Streetsblog San Francisco

The SFMTA released its 2011 Bicycle Count Report [PDF] today, showing a continued citywide increase in bicycling in recent years.

A press release from the Mayor’s Office states:

Since 2006 when 4,862 bicycle riders were counted, San Francisco’s bike counts have increased an impressive 71 percent to 8,314 riders, and have increased 7 percent since 2010. Bike trips accounted for 3.5 percent of all trips in the City compared to two percent in 2000…

The 2011 Bicycle Count Report relied on a new methodology and more comprehensive approach which included American Community Survey findings, manual intersection counts, loop-detector automated corridor counts and Metropolitan Transportation Commission manual counts. The purpose of changing the methodology was to bring San Francisco’s data in line with national reporting standards.

“These counts back up what is apparent on our streets everyday — that San Franciscans love bicycling, and that bicycling has never been more popular,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work with city leaders, neighbors and local businesses to help even more people bicycle by connecting the city with safe and inviting crosstown bikeways, helping the city reach its goal of 20 percent of trips by bicycle by 2020.”

Gary Toth is director of transportation initiatives with the Project for Public Spaces. This post first appeared on PPS’s Placemaking Blog.

Would you use a rototiller to get rid of weeds in a flowerbed? Of course not. You might solve your immediate goal of uprooting the weeds — but oh, my, the collateral damage that you would do.

Yet when we try to eliminate congestion from our urban areas by using decades-old traffic engineering measures and models, we are essentially using a rototiller in a flowerbed. And it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage has been too great.

Image: Andy Singer

Image: Andy Singer

First, an explanation of what I call the “deadly duo”: travel projection models and Levels of Service (LOS) performance metrics.Travel projection models are computer programs that use assumptions about future growth in population, employment, and recreation to estimate how many new cars will be on roads 20 or 30 years into the future.

Models range from quite simplistic to incredibly complex and expensive. Simple models deal primarily with coarse movements of vehicles between cities, while complex models deal with the intricacies of what happens on the fine grid of urban areas. To be truly accurate, growth projection modeling can be expensive. Therefore, absent compelling reason to do otherwise, most growth projections tend to be done using less expensive techniques, which usually lead to overestimates.

Levels of Service (LOS) is a performance metric which flourished during the interstate- and freeway-building era that went from the 1950s to the 1990s. Using a scale of A to F, LOS attempts to create an objective formula to answer a subjective question: How much congestion are we willing to tolerate? As in grade school, “F” is a failing grade and “A” is perfect.

Read more…

Happy news out of Denver. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood was in town yesterday for a tour of the under-construction West Rail Transit line, part of 122 miles of passenger rail the region is planning as part of its FasTracks program.

Denver's plan to add 122 miles of passenger rail is boosting the local economy. Photo: The Fast Lane

The secretary’s blog, The Fast Lane, discusses how this project promises to be, on many levels, a winner for the Mile-High City:

The enthusiasm in yesterday’s crowd was electric. It’s not hard to see why. The West Rail Line is 85% complete, and the mock-ups and progress to date indicate a beautiful, state-of-the-art transit system.  The new line will allow tourists and commuters to spend less time in traffic and less money on gas. That’s something everyone can appreciate.

Not only will the FasTracks program provide an efficient and cost-effective way to get to and from work, school or the airport; but it is also creating jobs right now.  There are more than 500 men and women working on the West Rail Line alone. FasTracks estimates that its plan will eventually provide work for 4,200 others.

But we can’t be content to see this progress in just one city.  All across America, there is work to be done on projects like the West Rail Line.  More and more Americans are looking for greater choices in transportation today, and it’s important we provide the funding to ensure transit remains one of the available choices.  Now is the time to connect people who need work with the work we need to do improving our nation’s transit centers, highways, railways, airports and ports.

This is exactly the type of investment in the future that other cities would miss out under the House GOP proposal to strip transit projects of dedicated federal funding stream.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Mobilizing the Region reports that political leaders in the New York-New Jersey region are united in their opposition to the House transit proposal. Streets.mn asks if traffic engineers’ roadway classification system is an outdated way of understanding transportation dynamics. AndSuburban Assault introduces Dallas’s first bike café.

• City CarShare to Pilot Electric Rental Bikes in SF and Berkeley This Year (NYT Green Blog, KTVU)
• BART to Vote on Whether to Conduct EIR For Livermore Extension (SF Examiner)
• Three Injured In Car Crash on Geary Boulevard (BCN via SF Appeal)
• State Legislation Takes Aim at Regulating “Buy Here Pay Here” Car Dealerships (Streetsblog LA)
• “Red Light Cameras Boost Coffers, Rile Drivers” (SFGate)
• Muni to Add E-Embarcadero Streetcar Line for America’s Cup (GG Express)
• OpenPlans/Streetsblog Founder Mark Gorton to India: Don’t Let Cars Overrun Your Cities (Times of India)
• Why Planners Need to Take Agenda 21 Criticism More Seriously (Atlantic Cities)
• Agencies Acramble to Fill Funding Gap on $1.1B Doyle Drive Project (Marin IJ)
• Concord Woman Run Over in Her Own Driveway Dies (KTVU)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

A "stripped down" version of the street plan showing the basic geometry of changes planned on Jefferson Street between Jones and Hyde. See full PDF here. Image: SF Planning Department

As the plan to revamp the public realm on Jefferson Street in Fisherman’s Wharf develops, planners recently announced that two blocks of the project could be brought to life by summer of 2013 in time for America’s Cup.

At a recent public meeting, staff from the San Francisco Planning Department’s City Design Group presented the latest designs for the Fisherman’s Wharf Public Realm Plan. Some changes have been made from concept designs presented as late as last year, including the decision to rescind a proposal for a curb-less “shared street” where cars are allowed, but people are granted priority. Instead, the project will feature curbs as conventional streets do, though it won’t include curbside car parking.

Despite the change, the project is still intended to transform Jefferson into a “beautiful, lively and memorable street that strengthens the identity of Fisherman’s Wharf,” planner Neil Hrushowy told the San Francisco Chronicle:

The work will include adding 15 feet to the sidewalk along the water side of the street, where visitors now must wend their way past crab stands, street vendors, entertainers and outdoor dining tables that take up much of the walkway.

On the other side of Jefferson Street, current plans call for the removal of parking meters, trees and other sidewalk obstacles.

The biggest changes will be to the street itself. The wider sidewalk will mean a narrower roadway, with no street parking and traffic limited to two 11-foot-wide lanes. For the first time in decades, Jefferson will be opened to two-way traffic, dramatically slowing the cars and trucks and making the road safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

“This is a way to show San Francisco as a model for a pedestrian-priority city,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. “I look forward to more projects like this throughout the city to benefit residents as well as visitors.”

Read more…

• Tuesday: SPUR Lunchtime Forum – Time’s Up: the End of Temporary. “From parklets to bike lanes, gardens to pop-up stores, temporary urban interventions have emerged as a powerful source of innovation, experimentation and rapid implementation. But while temporary approaches can fast-track things into existence, their day of reckoning must eventually come… Join innovators Kit Hodge of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Michael Yarne of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and John Bela of Rebar to discuss the evolution and future of temporary urbanism.” 12:30 pm.
• Also Tuesday: The SFMTA Board of Directors meets. On the agenda is adoption of the America’s Cup People Plan, a resolution supporting the quick implementation of High-Speed Rail, its termination at the Transbay Transit Center, and Caltrain elecrification; and a presentation on the city’s Transportation Sustainability Program. 1 pm.
• Also Tuesday: The SF Board of Supervisors meets. On the agenda is the appointment of Cindy Wu as Planning Commissioner, an ordinance to expedite sidewalk expansions, and more. 2 pm.
• Wednesday: Cesar Chavez West Streetscape Improvement Project Update Meeting. “The SFMTA has just announced changes to the long-awaited community-based design for Cesar Chavez between Bryant Street and Hampshire Street. Caltrans, the State Department of Transportation, is now requiring an additional vehicle travel lane on Cesar Chavez between Bryant Street and York Street, forcing the loss of on-street car parking on the south side of the street in that section. Attend a community meeting to hear more about how those decisions were made and ask questions of the city team.” 6 pm.
• Thursday: SF Planning Commission Hearing. On the agenda is a major parking reform amendment from Supervisor David Chiu and Livable City Director Tom Radulovich that would remove many parking requirements in northeastern neighborhoods of the city. 12 pm.
• Sunday: SF Bicycle Coalition Family Biking Series: Biking Pregnant/With Your Baby and Toddler. New parents and mothers-to-be can join this free two-part class to learn the facts about biking safely with their young ones and meet others who are in the same boat and share experiences. Part 1: 10 am. Part 2: 11:30 am.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

If you make your home on the Louisiana coastline, upstate New York or the mountains of the Pacific Northwest, chances are you live near a highway that really has it coming. It’s big. It’s ugly. It goes right through city neighborhoods. And it just might be coming down soon.

New Orleans' Claibourne Overpass is this year's Congress for New Urbanism choice for "Freeway without a Future." Photo: CNU.org

Latest week the Congress for New Urbanism released its updated list of “Freeways Without Futures” — 12 transportation anachronisms that are increasingly likely to meet the wreaking ball.

This year’s top finisher was New Orleans’ Claiboure Overpass — a 1960s-era eyesore that replaced a thriving, tree-lined commercial street at the center of the city’s oldest, most culturally vibrant black neighborhood. The teardown for this highway has some real traction; a master plan to remove the elevated portion is expected to be endorsed by City Council shortly, according to CNU.

The Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx is runner up, the same position it held in CNU’s 2008 Freeways Without Futures list. This riverfront disaster was bestowed by the master highway builder himself, Robert Moses. Residents of the Bronx have successfully fought off two separate proposals to expand the Sheridan, which runs right along the Bronx River. A coalition of community groups and advocates called the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance has led the charge to replace the freeway with housing and parks, and a group of cities agencies are now examining teardown scenarios with the help of a federal TIGER grant.

The third-place finisher is New Haven’s Route 34 (the Oak Street Connector), which is slated for demolition. New Haven received TIGER funds to convert the road into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard and local officials are currently haggling over the design details — there’s a chance they’ll opt to replace a highway with a road that feels like a highway.

Read more…

Well, the cards are on the table now, as far as national transportation policy is concerned.

The House transportation bill passed committee on solidly partisan lines. It would reverse decades of reforms that promote safer streets, sustainable transportation, and urbanism. Photo: The National Journal

The Senate managed to put together bipartisan support for legislation that weakens biking and walking programs while including a fewprogressive reforms to transit policy. House Republicans, meanwhile, have lined up behind a draconian vision for highways-only transportation policy that would reverse decades of pragmatic reforms.

Crystallized in the House bill is a strident position that seeks to undermine any form of transportation beside the private automobile, one that rejects cost-saving reforms while cloaking itself in the pretense of fiscal rectitude.

This position — clearly a favorite of industries that profit from highways and sprawl — has even become a talking point among Republican presidential contenders this primary season, reports Yonah Freemark at the Transport Politic. Advocates for green transportation and urbanism have no choice but to fight, says Freemark:

As I have documented, density of population correlates strongly and positively with the Democratic Party vote share in Congressional elections; the result has been that the House Republicans have few electoral reasons to articulate policies that benefit cities. Those who believe in the importance of a sane transportation policy need to make more of an effort to advance a sane transportation politics to residents of suburban and rural areas, who also benefit from efforts to improve environmental quality, mobility alternatives, and congestion relief, but perhaps are not yet convinced of that fact. Doing so would encourage politicians hoping for votes outside of the city core — Democratic or Republican — to promote alternatives to the all-highways meme that currently rules the GOP in the House.

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