Elevated Transbay Park. Images: Planning Department

The Planning Department's Joshua Switzky, one of the lead authors, said like any draft plan this one will fluctuate based on the public and the Planning Commission's feedback, but the principles espoused in it should remain intact.

"The plan that we put out is clearly the one we think is the best plan. Depending on what the Commission wants to do, we will potentially make changes. It's kind of really open to the process," said Switzky.

Switzky pointed to several key recommendations, ones that could prove contentious several years down the line when more detailed proposals are hammered out. One is assuring the quality of pedestrian accessibility with the objective in the plan to maintain, on average, 21-foot sidewalks, 15 feet for circulation and 6 feet of curbside amenities, such as bike racks, benches, street trees, or news boxes.

"That will mean different things on different streets," said Switzky. "On some streets, the only way to achieve that will be to eliminate on-street parking. Sometimes it might mean eliminating a travel lane." Sometimes, he said, it could be a combination of both. "The future of this area is probably a lot less on-street parking than there is today."

Click to enlarge: A conceptual image of a new San Francisco skyline.

"The Plan's emphasis on creating a pedestrian-oriented Transit Center District is very encouraging. Attention will be paid to making the area safe for people of all ages and mobility challenges to get around on foot," said Whitacker. "The Association will be vigilant about trying mitigate 'dangerous by design' elements that detract from the pedestrian experience along our residential core on Harrison Street."

Manish Champsee, Executive Director of Walk San Francisco, also praised the plan. "The thing that I really like about this plan is that it considers the pedestrian first. Usually when there is a plan to greatly increase the usage of a particular area, the first thought is to create more auto capacity to deal with extra traffic in the area," said Champsee. "This plan takes a completely different approach: it says there will be lots more people in this area, lets increase the sidewalk space to accommodate them. A stark difference."

Another plan objective likely to inspire debate is the proposal to reduce maximum parking allowances in the plan area by half. Currently, said Switzky, commercial space in the downtown core allows 7 percent of gross floor area to be parking, which works out to about one parking space for every 5,000 square feet of office space, or one car for every 20 workers. If the plan's objectives are adopted, the limit of one car for every 40 workers in the plan area would put San Francisco close to the limits set in Manhattan, the strictest anywhere in the country (In Manhattan below 60th Street, commercial developments have to cap the total new parking spaces to 100, no matter the size of the building).

The final plan objectives guaranteed to bring about disagreement are travel demand management proposals, including congestion pricing and other restrictions on personal automobiles into the plan area. In addition to pricing private driving into the downtown, the plan proposes mandating mode-split targets by requiring commercial property owners and managers to keep records of how their employees traveled to work. If the split didn't meet overall travel targets, property owners and businesses would have to provide incentives to employees to reduce overall driving into the area.

Whitaker looked at the long view of the neighborhood. "I believe it is a good reflection of San Francisco's aspirations to continue to be a jobs center, the hub for regional transit, and a model for sustainable urban planning, [while] minimizing air pollution and other negative impacts on our environment," he said.

Click to Enlarge.

Pedestrians and the Public Realm

"To create a public realm worthy of a great city, as well as accommodate the increased number of pedestrians and transit users, the balance of space must shift more toward people on the street. Unavoidably, this step involves certain tradeoffs between pedestrian improvements and space for automobiles.... Giving priority to pedestrians and the Transit Center District’s place in the city means difficult choices in view of space limitations in the rights-of-way."

• Policy 3.8 - Designate Plan Area streets where no curb cuts are allowed or are discouraged. Where curb cuts are necessary, they should be limited in number and designed to avoid maneuvering on sidewalks or in street traffic. When crossing sidewalks, driveways should be only as wide as necessary to accomplish this function.
• Policy 3.14 - Convert the western portion of Natoma Street between First and Second streets on the south side of the Transit Center to a primarily pedestrian-only street.
• Policy 3.13 - Close Shaw Alley permanently to vehicles and design it as a pedestrian-only open space for thru-connection to the Transit Center.
• Objective 3.6 - Enhance the pedestrian network with new linkages to provide direct and varied pathways , to shorten walking distances, and to relieve congestion at major street corners.
• Objective 3.8 - Ensure that new development enhances the pedestrian network and reduces the scale of long blocks by maintaining and improving public access along existing alleys and creating new through-block pedestrian connections where none exist.
  
• Objective 3.9 - Ensure that mid-block crosswalks and through-block passageways are convenient, safe, and inviting.

Encourage Transit and Limit Automobile Congestion

"Data compiled from the 2000 Census by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) for the broader downtown, encompassing the entire C-3 zone and adjacent areas showed that 49 percent of workers took transit, 41 percent of commuters came by auto (including 29 percent who drove alone to work) and about 10 percent took other means (primarily walking and bicycling).... Moreover, vehicle occupancy trends (i.e. number of people per vehicle) also appear counter to the intentions of the Downtown Plan.... Evidence reviewed in the 2004 Downtown Monitoring Report indicate that vehicle occupancy on both major bridges into the City have declined since 1985."

• Policy 4.11 - Study the feasibility of and implement, as feasibility and necessity determines, congestion pricing of roadways as a primary tool to reduce overall traffic levels in the Plan area, particularly peak-hour bridge and freeway queues.
• Objective 4.1 - The district’s transportation system will prioritize and incentivize the use of transit. Public transportation will be the main, non-pedestrian mode for moving into and between destinations in the transit center district.
• Objective 4.2 - The district’s transportation system will implement and require transportation demand management strategies to minimize growth in auto trips and reduce volumes as necessary. Actively manage the transportation system to optimize person-carrying capacity. 
• Objective 4.4 - The district’s transportation system will prioritize pedestrian amenity and safety. Invest in circulation modifications and urban design measures that support the creation of an attractive and memorable public realm.
• Objective 4.5 - The district’s transportation system will build on successful traffic and parking management programs and policies that are in place. Expand and strengthen existing adopted policies (e.g. Downtown Plan, C-3 parking controls) and current planning initiatives (e.g. Transit Effectiveness Project, SFPark).
• Objective 4.6 - The district’s transportation system will require management of bay bridge queues to reduce and mitigate impacts of regional traffic on transit circulation and the public realm in the district.
• Objective 4.9 - Prioritize transit movements through and within the district over all other transportation modes.

The San Francisco Planning Department will release the Draft Plan for the new Transbay Terminal and development project after the Planning Commission meeting tonight at 5:30 p.m. According to Planning's Joshua Switzky, the plan will be presented to the commission but there will not be extensive discussion about its details until future public hearings.

In a press release sent out moments ago, Mayor Gavin Newsom called the project a lynchpin of the city's future growth, "one that is based in sustainability and channeling growth around major investments in public  transit.” 

“This plan takes a very comprehensive approach to sustainability, looking at everything from land use to transportation patterns to energy systems in order to reduce the ecological footprint of growth,” Newsom said in the release.

John Rahaim, the Planning Director, said San Francisco's downtown has added "over 20 million square feet of office space, hotels and thousands of housing units since the 1985 Downtown Plan. This growth was possible due to excellent transit, resulting in little appreciable increase in auto congestion on downtown streets."

This plan will continue this tradition of success, creating a dynamic district appropriate to the multi-billion dollar public infrastructure  investment  of the Transit Center Project. We look forward to hearing comments from the Planning Commission and the public in the coming months.”

The Draft Plan intends to meet the following objectives, according to the Planning Department release:

• Increase capacity to help accommodate San Francisco’s share of job growth for the next 25 years by eliminating density caps and increasing some height limits above the current 550-foot maximum in the area around the new Transbay Transit Center.
• Create gracious public spaces and accommodate higher pedestrian volumes by widening sidewalks and adding substantial amenities and infrastructure, such as seating, landscaping, kiosks, and bicycle parking.
• Create a new plaza at the northeast corner of Howard and 2nd Streets and support the creation of a park on the 5.5-acre roof of the Transit Center.
• Manage  travel demand and reduce auto traffic to facilitate growth by limiting increases in parking, providing incentives, and pursing congestion pricing if necessary.
• Expand  the  existing New Montgomery-2nd Street Conservation District to preserve numerous historic resources, as well as recommend protection of many additional individual buildings.
  
• Pursue the creation of district-based resource systems to reduce consumption of energy and water by new development.
• Consider the implementation of multiple new funding mechanisms to generate funds from new development for the Transit Center and other necessary infrastructure and improvements to support growth, including a Mello-Roos special tax district and new impact fees.

Click to enlarge: Annual household transportation costs in the Bay Area.

In the Bay Area, where annual car ownership costs on average over $8,000 per person, individuals spend roughly $34 billion every year on personal transportation costs, compared to only $4.6 billion spent by public agencies on transit and roads combined. Households with poor access to public transit not only spend double the amount per year on transportation when compared to those with good access to transit, they produce more than double the amount of CO2, a greenhouse gas.

"The most astounding thing is that agencies pinch their pennies on transit and cut back and we feel like we can't afford not to save that service," said Stuart Cohen, Executive Director of TransForm. "We're already spending more than seven times as much as our agencies spend on public transit and roads just on buying and operating our vehicles."

What's more, the report points out that fuel costs represent a small minority of the cost of owning a car, so the craze for electric and other low-emission vehicles will not dramatically reduce the transportation costs for those living far from their jobs and far from transit. The best solution to combating climate change, the report notes, is to build walkable, vibrant communities where residences are situated close to job centers. 

Click to enlarge: household CO2 from transportation in the Bay Area.

"By reducing public and private transportation costs and increasing revenues to local governments, SB 375 can help put dollars back in the pockets of consumers and local governments," said Cohen.

Windfall for All counters the claim that SB 375 will be too costly to implement during the current economic crisis with several examples of how planning denser cities and offering alternatives to private car travel can save money.

First, in Sacramento, the Sacramento Area Council of Governments (SACOG) created a 2050 development blueprint that forecasts current development patterns and compared them to smart growth patterns. SACOG found that Sacramento would save $9.4 billion in public infrastructure costs (transportation, utilities, water, etc), $655 million in annual residents' fuel costs and $8.4 billion less for land purchases to offset environmental degradation from sprawl. The city would also see a 300 percent increase in public transit use if the city clustered development around transit within an urban growth boundary.

Benefits of public transportation for household costs and pollution. Image: TransForm.

In the Bay Area, parking regulations are a significant impediment to dense development. In San Leandro, parking minimums of more than two parking spaces for each new home made dense development a planning impossibility. When San Leandro re-wrote its downtown plan, it rezoned to allow 3,400 new homes, more than seven times the limit under the old zoning laws. The first development in the new Downtown Transit-Oriented Development Strategy, The Alameda, designed by San Francisco Architect David Baker, saves $3.9 million by eliminating a level of parking and produces 30 more affordable units, according to the report.

Based on these and other case studies, Cohen suggested California should consider levying a climate impact fee on gasoline to generate enough money to expand public transit options and expand walkable communities while improving the economy and meeting ambitious greenhouse gas targets.

"Building our communities with the expectation that every driver in a family is going to have to own their own car is part of what is part of what is bankrupting families," said Cohen. "The infrastructure for the... roads and those patterns of growth is part of what is bankrupting our public agencies."

Windfall for All Critical Recommendations

• Integrate full economic analysis into planning. The huge dividends from efficient land use become evident once personal costs, not just public budgets, are considered. Without such analysis, we will continue to promote plans and policies that cost too much for families, businesses, and local governments.
• Provide cities and counties with an infusion of funds to engage the community in planning. The state should make funds available for updating zoning codes and parking policies to make more efficient use of land and resources. Identifying strategies to maintain and expand the number of affordable homes is also critical.
• Fund cost-effective public transportation. The state needs to provide leadership and restore funds for public transit, as well as make it easier for regions to raise new revenues with climate-impact fees. Economic analysis could determine whether such fees, if spent in ways that promote more efficient communities, can reduce our overall costs.
• Innovate, evaluate and replicate. There are dozens of innovative strategies – whether an individual program such as car-sharing, or a comprehensive rewards approach such as UC San Diego’s. MTC, the Bay Area’s transportation agency, will soon launch the first “Transportation Climate Action Program.” This program will seed, evaluate and replicate innovative programs. Other regions should follow suit.
• New development should minimize pollution from new residents – or pay to mitigate it. The San Joaquin Valley is encouraging efficient development from the start. New developments that don’t provide walkable communities with convenient transportation choices must mitigate the costs of the air pollution that will be generated by future residents. The state and regional air districts should encourage this same system for mitigating the costs of greenhouse gases.
  

Click image to enlarge: Leland Avenue intersection overview.

The Planning Department's Andres Power lauded the Leland Avenue improvements, and said the reconstruction of the street was the first step in a process the city hopes will become codified in every street redesign moving forward through the Better Streets Plan. He pointed to a new project, however, in neighboring Bayview as the benchmark for how San Francisco is innovating street design. Power is the project manager for the Model Block pilot on Newcomb Avenue in the Bayview, a project designed around stormwater treatment. The Newcomb project is situated on the 1700 block, just off of 3rd Street between Newhall and Phelps, and will employ a cocktail of street treatments, including stormwater planters and bulbouts, planted traffic calming chicanes, permeable pavement at on-street parking spaces, landscaped sidewalks that absorb runoff, raised crosswalks, and new street trees.

"Newcomb will be the first true green street in San Francisco," said Power, who noted that over the last few years movement from within the city on these matters has been quite positive. "From a policy and design perspective, there has been a sea change; it is infinitely easier to be able to talk about this stuff. Good design feels much less like an impossibility."

The cost to remake the Newcomb is $1,251,421, half of which comes from the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, nearly $500,000 from the U.S. EPA, and the remainder from San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing Community Challenge Grants. The Redevelopment Agency, as part of the expansion of its Model Block single-family home rehabilitation program, will provide financial assistance to low-income families on Newcomb in conjunction with the renovation to refurbish their dwellings.

Click image to enlarge: Newcomb Avenue overhead with stormwater and traffic calming treatments

"Our drivers are different," said Jencks, referring to the Clean Water Act lawsuit that compelled Portland to clean up the Willamette River. "We don't have rivers with Salmon in them and we addressed the Clean Water Act with storage facilities.  We're in full regulatory compliance."

Jencks said the storage facilities brought raw sewage overflows into the bay and ocean down from an average of more than 80 per year before adding the tanks to fewer than 10 a year currently, most of those small. But, she acknowledged, "The public is not happy with combined sewage overflows any time," so her agency is working with Planning, the Department of Public Works, and the MTA to address upstream storm water through street design. Jencks noted that any reduction in storm water entering their facilities saves the city money by reducing pumping and processing volumes.

Looking forward, Planning's Power highlighted the Cesar Chavez Street redesign, which is slated to begin construction in 2010. Power said Caltrans awarded a $250,000 grant to the Planning Department to begin planning charettes for the Highway 101 interchange at Cesar Chavez, commonly known as the "Hairball," and the portion of Cesar Chavez that stretches from 101 east to 3rd Street. Furthermore, the U.S. EPA just awarded the $6 million project an additional $1.2 million for greenstreet treatments from the Hairball west to Guerrero Street. The EPA grant doubled the funding that had been planned for greenstreet facilities and gives the project leaders the opportunity to make the street the showcase for green design citywide.

"From a planning perspective we're moving to make sure all street projects have these treatments," said Power. "It hasn't been part of the standard approach in the city, but the Better Streets Plan will change that."

UPDATED: 11/19, 9:43 a.m.

Photo: carbonmotion

"What I find is that people at first are very upset about the notion of paying evenings and Sundays," said Nolan, explaining that the majority of emails he has received from the public have been negative. "The real question is what are we going to do about Muni? It is so important for this city. When it's put in that context, people understand the problem [and understand] the alternative could be much worse."

MTA apokesperson Judson True said the agency has conducted 11 outreach meetings with various "groups" since the October 20th MTA Board presentation, including meetings in Supervisor Michaela Alioto-Pier's 2nd District and Supervisor Sean Elsbernd's 7th District, both considered to be more hostile to the proposal. When asked how many people the MTA has met with in these meetings, True would not specify that. When asked whether the number was 20 or 2,000, True said, "Somewhere between the two."

"We continue to attend community meetings and talk about the study and proposal," said True. "We continue to hear the same sorts of responses as we did at the board. We don't have a schedule to bring this issue before the board."

When asked whether the MTA has been pressured by the Mayor's Office to kill the study, True said, "The same skepticism about the proposal that existed when this came out, exists now."

Despite a proposal by the Chamber of Commerce to coordinate a comprehensive outreach meeting of its membership, the MTA has yet to take up the offer, according the the Chamber's Senior Vice President for Public Policy, Jim Lazarus.

The decision over extending meter hours will likely come down to MTA Chair Nolan and his resolve for confronting an issue the mayor who appointed him clearly disdains. Nolan said he wasn't concerned about the political reaction if he betrayed Mayor Newsom's wishes and said, "We're all in fixed terms over there; we can't be removed, except by cause."

This resolve clearly flies in the face of concerns Nolan conveyed to Streetsblog in an interview in July, when he admitted he worries about angering Newsom and what effect that would have on his ability to maintain good graces for his non-profit, Project Open Hand. Newsom has also summarily requested resignations of board members who disagree with him in the past, as happened to SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum nearly two years ago.

Whether Nolan will risk the political fallout is uncertain, though he acknowledged that the public is growing increasingly upset as it understands the scope of the Muni service cuts that go into effect December 5th. Those cuts, along with service enhancements meant to negate the impact, were negotiated in May in a budget deal between Mayor Newsom and Board of Supervisors Chair David Chiu that prevented Chiu from rejecting the MTA budget. Neither Chiu nor the Mayor seem to want to embrace a parking proposal they see as toxic.

That leaves Nolan holding the bag and compels him to make the unenviable choice between balancing the budget with the help of increased meter revenue (and the attendant political backlash) or balancing it with more service cuts and fare increases.

"People are just beginning to realize what [service cuts] mean to them," said Nolan. "It would be nice to make everybody happy, but my job is to do everything to make the system work for the vast majority of people."

One of the most ubiquitous admonitions in the urban landscape is the No Parking sign. Many are your garden-variety plastic number, for sale at the hardware store, hardly creative. All over San Francisco, however, folks have taken matters into their own hands and crafted some excellent variations. Whenever I've got my camera handy and I'm walking around the city, I find a new one that impresses. I've tried here to cluster a few of my favorite No Parking signs in this slideshow by type, whether by pattern, location, or color.  I hope you enjoy.

Many thanks also for consistently uploading your shots to our Flickr pool. Feel free to upload your favorite No Parking signs or leave a link in the comments.

Unfortunately, my favorite No Parking sign in San Francisco has already been taken down, presumably by the new renter of the garages space, who didn't feel quite this strongly about the issue:

Photo: vizcacha

A typical greenstreet facility in Portland, Oregon. This one compines a stormwater treatment facility with a bulbout to reduce pedestrian crossing distances. Photos: Portland BES.

Portland's greenstreet facilities often take up multiple on-street parking stalls and replace the asphalt with beds planted in native species that help absorb significant volumes of streetlevel wastewater, near 100 percent in some locations. Facilities include swales, curb extensions, planters, and infiltration basins, and are typically linear and pool 6 to 9 inches deep [PDF].

David Elkin, a Landscape Architect working for Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), explained on the tour that the first experiments with greenstreet facilities in Portland were necessitated because the city had to meet mandates in a Clean Water Act lawsuit for polluting the Willamette River, which flows through Portland. The city faced the challenge of increasing the number drainage pipes in east Portland, at a cost of $150 million, or develop another solution for reducing "upstream" water volumes, those that came from surface streets. By adding the greenstreet facility network, which initially cost $11 million, the city met its target stormwater capture and estimated that it saved $60 million in pipe replacement costs.

"We can talk about all the multiple benefits that greenstreet facilities provide, but the bottom line is it saves taxpayers dollars," said Elkin, noting that the first on-street facility was installed in 2002. "Instead of just a patch or trench in somebody's street, we're going to leave behind a green, vegetated facility."

The holy trinity of intersection design: a combination of greenstreet facility, painted bicycle lane and bike box, and pedestrian bulbout.

Elkin described the extensive outreach the BES conducted in conjunction with the city's Department of Transportation (DOT) to explain the benefits of the system to Portland residents. He said a particular sticking point was the removal of parking spaces--some facilities required removing up to five spaces. When the engineers talked vaguely about the importance of reducing upstream volumes, they met with relatively little interest from the public, according to Elkin. When they spoke about cleaning up the Willamette and protecting the water supply, they received resounding support, including several ballot measures re-affirming the public's trust in the initiative.

The coordination between city agencies was so thorough, when the DOT reviewed its program for Safe Routes for School treatments, it asked BES to determine where it could match stormwater facilities and pool resources to reduce the costs of doing both. Elkin explained that the two agencies routinely build five facilities together each year.

Mike Faha, co-leader of the CNU tour and Principal of Greenworks, P.C., said, "Only in the last few years have public agencies locally figured out they have the responsibility to [treat stormwater run-off] for public right of ways--obviously that's a good source of pollution out there with vehicular traffic. The public sector has come to the plate and they're starting to adopt greenstreet standards."

Faha admitted they had made mistakes in planning earlier facilities ("There are stormwater facilities that are sitting high and dry because the inflow was not designed properly"), but that the city was willing to admit those mistakes and improve upon them.

Understanding pedestrian access and safety and coordination with bicycle infrastructure were two of their current priorities. "We've gone through an evolution in our thinking - how do you not create conflicts with vehicles, how do you plant it in such a way that it doesn't block vision from vehicles [at] crosswalks. The big issues are pedestrian safety, maintenance, and the types of plants you use."

As though on cue, a planner from Ohio asked Faha and Elkin if they only used native plants, what he described as unsophisticated and "country," which brought loud protest from a Portlander who volunteered with a local planting group to be sure the city used as many natives as possible (a first-ever New-Urbanism brawl between the plant people was narrowly averted).

Faha conceded that these issues tended to draw some of the most vehement concern from the public, though it was clear to all participants that our two guides relished the fact that these minor qualms were the worst of it. Said Faha: "We're figuring it out and I think the city of Portland has some pretty good design standards for greenstreet facilities."

This facility treats the cascade that used to come off Mt. Tabor during a strong storm. It also rationalized a difficult intersection and shortened pedestrian crossing distance by more than 50 feet.

This facility combines pedestrian, bicycle and stormwater facilities, with a unique twist. This is one of the first advance bicycle stop bars in Portland, where cyclists (lower right of picture) yield when pedestrians are present, but then move forward to the stop bar to gain a view of perpendicular traffic.

Before the greenstreet treatment, this was an asphalt parking lot that routinely flooded.

Images: SFCTA

Charleton said the data collected will put San Francisco in the forefront of modeling in the U.S. "One of our hopes is that this helps put some data behind new infrastructure going forward," said Charleton. "If we see in the data lots of people bicycling on streets without facilities it will help us identify what streets cyclists are using and we can look at the characteristics of those streets to understand why people are biking there instead of somewhere else."

Users of the application can enter as much or as little demographic information as they prefer, though the TA would obviously prefer as much detail as they can get. After the user finishes a ride and saves the data, the information is stored anonymously on the TA's servers and compiled with the extensive data they have on car and transit trips. In theory, the program can also be used to enhance pedestrian modeling.

"San Francisco hasn't done a much better job than any other city or county in America for measuring bicycle movement and patterns," said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Program Director Andy Thornley. "Until now, what we've had for data collection is one or two times a year standing at 32 intersections and counting cyclists. It's going to be a huge jump forward."

Thornley had several reservations about the application, however, cautioned that the technology divide of cyclists who have advanced phones could lead skewed data. "One concern is that it might be over-reporting affluent folks with tech backgrounds and missing old folks like me who don’t have iPhones." He also suggested that refined data wouldn't change the situation for cyclists on the street overnight. "These will not be blue lanes on the streets, you will not be in Copenhagen."

Despite these limitations, Charleton said the bar is pretty low on bicycle data, so the improvement to their model will be considerable and will have important ramifications for refinements to the Bicycle Plan and its subsequent iterations. Development of the application was funded by a Caltrans State Planning and Research Grant. Each person who downloads the application and uses it at least once will be automatically entered into a drawing for one of four $50 iTunes gift cards. The Authority is coordinating with cycling groups throughout the Bay Area in an effort to promote use of the application.

"Everyone knows the city is a couple years behind and a lot of people want to do something to help," said Charleton. "This is a way that people out there on bicycles can be part of the solution. For the future, this data is going to be useful for prioritizing new projects that aren't in the works yet."

Leaving aside his reservations about the program, many of which he assumed the TA would factor into their models, Thornley was upbeat about the potential for user-generated data to help improve the city's plans for cycling.

"In the bicycle community, there is an impulse by a lot of people who ride bikes that they want to make it better and they want to raise the acceptance of bicycling as a transportation mode," he said. "People are aware that bicycling isn't recognized and this is a way to help be recognized."

Cycle Tracks can be downloaded for free at the iTunes Store or directly on iPhones, and it will be regularly updated as users provide feedback. 

Godspeed and Chrome, a match made in San Francisco. Photo: Seng Chen

Same-day delivery by courier hearkens to the heady days of dot-com hyper-convenience, when messengers were dispatched to deliver everything from DVDs to ice cream and beer. Chrome manufactured the bags for one of those short-lived companies, Kozmo.com. Reedy explained that Chrome had loosely talked with Godspeed and other couriers about bag delivery by messenger since then, but the idea hadn't been implemented. Asked whether the effort was to help Godspeed avoid the plight of downsizing or closure that has hit bicycle couriers across the country, Reedy said his consideration was more about the connection to the messenger community in general.

"Godspeed is doing extremely well, they're fast, dependable, legit. We've organized events and parties with them in the past," said Reedy. When asked how far Godspeed would ride, Reedy said, "Godspeed will pedal everywhere, they're animals. They'll ride over the bridge if needed."  He admitted some longer-distance deliveries might have to be next morning, depending on just how far away and how much business the new promotion engenders.

"The retail store is going to act as the epicenter," said Reedy, who envisioned a swarm of couriers coming in and out on runs. "It's going to add to the mystique of the retail store." The new Chrome store, located on 4th Street and Brannan in SoMa, suffered a break in and theft of goods a couple of months ago, but has been doing well, according to Reedy.

For a small business, working with Chrome can be a significant boost. The kids over at Bicycle Coffee Company, who we profiled in July, recently finished a promotion with Chrome, where each new bag purchase included a half-pound of their coffee.

Mikael Kirkman, who roasts the coffee in his pottery studio in Berkeley, said they had moved 600 pounds through the Chrome deal, an enormous boost to their fledgling company, but one that required near-constant roasting.

For Chrome, the coffee promotion grew out of a connection they had to Matthew McKee, one of Bicycle Coffee Company's co-founders, who had done some artwork for the company's San Francisco store. Reedy was drawn to the path McKee and Kirkman followed to start their company and said Chrome was looking for similar entrepreneurs.

"For us that was just a cool story, period," he said. "Chrome can be tied to bikes, to urban culture, to art. If something feels good and legitimate, that's when we jump on it."

"Look kids, Coit Tower!" Photo: jinazaki

We left Fisherman's Wharf in his old faux-wood paneled station wagon, driving south on Hyde Street, before turning east on Filbert. After the turn, just before the infamous Filbert grade started, my grandfather said, "Look, kids, Coit Tower!" He then gunned it, sending us careening over the edge of "The Steepest Street in San Francisco," sacrificing the integrity of his car's undercarriage and front-end for the sake of a good scare and the subsequent laugh. 

I certainly never forgot that moment and I've used the same trick on other people who aren't familiar with San Francisco's hills. I took it on faith that Filbert was the steepest street in the city, a fact backed up by none other than Wikipedia (tied with 22nd St. in Noe Valley), which claims it to be "one of the steepest navigable streets in the Western Hemisphere, at a maximum gradient of 31.5 percent."

So it must be true, right? Wrong.

Stephen Von Worley, who runs the blog Weather Sealed, went out and measured a few other steep streets and it turns out there are several significantly slanty-er than that block on Filbert, and most of them are on the hill right behind my house in Bernal Heights.

Take Nevada above Chapman: 36 percent grade. Or his steepest: Prentiss between Chapman and Powhattan, 37 percent grade!

Von Worley writes a very entertaining essay about his quest to right the record books on the steepest streets in San Francisco, highly worth the read. Any dissenters out there have a steeper street?

Photo of Prentiss after the jump.

San Francisco's steepest street? Prentiss between Chapman and Powhattan. Photo: Stephen Von Worley

Photo: Matthew Roth

And who should they hang for granting variances permitting higher than 2:1 ratios, as happened last week when a two-unit home at 2626 Larkin Street in Russian Hill received permission from the San Francisco Planning Commission to build five parking spaces, one with a parking stacker for additional cars?

When these questions are asked of city planners and developers, like they were during the struggle to limit parking at 299 Valencia Street, advocates and political leaders are led to believe that it is impossible to finance new developments, particularly condos and non-rental properties, without the maximum parking ratio possible. Less parking, goes the developer refrain, banks will refuse to loan and the units will be impossible to re-sell.

Not all developers buy that argument, however, and some have buildings that disprove it.

"If you are doing a project next to BART or many buses, you really don't need to have a lot of cars," said Oz Erickson, Chairman of the Emerald Fund, Inc, a developer who has built more than 2,000 units in San Francisco. Emerald's newest development, a rental building at 333 Harrison Street in Rincon Hill, will be built with a .5:1 parking-to-unit ratio, even though the developer could appeal for a variance to build more parking.

Above all else, Erickson argued, a city should provide as much flexibility in developments as possible. "You really should be in a position where zoning laws do not require you to put in parking," he said.

Patrick Kennedy's Gaia Building in Berkeley has 91 units and only 35 parking spaces. Photo: jeremydw

Referring to cyclists and others who don't own cars: "I think it's important to provide them with an opportunity to live a car-free life if they choose to."

It has been six weeks since the MTA started diverting private automobiles off Market Street, an effort to improve conditions for pedestrians, Muni vehicles and cyclists in the eastbound direction, while measuring the economic impact of reduced traffic on the corridor. The traffic diversions are part of the Better Market Street vision to revitalize the Central Market streetscape between Van Ness Street and 5th Street, including musical programming, sidewalk tables, and the Art in Storefronts pilot program.

The stop bars are the first treatment of the Calm the Safety Zone project that was inspired by the San Francisco County Transportation Authority in its 2004 study of treatments for improving safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and motorists near the intersections and Muni boarding islands on Market Street.

MTA Spokesperson Judson True, who said the stop-bar placement would be completed by Monday, wrote in an email, "As part of the Market Street Calm the Safety Zone project, we are moving the stop bars 10 feet back from their existing location to give more advanced stopping distance between motorists and pedestrians. The advanced stop bar is a best practice for pedestrian safety."

Although the MTA doesn't plan to release results of the traffic diversions for several days, Streetsblog has learned from interviewing businesses that participated in stakeholder meetings with the agency that the MTA said vehicular counts during the AM rush hour are down 60 percent, while bicycles make up 60 percent of the street's users to the east of 8th Street during the same time.

Not everyone cares where the new stop bars are placed.

Photo: barolodrinker

The VTA used an initial $75,000 from their general budget to hire Economic and Planning Systems (EPS) to conduct the planning work, but applied for a $500,000 Safe Routes to Transit grant to implement the pilot, money that will come from bridge tolls collected by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). VTA has learned that the project has been ranked for funding, though it might not get the money for a month or two.

"Bikes in general are given short shrift in suburban sprawling areas," said Chris Augenstein, Deputy Director of Planning at VTA. "We can do a lot more to make bicycles a real mode and integrate them into everything we do."

VTA's Augenstein countered any doubts about the agency's approach to the project, arguing that by doing extensive market research and intercept studies, they will be targeting the project to expressed need. "We don't have all the answers, but we want to put our feet out there in the deep end," he said. "By focusing on the Caltrain stations where you have bike capacity problems, we think we're taking a logical step. Nobody really knows how [bike sharing] is going to fare in the Bay Area, but that's the whole purpose for the pilot."

Photo: richardmasoner

Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Corrine Winter echoed Beasley's concern, though she was also clear to point out that the new leadership at the DOT was very encouraging. "We're very happy with the vision of what's going to happen," said Winter, who said that between the Mayor, Councilmember Liccardo, and Larsen, all the important players are talking the talk. "How does the vision turn to reality-- that comes down to dollars."  Winter also noted that among 447 staff at the DOT, only two work full-time on cycling, a fact she argued would have to change.

"If the city really wants to see this project come to reality, they need to have more people [working on it]," she said.

San Fernando Bikeway and 4th Street Cycle Track

John Brazil of San Jose DOT's Bicycle and Pedestrian Program said the two biggest priorities for his department in moving forward with the bicycle plan are to make cycling in San Jose safe and convenient, so that it would be as commonplace to see throngs of cyclists commuting to work in his city as it is in Portland, Oregon or other cycling hotspots. Brazil noted that despite a large budget deficit, bike plan improvements will be built out, should the plan be adopted.

In addition to working with the Valley Transportation Authority on a trial bike-share program, Brazil said two projects in particular would capture the public's attention over the next two years. The first is the San Fernando bikeway, a painted, buffered bicycle lane from Diridon Station a mile and a half to downtown destinations, such as San Jose State University. Because Caltrans doesn't currently recognize colored bicycle lanes, however, Brazil said the city has to complete a rigorous experimental pilot process with the agency to convince it that adding paint will fit within its street engineering guidelines. Funding for the project will come from a mix of internal budget apportioning and external grants.

The second project of note is a bi-directional, physically separated cycle track on 4th Street from St. James Street to San Carlos Street, intersecting the San Fernando colored lane and linking up Japantown and destinations north with the downtown core. The DOT intends to remove a lane of vehicular traffic to make room for the cycle track, move the parking lane off the curb, and run the cycle track curbside. Numerous technical difficulties still need to be worked out, particularly the challenge of minimizing turning conflicts at the intersections where bi-directional bicycle traffic would create signal and visibility issues. Brazil estimated that this project would take 1-2 years to clear Caltrans experimental process designation, but hoped San Jose's example, if successful, would make it easier for other cities to follow the lead with the innovation.

2020 Plan Objectives

• Bikeway Network - Complete 500 miles of the Bikeway Network
• Mode Share - Achieve 5% of all trips taken by Bike
  
• Safety - Reduce bike collision rate by 50 percent
  
• Parking - Add 5000 bike parking spaces
  
• Validation - Achieve Gold-level Bicycle Friendly Community status from LAB

• Bikeway Network – Complete 25 miles of new bikeways each year
• Mode Share – Increase bike mode share by 1% from baseline every two years 
• Safety – Reduce bike collision rate by 5% from baseline each year 
• Parking – Install 500 new bike parking spaces each year 
• Validation – Achieve Silver-level Bicycle Friendly Community status by 2013 and Gold-level by 2020.
  

Photo: gwenturnerjuarez

Reforming the Transportation Bible

Another topic that has long been on CNU's radar for reform is AASHTO's "Green Book," the bible for traffic engineers. As we reported, CNU Chief John Norquist has been working with the Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) to add urban street concerns to the comprehensive roadway guidelines. Rick Hall, of Hall Planning and Engineering, in a plenary session yesterday elaborated on changes that would benefit pedestrians.

"There's not a single mention of pedestrians in the entire first chapter of the AASHTO's green book," said Hall. "It's all about cars." He argued that AASHTO's street classifications (arterials, collectors, locals) do not account for walkability inputs that make urban streets comfortable and livable. 

In Hall's opinion, MPOs and traffic engineers should start by indentifying cities that work for pedestrians, then use computer modeling and simulations to simulate urban forms in those cities, not just the travel and movement of motor vehicles.  For Hall, the most important walkability design parameters are, in order of importance:

• Small block size
• Buildings fronting the street
• Mixed-land uses
• Lower traffic speeds
• On-street parking (pedestrian buffer)
• Interconnected streets
• Narrow streets
• Quality Sidewalks
• Lower traffic volumes
• Street Trees
  

Hall called for a change to AASHTO's guidelines, including the creation of a new classification he called "compact urban," where speed limits would be lower and a number of pedestrian factors would be considered in conjunction to road characteristics.  In compact urban areas, he said, road design should not allow for speeds greater than 25 mph, versus AASHTO's current urban low-speed of 45 mph. MPOs could determine that they want to alter development patterns to add compact urban areas to suburbs and re-design streets accordingly.

CNU President Norquist told the audience he anticipated positive additions to the Green Book by 2010.

Throughout the day Friday, CNU participants have broken out into working groups to discuss the various proposals put forth in the conference and bring them together into the working document, Sustainable Transportation Network Principles [PDF], which the organization will take to policy makers in Washington D.C.

The Congress for the New Urbanism's Project for Transportation Reform summit in Portland, Oregon, has brought together transportation engineers, city planners, and transportation reform advocates to share best practice policies for reforming transportation metrics, funding mechanisms, and regional practices that isolate transportation planning from land-use and growth targets.  The highlight of the first day of the program was Portland itself, as councilors from Portland Metro, one of the only elected municipal planning organizations (MPOs) in the country, elaborated on their multi-disciplinary mission, which seeks to limit development within an urban growth boundary and coordinate transportation, parks and recreation, and solid waste management to achieve a more sustainable city.

It's quite a mandate, one that Metro's own councilors and representatives reminded the audience was a work in progress. Despite Portland's reputation among new urbanists and livable cities advocates as a national leader in promoting pedestrian safety and multi-modal accessibility, the region's municipal stewards said they have a long way to go.  

Metro Councilor Robert Liberty said, "I know this is the image many of you have of our region," while displaying a slide of Dorothy and her cohorts skipping along the yellow-brick road to Oz (Portland's green bike lanes do beg at least a chromatic comparison to the Emerald City). In reality, said Liberty, moving onto a photo of one of Portland's many crisscrossing freeways, the city is still fighting off the influence of Robert Moses (who visited in the 1940s and convinced city leaders they should build bigger and faster roads). 

Since 1973, with the passage of Oregon's Senate Bill 100, which led to the original urban growth boundary around Portland, the region has incrementally chipped away at the Moses paradigm of freeway expansion, instead funding light rail, robust bus service, extensive neighborhood traffic calming, and ever more impressive bicycle infrastructure. So thoroughly have Portlanders embraced the bicycle, in fact, St. Stephen's Episcopal Church recently unveiled a new bicycle shrine in its efforts to reach out to cyclists.

An abandoned spur from the planned Mt. Hood Freeway, plans for which were scrapped after the freeway revolts of the 1960s and 70s. Photo: Matthew Roth

Despite this effort to moderate the expectations of conference attendees, it was clear twenty minutes into the first presentation that Metro has so thoroughly incorporated new urbanist principles into their lexicon that they are essentially speaking a different language than any other MPO in the country. What's more, they are not merely drafting good plans that collect dust on a shelf, but funding the innovative policies and setting performance targets so the public, which has a remarkable opportunity to give direct feedback via the ballot box, can gauge their successes and failure.

When I asked the city engineer from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, how receptive his peers, their MPO and the state DOT were to principles of network connectivity and human-scale transportation objectives, he gave me a bemused smirk. He explained that his city was moving closer to installing a 2-mile streetcar route, but that most efforts to convince Wisconsin DOT that it should consider transit projects are met with responses like, "we're in the highway business."

Two other conference presentations from the day were particularly interesting, the first from CNU President John Norquist, who explained the efforts his organization has been involved in to build support among fire and emergency service personnel for human-scale streets, traffic calming, and dense development. Norquist said the process has been slow but positive: they are hoping more states will adopt policies similar to Oregon's, where final authorization of traffic calming depends on traffic engineers, not the fire marshal.  

The other presentation, by University of Connecticut Engineering Professor Norman Garrick, bolstered Norquist's assertion that dense cities are safer cities, per capita. Garrick presented data from a yet-to-be-released study of cities all over California that measured the impact of street design on a range of safety factors, from emergency response times to bicycle injury collisions and pedestrian fatalities.

Garrick found that cities built on a grid network and cities built before 1950, which tended to have smaller streets not designed primarily for automobility, realized significantly better safety indicators. In grid cities, according to Garrick, one's chance of dying in a car was 50 percent lower than in suburban-style cities (branch street networks) and injury collisions were 30 percent lower in grid cities.  People living in grid cities were four times more likely than their suburban counterparts to walk and bike and two-to-three times more likely to take transit.

During the afternoon, attendees broke out into groups to take tours of Portland's various networks, from streetcars, to bicycles, to green streets (my post on the green streets tour will be forthcoming). Today's highlights will be  panels on MPO reform and analysis of the VMT reduction benefits of dense development along transit corridors. Tomorrow, attendees will hear from Representative Earl Blumenauer on his national transportation agenda.

You can get updates from the conference on Twitter by searching for #CNUtrans and be sure to check the CNU website for presentations and video. 

• Tuesday: SFMTA Board Meeting. The MTA Board will hear an update on the FY 2010 budget deficit, which is expected to be significant. 2 pm.
• Tuesday: SF Board of Supervisors Meeting.  The Board will conduct normal business, including a ban on de-clawing cats. A proposed ordinance granting the MTA authority to implement SFPark pilot project has been introduced for assignation to committee. 2 pm.
• Tuesday: Bicycle Craft Workshop. Bring your creative energy and cycling enthusiasm to a hands-on craft workshop for cyclists. We'll be sharing ideas and making several crafts using discarded bicycle parts and other scrap materials. Make one for yourself and one for the SFBC to sell at the Winterfest craft table.  6;30 pm.
• Thursday: VTA Board of Directors Meeting.  Come learn all about the $98 million VTA debt, four times the number previously disclosed. 5:30 pm
• Saturday: East Bay BRT Community Meeting in San Leandro.  At the upcoming meeting, AC Transit will provide detailed information on the San Leandro draft plan for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and collect feedback to present to policy makers.  10 am.
• Saturday: SFBC Architecture Ride: Reid Brothers in the Richmond.  From the turn of the 20th Century through its first few decades, James and Merritt Reid designed an impressive number of San Francisco's buildings, from theaters to hotels, office towers to townhouses, bandshells to barns. We'll take a look at nine of the Reids' Richmond District projects that help round out the collection. 1:30 pm.