Letters to the editor

Editor:
A 92-year-old tradition came full circle when the Lukas Glass Company of San Francisco removed some historic stained glass windows from a Richmond District church and packaged them for storage. When the church has completed its restoration from damage caused by the 1989 earthquake, the windows will be lovingly returned to their home on 29th Avenue, hopefully to stand unshaken for generations to come.

St. Peter's Episcopal Church, which was founded in San Francisco in 1867, has a history of dealing with earthquakes. Seven years after the 1906 earthquake and fire destroyed its former wood structure in the North Beach, the congregation built its current home at Clement Street and 29th Avenue. Taking its cue from the "Three Little Pigs" fairy tale, the congregation built the new church of solid brick, not straw (never dreaming at the time that unreinforced masonry could suffer severe structural damage in another quake).

The crowning touch of the 1913 construction effort was the installation of windows by a firm called Church Art Glass, then only recently formed by Edward Lapotka. Church Art Glass, originally housed at California and Montgomery streets but later located on Market Street, would continue to provide regular maintenance for the windows in coming years.

In 1946, the firm was taken over by John Lukas and the name was changed to Lukas Glass. The business eventually relocated to Waller Street.

Lukas branched out to producing windows for residential buildings, but he also stuck to the original mission of creating or restoring stained glass windows for churches. Nick Lucas, John's son, joined the family business in 1970 and eventually took over the company in 1994. The company's current home perches on a hill overlooking Bayshore Boulevard, near the former site of Goodman Lumber.

When Lucas removed the stained glass windows from St. Peter's, he placed them in crates specially built to accommodate their exact dimensions. They will be stored safely while St. Peter's proceeds with its restoration project, which is expected to take four years.
Patrick Andersen

Editor:
I attended the Geary BRT/light rail workshop on Dec. 10. I have an office on Geary Boulevard and live two blocks from Geary.

These workshops were basically a sham because the outcome has already been largely predetermined. I am not absolutely opposed to a BRT plan if it is properly designed. However, this plan is really about light rail (the only thing Prop. K money can be used for), which I and many others in the Richmond District are absolutely opposed to, as this would devastate the neighborhood.

A properly designed BRT plan would figure out how to replace any lost parking, study how to minimize economic impacts on merchants and study ways to maintain cross-town artery traffic capacity for Geary.

The utopian transit-only advocates who would like to eliminate cars are living in a dream world. There should be a fourth plan under study to improve the Geary transit corridor which would cost a fraction of the estimated $200 million the Transportation Authority is talking about spending.

The people who are really going to be impacted by this utopian nonsense are deliberately having their voices ignored because the workshops are a sham, and the powers to be already plan to implement light rail.

Approving BRT is just a way to get their foot in the door.
Keith Wilson

Editor:
You are correct to criticize the absence of public process in bringing Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) to the Geary Corridor - if, indeed, there has been inadequate public notification (Richmond Review, December 2005). I have known about plans to bring BRT to the Geary Corridor for many years, but then, I am a sustainable transportation advocate, so I would know.

I disagree with your conclusion that the potential loss of traffic lanes for individual vehicles and the loss of parking are negative. You ask, "Does anyone really believe traffic in the Richmond will decrease in the next 20 years?" And you note that the plans to-date inadequately address "the effects the loss of parking spaces in the Richmond would have on businesses and residents."

For starters, I do believe that there will be less traffic in the Richmond in 20 years - it's inevitable. The planet simply does not have the supplies of oil and natural gas to permit Americans to burn fuels as mindlessly as we've been doing for decades. In fact, many geologists predict that we have reached the peak of global oil production or will do so very soon (within five years). If that's so, what are Americans going to do as the price of gasoline goes up and up? In the past year there have been more than a dozen books and hundreds of articles (including in the "New York Times Magazine" and "National Geographic") published on the energy famine that awaits us in the near future - and the global competition for what remains of oil and natural gas. Many of these writings note that there is no technology (including hybrids, hydrogen, wind, solar, biodiesel, biomass, algae, coal gasification, gas hydrates or nuclear) currently available that can replace what we get from oil and natural gas in quantities, or at prices, anywhere near what we are used to.

Second, climate change should now be an issue for which we take personal responsibility. The average American emits 12,000 pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere annually. At some point, we are going to have to start driving less - a lot less. Therefore, the question is not: What will be the impact of BRT, the loss of traffic lanes and parking spaces on local businesses? The questions are: What will be the impact of declining supplies of oil and natural gas on local businesses? What will be the impact of declining supplies of oil on San Franciscans trying to get to and from their places of study, work, commerce and leisure? And what measures are we going to take to restrict our greenhouse gas emissions?

We don't answer them by sticking our heads in the sand and insisting on perpetuating a way of life bound to the personal automobile, a way of life that has no future. We answer them by creating low-energy forms of transportation and complete communities, where people walk, bike or take the bus to fulfill the majority of their needs. Well-ridden buses use significantly less energy than personal cars; thus, we should be welcoming BRT.
Sue Vaughan