Whereas navigating the old cluttered site often felt like a walking through a maze, visitors are now greeted by drop-down menus leading to tidy, image-heavy pages with useful info on the various modes of transportation. The front page features an integrated Muni trip planner which offers a choice of using information from 511 or Google.
One colleague of mine did take issue with the hierarchical order of transport modes on the "Getting Around" page -- Muni, then parking, then bicycling, then taxi, then walking, then accessibility for the disabled, etc. -- which doesn't quite match up with the "Muni, walking, and bicycling" priority dictated in the city's transit-first policy. Granted, I'd imagine getting information on parking is one of the top reasons for visiting the SFMTA website, so it could be geared toward providing the most-requested info first.
So readers, does the new website feel more useful? Should walking and biking be placed before parking as a symbolic show of priorities? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Aaron was the editor of Streetsblog San Francisco from January 2012 until October 2015. He joined Streetsblog in 2010 after studying rhetoric and political communication at SF State University and spending a semester in Denmark.
No other field would tolerate this level of death and destruction. The tragedy of West Portal is more evidence that the traffic engineering profession is fundamentally broken