Actually, there are a bunch of problems. The Chron says the developers want to make the place “special,” a community of its own:
Developers hope the project, which goes before the Board of Supervisors for approval today, will feel like an urban village in the middle of a bustling metropolitan area. They hope urban farms, plentiful public transit and shared community spaces will give residents of the island a sense of community not found in other developments. …
For Treasure Island to be successful, developers and city planning experts agree that the residents of the island must feel like part of a special, distinct neighborhood where people want to spend time, and not just another community of commuters to San Francisco.
But the numbers don’t add up.
The plans call for 19,000 people living on the island — and there won’t be anywhere near enough employment opportunities for even a fraction of that number. So most of the residents are going to work somewhere else. Which means that twice a day they’ll have to travel — to and from San Francisco or to and from the East Bay — and there’s just no easy way to get that many people off that island to those locations.
Ther Bay Bridge is already beyond capacity during the periods when most of these people are going to be commuting. Yes, you can add a bunch of Muni buses to carry a lot of people, but that’s going to cost a lot of money. So would increasing ferry service to the level that this project would require. And if the past 50 years of San Francisco development is any guide (and it ought to be), the developers won’t pay enough for the transportation and the city won’t have the money to do it right so it won’t happen.
And even if the project meets the developers’ dreams in 30 years, it’s going to be a long, messy slog along the way.
How, for example, will people who live on the island get their kids to school? Given San Francisco’s school-choice system, and the fact that there won’t be elementary, middle and high schools on the island anyway, and the school district can’t pay for the bus routes it has now, much less for new buses going to Treasure Island, you’re going to have hundreds of parents going to schools all over the city — and there will be only one way to get there: In cars.
(I’m all for no-car travel, but let’s be serious: Who’s got the time to take a kindergartener on the ferry downtown and on one or maybe two bus connections to a school — then turn around and take another bus to work? It isn’t going to happen. And nobody’s sending elementary school kids on Muni to school alone.)
If the supermarket isn’t built before most people move in, then you’ve got the grocery problem: It’s hard to do a week’s shopping on Muni and then a ferry. And what happens when you forget the milk (or run out of beer on the weekend?) No way to walk to the store, so you get in the car.
To make it even worse, 80 percent of the people who live there will be rich (since that’s who can afford market-rate housing). They’ll all have cars (and the developer kindly is providing parking spaces for all of them).
I just don’t see how it’s going to work.
