G’s comment earlier addresses why this is possible legally:
LOS isn’t really even an “impact”, the guidelines are discretionary. The air quality theory that it is based upon, that slowing down cars will create Carbon Monoxide hotspots was throughly discredited by the Bay Area Air Quality management District in the public comment surrounding the LOS legislation. There hasn’t actually been a “hot-spot” in the Bay Area for over ten years. The conditions in SF are generally windy it is not a basin surrounded by mountains like for example LA. In the BAAQMD guidelines they don’t even ask that LOS E,F be considered to be an impact, it’s actually a “screening threshold” in that they suggest that agencies check for a hot-spot if reaching LOS E,F.

Come on Mr McCain, I know you know how to use “The Google”

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/e/a/1998/03/10/NEWS7590.dtl

I believe that the City’s own statistics indicate that there has been significant unfunded depreciation in the street surfaces over the past 15 years, and that dangerous condition leads to countless injuries not recorded by the cops.

Statistics also indicate a higher rate of auto ownership, largely based on the production of luxury and commuter housing with 1:1 parking making SF the endpoint of many more freeway trips.

And, of course, the SFPD has been left to their own devices and allowed a culture of automotive miscreance to flourish in San Francisco, a nod and a wink from the commuters in blue that we’re just not doing enforcement unless its budget time.

-marc

We can all get out our SimCity game and make believe what we want. The trick is building political support for what you want to do and making it real instead of whining about other people not agreeing with you.

At the end of the day, it all revolves around making the Muni attractive by increasing incentives to take transit and eliminating barriers to taking transit.

Only when there are viable alternatives will you be able to make the jump to where you want to be. And when cyclists don’t care whether a bike lane would delay Muni, you push yourself further away from that confluence.

As far as the SFBC goes, either you want to ratify a record of utter failure over the past five years as far as the bicycle plan goes, or you want to do a post mortem and learn from what went wrong. I don’t think that most critics would have a problem with the SFBC if their structural deficiencies did not impact on others, but in fact, the way that the political fluids flow, sus problemas son nuestras problemas.

Let’s face it, if the sheer indignation that you and the SFBC show towards those which do not buy into your fantasies of how politics works in San Francisco, were sufficient to change things, we’d be living in Portland now. There are no shortcuts, the real political work needs to be done to make your case in a democratic society.

Other jurisdictions have managed to make progress while San Francisco has remained stagnant. Are you suggesting that we ignore this history and not learn from it?

-marc

Objectively implies fact – do you have stats? If you did, and they supported your statement, I’d probably object that Market/Octavia need to be filtered out as that specific intersection being extraordinarily dangerous does not speak to general cycling conditions.

I started commuting to work through San Francisco on a daily basis 10 years ago – almost to the day. Anecdotally I completely disagree with what you imply the stats prove. Even with no new bike lanes the last three years, the past decade has included the Valencia bike lane among others. And the number one safety improvement over the past decade? 10 years ago I used to ride alone. Now I ride in a bike traffic jam.

Do you disagree returning “parking lanes” to travel lanes would likely allow bikes, cars and Muni to move relatively quickly along “narrow” streets and pinch points? Because it seems pretty simple to me–but then, I’m just not cool with the city continuing its total neglect of cyclists on our public roads while simultaneously providing free on-street storage space for private gas-guzzlers.

As for the other stuff–you first, Marcos. You go out there and gain traction on all the shit you’ve been posting here for weeks now, like the desperate need for the whole city to subvert that evil empire the SFBC, and maybe *then* you won’t seem like such a hypocrite wagging your finger at me while I indulge your restated request for this very conversation we’re having.

It is wonderful that you have the solution, removing parking for travel lanes. Now you need to do the political work that it takes to convince enough people to support doing just that.

Similar to the 17th street reclamation, why is it that whiteness of ethnicity of an area correlates with the improvements is gets?

@John Murphy,

You should peruse the supporting documents of Anderson and Miles’ lawsuit for some background on how staff and a small circle of designated stakeholders operate, as well as the documents surrounding the hundreds of thousands of dollars paid the SFBC to do “public outreach” on the Bike Plan Update to see how cash lubricates the freewheel.

This is not about whether one likes any given individual or their personalities, rather about an approach of an organization to dealing with government and government’s approach to dealing with an organization.

If we’d seen success over the past decade, then your defense of choices made over the past decade might be legitimate. If we’d seen progress on reconfiguring enforcement priorities over at the SFPD to end the jihad against cyclists, then you’d be correct. Objectively, even though more folks are riding now than ever, it is more dangerous to ride now than it was a decade ago.

-marc

“Narrow” streets, like all public roadways, should be used primarily for moving people and goods. Private car storage should only be allowed where there are enough travel lanes to accommodate all modes of travel at a reasonable speed.

If the entire roadway, curb to curb, has been reopened to moving traffic, and if Muni buses still run too slow as a result of striping bike lanes–THEN, and only then, should cyclists reconsider our rightful demand for accommodation on our shared roadways. But not a moment before then. These streets in San Francisco were not laid down for motorists back in the 1800s–they were laid down to move traffic. In 2009, bikes are traffic. Street design and traffic enforcement must reflect that reality.

I really think you need to go have a beer with Andy Thornley some day, to verify that he really is a modern day Kenneth Lay.

The decision to ignore LOS in 2002 and to bundle these projects together as one gargantuan “bike plan” was the high risk strategy that blew up in their/our faces.

They could have ascertained the MTA’s annual capacity for these kinds of things, and staged a process where each year a set of projects would be selected, studied in the second year and implemented in the third, so that there were always bite sized chunks in the pipeline instead of a python trying to eat a baby elephant in one gulp.

When people are organized, amazing things can happen. But when organizations prioritize themselves over empowering their constituencies, then detachment occurs and potential political power is grounded out. With 10,000 members, the SFBC could mobilize people to get whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted it. But they chose another path, one that placed blame everywhere BUT at the SFBC, and we’re playing 5 years catch up.

I mean, why run campaigns and elect candidates to office, why even participate in politics if we’re not going to leverage our comparative political advantages to the hilt to move our policies?

This life is more than just a read through.

Nobody is dictator, decisions are made through a process, and the goal of livable streets advocates should be to ensure that the process is as transparent as possible. But our electeds prefer short-cuts that only allow designated stakeholders to participate meaningfully. And when stakeholders freeze out their constituencies, like the SFBC has repeatedly, then something gets lost in translation. And since there is really no way for constituents of a nonprofit to hold designated stakeholders accountable for poor decision making the way that shareholders would keep management accountable by voting in new board members or passing resolutions at an annual meeting, the rejoinder is “go form your own group,” instead of acknowledging that there are structural problems and finding common ground on how to fix them.

This is the basis for referring to the SFBC as the bicycle corporation, as it privatizes the public discourse and this closed shop results in real dangers to cyclists.

As to 2d street, the major cause of congestion is not conditions on 2d street, rather the degree of congestion on the freeways.

-marc

If I were dictator, I would revamp the whole thing. There are some adjustments in the plan on streets I ride every day. Some I think are unnecessary. Some aren’t scoped very well. Some roads could really use some adjustment and aren’t in the plan. Some are treatments on roads that I think even after a treatment will not be the best route through the neighborhood (see Cesar Chavez).

But I’m not the dictator. Gavin’s visions notwithstanding we have no dictator. We have a bloated representative system. Road design is never perfect either but 99% of the time the users and nearby residents just accept what comes in. Sometimes they end up with the Embarcadero Freeway. But automobiles get things built for them. We’ll certainly end up with our own share of crap, and things won’t get prioritized properly (if there is such a thing as proper prioritization – I would pick Townsend, others Masonic, others Market, etc…). But I think it’s insane to throw the baby out because you think the bathwater’s a little tepid.

They had to do an EIR on the whole thing, because someone filed a lawsuit against the whole thing.

What does it say that it took auto-centric antediluvians filing a lawsuit to inadvertently illustrate the relationship between CEQA, bikes and Muni to transportation professionals both in and out of government?

Transit first includes bicycles, but consider for a moment “big picture” matters from a strategic perspective not directly related to your immediate perceived needs. There are cases where other-centered advocacy, counter intuitive as it might be, will actually facilitate cycling to a greater extent than if one pursued what appeared to be a solely cyclist-centered approach.

The fact is that the CIty was wrong in bundling up the bicycle network into one huge target, given the known LOS impacts.

The City was wrong in bowing to political pressure and not conducting an EIR given the demonstrated impacts of certain segments on the Muni.

The CIty was wrong in pretending that LOS did not exist as a concern for the Bike Plan network.

The City compounded its wrongness by commissioning the mother of all EIRs, going from zero to infinity rather than staking out a middle ground of a cursory yet adequate EIR, and this last bit cost two years of time.

As we move forward, instead of repeatedly bleating “bike lanes = good,” lets see some sort of more sophisticated, subtle reality-based implementation approach that considers 1) what segments are most critical to cyclist safety, 2) what is the MTA’s annual capacity to stripe lanes, and 3) what steps can we take to balance out the impacts between bikes and Muni?

-marc

I wrote a really long post just a few minutes ago, and it disappeared when I clicked “Post Your Comment” … sorry if this turns out to be a duplicate more or less because my other posting just needed moderator approval or something.

I’d like to correct The Examiner’s article quotation that says that I “expressed concern that the Second Street plans would clog roads and endanger pedestrians because ambulances and fire trucks would not be able to reach residences.” That doesn’t make any sense and it isn’t quite what I said. What I tried to relay is that I and my neighbors are concerned about additional traffic congestion on surrounding streets causing more air pollution for residents to breathe (in addition to the toxins emitted by the 280,000 cars that cross the Bay Bridge daily behind (and above, in my case) our homes). We’re concerned that the SF MTA is not introducing traffic calming measures to slow down vehicles that already drive at unsafe speeds down Folsom Street to do an impatient end run down Main and up Harrison to the 1st Street Bay Bridge entrance – the lack of traffic calming means it will likely be even more dangerous for pedestrians than it already is to walk home from work. Finally, with all of the traffic congestion in the area already between 4pm and 7pm, Monday through Friday, can emergency response vehicles reach residents in Rincon Hill, South Beach, and South Park within 5 minutes if traffic congestion is made worse and Hawthorne is ulitized as a primary street instead of a side street for commuter traffic?

We are like-minded folks, and I’m glad to read that most folks recognize that to some extent and are not personally attacking me (thank you). Some of us met when Don Fisher was trying to increase parking downtown with Proposition H in 2007, and we pulled together to fight it (see http://rinconhillneighbors.org/2007/06/sf-news-and-politics/ ). Some of you know of me because I gave Supervisors Peskin and Alioto-Pier a lot of criticism on my RinconHillSF.org blog for trying to kill off Sunday Streets last summer (see a slightly different domain name web site where I had to leave my political commentaries when I moved my blog to the RHNA web site, http://www.somapride.com/2008/07/19/454 ). Maybe we met at the first Sunday Streets as I wore a cowboy hat and held a little stop sign as a volunteer on Illinois Street at 19th, across from the S’More making bicycle and SFBC tent. Maybe we’ve met when I was in the SFBC office folding Peak to Peak letters for Walk San Francisco. As a matter of fact, go to RinconHillSF.org and select the Category: Transportation and Ped Safety. Look through my 83 postings categorized under that topic and you should figure out I’m on your side.

Working people who choose to live in Rincon Hill at this early stage in the redevelopment of the neighborhood choose this location for one primary reason – we want to be able to walk, bike, or ride public transit to get to work if we work within San Francisco. High-density housing near jobs and the Bay Area’s public transit hub is the big picture idea behind a residential Rincon Hill, and I think that most of you would completely agree that this is a concept that you should support for the sake of the environment … and to succeed, it needs to be LIVABLE.

I and my neighbors want the SF MTA to open their ears, to provide us a utility lane in the 2nd Street design like the one on Valencia Street with metered traffic signals to allow those car commuters to move along and to mitigate the amount of time they sit and idle in our neighborhoods, and to stop taking pedestrian safety for granted in downtown San Francisco.

In this thread I read an interesting debate between marcos, macas, greasybear, and others about the effect of bicycle improvements on public transit speed. I also read several posts responding to you in ways that clearly demonstrate that they’re not simply “focused on their own needs.”

In the opinion of this (non bicycle riding) poster, you might want to lose your own “smug moral superiority” before you start to cast stones at others. . .

Do you see “cyclists” in there anywhere?

“bike riders don’t really care about the others in the City. They are only focused on their own needs and assume that if their needs are met, everyone else will conform.”

This is such crap. The percentage of people who use bikes frequently who also use transit frequently is probably in the high 90′s. I ride to work almost every day, but a lot of random trips that would be much faster on a bike I take on MUNI, because loads of groceries, drinking alcohol, long times away from where I would lock my bike, etc…. are involved. I just wish MUNI wasn’t so damn slow and unreliable. And my experimental data as someone who is out there on the streets is that the slowness and unreliability comes from 2 sources – automobiles, and drivers taking a KFC run in the middle of a shift

I’ve gotta admit, I expected to see some pretty bad personal attacks when I clicked on the link over here from SFist.com. I’m pleased to see some rational discussion from people whom I consider to be like-minded friends. Some of us first crossed paths to fight against Don Fisher’s Proposition H (downtown parking) in 2007 (see my blog entry: http://rinconhillneighbors.org/2007/06/sf-news-and-politics/ ). Others may know of me because I publicly gave Supervisors Peskin and Alioto-Pier hell last July when they signaled they were going to require an economic feasibility study before allowing the pilot Sunday Streets events to happen (see http://www.somapride.com/2008/07/19/454 – I had to remove my political musings when I moved the blog to the Association web site, thus the different domain name). We may have met when I volunteered for Sunday Streets, holding my little stop sign on Illinois Street near 19th Street, across from the s’more making bicycle at the SFBC tent. Maybe you met me at the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition office while I was folding Peak to Peak flyers and stuffing envelopes for Walk San Francisco. Maybe you’re just curious why a guy with a full time job outside of politics puts so much time into a neighborhood blog – the answer to that was posted March 15, 2007 (see http://rinconhillneighbors.org/2007/03/pedestrian-safey/ )- the reason I started the RinconHillSF.org blog is because I moved to Rincon Hill, almost got hit by a car doing an end run down Folsom, right onto Main Street, and and right onto Harrison Street to get up to the Bay Bridge soon after I moved to Rincon Hill, I emailed Chris Daly a couple of times, and after hearing nothing back, I realized I needed to get my own bullhorn in the form of a blog to fend for myself and my neighbors in regards to pedestrian safety and other issues.

Something that you all should understand is that people who live in Rincon Hill do not move here for all of the awesome neighborhood cafes, green open spaces, community gathering spots, and safe streets … people move here at this very early point in the transition of Rincon Hill back to a residential neighborhood in order to be able to walk, bicycle, or take public transit to work for those of us who work in San Francisco. I walk to work. Before I lived in Rincon Hill, I rode a bicycle to work from 17th and Texas Street in Potrero hill down to 16th Street east, northbound on 3rd Street, and then east on Brannan Street – that was a few years ago before the roads were smooth(er). I’m part of the choir folks – and just because I’m questioning why 2nd Street cannot be designed like Valencia with a utility lane in the middle and metered traffic signals to allow for cars to turn left off of 2nd Street instead of making three right turns down SOMA’s long, uninterrupted roads, please don’t think “if you’re not with us, you must be against us.” I am with you, but I want SF MTA to do a COMPLETE job and to consider pedestrian safety, air quality, and how emergency response vehicles are going to reach residents in Rincon Hill (and South Beach and South Park) if 1st Street, Harrison Street, Folsom Street, Howard Street, Beale Street, Spear Street, and The Embarcadero are jammed up with cars during rush hour because we’re removing two lanes on 2nd Street and requiring multiple right turns for cars to head in the direction of the highway of their choice (Bay Bridge, 101, or 280).

My neighbors living in Rincon Hill, in general, get it. If we want to minimize CO2 emissions, we need to ditch the cars and walk or bike (or, as a 3rd option, take public transit). That’s why we live here at this point in the development of Rincon Hill! We’re very anxious to see a multi-modal Transbay Transit Center rise up and provide Caltrain and high speed rail services along with the existing bus services in the Bay Area. People complain about the high-rise residential buildings that started to go up around me in Rincon Hill, but the same people seem to want more housing near the jobs and public transit so that not as many people need to drive – well, HELLO?!?

One correction to The Examiner article. It says something like I “expressed concern that the Second Street planss would clog roads and endanger pedestrians because ambulances and fire trucks would not be able to reach residences.” That don’t make no damn sense, and it is not what I said. Go read my blog if you want to know what I’m trying to communicate as the concerns of myself and many of my neighbors – http://www.RinconHillSF.org. The concerns are that the current design will make traffic congestion worse, and with 280,000 cars spewing crap into the air as they cross the Bay Bridge daily, can’t the SF MTA figure out a way to mitigate the traffic congestion so as to do no ADDITIONAL harm to local residents and their air quality? With more frustrated drivers on the roads, can’t the SF MTA introduce some traffic calming measures in order to try to slow cars down and help pedestrians live another day to walk to work? Why can’t we stop vehicles from making right turns off of Folsom Street east of 1st Street during rush hours to try to help improve pedestrian safety? A third, separate issue is that Hawthorne serves as the Bay Bridge traffic bypass for SFFD Fire Station No. 1 located on Howard near 3rd Street to reach Rincon Hill, South Beach, and South Park – if that alley way is clogged up with cars as a way to go west on Folsom, can emergency response vehicles reach residents around the Bay Bridge within 5 minutes of receiving a call?

Anyway, I just want to tell my friends (and those of you who I do not know but I share your desire to decrease the number of cars on the roads) that you shouldn’t burn the bridges that could lead to collaboration with residents in Rincon Hill, South Beach, and South Park. We’re already living the environmentally friendly life. The people clogging up the streets today in Rincon Hill between 4pm and 7pm are folks trying to drive home to the East Bay, and you’re not going to convince them to start taking BART by adding bike lanes to 2nd Street. Also, this is the wrong time of the year to tell a gay man to shut up and to stay in the closet …