Streetsblog San Francisco

First Lady Michelle Obama took to the mikes this afternoon to kick off a national campaign to combat childhood obesity, emphasizing new initiatives to promote biking and walking alongside a strong focus on healthier food options in schools.

Mrs. Obama appeared with six Cabinet members, the Surgeon General, and several lawmakers and mayors to mark the president's official creation of a new Task Force on Childhood Obesity. As part of the first lady's new effort, the White House plans to expand the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, while setting up a Safe and Healthy Schools Fund during hte next reauthorization of federal elementary education law.

In her remarks to the press this afternoon, Mrs. Obama paid particular attention to the lifestyle shifts that have led many kids to a more sedentary routine -- and helped contribute to obesity rates of 17 percent for children and teens, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. (The same study found that one of every three U.S. kids are oversight.)

The first lady said:

In my home, we weren't rich. The foods we ate weren't fancy. But there was always a vegetable on the plate. And we managed to lead a pretty healthy life.

Many kids today aren't so fortunate. Urban sprawl and fears about safety often mean the only walking they do is out their front door to a bus or a car. Cuts in recess and gym mean a lot less running around during the school day, and lunchtime may mean a school lunch heavy on calories and fat. For many kids, those afternoons spent riding bikes and playing ball until dusk have been replaced by afternoons inside with TV, the Internet, and video games.

Mrs. Obama highlighted the presidential budget proposal for $400 million in financing to develop supermarkets and farmers' markets in neighborhoods that currently lack a walkable healthy food option, but she did not directly mention Safe Routes to School, the federal program that helps carve out local routes for children to bike and walk from home to class every day.

Now that the Obama administration has awarded $8 billion in high-speed rail grants to more than two dozen states, with $2.5 billion more coming soon, why not keep thinking big when it comes to bullet-train expansion?

That's the ethos of a new report released today by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) calling for a New Deal-like public works juggernaut that would eventually connect all major cities located within 100 and 500 miles of each other. For a look at how such a system would remake the American rail map, check out the image above.

"The first step in building the network is to set a national goal with an ambitious time frame, just like we did for the Interstate Highway System or getting to the moon," U.S. PIRG senior analyst Phineas Baxandall wrote in a blog post unveiling the report. "We can link all our major cities by 2050, if we set our minds to it."

Given the political wrangling over the deficit that continues to paralyze Washington, however, it's worth asking how an ambitious rail program would be funded. The U.S. PIRG answers that question in several ways: First, the group calls for a dedicated revenue stream for inter-city passenger rail in the next long-term transportation bill, with local investments matched by the federal government in the same 80:20 ratio that highway plans receive.

"By financing transportation projects equitably," the report's authors write, "states will be able to make rational transportation decisions based on the needs of their residents, rather than on the chances of securing a lucrative federal match."

Secondly, the U.S. PIRG aims to put government support for Amtrak -- often derided by conservatives for its reliance on federal subsidies that also benefit road projects -- in perspective. When evaluated as a share of U.S. GDP, government investment of passenger rail looks stunningly low compared with other industrialized nations. The imbalance is visible in the chart below:

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• SF Weekly Wonders Whether Twitter Can Save Muni
• MTA Board to Hold Townhall Meeting Tonight, Several Dates in Future (SF Gate)
  
• Accused Muni Stabber's Prosecution Goes Forward (CBS)
  
• Teamsters Upset Over Caltrans Parking Will Pamphlet on Muni (CBS) (KCBS)
• SF Mayor Gavin Newsom Upset by Audi "Green Police" Super Bowl Ad (NBC)
  
• Yosemite Slough Bridge Seen by Some As Vital for Hunters Point Development (Examiner)
• Peninsula High Speed Rail Opponents Try to Reopen Failed Lawsuit (CoCo Times)
• Money Runs Short for Caltrain Crossing Guards at Palo Alto Station (Merc)
• Berkeley Study Links Auto Exhaust to Increased Heart Disease (KCBS)
  
• News Doesn't Get Better for Toyota, Massive Recall (SF Gate) (SF Gate)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

A few weeks ago in San Francisco, a number of urban farmers opened a gate in a chain-link fence at Laguna Street, between Oak and Fell Streets, and entered an overgrown lot that has been unused for nearly two decades. The farmers brought with them steaming piles of mulch, which they cast over the edge of the ramps formerly used by cars to enter and exit the elevated Central Freeway spur above Octavia Street, arranging the soil in rows for planting vegetables and filler crops.

Since the Loma Prieta earthquake made the Central Freeway unsafe for travel, leading to its eventual removal and the re-design of Octavia Boulevard, those ramps have been one of the more poignant reminders of a distant vision of San Francisco, with freeways crisscrossing the urban environment, whisking motorists above the unfortunate city dwellers below. 

The new Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) inverts the paradigm and reclaims the space for city dwellers, if only temporarily. "We call it 'freeway to food forest,'" explained Chris Burley, Project Director for HVF and former organizer of My Farm. Burley was joined by nearly fifty volunteers at a HVF work party Sunday. "We're trying to create a successful, sustainable urban farm in the heart of San Francisco."

Burley and several other organizers were approached by Mayor Gavin Newsom's Office of Economic and Workforce Development (MOEWD) last year with the idea to transform the unused lot into a farm. The HVF received a $50,000 grant from MOEWD for the first year of the project, money that comes from the operation of parking facilities along Octavia Boulevard. Burley expected to work the farm for between two and five years, depending on when the economy turns around and the land is developed.

While the city owns the property, the MOEWD has selected Build, Inc, to develop it when they secure their financing. According to Richard Hillis at MOEWD, the site will be broken into ten parcels and built as 50 percent affordable homes, 50 percent market rate. Because the housing construction market is so bleak right now, said Hillis, the city worked with the neighborhood groups to develop a plan for activating under-utilized lots, starting with this very visible one.

In addition to the community benefit of a farmers market and mobile food vending, the city benefits from having the lots used by the farmers. "It helps us save money on cleaning them and maintaining them," Hillis said.

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Pensacola, Florida. Springfield, Missouri. Fort Wayne, Indiana. All three of those metropolitan areas have populations between 350,000 and 500,000, and all three would have been required to install nitrogen dioxide monitoring stations near major roadways under a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) rule cracking down on the pollutant.

But as the Center for Progressive Reform (CPR) noted soon after the EPA unveiled its rule, an initial draft setting the minimum population for local air-quality monitoring at 350,000 was changed to 500,000, leaving out cities such as Fort Wayne and effectively weakening the nitrogen dioxide rule's accountability.

Another watchdog group traced the change to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which evaluates new agency regulations through a smaller arm called OIRA (short for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs). The president's nominee to lead OIRA, Cass Sunstein, has taken heat from green groups for his past criticism of government's role in the rule-making process.

What's the significance of the OMB's change to the EPA rule? "The fewer the monitors, the more likely it is that many metropolitan areas will be able to exceed EPA’s limits without detection or correction," CPR president and law professor Rena Steinzor wrote on the group's blog in late January.

Steinzor's post also addressed the significance of the new nitrogen dioxide rule, noting that the pollutant tends to be especially common, and dangerous, in lower-income neighborhoods located near busy roads:

Scientific evidence links human NO2 exposure with various respiratory health problems. ... The biggest source of NO2 pollution is automobile emissions, though power plants and heavy industry are also significant contributors. NO2 pollution levels tend to be greater in urban areas and near major roadways, which means NO2 pollution tends to disproportionately harm the poor and communities of color.

(h/t Wonk Room)

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are making significant progress on their joint effort, with the U.S. DOT, to connect cleaner transportation options with affordable  housing and denser urban development.

The latest moves came as Obama administration officials gathered in Seattle for the annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference, where HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan officially tapped Shelley Poticha and Ron Sims as leaders of his agency's sustainable communities office.

On the HUD website, Donovan's aides are seeking input and suggestions from local planners as they prepare to award an initial $100 million in grants to cities with plans for transportation and land use reform.

Not to be outdone, EPA took the opportunity to launch two pilot grant programs aimed at using clean water funds to boost community development and rebuilding brownfield communities around transit access.

The water-funding pilot will focus on New York, California, and Maryland, while the brownfields -- former industrial sites where hazardous materials may impede environmental cleanup -- selected for transit-oriented development aid are located in Indianapolis, Iowa City, Denver, Boston, and the San Diego area.

The three federal agencies involved in green development work are also beefing up their message, connecting a number of recent policy shifts on their respective fronts into a larger narrative of progress towards a more harmonious approach to transportation and housing. For a recap of the recent steps taken by the EPA, HUD, and U.S. DOT -- many of which were covered by Streetsblog Capitol Hill -- check out the agencies' January bulletin [PDF].

Now that the new police chief has announced he is going to "review" department procedures with respect to Critical Mass, I think it might be a good time to "review" the history of the relationship between Critical Mass and the police. I have to emphasize that this relationship has evolved in the context of a police department that has been consistently biased against bicyclists for as long as anyone can remember. Recent efforts to bring the SFPD into the 21st century have not yielded noticeable results yet. Chief Gascón has an opportunity to direct the department culture towards an altered cityscape with thousands more bicyclists and pedestrians, or he can maintain an obsolete approach to reinforcing a car-centric society's prejudices. I have to admit that I'm not hopeful. Also, I hope this review further debunks the silly reporting from KPIX starting last summer, that somehow Critical Mass is not paying for the police that accompany it, and thus costing the city some $100,000 a year in police overtime.

Back in the beginning of Critical Mass, when we first gathered at PeeWee Herman Plaza at the foot of Market to "fill the streets with bikes and ride home together" in September 1992, there was no police presence at all. Between 40-50 riders went straight up Market Street, turned left on Valencia and pulled in to Zeitgeist. That was it. But it was a revelation too! No one knew how euphoric it would be to ride in a big pack. It was a happy surprise to discover a new public space, in motion, rolling up the street with a crowd of bikes, no cars to dodge, a solid mass that took the road and changed it in so doing. It was an open mobile meeting space where you didn't have to buy anything to participate, and you could meet countless interesting, good looking people and often have amazing conversations!

In the following months, the ride grew steadily, hitting a couple of hundred by February 1993, and still there was no police presence. I think there may have been one motorcycle cop who came upon us during those months and just rode on. In April 1993 it changed though. The ride had grown to several hundred cyclists, and those of us who were publishing the monthly "Critical Mass Missives" and preparing proposed routes with maps, writing flyers, handing out stickers (all under the happy neologism of "Xerocracy") were already worried about the culture of the ride. Too many people were bleating that Orwellian chant "Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad!" and admonishing motorists in an entirely unpleasant self-righteous moralistic tone.

Behaviorally, we already had identified the "Testosterone Brigade" as a problem, young men who seemed to be looking for confrontation, perhaps exercising unresolved anger with their parents by taunting motorists or deliberately riding into oncoming traffic. Another group was dubbed the "snails" because no matter how often we stopped at the front to give everyone a chance to "mass up," a bunch of folks would just dawdle way at the back and never catch up. This led to long stretches of thinly-occupied streets, where just a few cyclists were noodling along. In April 1993 in just this kind of scenario, a motorist tried to cross Market to Guerrero and when cyclists surged in front to block him, he hit one girl. Her bike was totaled, ending up under his car, which careened into a hydrant on the corner while he was trying to escape. The girl was not physically harmed luckily, but her boyfriend, not knowing that she wasn't under the car, reached in and took the keys out of the ignition. The cops came up and arrested the girl and her boyfriend and let the motorist go, treating him as the victim, even though it was widely felt by all present, including bystanders on the street, that he had behaved with homicidal intent.

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