Streetsblog San Francisco

A crucial step in advancing the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project was delayed for a month today after Supervisor Mark Farrell, a member of the SF County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) Plans and Programs Committee, complained that he wasn’t comfortable voting on the latest design proposal which he said he “hasn’t been briefed on.”

Supervisor Mark Farrell. Photo: Jennifer Low/Flickr

The committee was expected to approve recommendation of the proposal today, sending it to the full board for a vote next Tuesday. However, Farrell said that it was “absolutely inappropriate” for him vote on it today without feeling adequately informed, and that he still wouldn’t be ready in a week. Although the proposal received unanimous approval from the SFMTA Board of Directors today, the SFCTA committee decided to postpone its vote until its next meeting, in one month.

Staying updated on the project, said Farrell, “is a responsibility of mine, for sure, but it’s also a responsibility of the TA [staff].”

“In my opinion, it is very appropriate and, I think, necessary for all the supervisors and commissioners who get affected by this in their districts to be fully briefed on this before we’re asked to vote on any portion of this, even if it might be non-binding,” he said.

Read more…

Source: RAND Corporation

The brilliant thing about car-sharing is that it leads people to drive less by providing access to cars. It allows people to give up their personal vehicles (along with the gas, maintenance, parking, and insurance costs they entail) without giving up the ability to use the car once in a while when necessary. It diminishes the need for parking spaces, since one vehicle can serve several households. And it makes people think harder about the trips they take, since each trip constitutes a higher cost than in a personal vehicle, which come with high upfront costs but low per-trip costs, encouraging more driving just to get your money’s worth out of your investment.

But only 0.27 percent of U.S. drivers participate in car-sharing programs.

A recent study from the RAND Corporation estimates that that number could rise to 4.5 percent if policies were put in place to support car-sharing. RAND’s outer estimate of the potential of car-sharing goes as high as 12.5 percent of the 21-and-older population of major cities. The potential for greenhouse gas emissions savings is significant.

Read more…

We all know regular TV-watching is a risk factor for obesity and associated health problems. Also, recent studies shined a light on the role of sedentary jobs.

That long car commute could be destroying your health. Photo: AOL News

Less attention has been paid to the threat of the lengthy car commute. But a new study [PDF] from the Center for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health and American Cancer Society is confirming what many have long suspected: lengthy car commutes are terrible for your health.

A study of more than 4,000 residents of greater Dallas found that those who commute more than 15 miles by car get less exercise and have larger waistlines and poorer cardiovascular health. Those who commuted more than 20 miles were also at greater risk for high blood pressure.

The results were adjusted for age, gender, education, family circumstances and health history.

One rather obvious explanation noted by researchers is that long commutes replace time that could be dedicated to exercise. The study’s authors also noted that “participants with long commutes were more likely to live in suburban neighborhoods, which often possess built environment features that are associated with physical inactivity and sedentary behavior.”

In addition, high blood pressure may also be caused by the stress of commuting, or the social isolation it produces, researchers said.

Publicly backed sports arenas are always a gamble. Sold as a way to attract investment and energy, they can become big public liabilities, draining money for more essential services.

The Nationals' new stadium has turned a dead urban zone into a hotspot. Photo: NRDC Switchboard

But that doesn’t stop too many cities, and there are examples of places that have gambled on sports facilities and won big.

There’s a new member of that club now: Washington, DC. It’s been nearly 10 years since the city green-lighted a package of 30-year bonds for a new home for the Nationals baseball franchise in a depressed southeastern section of the city. Kaid Benfield at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Switchboard blog reports that the investment is paying off:

According to developers in the area, building didn’t really become financially feasible there until the city committed to the ballpark. Today, the neighborhood’s new projects are about 30 percent built. In addition to the new commercial properties, the area’s residential population has increased from about 1,000 to more than 3,500 and should eventually reach 16,000.

Read more…

• Police Seek Hit-and-Run Driver Who Seriously Injured Man in North Beach (SF Weekly, KTVU, SFGate)
• More on SFMTA’s Completion of 15 MPH School Zones (SFGate, SF Examiner, WalkSF)
• Bartlett Street Plaza Design Workshop Tomorrow (Uptown Almanac)
• New Facebook Page Dedicated to Documenting Bad Tour Bus Driver Behavior (Haighteration)
• SFist Provides a Refresher on Public Transit Etiquette
• Sierra Club Director: Recent Bicycling Boom Only “Scratching the Surface” of Potential (City Brights)
• Roadshow: Appeasing Drivers Venting Over “Wasteful” Green Bike Lanes (Mercury News)
• CA Senate Passes Bill Increasing Fines for Drivers, Cyclists on Cell Phones (Press Democrat, Sac Bee)
• CHP Cited 5,900 Bay Area Motorists Last Month for Distracted Driving (Palo Alto Online)
• Schools in Copenhagen Have Scooter Parking Racks (Copenhagenize)

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Factoring in proximity to bike lanes, street connectivity, topography, and commuter cycling rates, the Bike Score algorithm rated Minneapolis America's most bikeable city. Image: Walk Score

The people behind Walk Score, the real estate rating service that goes by the slogan “Drive Less, Live More,” are out with a new rating system, based on hard data, that should prove useful to prospective city dwellers: Bike Score.

The company launched the Bike Score website today, using its new algorithm to rank the ten most bikeable cities in the country. (We covered their release of city rankings for transit last month.) Minneapolis ran away with the top prize with a 79 percent bikeability rating. San Francisco tied Portland for number two, despite the fact that hilliness was a factor. D.C. and New York also placed highly (while the NYC core rates very highly on Bike Score, the bike lane deserts outside the center city score quite low).

The staff of Walk Score is made up of a whole lot of bike commuters. No wonder they were excited to launch a new bikeability ranking. Photo courtesy of Walk Score

In other bikeability rating news, the League of American Bicyclists released its 2012 list of Bicycle Friendly Communities today. There’s a lot of overlap between the BFCs and the Bike Score winners, but they are compiled use vastly different methodologies. For one thing, you won’t find two of the League’s top three cycling cities on the Bike Score list because Bike Score, so far, only looks at cities with populations over 200,000. Sorry, Boulder and Davis.

Colorado and Montana did well in the League’s rankings this year. Missoula and Durango moved up to gold, and the Colorado towns of Gunnison and Aspen made it onto the list for the first year, rolling in at the silver level. Look for your city on their updated BFC list [PDF].

Read more…

Don’t miss the SF Transit Riders Union forum tonight at 7 p.m. to learn all about the Van Ness BRT proposals. On Friday, speak up in support for the Oak and Fell Street bikeway project at a crucial SFMTA engineering hearing to help ensure it’s approved as soon as possible. On Thursday evening, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and Association of Bay Area Governments also convene to possibly adopt the preferred scenario for Plan Bay Area, the regional smart growth plan.

Here are all the highlights from the Streetsblog calendar:

• Monday: SFTRU Forum: Van Ness BRT. Join the SF Transit Riders Union and the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association for a discussion on the selected design for Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit. Staff from the SF County Transportation Authority will make a presentation on the design and answer questions about the project. 7 p.m.
• Tuesday: SFCTA Plans and Programs Committee Meeting. The committee could approve state funding for the Free Muni for Low Income Youth Pilot Program and approve a recommendation of the selected design for Van Ness BRT. 10:30 a.m.
• Also Tuesday: SFMTA Board of Directors Meeting. The Van Ness BRT design is also on the SFMTA Board’s agenda along with a new proposed express bus route connecting the 4th and King Caltrain station with the rebounding Mid-Market area. 1 p.m.
• Thursday: MTC and ABAG Special Meeting. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments could approve a “preferred scenario” for the region’s Sustainable Communities Strategy known as Plan Bay Area, a blueprint for smart growth and transportation funding over the next 25 years, as well as the One Bay Area smart-growth incentive grant program. 7 p.m.
• Friday: Fell and Oak Bikeways SFMTA Hearing. This crucial hearing will determine how quickly the protected bikeways on Fell and Oak Streets are implemented — help ensure the project’s approval by showing up and voicing your support or sending an email to sustainable.streets@sfmta.com. Also on the agenda: the SFMTA is proposing closing a crosswalk at Fulton Street and 14th Ave. and raising the speed limit on Winston Ave. from 25 to 30 MPH. 10 a.m.
• Saturday: SFBC Family Biking Classes. The SF Bicycle Coalition hosts two free classes for expecting parents or those with young children. At Part 1: Biking Pregnant (12:30 p.m.), attendees can meet other parents and “learn the medically reviewed facts about biking pregnant.” Part 2: Biking With Your Baby and Toddler (2 p.m.) will help you choose the right child seat, get your bike “baby- or toddler-ready,” and learn other tips and tricks.
• Sunday: Walk SF Guided Walk: A Visit to Visitacion Valley. Join Walk SF for a walk around Visitacion Valley, where you can “look at the Leland Avenue street design improvements and discuss plans to build transit-oriented development in the neighborhood. We will also visit local parks, including the lesser traveled Bayview Park, which has great views of downtown San Francisco, Sutro, and the Peninsula.” 10 a.m.
• Also Sunday: Green Connections Walk: Green Hairstreak Butterfly: A Walk Through an Ecosystem Corridor. The SF Planning Department continues its series of walks for its Green Connections project, an effort to “improve the city’s streets and routes that lead to our parks, waterfront and open spaces.” Explore the area around Forest Hill and ”provide feedback about what you like along the way and how certain elements could be improved.” 1 p.m.

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

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and his DOT head Gabe Klein have introduced a bold, 100-page plan to to make the Windy’s City’s transportation system more safe and sustainable.

Chicago's transportation "action plan" calls for increased camera-based traffic enforcement. Image: Chicago DOT

The city’s “Chicago Forward Action Agenda” [PDF] places strong, even revolutionary, emphasis on safety, in addition to some admirable cycling and transit ridership targets. Highlights include:

• A target of zero traffic fatalities annually in 10 years. (The city has been averaging about 50 a year)
• 20 miles per hour zones in all the city’s residential areas
• A five percent bike mode shift on trips less than five miles (currently 1.3 percent of Chicagoans travel by bike, but in the central city the figure is as high as two percent)
• An emphasis on street maintenance, or “fix it first”

In his introduction, Emanuel makes it clear that it’s a new day at Chicago DOT.

“Where we once built expressways that divided our communities, we are now reconnecting neighborhoods with new bus lanes and extensive and expanding bicycle facilities that offer safe, green, and fit ways to travel for all ages,” he says.

In the plan, the city makes a commitment to address problem intersections. The plan calls for the city to “analyze all fatal crashes involving pedestrian and cyclists” and as improve the city’s top 10 traffic collision locations annually.

City leadership also promises to invest in new infrastructure to smooth the ride for cycling and transit. The plan calls for a pilot project with 10 bicycle signals, 500 new bike racks per year and 100 transit-priority traffic signals.

Read more…

Smart growth is affordable. Smart growth is healthy. More and more, smart growth is what people prefer. And yet, the view that smart growth policies are being forced on people, or that they are some sort of global conspiracy à la Agenda 21, has no shortage of adherents.

This campaign season, opponents of smart growth policies are running against urbanism in greater Portland. Photo: The Oregonian

Even in Portland, a group called the Oregon Transformation Project is running candidates to overturn the region’s longstanding commitment to urbanism. Engineer Scotty at Portland Transport posits that the smart growth opponents are motivated by self-interested fear of the urban renaissance:

Some density opponents are staunch conservatives, motivated by cultural politics, free-market economics, or political solidarity with other conservative constituencies such as big oil. Many other density opponents come from the left — viewing big-ticket capital transportation projects (as well as urban renewal projects designed to encourage infill) as little more than corruption and cronyism, indistinguishable (other than in scope) from the antics of Wall Street banksters, with greenwashing being used to deceive a gullible public. But a common theme that motivates many of the critics on both the left and the right, is a dislike of density itself.

Read more…