Tim Redmond

There are times when people like me, who think development should be driven by public needs, not private profit, are in something of a bind. I don’t like the Lennar plan for Bayview Hunters Point — but I agree that doing nothing isn’t a very good alternative. Sometimes, the “no-project” alternative isn’t an alternative at all — which gives the developers a huge hand up in negotiations with the city. Gee, you want affordable housing? We can give you 15 percent — or we can walk away and you’ll get nothing.

But when it comes to Treasure Island, I think we’re in a different situation. The proposed development is so out of whack, so looney, that it makes no sense to me — and the alternative of doing nothing, at least for now, isn’t so bad at all.

The plan calls for 19,000 new residents on the 403-acre artificial island in the Bay. At most, 25 percent of the units would be below-market. Which means some 13,700 rich people, virtually all of them with jobs in San Francisco, the Peninsula or the East Bay, would be plunked into a place with no viable transportation alternatives.

I wonder if any of these planners have ever tried to leave TI by car; it’s a nightmare. And there’s no way to fix it: Even if they build a new acceleration ramp (the current stop-and-go into 60-mile-an-hour traffic is a death trap), the Bay Bridge is already at full capacity during a very long rush hour in the morning and evening. And does anybody really think those 13,700 people will all take the ferry to work every day?

Impossible: There’s no way to provide enough ferry service for that population at anything resemble the cost the developers are willing to pay. How about all the Google and Yahoo and Genentech employees (and that’s a big part of the population buying new high-end condos in San Francisco)? You think they’re all going to take a ferry to downtown SF then hop on a bus or train then take another bus to the office? Not these folks. A lot of them will want to drive.

And the bridge, which is already backed up, will back up further, driving more traffic onto the streets of SOMA and creating a slowdown all the way back to Berkeley.

Meanwhile, the island is sinking, and water levels are rising. Forget the fancy engineering plans to sink stone columns deep into the clay under the Bay; what happens when the water rises? Are we going to surround the entire place with seawalls?

And here’s the bottom line: The current situation isn’t all that awful. There’s a small amount of housing out there, some of it affordable. There’s lots of open space. A little effort and the playing fields and parkland could be upgraded and TI could, for the intermediate term, be a day-use area for the city. Not a terrible alternative.

At some point, either the island’s going to sink back into the Bay or it’s going to have to be completely redeveloped. But right now, with no public money available, we’re at the whims of private developers. And what they’re offering doesn’t even remotely meed the city’s needs — and will create a catastrophic transportation problem.

So the supervisors are in a great position to negotiate. We want 50 percent affordable housing, we want the developer to pay for substantially increased bus and ferry service (or maybe we want to add a rail line to the Bay Bridge). And if that’s not something the developers want to do, fine: we’ll wait. Nothing wrong with that.