebounding economy was not the sole reason for the biggest jump in traffic since 2000, as the front page story said (“Traffic congestion worsens,” June 21). In the same edition, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that while the Central Valley continues its rapid population growth, with Elk Grove leading the nation by growing 11.6 percent last year, many Bay Area cities, including San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland and Fremont, continue to shrink (“Big cities shrink, rural areas grow,” June 21).

The paradox of increasing traffic congestion while the population declines is one that should not go unnoticed. As residents flee the high-priced Bay Area for the more affordable Central Valley, Bay Area freeways and air quality are paying the price for the failure to provide more housing where it is most needed.

Irvin Dawid

Air Quality co-chair, Sierra Club California

Palo Alto

More crime cameras

Video cameras located in all different parts of The City are assisting our brave individuals in blue, the police, in doing their job (“Suspect allegedly caught on one of city’s crime cameras pleads not guilty,” June 21). It also helps the district attorney prosecute criminals who prey on our kids, seniors and families.

It is important that city officials continue to put up more surveillance cameras to deter crime, illegal garbage dumping and graffiti artists from defacing private and public property, and to improve the overall quality of life for all San Franciscans.

Ed Jew

The City

Qualified city leaders

I have no beef with Supervisor Aaron Peskin passing legislation mandating minimum qualifications for any government employee, including department heads. However, it should apply to all.

The San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has a lawyer as general manager, and her deputy general manager for infrastructure is an architect. It is unclear if they had any utility experience prior to their appointments.

San Francisco’s Hetch Hetchy system supplies 2.4 million Bay Area water customers, and the SFPUC and is spending $4.3 billion on an ambitious capital improvement program. It would seem that anyone running the complex, seventh largest multi-utility (power, water and sewerage) in the country, overseeing the largest infrastructure restoration program in San Francisco’s history, should have at least a degree in a related engineering field and be well-experienced in gravity systems similar to Hetch Hetchy.

Brian Browne

The City

Terrorists’ brutality

Where is the outrage from the left over the brutal slaughtering of our two soldiers in Iraq?

Rather than suggesting that it is evidence of the inhuman brutality of the terrorists, they choose to call it a reason for us to cut and run. At the same time, they make up stories about mistreatment of prisoners in Guantánamo Bay. And they would like me to vote them into the position of leading our country?

We need to throw out a goodly number of the representatives who are in Congress and replace them with people with spines in order to regain the courage and values that made this country great.

Lyle Topham

Saratoga

S.F. gun ban

Washington, D.C., has a total gun ban and a rate of violent crime that is twice the national average (“Judge overturns S.F.’s Proposition H gun ban,” June 13).

By contrast, there are 37 states that grant licenses to carry a concealed handgun based simply on a clean background, knowledge of applicable law and gun-handling skill. Of those 37 gun states, 31 of them have a rate of violent crime that is below California, where it is all but impossible to get a gun license unless you’re a senator or a movie star.

The most effective thing to do about any violent crime is to pursue the perpetrators, arrest them, prosecute them to the max and sentence them to the max. If a gun is what I need to save my family from a bad guy, you do not have the right to impede me in my access to my gun.

James Bell

Oakland

Muni passenger data

If Muni wants to provide more efficient service, wasting $10,000 per bus on high-tech passenger surveillance sure will not help (“MTA counting on computerized counters,” June 20).

Are the humans running Muni incapable of perceiving that buses are too crowded and do not come often enough, and that the money should be for providing more service, rather than ever-decreasing service at ever-increasing cost?

David Tornheim

The City