Oakland A’s should stick with Coliseum site
Oakland’s Jack London Square is not a destination. It has languished for decades despite large city investments. Why? It’s hard to get to. Now the Oakland A’s say they want to build a ballpark that will be twice as hard to get to as Jack London Square. Their “vision” is a disaster. None of it makes sense. No matter how much infrastructure they squeeze out of the city, it will still be easier for East Bay baseball fans to get to the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark than to (Superfund site) Howard Terminal. There is a site in Oakland with a BART station, two freeway exits and vast parking lots.
It is big enough to build a stadium while using the old one. A new structure could even be built within the existing Coliseum with the help of some truly visionary architects. If you take the A’s owners at their word, they believe that the Oakland fans, who are now paying upwards of $200 to take their families to the Coliseum, will happily shell out $300 or $400 to sit in traffic and miss half the game at a shiny new stadium. Forget it.
Tom Richardson, Oakland
Expand electric car use
I read “Heat, smog combine to trigger Bay Area air alert” ( July 10) and the highlighted comment saying, “The most important thing we can all do to keep the air clean is to reduce our driving.” I thought it important to remind people that driving a fully electric car of either a lithium battery or hydrogen fuel cell
technology emits no bad stuff in our air. The hydrogen cars emit a few tablespoons of water each drive. It’s a good feeling when you drive one of these cars because of not polluting the air. Now we have to push the governor to get going on expanding charging and filling places, and we need to make sure the batteries and hydrogen are made with completely carbonfree methods. It is now possible, by the way, to drive with hydrogen from Los Angeles up to Tahoe, but not from San Francisco to Cambria (San Luis Obispo County). Al Crowell, San Francisco
New toll would be unfair
Regarding “Rising reality” (SFChronicle.com, July 16): Your excellent article on sea level rise along Highway 37 highlights two contradictory concerns: economic justice and toll roads. Highway 37 is driven daily by thousands of lowwage workers who are kept from living in Marin and Sonoma counties by exclusionary zoning. An unholy alliance of NIMBYs and environmentalists locked the workers out while the region added thousands of lowwage jobs. Bay Area bridge tolls are already a regressive tax on the poor. Any new toll on Highway 37 should be means tested and include lowwage workers.
Paul Theiss, Vallejo
Spend surplus on fires
In “Cost of battling wildfires soars” (Front Page, July 14), there was a statement at the end from the state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office that said, “To the extent the state is in poor fiscal condition in 202122, these increased General Fund costs will mean the Legislature and Governor have to find budget solutions elsewhere, such as through more budget reductions, tax increases, or special fund borrowing.”
If that is the case, why can’t those billions of dollars that Gov. Gavin Newsom was crowing about a month or so ago be used to cover the wildfire costs instead of being used for everyone else’s pet project with no mention of accountability or transparency on how the funds are being spent? Instead, it is the fiscally responsible taxpayer who will eventually foot the bill as always.
Richard Raffo, San Mateo
Not a coincidence
Why is it that some states that have the fastest growing outbreak of the COVID19 delta variant are some of the same states that have a low vaccination rate? Probably just a coincidence ... never mind.
Al Comolli, Millbrae