Re: 30 years SF driver here..
I see the replies to my post fall into three groups.
The one person who actually seems to have lived in SF a few decades or is actually from here. Who agrees with me completely.
A few who have lived in SF a few years, blow ins, and know little or nothing about its history, politics or for that matter, historical traffic patterns. Locals have no problem parking, we know where the secret parking spots are. Pretty much the same places as in the 1980's when I first got to know the City. The worst traffic congestion in SF my experience was just after the earthquake in 1989. A nightmare for about 18 months after wards. Did not really settle down until around the end of 1991. The current downtown construction is a doddle in comparison.
Buses smelling of pee. Thats because the City handouts attract so many street people from out of town. About 75% have zero connection with the City. And because until the 1970's the City had clean safe buses because it enforced the law on buses just like they do in LA. But then "Civil Rights" activists brought a lawsuit again MUNI because a "disproportionate" number of the people cited for anti-social behavior were not white. Result. Basically no law enforcement on City buses and streetcars since the early 1980's. Try the sort of anti-social behavior thats common on SF buses down in LA and you will soon end up in jail. Saying that since Three Strike cleared the streets MUNI has rarely been outright unsafe like it was before the mid 1990's. The 22 and 9 were pure MadMax after dark about 30 years ago..
And the rest of the replies were as expected. Know zero about SF. Driving here. Cycling here. Taking MUNI. etc. Just typical middle class suburban class marking discretionary cyclists. Typical Critical Mass assholes. By the way that characterization is based on 25 years interaction. At first I was somewhat sympathetic but due to their utterly selfish boorish and juvenile behavior they are universally hated by people who are actually *from* SF. The quickest way of shutting up their rant about "cyclists rights" is to ask them how long they have been in SF (months to a year or two), and how long have they been big city cyclists. Maybe a year or two at most. But never main mode of transport. As I said, assholes with a huge sense of entitlement.
Me, big city cyclist since mid '70's. In Europe. California cyclists since mid '80s. SF cyclist starting 1988. Every last bike activist I have run into, both US and European, was never from the large city they wanted to utterly reconfigure to pander to their hobby activity, had only started living there not soon before, and would have moved on within five or ten years. Max. Back to a suburb just like the one they grew up in. Leaving a traffic disaster behind them which all the locals have to live with.
Other stuff. Taxis in SF, apart from Downtown, were unobtainable before Uber and Lyft. Need a ride to the airport and you did not live Downtown. You never ordered a taxi because it would never arrive. You asked a friend to drop you.
All Ubers/Lyfts are basically filled to capacity when possible. Very few single passenger cars. A friend bought me Uber rides a few time. A 20 min cross city drive, 30 min in the Uber, 1hour 20 plus by MUNI. The passengers are almost all hipster / dotcomers. Majority women.
So very much the people who dont own a car and boast about it, cycle at the weekend, vote for the most progressive virtue signalling politicians but wont use public transportation because its full of anti-socials attracted to the City by the self same politics. The drivers are great. The typical Uber customer seems to ignore them like the household servants they actually are. I chat to drivers, they are always very glad to talk after been ignored for hours. Heard some great stories from the drivers. The passengers almost without exception are typical dot comers and hipsters, the most boring and dreary group of sad fucks you could possibly meet. Even Marina People are not this bad. So a rerun of the dotcomers 1.0 and slackers of the 1990's..
Plus ca change.