Image via SFMTA. See full PDF here.

The Transportation Sustainability Program (TSP) would reform the city’s transportation practices in three key areas: by eliminating reliance on the automobile-centric measuring stick known as Level of Service (LOS), by instituting a system of development impact fees that fund sustainable transportation improvements, and expediting the review process for pedestrian, bicycle, and transit projects. The details are on the wonky side, but if the city delivers on these reforms, SF could be looking at a much more rapid build-out of transit corridors, bikeways, and pedestrian safety measures.

“This program is taking a look at how we manage, regulate, and mitigate for development as it relates to transportation to develop a process that’s more transparent, equitable, and meaningful, and provides a much better nexus between land use planning and transportation,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin.

SF Planning Department Assistant Director Alicia John-Bauptiste presented details [PDF] about the TSP Tuesday to the SFMTA Board of Directors. The program, currently planned for adoption in late 2013, is a coordinated effort between the SFMTA, the Planning Department, the SF County Transportation Authority, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

One key component to the TSP is the Transportation Sustainability Fee (TSF), which would replace the current Transit Impact Development Fee (TIDF) that building developers pay to the SFMTA to account for infrastructure costs due to car trips and transit trips made by users of those buildings. The TSF would be based on offsetting car trips added by a project, and its revenues could only be spent according to a spending plan to directly fund projects that improve transit service and bicycle and pedestrian safety. Developers would receive discounts on the TSF for building less car parking, and it would apply to residential buildings (except affordable housing), which the TIDF doesn’t.

According to John-Bauptiste, many developments and transportation projects will also no longer be required to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR) as part of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which would lead to major time and cost savings. “Individual projects will be relieved of having to study cumulative transportation impacts because the TSP EIR will study those impacts. Project-specific analysis will be limited to site design issues such as loading docks, curb cuts, and pedestrian and bicycle safety,” the presentation says.

Planners would also be relieved of having to measure projects using LOS, a tool that grades transportation projects based on how much they might slow down cars. LOS often calls for planners to take measures that “result in inconsistencies with achieving the city’s transit-first policies,” said John-Bauptiste.

A recent cartoon about LOS by Andy Singer.

Image: Andy Singer

“If what we’re concerned about is how quickly automobiles are moving through a particular intersection or roadway segment, a logical mitigation might be to expand roadway capacity, to add a lane of traffic,” said John-Bauptiste. “That is, first of all, often infeasible in a built-out, urban, dense environment such as San Francisco. It, secondly, can often be in contradiction to our policies supporting the bike network or pedestrian safety.”

Instead, the program would implement a new metric called Transit System Performance, which turns the LOS approach on its head by evaluating the transportation network holistically and focusing on reducing driving and improving conditions for walking, bicycling, and transit. This metric was developed as an alternative to LOS over recent years, and in 2009, San Francisco agencies successfully lobbied the state to allow cities to use alternative metrics.

“This is the latest in a long-running conversation about reconciling our practice of CEQA with our city’s wonderful adopted policies,” said Andy Thornley, policy director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “We decided as a city quite a long time ago that we didn’t want to use LOS in CEQA.”

Under the TSP’s new environmental review system, projects would move so much faster that Reiskin said some improvements currently in development might get finished sooner by waiting until after the reforms are adopted.

“One of the main cost- and schedule-drivers of environmental review is transportation analysis, and that’s for any large development project,” said Reiskin. ”Somewhat ironically, that has created cost and schedule extensions for our own projects, even those that on the surface would appear to be very clearly imparting positive environmental impacts to the city — the Bike Plan is perhaps the poster child for that.”

As another example, he pointed to the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP), which Mayor Ed Lee has said is his #1 priority for Muni. The SFMTA is now at the outset of a 21-month, $2 million environmental review process for the TEP, said Reiskin. The TEP “is really about speeding up transit — a very clearly environmentally-beneficial initiative, but because we currently are under a Level of Service methodology… the TEP is subject to a full environmental impact report,” he said, though he noted that the TSP reforms won’t come soon enough for the project to take advantage.

The SFMTA Board roundly praised the program, and directors Joél Ramos and Bruce Oka emphasized the urgent need to implement it. “Every month that we don’t have a policy like this in place, we stand to lose, who knows, millions of dollars,” said Ramos.

Director Malcolm Heinicke hailed the program as a “creative way to restructure at the more local level to meet our goals and still satisfy the state act.”

“There’s always complaints about the CEQA process. There’s always calls to reform it at the state level,” he said. “It’s impressive that someone is actually doing something about this rather than just throwing up their hands and saying, ‘CEQA screws up everything.’”

Aside from the program’s cost savings, the TSF is expected to generate $630 million over 20 years and leverage $820 million more in other funding. The streams of revenue would fund “a comprehensive and strictly regulated $1.4 billion plan targeted at highly-efficient transportation system improvements,” according to the SFMTA presentation. Every two years, the city would dedicate funds to projects like the Market Street redesign, Muni’s TEP, Bus Rapid Transit on Van Ness and Geary, regional improvements like Caltrain electrification, the bikeway network, and pedestrian improvements.

City staff are currently reaching out to stakeholders for the program. This month, they plan to introduce a legislative ordinance and begin conducting the program’s EIR, which should finish next summer. The program is set to be heard and adopted by the SF Board of Supervisors in fall of 2013.

A "stripped down" version of the street plan showing the basic geometry of changes planned on Jefferson Street between Jones and Hyde. See full PDF here. Image: SF Planning Department

As the plan to revamp the public realm on Jefferson Street in Fisherman’s Wharf develops, planners recently announced that two blocks of the project could be brought to life by summer of 2013 in time for America’s Cup.

At a recent public meeting, staff from the San Francisco Planning Department’s City Design Group presented the latest designs for the Fisherman’s Wharf Public Realm Plan. Some changes have been made from concept designs presented as late as last year, including the decision to rescind a proposal for a curb-less “shared street” where cars are allowed, but people are granted priority. Instead, the project will feature curbs as conventional streets do, though it won’t include curbside car parking.

Despite the change, the project is still intended to transform Jefferson into a “beautiful, lively and memorable street that strengthens the identity of Fisherman’s Wharf,” planner Neil Hrushowy told the San Francisco Chronicle:

The work will include adding 15 feet to the sidewalk along the water side of the street, where visitors now must wend their way past crab stands, street vendors, entertainers and outdoor dining tables that take up much of the walkway.

On the other side of Jefferson Street, current plans call for the removal of parking meters, trees and other sidewalk obstacles.

The biggest changes will be to the street itself. The wider sidewalk will mean a narrower roadway, with no street parking and traffic limited to two 11-foot-wide lanes. For the first time in decades, Jefferson will be opened to two-way traffic, dramatically slowing the cars and trucks and making the road safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

“This is a way to show San Francisco as a model for a pedestrian-priority city,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. “I look forward to more projects like this throughout the city to benefit residents as well as visitors.”

Restoring two-way vehicle traffic on Jefferson and Hyde Streets is another one of the main differences compared to previous designs, along with maintaining the current streetcar alignment and shelving restrictions on private autos, according to the Planning Department’s presentation from the meeting [PDF].

The rationale for the changes, the department says, is to “simplify the design, improve bicycle safety, calm the street, increase [the] flexibility of circulation, minimize cost,” and speed up the timeline.

Construction is being expedited on the project’s first phase between Jones and Hyde Streets — two of the five blocks in the project scope — to greet the hundreds of thousands of additional visitors expected for the America’s Cup yacht races next summer. Work on those blocks doesn’t include the rail tracks and overhead wires for the F-Line streetcars, making it “the easiest, quickest way to get the project in the ground and demonstrate the plan to the community,” Hrushowy told the Chronicle.

“I think it’s important to have projects like this in extremely visible places,” noted Stampe, who said she hopes the city will also consider piloting wayfinding signs in the area to help visitors be aware of how quickly they can walk to various destinations.

As for the rest of the project, no timeline has been set yet, but it will require finding an additional $7.5 million in funding on top of the $5 million identified for the first phase, according to the Chronicle.

Planners are consulting with merchants as they finalize the plans for details like street furniture, pavement, and lighting. Those are set to be presented at another community meeting later this month. Construction is scheduled to begin in October.

Jefferson Street as it looks today. Photo: SF Planning Department

A rendering of a previous proposal for a "shared street". The project will still look similar this, but will include differences like curbs separating the roadway from the sidewalks. Image: SF Planning Department

"Bulb-outs", or curb extensions, like this one at 7th Avenue and Irving Street could be installed more easily under a new proposal. Image: Google Maps

The proposal, sponsored by Supervisor Scott Weiner and Mayor Ed Lee, was moved forward by the SF Board of Supervisors Land Use and Economic Development Committee today. It would streamline the bureaucratic process for building sidewalk extensions (a.k.a. “bulb-outs”) — a street design tool often used by planners to calm motor traffic, improve pedestrian visibility and comfort, and ease transit boardings at stops — by eliminating an outdated requirement for changes to sidewalk widths less than one block long to be approved by the Board of Supervisors.

“This will be a significant improvement in our process in terms of making our city more pedestrian-friendly and safer for pedestrians, improving the vibrancy of our commercial districts, and creating more public space that is not for cars, but rather for people,” said Wiener.

“Upon adoption of the Better Streets Plan, we’ve seen more and more projects come through for minor sidewalk changes such as corner bulb-outs for individual projects that don’t exceed one linear block,” said Nick Elsner of the SF Department of Public Works (DPW), the primary agency responsible for implementing sidewalk extensions. ”This would greatly expedite and make the process much more efficient.”

According to legislative documents [PDF], the proposal would amend an ordinance passed in 1910 requiring project approval from supervisors, which “result[s] in a very lengthy process and often lead[s] to project delays.” It would also establish a speedier approval process for the SF Planning Department, but projects would still need to be approved by other affected agencies like the SFMTA. The change would save the DPW an estimated $2,500 in processing costs for a block of construction, said spokesperson Gloria Chan, and the SF Planning Department would save about $1,375 in reviews.

Bulb-outs, the documents note, are an important tool in pursuing the city’s goals of improving the pedestrian environment. Stephen Shotland of the Planning Department said the proposal is intended “to be able to move projects forward that really are consistent with the General Plan and consistent with the adopted Better Streets Plan,” which, along with several neighborhood plans cited in the documents, call for improvements like widening congested sidewalks, minimizing crossing distances, and discouraging high-speed car traffic on local streets. “Staff would be able to review projects to make sure that, in fact, is the case,” said Shotland.

The proposal passed the committee today without objection and is expected to go before the full board in the coming weeks.

A raised crosswalk and landscaped sidewalk bulb-outs now grace the entrance of this block of Newcomb Avenue. Photo: SFDPW/Flickr

After a six-year-long process, residents of Newcomb Avenue in the Bayview joined city staffers yesterday to mark the completion of the “Model Block” project, a prototype for street design that’s better for the environment and more conducive to neighborhood life.

The block had been characterized by speeding traffic and illegal dumping. With this redesign it should be a safer, more sociable street thanks to the addition of landscaped chicanes, sidewalk bulb-outs, 20 new street trees, raised crosswalks, and other traffic calming improvements. The new landscaped surfaces will absorb rainfall and prevent stormwater from overloading the sewer system.

“To see the finished project, something this great in the Bayview, is unbelievable!” said Newcomb resident Mardina Graham in a press release from the Department of Public Works. “I have lived in the neighborhood all my life and have never seen anything like this before, perhaps in other neighborhoods yes, but not here.”

Residents will organize community cleanup days to keep the street “clean and green,” according to DPW, while the performance of the new stormwater treatment facilities — projected to reduce runoff by half — will be monitored by the city.

Landscaped chicanes along the curbs are designed to slow drivers. Photo: SFDPW/Flickr

See more photos after the break.

Newcomb Avenue before the redesign in May during a press conference for the project's groundbreaking. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Photo: SFDPW/Flickr

Department of Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru speaks with neighbors, the mayor, Supervisor Mali Cohen, and other city staffers at a ribbon-cutting ceremony yesterday. Photo: SFDPW/Flickr

Photo: SFDPW/Flickr

Option C. Image: SF Planning Department

The Planning Department, working with the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC), the SFMTA and SFDPW, recently released three options for dramatically improving the pedestrian environment on a two-and-a-half block stretch of Broadway, a high-volume two-way arterial that cuts through North Beach and Chinatown, a neighborhood that is “the most densely populated urban area west of Manhattan.”

Chinatown has the city’s lowest car ownership rate, and yet its residents — mostly low-income, elderly and monolingual immigrants who primarily walk and take Muni — have to deal with some of city’s worst automobile traffic. Broadway between Columbus Avenue and the Broadway Tunnel is lined with bustling grocery stores and restaurants, including some that have been fixtures in the neighborhood for decades, along with community-based organizations and Jean Parker School.

CCDC, the Planning Department’s outreach partner on the Chinatown Broadway Street Design project, stressed that Chinatown’s 15,000 residents have been historically underrepresented in transportation planning. As an environmental and social justice issue, CCDC has undertaken a collaborative process with the city to bring about a street redesign with strong community input. The effort is part of a Caltrans environmental justice grant.

“There’s some institutional biases going on in terms of planning processes in general, and that’s part of our goal, is to balance a little bit,” said Deland Chan, the senior planner at CCDC. Working with Planning, she said, another objective has been to make the process engaging for Chinatown’s residents, and the materials easy for the non-planner to understand.

At a recent workshop, where plans were presented in Cantonese, participants got a chance to review the tentative design options, which were crafted based on feedback gathered at the initial workshop in May.

CCDC used models to explain the options to Chinatown residents. Photo: Deland Chan

Option A [pdf] would require the removal of the existing morning rush-hour lane in the eastbound direction, and focuses on bulb-outs for increasing pedestrian space and shorter crossings at the corners and mid-block. It would include only sharrows for bicycles. Lighting and street furnishings, such as benches, would be included.

Option B [pdf], a road diet, would remove the eastbound rush hour lane as well as a westbound travel lane, which would allow bike lanes on both the north and south sides. It would include bulb-outs on both sides of the street, along with crosswalk improvements.

“A lot of the participants indicated they wanted to see pedestrian safety improvements. Four out of six groups called for pedestrian scramble signals on Stockton and Broadway, and also wanted to see more sidewalk extension and width there,” Chan explained.

Chinatown merchants surveyed by CCDC last year indicated they thought the Broadway/Stockton intersection was the most dangerous, and the “Chinatown Needs Pedestrian Safety Needs Assessment” report [pdf] noted that Chinatown’s rate of collisions involving pedestrians “is significantly higher than the rate for San Francisco as a whole.”

In an interview, Lily Langlois, the city’s lead planner on the project, and Nick Perry, also a city planner, said their team is tabulating the survey results from the last workshop and is looking to revise the designs based on feedback. They said any new street redesign will have to complement efforts to improve Columbus and the Broadway Tunnel.

The SFMTA has recently indicated it is exploring removing a travel lane to build a bike facility in the north bore of the tunnel. Earlier this year, it scrapped a plan to put sharrows in one of the lanes, after bicyclists complained that it would be dangerous to encourage people on bikes to take the lane.

Perry said the drawings for the three options are focused primarily on basic roadway layout. A more in-depth discussion on streetscape elements such as trees, mid-block bulbs, lighting and seating will occur at a future workshop after a preferred option is selected, he said. The Planning Department’s Environmental Planning division is also working with the SFMTA on traffic modeling and an analysis for all three options as a part of the project.

The Planning Department is encouraging the general public to review the designs and give feedback. You can fill out the survey here.

Option B. Image: SF Planning Department

The study area for the Cesar Chavez East Community Design Plan. Image: SF Planning Dept.

The San Francisco Planning Department, the SFMTA and other city officials will present the new designs for Eastern Cesar Chavez Street to the community tonight, and a strong attendance is key. You’re encouraged to show up tonight and speak out in support of improvements that will transform the street environment for pedestrians and bicyclists.

For more details, check out this Streesblog story from last week.

The workshop begins at 6 p.m. in the community room of the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center at 1294 Potrero Avenue. Download the flyer here [pdf].

The pedestrian environment on eastern Cesar Chavez Street is in desperate need of improvement. Photo: SF Planning Department

New designs have been drawn up for eastern Cesar Chavez Street and will be presented to the community next week, nearly two months after a contentious meeting in which attendees were told, just days before the striping of new bike lanes, that plans for a road diet were being scrapped by the Mayor’s Office and Port of San Francisco because of concerns from industrial businesses about reducing road capacity for trucks hauling goods.

The new designs will not be made public until the August 24 meeting, where options for short-term and long-term plans will be presented. Sources who have seen the designs say the short-term plan does not remove a travel lane like the original plan. Instead, it would remove parking to add one-way protected bike lanes on both the north and south sides. The short-term plan is part of an air quality grant to improve biking and would not change the sidewalks.

“The plan that was going to go out in July was going to put a bike lane between a parking lane and a bunch of trucks,” said Peter Albert, the manager of urban planning initiatives at the SFMTA. “It seems like the low hanging fruit in that whole thing was the on-street parking, so why was on-street parking for basically two dozen spaces so sacrosanct that it was forcing bicyclists to pit themselves against trucks and buses?”

Under the new designs, he said, “the bike experience is much better because you’ve got no parked cars or dooring to the right, you’ve got complete clarity on your path and the trucks don’t have to intersect with you in any way.”

The Problem with Evans

The tricky part is where Cesar Chavez intersects with Evans Avenue and turns from four lanes into five lanes. There are two options for what to do at that hairy intersection in the short-term plan.

The first would get bicyclists through the intersection by removing a westbound lane on a 600-foot stretch of Cesar Chavez just west of Evans and east of Connecticut. That would leave enough room to paint protected bike lanes, and when compared to the original Bike Plan proposal, would slightly improve traffic flow for autos. The less-than-ideal option for the intersection, which is sure to encounter opposition from bicyclists, would not include any bike lanes, and only use sharrows to guide bicyclists through. Walking advocates don’t like this option either, as it leaves no room to widen the woefully inadequate sidewalk pictured above.

The long-term proposals, part of the Eastern Cesar Chavez Community Design Plan — which covers Cesar Chavez from Hampshire to Illinois — offer a better solution. The Planning Department is proposing a cantilevered path to widen Cesar Chavez Street around the Evans Avenue intersection to accommodate a total of 4 lanes of traffic, bike lanes, and sidewalks. They also plan to present proposals for a two-way protected green cycletrack with a six-foot buffer, and another option that would offer one-way protected green bike lanes on the north and south sides with six-foot buffers.

Pedestrians Won’t See Immediate Improvements

This is what pedestrians currently have to contend with on Cesar Chavez near Mississippi. Photo: SF Planning Dept.

The new drawings for short-term options don’t address the skinny sidewalks because, unlike the road diet that was originally envisioned, the eastbound lane on eastern Cesar Chavez would not be removed. Without doing that, there is little room left on the 59-foot wide street to expand the sidewalks and build bike lanes.

Albert said a $79,000 Bay Area Quality Management District grant being used to re-stripe Cesar Chavez isn’t meant to cover widening sidewalks, but the paint will serve “as a footprint of a road we’d like to be much better in the long-term.”

“I’m confident that either one of [the short-term options] is vastly better than what we’re living with right now,” he said.

“The sidewalk has got to be fixed. In the near term, at the bare minimum, the bike lane project should set the stage for improving walking conditions,” said Elizabeth Stampe, the executive director of Walk San Francisco.

Albert said he definitely “wants to revisit with the community this whole idea of a transit line along Cesar Chavez,” and that that’s one reason why removing a traffic lane along the entire stretch doesn’t make sense right now.

Trucks, Private Autos and Pollution

The June community meeting where the audience was told the road diet was being taken off the table failed to directly relay what the underlying issue was:  industrial businesses expressing concerns that reducing road capacity would increase congestion and hurt their bottom line. David Beaupre, a senior planner at the Port of San Francisco, repeated this concern in an interview with Streetsblog yesterday.

“If we start to impact the capacity of Cesar Chavez it’s going to negatively impact the economic opportunities to that part of the city,” he explained. “It’s going to begin to push those types of businesses out of the city, which means, you know, the food distribution, the auto repair shops, the cleaning services, and people are going to have to start driving more to get their services in south city or wherever.”

Beaupre acknowledges, however, that the majority of traffic on Cesar Chavez is not trucks, but private automobiles, but said eliminating a lane could impact the transit option, because”Muni can’t run if there’s only one lane.”

As a general rule, traffic engineers consider 2 percent of all vehicle traffic to be heavy traffic, or trucks and buses. Sources told Streetsblog the SFMTA was currently gathering comprehensive traffic flow data on eastern Cesar Chavez that should give everyone a clearer idea of the traffic make-up. It’s expected to be presented at next week’s meeting.

Beaupre also expressed a concern that reducing the capacity would create more pollution because of idling trucks, and force them to divert onto quieter neighborhood streets in the Bayview. But Peggy da Silva, the educating and training manager at Veritable Vegetable, which is located on Cesar Chavez and uses a fleet of trucks to haul organic produce, said trucks face tighter air control regulations than private automobiles.

“There’s a lack of understanding in the community about trucks. People think, because they’re big, that they pollute more and they don’t necessarily. Professional drivers are also probably less of a risk to people than, you know, your average person driving down the street,” da Silva said.

The project area. Image: SF Planning Dept.

Reducing Private Auto Traffic

Da Silva said the city should prioritize the movement of goods on Cesar Chavez by reducing private vehicle traffic on the street, which would reduce air pollution and the risk of injury and “support the health of our re-emerging industrial sector in Southeast San Francisco.”

“We don’t want the trucks idling. I think that’s an agreement for all of us. Therefore, we need to make sure that the essential vehicles on this street can move,” said da Silva.

Albert, the SFMTA official, called the latest designs breakthroughs, and said he hopes the August 24 meeting can move beyond “pitting trucks against buses against bikes against pedestrians.”

“It gives us the opportunity to pilot a much better environment,” Albert said. “If it works really well, if we manage the congestion, we provide the bikes their protected path, then we can come back with confidence and say this works for the community, everybody likes this better, let’s go back and find the capital funding to make the pedestrian improvements substantial.”

The community meeting on Eastern Cesar Chavez will be held Wednesday, August 24th from 6-8 p.m. in the community room of the Good Samaritan Family Resource Center at 1294 Potrero Avenue. Download the flyer here [pdf].

The current Cala Foods on Hyde Street is fronted by a parking lot. Photo: Bryan Goebel

Trader Joe’s announced last week that it is moving into a new location on Nob Hill, at the southwest corner of California and Hyde streets, where the lease for Cala Foods expires in late December. It’s a dense, transit-rich neighborhood that sits along the California cable car line. Given the popularity of TJ’s four other San Francisco locations, which cater largely to motoring shoppers, will it bring more cars and congestion to the neighborhood?

“The plan is to keep the parking configured exactly as it is right now. There will be about 80 spaces total after we’ve re-striped the garage and complete the work,” said Dan Safier, the president of the Prado Group, the developer. “Plus, you have a lot of people who live in the area who just don’t live with cars, so shoppers will be using public transportation or arriving on foot.”

Trader Joe’s recently abandoned plans for a Castro location because neighborhood groups courageously pushed for no parking. The chain ultimately pulled out, according to Supervisor Scott Wiener, because “the location was not going to work for its business model, one that is fairly reliant on automobile visits.”

Safier said Trader Joe’s plans to occupy a little over half of the 25,000 square foot building on Hyde and will begin construction in early 2012. Because the change in tenancy doesn’t require a change of use, it doesn’t trigger a Planning Department review, similar to the process for the Whole Foods that recently replaced another Cala Foods location in the Haight. (Update: According to the SF Planning Department, because Trader Joe’s is formula retail, it will actually require a conditional use permit. It’s possible the Planning Department could require that Trader Joe’s take measures to prevent a vehicle queue and address pedestrian circulation at this location).

The traffic queue on Masonic Avenue. Photo: SF Citizen

It’s hard to tell what the demand for parking might be at TJ’s Nob Hill location, but the Planning Department has begun to require that large new stores prevent traffic queues like the long line of cars frequently spotted at TJ’s Masonic Avenue location.

For the planned Whole Foods/condo project at Market and Dolores streets, also being developed by the Prado Group, the Planning Department requires implicit measures “to ensure that vehicle queuing does not occur.” However, some advocates doubt that Whole Foods will be able to prevent a traffic queue without charging for parking to properly manage the supply, and are frustrated that there’s really no mechanism in place to enforce the measures.

“Right now the MTA (Municipal Transportation Agency) isn’t required to do planning code enforcement, nor is Planning empowered to do traffic enforcement, so it could very easily fall through the bureaucratic cracks,” said Tom Radulovich, the executive director of Livable City.

At TJ’s Nob Hill location, one concern about making it more attractive to people on foot is the parking lot that fronts the store. The entrance has a substantial setback from the sidewalk, notes resident Michael Jacinto, who lives nearby.

“You kind of have to dodge cars sometime,” said Jacinto. “I think there will be more cars than there are now.” He hopes, however, that the new store will lead some neighbors who might normally drive to the other TJ locations to walk instead.

Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

San Franciscans are dreaming big as Market Street’s transformation approaches in 2015, when the city’s most important street is scheduled to be redesigned and repaved. City planners are engaging with citizens to answer a century-old question: How can we make Market Street the glorious thoroughfare that it needs to be?

Better Market Street, a collaborative project of five city agencies, has held public meetings and webinars the past two weeks to field input from people who walk, bike, ride transit, and even drive along the street. The effort is being informed by a large swath of research brought to the table by city staffers, which is now available on the Better Market Street website.

“Market Street is San Francisco’s civic backbone, connecting water to hills, businesses to neighborhoods, cultural centers to recreational opportunities,” the site’s about page states. “The movement of people and goods, from the very earliest times, has dominated its design and use. But Market Street needs to be more than a transportation route. It needs to be the city’s most vibrant public space and many San Franciscans feel it falls far short of this ideal.”

Block-by-block, hour-by-hour data documenting the urban environment were collected by researchers to help inform input from attendees at recent workshops. Researchers note everything from fluctuations in pedestrian and bicycle traffic along the street, to the conditions plaguing its extremely high volume of transit trips, to the placement of trees and how the usage of plazas is impacted by the sun and wind. Comparisons and best practices from major streets abroad help put it all in perspective.

Pedestrian activity on Market Street is most highly concentrated in the retail districts during the weekend. Photo: Myleen Hollero/Orange Photography

“The BMS Project is expected, at a minimum, to result in a major revitalization effort, with plans for a number of strategic and significant public space improvements,” the project materials explain. “These improvements will be supported by sustainable urban design and mobility principles that facilitate promenading opportunities and an enlivened sidewalk life; reliable and efficient transit service; and a safe, comfortable and appealing bicycle facility along its entire length.”

The project is an effort led by the Department of Public Works along with the SF Municipal Transportation Agency, the Planning Department, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development, among others.

One of its highest priorities is to make Lower Market more inviting to people who will want to spend more time along all of the street throughout the entire day.

Walking is already the predominant use of the street, making up nearly half of all trips, according to the research. But pedestrian volumes were found to vary drastically throughout different areas, different times of day, and for different seasons. While the mornings and afternoons see commuters fill sidewalks in the Financial District and weekend shoppers swarm the retail district, they stay relatively empty west of Seventh Street.

That low level of activity can inhibit a sense of “urbanity” and contribute to a feeling of insecurity, researchers found. Most people who do walk or linger on Market are just passing through or waiting for a bus.

The public spaces along Market lack certain features needed to promote healthy pedestrian activity, and “gathering spaces and edges that activate the street” such as cafes, public seating, and storefronts within a comfortable distance of pedestrians, are key to reaching that goal, say researchers.

In many of the open space destinations along Market, lingering is limited to weekends and events, according to the research, and Market Street is the city’s regularly chosen stage for civic parades and celebrations. But on most days, many of its public plazas suffer from design flaws such as a “lack of differentiation from the street” and “visual and physical barriers to the majority of the occupiable space”.

Much of the pedestrian activity that does happen seems to be connected with transit use. Of all transit boardings in San Francisco, Market Street hosts nearly a quarter, carrying one-third of all Muni lines and most BART lines for a total of 250,000 daily boardings. On the surface of the street, buses and streetcars pass at an average of every 40 seconds at peak times, yet they travel “relatively slowly” at 4 to 8 mph despite the traffic lights being timed for an optimal 11 mph.

The thoroughfare has seen a sharp growth in bike usage over the past few years, notes the research, with bikes outnumbering cars three to one at rush hour. But project members say they would like to see that ridership grow beyond the predominantly male, commute-based traffic.

The growth seems to have partly resulted from a “safety in numbers” snowball effect, although separated green bike lanes west of Eighth Street seem to help. But hazards like neglected pavement, turning motor traffic and incomplete bike lanes are well-documented deterrents, and a continuous separated bikeway was a markedly high priority in workshop attendee responses.

"Half of those riding along Market Street do so because other people on bikes use the same route." Photo: Bryan Goebel

The disproportionate impact of private autos on all uses of Market Street has been a concern shared by many, but the data makes a strong case for doing away with cars on Lower Market altogether.

Up to 85 percent of the car traffic at intersections is crossing Market Street, rather than traveling along it, according to the research. The majority of the relatively few cars that do use Market are traveling only two blocks ”circling around looking for parking.” Meanwhile, the 30,000 spots provided to store automobiles in garages and parking lots within one-quarter of a mile of the street sit underused: city-owned garages average 45 to 73 percent of their capacity.

Going car-free could be crucial in designing a truly unique grand boulevard for the city that invites people from all over to experience it every day.

The Better Market Street Project is accepting community input via a survey on its website. Two more workshops are expected to be held in September and November 2011.

Project timeline. Click to enlarge.

Mayor Ed Lee speaks at the groundbreaking. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Construction began on a model for sustainable streets in San Francisco today when Mayor Ed Lee and city officials broke ground on a block of Newcomb Avenue in the Bayview District, promising a much friendlier streetscape for residents and the environment.

“You see a vision right in front of your door,” Mayor Lee told an audience of residents and agency officials who collaborated on the project. “A vision that’s going to bring about slowing the traffic, trees, permeable landscaping – all kinds of things that you see other neighborhoods get.”

The treatments in the Model Block project [pdf], such as greener sidewalks and bulbouts, over twenty trees, raised crosswalks, and chicaned street parking with permeable pavement, aim to treat stormwater as it falls, enhance the public realm, and create a safer street by calming motor traffic.

“This is one block of our many streets of San Francisco that altogether cover 25 percent of our city,” said Department of Works Director Ed Reiskin. “But they were designed more for people to drive through than to be on, and to cover up the environment rather than to work with its natural processes.”

The innovative practice of treating stormwater with streetscape plantings, known as greenstreet treatments, has been commonly used in Portland, Oregon. That city lacks more expensive infrastructure like San Francisco’s rainwater storage facilities and controlled combined sewage system, which are not always able to handle loads of rainwater that fall on the streets.

Elements to be installed for the Newcomb Avenue Model Block Project. See full PDF here.

“Since the Gold Rush, 90 percent of the wetlands in the bay have been filled in,” said U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Regional Administrator Jared Blumenfeld. “Those wetlands act as a filter for all the water that goes into the bay. When you don’t have that filter, you need to recreate one.”

The EPA provided $500,000 of the project’s $1.6 million cost. Mayor Lee and other officials praised the coordination between agencies all the way up to the federal level.

“I think this will really push the conversation forward in how we ought to be designing our streets. This really is a complete neighborhood street,” said Andres Power, the project manager for the SF Planning Department.

“[This project] brought together things that we’re not supposed to want as people of color in the community. We’re not supposed to care about ecology or storm drainage containment. We’re supposed to be complacent and not feel like we can be activists and make a change.” -Resident Michelle Mouton

“In the Bayview, we’re coming up with a strategy to spread these types of improvements out as much as we possibly can as part of the work the SF Redevelopment Agency’s doing at roughly half the cost,” he added.

Stormwater runoff on the block is expected to be reduced by about half, showing the huge potential for the city to save on expensive management costs.

Located near Third Street between Newhall and Phelps Streets, the block of Newcomb Avenue will put to the test a template on which future streetscape redesigns could be based in a neighborhood historically neglected for street improvements.

Power said the block was chosen after neighbors organized in response to the SF Redevelopment Agency’s Model Block Project request for proposals, which sought to invest in existing Bayview communities for its pilot program.

“They really sold the city on why this block is the best to move forward with,” he added.

“I finally feel like we’re kind of being noticed,” said Newcomb Avenue resident Michelle Mouton, who praised designer Eric Hale for his volunteer work in the initial planning of the project with the community.

“Why his and his colleagues’ work was so important was that it brought together things that we’re not supposed to want as people of color in the community. We’re not supposed to care about ecology or storm drainage containment. We’re supposed to be complacent and not feel like we can be activists and make a change.”

From left: Eric Hale, Ed Reiskin, Mayor Lee, Jared Blumenfeld, and Michelle Mouton break ground. Photo: Aaron Bialick

The block of Newcomb Avenue as it is (during the press conference). Photo: Aaron Bialick

Installation of the track that the builder will use to attach the pavers. Photos: Matthew Roth

Construction of the two newest parklets in San Francisco began today with the installation of a sidewalk extension on 24th Street between Sanchez Street and Vicksburg Street, with another to follow shortly on 24th near Noe Street.

The new spaces were designed by Riyad Ghannam, who designed and built the first parklet in the city in front of the Mojo Bicycle Cafe on Divisadero street. The parklets will replace a total of four parking spaces and cost $37,000, the entirety of which came from Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development as part of their commercial revitalization budget. The Noe Valley Association, which represents merchants in the area, is the permit holder and will oversee the maintenance of the facilities.

Learning from the Mojo parklet, the Planning Department’s Andres Power said they will be using pre-cast concrete pavers for the decking surface and steel planters, instead of wood and fiberglass at Mojo.

Referring to the public outreach process in Noe Valley, where a vociferous group opposed closing Noe Street to create a trial plaza, Power struck a diplomatic tone and said the parklets provided some of the public space amenities without the controversy. “It was definitely a challenging public outreach process in Noe Valley. The vast majority of people who participated in the process came to consensus that there was a desire for public amenities,” said Power. “We wanted to be building community, not dividing people.”

Though Power was kind in his characterization of the process, the anti-plaza crowd got downright vicious, as demonstrated in this near Tea-Party reaction to proposals to close a street. What doesn’t appear on the video is the after effect, where several in the audience infected with The Rage charged the stage trying to bite Andres, which led to a full-scale quarantine of Noe Valley for a week.

We jest. To Streetsblog’s knowledge, there were no flesh-eating septuagenarians at the meeting. If only we could get this kind of fervor around a transit assessment district to raise money for Muni!

H/T – Jeff Wood

The parklet in front of Mojo Bicycle Cafe. Photo: Matthew Roth

In a city with an appetite for experimentation, San Francisco’s parklets are particularly fascinating. What began as a guerrilla arts intervention meant to demonstrate the need for more public open space has now become a fully permitted procedure for extending sidewalks into the street and has the small business community, which routinely opposes removing parking or charging more for it, aflutter with interest.

During the 5th annual Park(ing) Day in September this year, the Planning Department announced it had opened a request for proposals (RFP) period seeking applications from interested parties who wanted to re-purpose the parking in front of their buildings to build and manage parklets.

The RFP encouraged community benefit districts, businesses and non-profits to submit preliminary designs for parklets, which would be reviewed by a select committee representing various departments in the city, including the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which manages parking and runs Muni and the Department of Public Works (DPW).

Applicants were encouraged to view parklets as sidewalk furniture meant to enhance public space. From the RFP: “Parklets are intended to provide space for people to sit, relax and enjoy the city around them, especially where narrow sidewalks would otherwise preclude such activities. They are intended to be seen as pieces of street furniture, providing aesthetic enhancements to the overall streetscape.”

Despite the long list of requirements and costs that can be in the tens of thousands of dollars, when the RFP closed at the end of October, city planners who had expected between 20 and 25 applications were pleasantly surprised when they received 42. According to the Planning Department’s Andres Power, the project manager who guided the process of formalizing temporary parklets and plazas through Pavement to Parks, the strong interest from the public was impressive, especially given how little publicity the city had done.

“Up until now, there’s been three projects on the ground and those have materialized quite a bit of interest,” said Power. “It clearly demonstrates there is a lot of latent demand for this.”

Kit Hodge, the director of the Great Streets Project, which has coordinated outreach to merchants with the city, agreed with Power that the demand for parklets was already strong and would become stronger as more of them are constructed.

“San Francisco should be lauded for embracing this experiment and to be open to move from simple experiment to more wider-spread projects and institutionalizing the process in the city,” said Hodge, who noted the public private partnership for enhancing and creating public spaces was not unique to San Francisco, but had a unique history here because of its Park(ing) Day origins. Hodge said the process of outreaching to businesses, which she and her interns had done for months, was building important connections with businesses that might not otherwise consider the use of the parking spaces in front of their buildings for anything but parking.

“One of the appealing things about this is that it’s not a top-down initiative. It doesn’t take a huge amount of public resources to do the projects. It’s finding a way to leverage outside resources and interest to make this happen,” she said.

She also argued that the most important determination of success or failure for the spaces would result from how well they were managed. Hodge referenced famous public spaces in New York City, such as Bryant Park and the newly pedestrianized portions of Broadway in Times Square, suggesting that much of the success of those spaces came from the stewardship of the business improvement districts that maintain them.

“We need to continue to work with organizations that have that management capability,” she said. “Great spaces are 80 percent management, 20 percent design.”

With the transition to a formal permitting process and the completion of various parklets and temporary plazas throughout the city, the Pavement to Parks trials have technically been completed, though Power said the city will remain an active partner in encouraging private parties to build parklets and it will assure the quality construction and monitor them as they are used. Just like any other revocable permit, say for sidewalk dining, if the permit applicant fails to fulfill their duties under the permit, the project can be modified or shut down.

A parklet must abide by various specifications, including size and location. The parklet must be not be at street corners and should be on streets with parallel parking and speed limits at 25 miles per hour or below. The parklet manager must maintain public access at all times, have numerous safety requirements and must not extend more than 6 feet from the curb. It can replace yellow or blue zones so long as there are adjacent parking spaces where those zones can be relocated and they can be in white and green zones as long as the party initially requesting those zones agrees to re-purpose them.

Applicants are required to take out $1 million in liability insurance, naming the City and County of San Francisco as additional insured. Applicants will have to pay for the construction of the parklets and will be required to maintain them, including the storage of any movable tables and chairs that might be used in the space.

Power said only five of the applications would be disqualified outright due to failure to meet core specifications, though he said the city would work with the applicants to improve their project should the city open another RFP. Another six projects were deficient in some manner, so the city was working to improve those applications to move forward with them. For the remaining 31 projects, the DPW will post fliers on the streets around the proposed locations seeking public feedback. If there is a complaint sometime in that period, the DPW will hold a public hearing, after which Director Ed Reiskin will make the final determination on whether or not the applicant can proceed. For those projects without opposition, design and construction can begin imminently.

While Power acknowledged the city expected some of the applicants wouldn’t be able to find the money needed for construction, he was confident most of the projects would be built after approval. According to Power, most of the applications came from businesses, with good distribution throughout the city. As would be expected, many submissions came from the Mission and North Beach, where two parklets have already been installed by Rebar, but Power was also happy to get five applications from The Sunset, four from the Tenderloin and one from Dogpatch. Power was surprised there were no applications in the Richmond or the Southeast neighborhoods and said the city would specifically target outreach there for the next round.

For Rebar’s Blaine Merker, the transformation of an art project into a formal permitting procedure that significantly transforms public space was exciting. He applauded Power and other city planners who had worked to facilitate the process. He also hoped the city would learn from the temporary measures that came from experimentation in a downturn economy to build more permanent public spaces in unusual places  when the budget is more flush.

“It’s very exciting that the city of San Francisco has stepped up to the creative challenge of codifying what started with Park(ing) day,” said Merker. He also said he hoped the city would find a way to support applicants in the future who might not be able to afford the initial capital outlay for constructing a parklet but would be excellent stewards of them.

“When the burden to create public space is shifted from the public to the private sector, it introduces the bottom line equation for merchants. How much is this going to increase my business, how long is it going to take me to pay it off. For smaller merchants, I can imagine this will create a problem,” said Merker. “Perhaps the city could come up with a fund to help merchants who can’t afford a large investment to specifically invest in the public realm and not just amenities that benefit their business as they look to the bottom line.”

Merker also argued that parklets shouldn’t be a stand-in for good public spaces, but a lesson in creating quality aesthetic improvements to the streetscape during lean economic times.

“When we as a city can’t afford to do much in the way of capital investments, this is a good time to experiment with temporary, light infrastructure,” he said. “I hope when things pick up and we can afford to spend more on infrastructure, we can take the lessons we’re learning now to build world class public spaces.”

"The Boulevard" option, which many advocates have endorsed, would remove all parking and provide a 6-foot wide cycletrack. Image: SF Planning Department.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) options for fixing Masonic Avenue, a major north-south traffic sewer that was the scene of the city’s first and only bicycle fatality this year, have been narrowed to two designs. While each option would calm auto traffic in slightly different ways and offer different amenities for bicyclists, both would significantly transform the street into a greener, friendlier corridor for all users.

The “Masonic Avenue Street Design Study [pdf],” a collaboration among the SFMTA, the San Francisco Planning Department’s City Design Group and the San Francisco Department of Public Works (SFDPW), was presented at the third and final community workshop last night, a meeting that drew more than 100 people. City planners said the spirit of cooperation between the agencies has been unprecedented.

The first option, or “The Gateway,” would feature four traffic lanes, parking on the east side of the street, a standard 5-foot wide bike lane and “bus bulb plazas” that would place the bike lane between the bus stop and the sidewalk to eliminate conflicts between buses and bicyclists. “The Boulevard” option has similar features but would remove all 167 parking spaces and add a 6-foot wide raised cycletrack and a landscaped median, an ambitious design that has been endorsed by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) and Assemblymember Tom Ammiano, among others.

The Boulevard would cost approximately $20 million and take 12-18 months to complete, compared to the $15 million price tag for The Gateway, which would take 6-12 months to finish. Capital funding has yet to be identified, however. SFMTA project manager Javad Mirabdal said most of the funds would be sought from state and federal sources.

While the SFMTA hopes to have a final option selected by the end of the year, it could take until 2012 to begin the capital construction and that’s only if the approval and funding processes go smoothly.  The final option will need to undergo an environmental impact report (EIR) before it winds its way to the SFMTA Board for public hearings and final approval.

Bus bulb plazas would be included in both options. They're designed to eliminate conflicts between buses and bicyclists and would be a first for San Francisco. Signs would be added warning pedestrians and bicyclists to look out for each other. Image: SF Planning Department.

While the conceptual designs in each option have significant streetscaping elements, The Boulevard would create a greener pedestrian environment by adding more street trees, sidewalk greening and “bus bulb plazas.” It would also include more roadway and pedestrian light fixtures.

Both designs also include an 11,000 square foot plaza that would be erected at the southwest corner of Geary Boulevard and Masonic Avenue, across the street from the planned Target store. It would replace the existing triangular median that serves as a bus stop and allows a right-turn for drivers headed south.

“We would take that space and capture a large pavement area and introduce a plaza while still allowing the residents who actually live along there access for their homes and their parking,” SFDPW’s Martha Ketterer told the crowd. “At the same time, of course, that gives us a huge opportunity to have a really nice sculptural art element that we would bring in and work with the Arts Commission.”

Ketterer said the plaza could also be used for recreational activity such as bocce ball or volleyball. A driveway would be included on both sides but limited to delivery trucks and residents. In front of the Target store across the street, the sidewalk would double in size and feature two rows of tree plantings, along with other streetscape elements.

SFBC program director Andy Thornley said he thought The Boulevard option was better from the perspective of bicycle facilities. “It really is the superior option for bicycle traffic and it is equivalently good for Muni.”

“Just striping a regular bike lane is not going to make bicyclists feel safer or be safer being right next to the traffic that way,” said Michael Helquist of BIKE NOPA. “I think the cycletrack and The Boulevard option presents a greater possibility for safety and I think the traffic is going to flow pretty much the same for either option, so I think that’s kind of a neutral factor for the two.”

A new plaza would be installed at Geary Blvd and Masonic Ave. Image: SF Planning Department.

Manish Champsee, the president of Walk San Francisco, liked both options but was concerned about the median in The Boulevard design.

“Medians generally tend to encourage speeding as compared to just two solid lines. The idea being that if you’re a car in the middle lane, you’re likely going to slow down for the car coming the other way,” he said.

Ketterer had a different take. “A median really changes the character of the street. It really changes the sight line, it changes the vehicular traffic, it slows it down,” she said. “It adds a whole other dimension to the street.”

While last night’s crowd featured a large number of advocates and residents who applauded the city’s proposed improvements, there were also a number of residents who were concerned about the loss of parking. In an interview with Streetsblog, one group of residents said they preferred The Gateway option because they feared eliminating all parking would cause drivers to veer away from Masonic and park in their neighborhoods.

“I think we need parking. We can’t eliminate all the parking. The neighborhoods cannot absorb it. We’re all filled up now,” said one man, who nevertheless acknowledged he never parks on Masonic.

Graphic: SFMTA

To address the parking complaints, the SFMTA presented a study that demonstrated scant competition for spaces. The average daily occupancy rate was about 60 percent, and most who parked along the heavily-traveled corridor only stayed for one or two hours, indicating a majority of drivers are people who work in the area or do business, not residents.

“The overall benefit far exceeds the fear of ‘I’m going to lose my personal parking space,’” said Quintin Mecke, an aide to Assemblymember Ammiano. “We can navigate that. I’m very confident about that. If that’s the only objection to this issue then I think we can sit down and fix that.”

When parking was brought up during the question-and-answer period, SFMTA’s Mirabdal said transforming Masonic would be the opportunity of a lifetime and he sought to minimize the concerns.

“In order to get improvements, you have to give up something. We have limited space. We cannot maintain parking and do the other things at the same time. We’re trying to use the existing space as best as possible,” he said.

Image: SF Planning Department.

Several people expressed concerns that no significant near-term improvements were slated, especially in light of the death of Nils Yannick Linke, a German tourist who was killed by a drunk driver while riding a bicycle on Masonic at Turk Street.

“I think there needs to be a series of stopgap measures because planning a long-term vision for the street is going to take several years, but we actually can’t wait for that, and I think that whatever short-term implementations that can be made, the MTA needs to do them immediately,” said Mecke.

The SFBC has called on the SFMTA to immediately install a trial bike lane along the steepest section of  Masonic Avenue from Ewing Terrace to Fulton Street.

“I do think there are benefits to be had from trying some of the changes. We’re certainly seeing this on Market Street,” said the SFBC’s Thornley. “Try it, learn from it, and then make a really great project.”

Although the SFMTA has made some near-term improvements, including the placement of radar speed signs, as well as signal upgrades and signal timing adjustments, the agency feared that a piecemeal approach would diffuse support for the project as a whole.

“This is a complete package. It’s not just about bicycles,” said Mirabdal. “It’s about pedestrians, it’s about transit and we want to keep the whole package together as much as possible and we don’t want to separate them because once you start separating things from the package, the package would lose momentum.”

District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi hasn’t endorsed an option yet, but he said it was important that community groups keep up the pressure to make sure funding is secured and the long-term vision is realized sooner than later.

“I think there is a political component to this that requires organizing amongst the neighborhood, community and advocacy groups to demand swift response in infrastructure developments on the capital improvements. I know it can happen because it was only blocks away [on Divisadero] that we demonstrated it could happen,” he said.

More than 100 people attended last night's workshop. Photo: Bryan Goebel.

St. Luke's Streetscape Plan

Fran Taylor contributes occasionally to Streetsblog San Francisco and wrote this Op-Ed on the CPMC plans for rebuilding the St. Luke’s Hospital in the Mission near where she lives.

An ambitious plan to overhaul hospital operations throughout the California Pacific Medical Center (CPMC)/Sutter system in San Francisco has stirred up controversy on a number of fronts. Neighbors of a proposed 555-bed facility on Van Ness and Geary fear out-of-scale development and are already facing evictions. Nurses embroiled in a long-running labor dispute with CPMC worry that the plan would squeeze out union jobs. Patient advocates decry the loss of neighborhood services, including psychiatric and skilled nursing facility beds.

It’s hard to digest the whole massive proposal, but because I live in the Mission and have advocated for several years on pedestrian, transit, and bicycle issues along the Cesar Chavez corridor, I naturally zeroed in on the plan [pdf] for St. Luke’s Hospital at the corner of Cesar Chavez and Valencia.

Priorities quickly emerge from the DEIR regarding health care and transportation at St. Luke’s. The current hospital campus has a parking garage at Duncan Street with 215 spaces, and this will remain basically unchanged in the new design. Elsewhere on the campus, a little over 100 other parking spaces currently exist, mostly in a surface lot that is the site of the proposed new hospital. The hospital building to be torn down and replaced, on the corner of Cesar Chavez and Valencia, now has 229 beds. In the CPMC plan, a replacement hospital would offer only 80 beds, while a new medical office building to be constructed on the site of the current hospital would include a new parking garage with 220 spaces. So the plan proposes basically a mirror flip: from about 200 to 80 patients, from about 100 to over 200 cars.

The five-level garage would have in and out ramps on both Cesar Chavez and Valencia streets. Valencia already has a busy bike lane, and Cesar Chavez is slated for major streetscape improvements early next year that will include bike lanes from Guerrero to Hampshire.

The DEIR itself notes that cyclists will suffer but offers few ideas for mitigation: “The proposed passenger loading/unloading zone and off-street loading area for the Replacement Hospital on Cesar Chavez Street would create a new conflict point between loading activities, vehicles, and bicyclists on Cesar Chavez Street. Vehicle/bicycle/pedestrian conflicts would be similar to those that occur at the existing passenger loading/unloading zone adjacent to the existing hospital on Valencia Street, although on Valencia Street traffic volumes are lower and bicycle volumes are higher than they would be on Cesar Chavez Street with the noted improvements. The new parking garage access on Valencia Street and new project-generated vehicle trips to this facility would result in increased vehicle/bicycle conflicts on a street that is designed to facilitate bicycle travel.”

The proposed mitigations consist of signals to alert motorists departing from the garage of the presence of cyclists and pedestrians, painted bike lanes, and audible warnings to pedestrians and cyclists telling them that a car is exiting.

CPMC takes greater measures to deal with potential parking shortfalls, including leasing 400 spaces in the Japan Center garage and 180 spaces at another garage at 855 Geary and running shuttle buses to both garages. The citywide shuttle system is touted as a means to reduce auto traffic and provide an alternative to Muni for patients, visitors and staff. The shuttles, however, run only northwards from St. Luke’s to the other CPMC campuses and the garages mentioned, while many patients and their families come from neighborhoods to the south: Outer Mission, Excelsior, Bayview. St. Luke’s is the only hospital other than San Francisco General to serve southeastern San Francisco.

“Last time I checked, about 80 percent of St. Luke’s patients arrive by private automobile,” said Gillian Gillett, an immediate neighbor of the hospital. “The neighborhoods currently served by St. Luke’s are poorly served by reliable public transit.”

Clearly, people traveling to a hospital because they’re sick, injured, or otherwise incapacitated are not likely to jump on a bicycle or walk long distances to get there. They may even be unable to deal with long waits and lurching rides on public transportation. But staff and visitors tend to be more mobile and open to alternatives. Like the Kaiser system and San Francisco General Hospital, CPMC does run one shuttle to BART, and that route has the highest ridership of any of the various lines, demonstrating potential demand if access were expanded.

What’s particularly frustrating about these changes to the streetscape environment is that they’re taking place in the context of reduced patient care. Though the new hospital is proposed to be about 145,000 square feet, compared with 197,983 square feet for the current building, or about three-quarters the size, the number of patients it will care for will be only about one-third of the previous total. Completely eliminating the skilled nursing facility (SNF, or “sniff”) at St. Luke’s will hamper the city’s ability to care for a growing senior population, even as other facilities such as Laguna Honda downsize. According to a 2009 report [pdf], the City faces a 30 percent shortage of SNF beds in the next 10 years. Cuts in psychiatric services, another rising need, are also a concern.

CPMC states that St. Luke’s already has empty beds, and it’s true the census rarely rises to capacity, but the conglomerate also performs poorly in its legally required commitment to charity care, and potential patients have long faced uncertainty about which services are available.

Neighbors have been haggling over the St. Luke’s proposals for almost two years, since early designs were released. Those living closest have expressed alarm at the prospect of the new hospital being built on the site of a surface parking lot close to Guerrero and their rear windows, after already having lost their backyards in the 1950s when Guerrero was widened as part of the proposed Mission Freeway plans. Immediate neighbors think the current hospital should be closed and demolished first so the replacement structure could be placed in the current location on the corner of Valencia.

But staff, patient advocates, and other neighbors consider a closure of several years unacceptable. A Blue Ribbon Panel formed when St. Luke’s came close to being shut down altogether some years back, the Health Commission, and the Board of Supervisors also oppose such a closure.

Shannon Dodge lives near the 101 freeway maze and a few doors from Cesar Chavez, which she has been working to calm. She recently had a baby at St. Luke’s. “As a neighbor, cyclist, and mom of a three-month-old St. Luke’s baby, I’d want to know whether CPMC has an aggressive transportation demand management program at St. Luke’s,” she said. “That means attractive incentives for staff to carpool, ride the bus, bike, or walk to work, much like the incentives that are successful at other large institutions. If the proposed 200-space garage is sized in the absence of such a program, it’s too big. Should this garage go forward, it must be designed to minimize car traffic on popular bike routes.”

Gillian Gillett has other worries. “I am more concerned that the use of the land where the current hospital stands will become a surface parking lot and ‘tree farm’ until there is a need to build more capacity at St. Luke’s,” she said. “The end of Phase I will bring the tower down and repurpose that site into an empty lot until there is sufficient demand to build something there, leaving the intersection of Cesar Chavez and Valencia three-quarters surface-level parking lots.”

Gillett’s organization, the San Jose/Guerrero Coalition to Save Our Streets, has come up with an alternative plan.

The lack of a united response has played into the hands of CPMC, which is also trying to whipsaw the various affected neighborhoods. But some Cathedral Hill residents have joined a healthcare advocacy group that also includes residents from the area served by St. Luke’s to pound home the issue of equity: Why should one neighborhood get a mammoth 555-bed facility, while another gets 80 beds?

“The DEIR concludes that the environmentally superior alternative is a bigger St Luke’s and a smaller Cathedral Hill,” said Nato Green, labor representative for the California Nurses Association and spokesperson with the Coalition for Health Planning, a group that formed to fight the CPMC plans. “CPMC has yet to produce a shred of evidence to support their pie-in-the-sky claims of better health care from concentration of services at Cathedral Hill.”

It doesn’t have to be this way. When San Francisco General Hospital faced massive disruption during the seismic rebuild of its hospital, a Transportation Demand Management office created a year before construction was to begin surveyed staff and visitors and came up with a long list of mitigations to deal with traffic. The moves are just a continuation of SFGH’s ongoing push to reduce the number of workers who drive alone. Those percentages have been going down as a result, and the hospital sees its promotion of cycling, walking, and transit as part of its mission to improve public health. Unlike St. Luke’s, where physicians park for free, staff who park on campus pay $120/month or $100/month to park in the nearby garage. While the crazy hours and stress of medical care naturally make it tempting for workers to opt for the fastest commute option, the public hospital puts its money where its mouth is by charging for the privilege. Transportation advocates could push CPMC/Sutter to show that it cares at least as much for patients as for parking.

CPMC disputed charges that it plans to eviscerate patient care and endanger cyclists and pedestrians at St. Luke’s. Geoffrey Nelson, the director of enterprise development for CPMC and head of long-range physical planning, said the St. Luke’s transportation demand management program will take inspiration from CPMC’s Davies facility, where 45 percent of people travel there by alternative modes (i.e. not alone in a car).

“I think this project will be, urbanistically, and from the point of view of community life, the best thing to happen to this neighborhood in decades,” he wrote me in an email.

The project will produce a much more engaging, safe, active, and attractive Cesar Chavez frontage, a wonderful new multilevel pedestrian plaza connecting the lower grade at Cesar Chavez with the upper grade at San Jose and 27th Streets, and clear wayfinding and inviting entries and spaces for the community.

The replacement hospital will increase patient volume by over 20 percent. Beyond this, a new Medical Office Building (the building with the subgrade parking structure) will bring additional physicians and services to the campus. Most medical care (over 80 percent) that you and I will receive in our lives will be delivered somewhere other than a hospital, such as in a multi-specialty clinic like we’re proposing. Medical activity will increase markedly on the campus [pdf].

Critics remain skeptical, however, and they have a long history with CPMC that informs their distrust. When CPMC was threatening to close St. Luke’s, neighbors, staff, patients, and politicians rallied to save it. Transportation advocates could push CPMC/Sutter to show that it cares at least as much for patients as for parking.

A new group, the Coalition for Health Planning, has formed to fight the current CPMC citywide plan. Labor, Democratic clubs, and community groups from the Gray Panthers and Coleman Advocates for Children & Youth to the Day Labor Program, along with neighborhood associations such as the Bernal Heights Neighborhood Center and Cathedral Hill Neighbors Association, are well represented. Conspicuously missing, however, are any transportation or sustainable streets organizations.

Public comments will be accepted until 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday, September 29. Written comments should be addressed to Bill Wycko, Environmental Review Officer, San Francisco Planning Department, 1650 Mission Street, Suite 400, San Francisco, CA 94103, or sent by e-mail to Chelsea.Fordham@sfgov.org or Devyani.Jain@sfgov.org. If you have any questions, please contact Devyani Jain at 575-9051 or Devyani.Jain@sfgov.org.

Visual simulation of the proposed Cathedral Hill hospital. Images: CPMC.

Transit advocates have joined a broad coalition of opponents mounting a fight against California Pacific Medical Center’s (CPMC) long range development plan for its San Francisco facilities, decrying the significant increase in parking being proposed, and the attendant impact that will have on traffic, transit and pedestrian safety. They argue the increase in parking supply will induce more driving to already crowded streets and will deteriorate Muni service and cause conflicts with pedestrians and bicycle riders.

They also say the DEIR fails to adequately address those concerns, in no small part because the Planning Department’s guidelines still don’t explicitly correlate parking supply with driving demand, the same argument brought against the City Place mall project on Market Street. Whether the advocates who appealed and are considering a lawsuit against City Place will do the same with CPMC is uncertain, though more will likely be known after the first Planning Commission public hearing on the project today.

Of the five CPMC locations studied in the DEIR, the most significant net increase in parking will also be at the facility located in one of the most transit-rich and congested parts of the city. The enormous new Cathedral Hill complex will occupy two blocks of Geary Boulevard on either side of Van Ness Avenue, the future crossing point for the city’s two planned bus rapid transit (BRT) corridors. During the first phase of construction between 2011 and 2015, when Cathedral Hill will open, CPMC plans to build a 555 bed hospital and a large medical office building (MOB) to complement an existing MOB it owns at 1375 Sutter.

The combined facilities will have over 1200 parking spaces, with a net increase of 650 from current conditions. While the 513 spaces at the hospital are significantly more than code would allow (95 spaces), the 542 spaces at the new MOB are less than half the quantity that the planning code for MOBs mandates, so the MOB will “borrow” from the hospital spaces to make the entire facility compliant within a range that’s allowed in code.

The increase in vehicle traffic accessing this facility, advocates argue, will have a tremendous negative impact on those two streets and the transit they carry, as well as numerous other streets and transit lines in the area. The additional parking will increase driving demand, according to Tom Radulovich, Executive Director of the transit non-profit Livable City and one of those who brought the appeal against City Place.

“It’s troubling,” said Radulovich.  “On the heels of City Place, once again we have the SFMTA and Planning Department not sticking up or enforcing the Transit First policy. If you’re going to maximize damage to Muni’s network, that’s where you would do it.”

Radulovich argues the worsening of traffic due to the increase of parking is unacceptable. He particularly chastised the Planning Department and argued the Major Environmental Analysis (MEA) division had abrogated its duty to plan for the health of San Francisco’s neighborhoods. Instead it was exacerbating traffic delays, inhibiting Muni and failing to adequately mitigate harm to pedestrians and cyclists around the facility.

The DEIR acknowledges traffic will get much worse (see Volume 3, Part 4, Transportation and Circulation) , but CPMC staff argue the only way to construct such a sizable hospital and reasonably expect to accommodate patients, medical staff, support staff and visitors is to build the proposed parking.

Geoffrey Nelson, CPMC’s Director of Enterprise Development, said not only were the proposed parking spaces permitted squarely within the Planning Code, if CPMC were building as many spaces it projected it would actually need, the total would more than double. Nelson argued CPMC wasn’t basing these numbers on suburban Institute for Transportation Engineers (ITE) estimates, but on extensive data collection of mode choice and trip generation at its other four facilities, which were then projected onto Cathedral Hill.

Click to enlarge CPMC parking supply and demand chart.

“We don’t wake up and go, I need this much parking. Our calculus that we use is, I have a hospital with 555 beds that has a certain patient volume and has a mix of cases and those patients are seen by a suite of physicians and specialists,” said Nelson. “If you look at our existing campuses, we typically have a ratio of twice as much non-hospital space to support hospital space than we have on this campus. This is about as lean as you can go in terms of physicians and specialty clinics and still have a rational availability of specialists to the hospital.”

Where Nelson and Radulovich agreed was that the Planning Department’s guidelines didn’t correlate parking supply with trip generation and driving. “I don’t think explicitly there is an assumption that if you ramp up or down the parking that it has an impact explicitly on the analysis,” said Nelson. Instead, he noted, as part of the preparation for the DEIR, CPMC ran “sensitivity tests” to determine what level of parking wouldn’t have an impact on traffic in the neighborhood.

“If you did half the MOB or half the hospital, would there be any meaningful reduction in peak period trips?” said Nelson. “The answer is basically, you have to get down to such a small, basically less than what the code allows on the site’s proposal to really meaningfully reduce peak period traffic impacts.”

“The Planning Department is like the White Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass: ‘if you practice believing impossible things, you can get so good at it, you’ll believe six impossible things before breakfast.’ They’ve become the White Queen of transportation planning.” –Tom Radulovich

For Radulovich, the fact that all the extra parking is code compliant shows the code is out of step with a livable city. “They may be correct in saying this is by right, but that’s not to say it’s not too much. The whole purpose of the planning profession was to increase people’s health and well being, but their planning tools don’t account for them and they don’t propose any effective mitigations.”

Radulovich compared the Planning Department’s view of parking with a fantasy novel. “The Planning Department is like the White Queen in Alice Through the Looking Glass: ‘if you practice believing impossible things, you can get so good at it, you’ll believe six impossible things before breakfast,’” he said. “They’ve become the White Queen of transportation planning.”

Planning Department Director John Rahaim did not respond to requests for comment on this article.

Nato Green, a labor representative for the California Nurses Association (CNA) and a spokesperson for the Coalition for Health Planning, said the Cathedral Hill facility as planned would devastate the neighborhood with traffic. In addition to an array of complaints with numerous other pieces of the plan, Green said the Coalition for Health Planning was concerned with the affect traffic would have on health care delivery.

“There are significant things about the relationship between traffic and health care. The plan is expected to bring an extra 10,000 cars a day. This means that there will be babies born in traffic,” he said. Green argued the plan inadequately analyzed how traffic impacts would affect patient transfers, let alone emergency and disaster response. Green said CNA had fought with Sutter Health, CPMC’s parent company, across numerous counties in the Bay Area and said their “regionalization” plan was ultimately eliminating 1300 beds across the nine counties, which would require patients not only to drive more, but farther. According to Green, the DEIR scope of study fails to account for the larger changes.

“Are the health care benefits so overwhelming that it’s worth destroying the central city and its neighborhoods?” asked Green. “The answer is no.”

CPMC’s Nelson acknowledged the long-standing riff with the CNA and said unfortuntely the Cathedral Hill hospital plan “hits every [third] rail in San Francisco, there’s not an issue this project doesn’t hit.” Though he wasn’t surprised by the initial uproar, he said he thought some of the opponents just wanted to see the project go away. He also defended CPMC’s travel demand management (TDM) plan and said they would institute a significant shuttle system linking facilities to BART and other transit hubs with headways under five minute in many cases.

“Would I like it not to be a petri dish around all the issues on parking? I’d love it,” said Nelson, but he noted the data behind the parking demand they presented in the DEIR was rigorous and he felt the proposed supply they hoped to build was consistent with their needs.

Click to enlarge circulation schematic of one option being studied for the Cathedral Hill complex

Both the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni, and the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA), the long term transportation planning body for the city and county, expressed reservations with the project, but resisted outright criticism. Both agencies have worked extensively with the project sponsors and generally felt CPMC was trying to ameliorate its environmental impacts.

“As a Transit First city, we have serious concerns about the project, however, we are committed to working with those involved to ensure that we identify innovative solutions to make this project work for everyone,” said Paul Rose, SFMTA’s spokesperson. “At this point, we are exploring all options as we move forward with identifying the appropriate solutions.”

Tilly Chang, Deputy Director of Planning at the SFCTA, said they had been negotiating with CPMC to make changes to their initial plan to mitigate the impacts the driveway entrances to the MOB and the hospital on Geary would have for the future Geary BRT. In the first iteration of CPMC’s proposal, for example, there would have been ingress and egress at both facilities on Geary, but SFCTA and the Planning Department had convinced them to eliminate egress (except for emergencies at the hospital) onto Geary.

“We feel like the on-street design and on-street concepts are getting there,” said Chang. “The parking garage is a different issue. We’ve talked with them about parking and parking provision and they feel like this is what they need.”

Nelson was reluctant to hypothesize how much less parking they could build and still keep the facility feasible, but he also expected the project dimensions and attributes to change throughout the approval process. “If we had to reduce the parking somewhat, is there some line that we would cross where we would go, “no más?” he said. “Yeah there is, but I couldn’t tell you what it is.”

“That said, I’ve deliberately not put a straw man in there for analysis. We’ve deliberately put a thoughtful approach for analysis and I hope it’s not taken as a throw away option to then get us to some ‘real’ negotiation,” said Nelson. “If there’s change to be made, we need to do it on some rational basis.”

Mayor Newsom and Blick's Edward Ogorzaly. Photo: Mayor's Press Office.

Newsom joined the owner of Blick Art Materials in a ribbon cutting yesterday for a new flagship store at 979 Market, near 6th Street, and announced a weekly arts market as part of a Central Market Arts District. The new market opens today at U.N. Plaza and will be co-sponsored by Blick, in what the city hopes will anchor a new art and theater corridor. The city pointed to a recent survey by Theatre Bay Area that found approximately 75 performing arts groups in the Bay Area are interested in expanding or relocating to Central Market. Newsom's administration hopes to lure them to the corridor by establishing a $11.5 million loan fund for commercial projects catered to artists and by providing assistance with identifying space, feasibility studies, and other financing opportunities in the arts district.

"Blick’s opening on Central Market and the weekly Arts Market at U.N. Plaza are major new milestones in our efforts to foster the growing cultural arts district in Central Market," Newsom said in a statement. "Blick and the Arts Market will be cornerstones in attracting artists and arts entrepreneurs to the area and continue its economic and physical transformation."

The current initiative catalyzes several trials to bring art to Market Street storefronts that have been shuttered because of a down economy and is part of the broader Better Market Street Project, a joint effort by the Mayor's Office of Economic and Workforce Development, The DPW, The Planning Department, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni. The Art in Storefronts trial combined with the People in Plazas concert series were instituted to fight the perception the neighborhood is dangerous and depressed and bring levity at a low cost. The trials also coincided with private automobile traffic diversions meant to speed Muni and improve safety for bicycle riders with separated green bike lanes and reduced traffic conflicts.

Lest the Better Market Street Project become merely a collection of interventions, the team has recently put out a request for queries (RFQ) to develop a broader vision for the transformation of the street, which will coincide with the scheduled repaving in late 2013 or 2014. The DPW is also coordinating a 15 person CAC to help the multi-agency collaborative liaise with the public and contribute to the visioning. The CAC will meet regularly for three years and will aim to promote interaction between the public and the city agencies as work progresses.

"The Better Market Street Project provides the City an opportunity to enliven one of the most vital corridors in San Francisco through comprehensive public realm improvements," said DPW project manager Kris Opbroek. "The formation of this committee will help ensure broad participation and community feedback throughout every stage of the Better Market Street Project."

The CAC is accepting applications until Tuesday, September 7th, and Streetsblog readers with a keen interest in shaping the future of the street should consider applying here.

A reconfigured Phelan Bus Loop. Graphic: SF Planning Department

In a statement, the FTA said the project "paves the way for landscaped open space, new retail space, and new affordable housing, all next to public transportation, and within walking distance of both a major transit hub and San Francisco City College, one of the nation’s largest educational institutions."

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also issued a statement praising the project and the federal funding. "Today's announcement highlights San Francisco's continued leadership in the realm of livable communities and transit-oriented development. It will increase public transportation options, while reducing congestion and our dependence on foreign oil."

John Katz, the project manager for the SFMTA, said it will probably take several months before the funding is in hand, but the reconfiguration would be the first major public project under the Balboa plan, and under a best case scenario, would be on target to begin construction a year from now.

"It's great news for the community in San Francisco. This is a project that has been worked on, at least in concept, for the last 7 or 8 years and it looks like it's going to become a reality now," said Katz. "This project is really a catalyst for a lot of long-needed community improvements." 

The current Phelan Loop on Ocean Avenue near Phelan and Lee used to be a turnaround for the K light-rail line before it was transferred to the Balboa Park station in 1973. It currently serves two major bus lines: the 49-Van Ness-Mission and the 8X-Bay Shore Express. But it occupies a lot of "wasted" space, according to Katz, that under the new configuration will allow a mixed-use affordable housing and retail development as well as a public plaza similar to Hayes Green and better transit connections, including a new BART entrance on the west side of Balboa Park station. The goal of the Balboa plan is to embolden the connection between transit and land use in the area. 

"What this does is make Muni whole again," said Katz. "It gives us back the same functionality we had before, but it sort of gets the buses off of fronting Ocean Avenue and gets them behind the fire station, and provides all this additional space to do all these other community-driven goals."

The Balboa plan is an ambitious blueprint for the area. Planners have envisioned a full deck over I-280 that would reconnect neighborhoods while dramatically improving pedestrian, bicycle and housing amenities.

The redeveloped Phelan Loop, according to the Planning Department, will simultaneously function "as a new front door on Ocean Avenue for City College and as a gateway to the commercial district."

Portions of I-280 north of Cesar Chavez serve to divide city neighborhoods. Photo: Troy Holden.

At the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) meeting on Wednesday, where the public was briefed on various alignment options for bringing high speed rail to the Transbay Terminal and 4th and King station, numerous people living in Potrero Hill, Dogpatch and Showplace Triangle testified that they supported the cornerstone rail project, but didn't want it to further separate their neighborhoods. They said they didn't support the idea of depressing 16th Street or 7th Street under the tracks of the bullet train and they feared the project would add to the already significant neighborhood divide caused by Highway 101 and Interstate 280.

Several members of the public even asked the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA), the state agency tasked with building the train, to tear down the portion of I-280 north of Cesar Chavez, arguing not only that it divides their neighborhoods, but it poses a serious health concern with all the pollution generated from the vehicles whipping by their homes.

Far from being just the whim of several residents, though, the City and County of San Francisco has formally requested the HSRA study "both minor and major modifications to Interstate 280, as necessary" during the environmental review process.

In a letter [PDF] signed by the directors of the SFCTA, the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, the Planning Department and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), the directors wrote: "We understand that the support columns of the Interstate 280 structure pose several obstacles along the Caltrain corridor. It is our observation that the [HSRA Alternatives Analysis] did not consider even modest modifications I-280 (sic) in order to provide the best HSR alignment and urban environment."

The directors say in the letter that their staff met with the HSRA on June 24th to present "alternative concepts" that would meet the city's objectives for the project.

Robert Doty of the HSRA acknowledged receipt of the proposals, but declined to comment, saying he hadn't reviewed them and it would be premature to discuss specifics of the issue.

"The cost of taking that freeway down would have to be estimated. It would have to be a new cost," said Doty. "If they're expecting High Speed Rail to do that, that would be a substantial increase to the budget."

When asked whether he thought the San Francisco Giants would miss the freeway on game days and resist the proposal, Doty joked, "Well, I'm an A's fan, I'm going to have to take it seriously."

According to Jose Luis Moscovich, Executive Director of the SFCTA and a signatory to the letter, it would be far too premature to discuss specifics like the cost and politics of freeway removal. The letter just asks for a study in conjunction with the lengthy environmental review process.

"I think we need to let the High Speed Rail Authority understand our preferences for how you get from A to B and then let them come up with the construction techniques and let them come up with the solutions they think are going to be the most cost effective and they can analyze it," he said.

"What we need to do in communicating with them is frame a set of choices that we want them to analyze, not straight jacket them into, 'We want the freeway demolished, we want cut and cover,'" he added, referring to a form of trenching to partially or completely bury the trains underground.

As for Caltrans, the state agency that owns the freeway, the idea was novel. Caltrans District 4 spokesperson Brigetta Smith said our inquiry was the first she had heard of the idea and declined to comment.

At several locations, the support pillars for the 280 rest on Caltrain right-or-way, making the addition of two more tracks for high speed rail prohibitive. Photo: Troy Holden.

Tony Kelly of the Potrero Boosters said at the SFCTA meeting that I-280 was a bane to his neighborhood, transporting solo drivers to and from work in downtown, while causing pollution and degrading quality of life.

"The folks coming into town should be riding this beautiful new train," argued Kelly, who voiced his support for tearing down the freeway. He said the new train represents a remarkable opportunity to reorient the city for its long-term health and environmental objectives.

"If there is one thing they know how do do successfully, it's tear down freeways. In the case of the Embarcadero, god came first, we finished the job," he said.

Sophie Maxwell, District 10 Supervisor, suggested restraint on such a massive undertaking. "I think we really need to think about what that means. If we do tear that down, what does that mean for District 10? What does that mean for the people in Visitation Valley? I think it's a tremendous opportunity, but everything has to be thought out."

Moscovich strongly cautioned against comparing I-280 to the Embarcadero or Central Freeways after Loma Prieta, both of which were structurally unsound, whereas Caltrans spent nearly half a billion dollars on seismic retrofits for I-280.

"When we had an opportunity to build Octavia Boulevard, we were dealing with a freeway that had been toppled by an earthquake, essentially. Before we could even begin to design it, we had three ballot measures and an eleven-year process," said Moscovich. "That's not a promising example of how we move forward."

"We will still have a huge challenge getting anywhere close to completing [High Speed Rail] on time, so do we need to layer on top of that a local controversy about demolishing a freeway?" he asked. "I want to go ahead and embrace High Speed Rail now in the best possible terms for the city, with the most favorable design that has the least environmental impacts. If they can deliver that, we should be very happy."

"Then we can take on Caltrans separately and think about the role of freeways in our city," he added.

Rendering of Jefferson Street at Powell Street. Images: Dario Schoulund/SF Planning Dept.

After several years of planning, including intense negotiations between merchants, property owners and neighbors who didn't always see eye-to-eye, the San Francisco Planning Department unveiled a comprehensive draft plan last week to revitalize public space and pedestrian amenities around Fisherman's Wharf, the second most-visited tourist attraction in California behind Disneyland. The plan details numerous deficiencies that degrade the pedestrian experience and proposes design guidelines for public and private investment to transform the district into a world-class waterfront.

At the heart of the plan is the fact that Fisherman's Wharf lacks pedestrian amenities and connectivity with other neighborhoods and planning is largely at fault for these problems. "Despite the enormous number of parking spaces in Fisherman's Wharf, most visitors do not arrive by private automobile," noted the plan's authors. Roughly one quarter of visitors arrive in private automobiles, though the area concedes a great deal of space to travel lanes and parking spaces.

"Fisherman’s Wharf generally looks in ill-repair and lacks any coherent vision for its built environment. This state extends to its streets, open spaces and buildings, alike, with few exceptions. Over time, Fisherman’s Wharf oddly has lost much of its relationship to its most spectacular asset, San Francisco Bay."

The plan identifies eight central challenges to improvement:

1. Weak links to the water
2. Inactive Waterfront
3. Poor pedestrian links to adjacent neighborhoods
4. Poor conditions for walking and cycling
5. Uninviting and poor streetscape
6. Lack of public space hierarchy and network
7. Few attractions for locals
8. Lack of district identity

To remediate these challenges, the plan divides the district into eight sub-regions and provides suggestions for improving pedestrian amenities in each, depending on the specific characteristics that exemplify them. For example, in the Historic Working Waterfront Area along Jefferson Street from Hyde Street to Taylor Street, where sidewalks are narrow and there is little connection to the water, the plan suggests preserving the industrial character that marks the area, but improving access to the Bay.

"This area remains one of the best opportunities for Fisherman's Wharf at once to improve its attractiveness as a destination and to strengthen the linkage to its historical roots," the authors argue.

In the hotel district along Beach Street, the problems stem from the architectural design: a majority of ground floors lack an active frontage and instead consist of solid blank walls, garages, garage entrances, service entrances or surface parking lots. "There is little to attract or comfort pedestrians," the plan states.

Rendering of Jefferson Street at Jones Street. Image: SF Planning Dept.

The extensive plan is the culmination of two years of work with Danish public space expert Jan Gehl and his Gehl Architects, work that was in part funded by the Fisherman's Wharf Community Benefit District (CBD), the Planning Department, the Port of San Francisco and a grant from the Bay Trail Program. The draft plan will continue to get community feedback through September and environmental review should be completed by the end of the year. The final sign-off from the Planning Commission isn't expected until early 2011.

Among numerous smaller changes and design guidelines, the plan hinges on one very large project: the transformation of Jefferson Street into a pedestrian-priority street, a concept that borrows from models in European cities where the street can be accessed by all modes, but its design characteristics reinforce the safety and convenience of the slowest moving, most vulnerable users.

"When you think of how much time people spend down here and the fact that you're here to enjoy yourself, it would be elegant to walk down here, to stop and enjoy this area, then continue on to a tour or to Pier 39," said Kevin Carroll, Executive Director of the Fisherman's Wharf CBD.

Perhaps because the Planning Department has been shopping the idea of converting Jefferson Street into a shared street for much of the last year, the prospect of limiting vehicular access to one of San Francisco's most familiar streets and opening it up to pedestrians has drawn less and less resistance.

Whereas Jeffrey Pollack of Nick's Lighthouse Restaurant was far from supportive of Jan Gehl's first public presentation of principles in 2008, Pollack and most of the merchants, restaurant owners and hotels have come to a consensus that Jefferson Street should get the treatments proposed by the Planning Department, assuming the money can be raised.

The Planning Department's Neil Hrushowy noted what a difference a year made. About a public meeting to release the plan last Wednesday, Hrushowy said, "We had a tremendous amount of support. People had clarification questions, but no one blinked an eye that we're proposing a shared street."

"Nunzio Alioto stood up and said 'I think this is beautiful, we really support it,'" said Hrushowy, acknowledging how important it was to win over the backing of neighborhood scions like the Aliotos.

Now that the community has seen the plans, the Planning Department will conduct an environmental review and work with city, state and national partners to identify capital funding to bid and build Jefferson Street. Total construction costs for Jefferson Street are likely to be between $12-15 million.

Though many hurdles have been surmounted, Hrushowy and Fisherman's Wharf CBD President Carroll said they anticipated numerous challenges could still arise, from funding capital improvements to the relocation of tourist buses. The plan recommends prohibiting tour buses and Scootcars from Jefferson Street when it has been redesigned, an objective sure to upset some operators.

Carroll predicted the city and the local merchants would work with bus companies and any others who might have concerns, much the way they have for the past year developing support for Jefferson Street.

Another challenge will be in the street itself and how it conforms with the Americans With Disabilities Act. Because Jefferson won't have sidewalks, the customary design component separating the street from the sidewalk will be dismantled and conflicts could arise between vehicles and those with visibility impairment or disabilities. The "big question is DPW and figuring out ADA with the shared street," admitted Hrushowy.

David Chiu, president of the Board of Supervisors and a participant in last week's meeting, was encouraged by the process and the consensus emerging from the plan. "I'm gratified that after the community worked through some substantive issues, it has rallied around a wonderful vision for a 21st century Fisherman's Wharf."

Rendering of Jefferson Street at Hyde Street. Image: SF Planning Dept.

San Francisco could eventually see car-sharing come to the curbside after the Planning Commission voted yesterday to urge the city to explore the idea of allowing on-street car-share pods. The commission also voted to start a process of updating the city's guidelines for car-share requirements in new buildings.

Car sharing first came to San Francisco in 2001, and just a year later, the Planning Commission began requiring some new buildings to include car-share spaces as a condition of project approval. According to the Planning Department, San Francisco is the only city that requires car-share spaces for many new buildings by law, a policy it adopted in 2005.

Almost all of the city's car-share parking space, or pods, are in private garages and lots, where they've been required as part of a building's approval for construction, or where building owners have voluntarily leased out spaces to one of the city's two major car-share organizations, City CarShare and ZipCar.

That could soon change, as the Planning Commission urged the city to study using some public on-street spaces as car-share pods.

Planning Department staff wrote in a memo [PDF] that providing on-street car-share parking spaces could greatly expand the number of available spaces, increase car-sharing's legitimacy and visibility, make it feel safer for people who don't want to go into garages, and make more efficient use of on-street spaces that otherwise often stay occupied by one person's vehicle all day.

While San Francisco is cutting-edge in requiring many new buildings to include car-share pods, it's already lagging in on-street car-share parking: Planning staff pointed to Philadelphia and Vancouver as models of cities that already allow on-street car-share parking, for a fee. And state law isn't holding San Francisco back: the California vehicle code was amended in 2006 to allow on-street car-share parking.

The Planning Code encourages car-sharing as a way to "mitigate the negative impacts of new development by reducing the rate of individual car-ownership per household," and early on, the city provided some spaces in public garages to car-share companies. But that sparked a debate about giving away public goods to private companies, which put a halt to the practice.

On-street car-share parking could also face the same questions about the use of public goods, but Planning staff suggested the city could lease these spaces instead of giving them out for free, using the money to fund other transportation improvements.

City CarShare CEO Rick Hutchinson said he strongly supports the idea and called for an immediate on-street car-share parking pilot program. "City CarShare is a non-profit organization, and we recognize that there are some controversial issues about on-street parking," he told the commission. "However, we strongly support it."

Livable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich also voiced his support for car-sharing and expanding it to the city's streets. "Lots of [new buildings] are not quite large enough to trigger the requirements" for car-share spaces, said Radulovich, "so it's important to think of on-street spaces there."

Update to Car-Share Guidelines for New Buildings

The commission also adopted hard guidelines for how many extra car-share spaces to require in "extraordinary cases where transportation impacts of the specified project combined with the project location warrant additional mitigations."

Right now, new residential buildings with fewer than 50 units don't need to include car-share spaces, while 50-200 units triggers a one-car-share-space requirement, and new buildings with over 200 residential units must include two car-share pods, plus one space for each 200 additional units. There are guidelines for non-residential uses, too.

Click to enlarge: car-share requirements for new buildings. Image: San Francisco Planning Department.

"The City's existing car‐share requirements are generally appropriate at this time," the Planning Department memo notes.

But while standard guidelines are already clear, the Planning Commission hasn't always had clear guidelines for just how many car-share spaces should be required in buildings that might have an exceptional impact on traffic. The commission approved a set of guidelines for such cases yesterday, outlined in the adjacent table.

The commission also approved a policy yesterday for setting car-share requirements in new projects that replace old buildings that have car-share parking spaces.

In several cases, the commission reviewed projects where a building that had voluntarily leased out spaces to car-share organizations was going to be replaced with a new building, and the commission sought to require that the new building replace those spaces one-for-one. But that has had the side-effect of discouraging some building owners from leasing out spaces voluntarily.

"Property owners have described an increasing hesitance to voluntarily provide car-share parking on underutilized lots due to a perception that the Planning Commission or Department may require that such voluntary spaces be indefinitely retained by the property owner," a Planning staff memo notes. That's a big problem, since the majority of the city's car-share pods are provided at will, not as conditions of project approval.

The Planning Commission moved to clarify that old spaces don't need to be replaced in such instances, whether they were voluntary or required. New projects will be evaluated based on requirements for new buildings, not based on how many car-share pods the previous building or lot had, voluntary or otherwise.

City CarShare's Hutchinson told the commission that Planning staff had done a "thorough job of developing guidelines and producing what is effectively a new policy for car-share."

Planning Commission Vice President Christina Olague also praised staff for its "great work" on the policy, but suggested developers that wanted to include excess parking should not just provide car-share spaces, but actual memberships. "If buildings want tons of parking, I want to look at requiring them to provide memberships too."

The Planning Commission will have a further hearing on the policy sometime after July 1.