Streetsblog San Francisco

The study analyzing numerous options for congestion pricing in San Francisco touched off such a political furor in San Mateo County, you’d have thought San Francisco was about to moat up and charge a fee for admission. Politicians and planners from Daly City and San Mateo spoke about the plan today as though they were jilted lovers getting a mandate from the beautiful city to their north without being allowed to get a word in edgewise.

“It hasn’t been a conversation with San Mateo County, it has been a monologue with San Mateo County,” said State Assemblymember Jerry Hill, who testified with numerous San Mateo officials at the board meeting of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA), which conducted the study. Hill said he and others from San Mateo County were supportive of efforts to reduce congestion and deal with climate impacts, but not if it included charging drivers to cross the county line.

In case San Francisco didn’t move affirmatively to drop the Southern Gateway option from the study, said Hill, he was prepared to introduce legislation that would make it illegal for one county charge other counties “punitive measures” like pricing.

“I am a professional supporter of appropriate congestion pricing,” said Richard Napier, executive director of the City/County Association of Governments of San Mateo County (C/CAG). But Napier warned that congestion pricing worked in cities like London and Stockholm because the charging areas were dense and transit was good, much like the northeast portion of San Francisco. Of the southern gateway option, Napier said, “I don’t think it would meet the criteria” for significantly reducing traffic.

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You’d think the Tea Party had descended on San Mateo County, what with the piqued rhetoric in the media over San Francisco’s congestion pricing study. I don’t like to invoke Sarah Palin’s jargon, but I keep coming back to her horrible phrase “lamestream media” when I see yet another story that paints San Francisco transportation planners as greedy car-hating vampires and gets the facts on the pricing study so terribly wrong.

Take John Horgan, a columnist for the San Mateo County Times, who calls San Francisco the Boondoggle by the Bay and the Duchy of Dysfunction, while lamenting that the poor “plebians” on the other side of the city’s “moat-like pay gate” should boycott San Francisco businesses and frequent those in San Mateo if the pick-pocket plan ever passes..

Running with a similar trope, Mike Sugarman of CBS 5 calls the proposal a “border war,” while erroneously painting a scenario where he drives across the charging zone line, forgets something back in Daly City and ends up paying $12 for crossing the line four times (in each of the four pricing zones being studied, a daily charge to a driver would be capped at $6). Sugarman then sticks his microphone in the face of a bunch of drivers and asks them if they would pay for something they currently get for free. Hmm, can you kids guess what the answer is going to be?

You have to wade through 2:20 of bad reporting to get to the first two factual items in Sugarman’s piece, when he says San Francisco is only studying congestion pricing and it wouldn’t go into effect before 2015 at the earliest.

Ken Garcia at the San Francisco Examiner takes the crusade on factual reporting even further, misrepresenting almost everything about the congestion pricing study, conflating the various options for congestion zones into one big tax-happy, driver hating city of lunatics. And on a stylistic quibble, I don’t think Garcia could have stuffed any more puns into his day-after Thanksgiving report (see Jon Stewart’s recent bit on media abuse of puns), from trotting turkeys to gravy to squash and communal platters. If the Examiner had editors, they could have trimmed several hundred words worth of fat from that holiday bird and left us merely with specious claims about money grubbing supervisors “taxing” the “privilege” and “pleasure” of driving.

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The Presidio Parkway/Doyle Drive project will move into the second phase of construction early next year, but planners are already touting a unique public-private partnership, or P3 in their shorthand, which they say forges a new model for delivering massive infrastructure projects for less money and greater financial oversight.

Assuming all the necessary approvals are in place by the end of the year, the Presidio Parkway P3 contract will be awarded to a consortium called Golden Link Partners and will rely on significant foreign investment from two European companies.

As SFCTA executive director Jose Luis Moscovich explained to Streetsblog recently, the P3 is the first of its kind in California and resembles P3s that have worked well in Canada and Europe for years.

“We are well on our way to creating, through the Doyle Drive project, essentially a new paradigm for delivering these big, monster projects in the state,” said Moscovich. “It’s a paradigm where you take into account the entire life-cycle of the project, the design, the construction, the operations and the maintenance. We’re ensuring the project will be well-maintained and there will not be a gap in the maintenance commitment to the project.”

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The Central Freeway sections damaged by the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 have been replaced by such a distinctive Octavia Boulevard, for many San Franciscans the double-decked behemoth that used to dominate the neighborhood has become a distant memory. Most of the traffic the freeway carried, however, has not disappeared and now city planners are tracking its displacement on city streets and devising scenarios for reducing it to make surrounding neighborhoods more hospitable to transit, pedestrians and cyclists.

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) this week released baseline traffic information as part of the ongoing Central Freeway and Octavia Circulation Study and proposed solutions for improving the situation locally and regionally [pdf].

The most obvious finding in the study is that traffic levels, while somewhat reduced on Octavia Boulevard itself since the freeway came down, nonetheless continue to choke the study neighborhoods and affect numerous areas further afield.

The Central Freeway Circulation study area is roughly from Noe Street and 18th Street to the southwest, up to Turk Street and Franklin Street to the northeast, with some of the numbered streets in SOMA to the east and as far as Scott Street to the west. The neighborhoods include Hayes Valley, SOMA, The Mission, Duboce Triangle, Civic Center and the Upper Market/Castro, though it also attempts to measure impacts in neighborhoods as far south as Glen Park and the Mission, which have been dealing with commuter traffic that started using detour routes like San Jose Avenue and Guerrero Street to access downtown after the earthquake.

Despite the ubiquity of transit lines serving the Market Street/Octavia and Hayes Valley neighborhoods, most people traveling to and through the area use a car. While slightly below the city average for auto trips (59 percent), 50 percent of the study area’s 340,000 daily trips are by car, 21 percent by transit, and 29 percent by foot or bicycle.

“This study is like a microcosm of the city’s challenges,” said Tilly Chang, SFCTA Deputy Director for Planning. “If you look at mode share, it’s under-performing even the citywide average in terms of auto modes and non-auto modes.”

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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.

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While the full results of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority's (SFCTA) congestion pricing plan, the SF Mobility, Access, and Pricing Study (SFMAPS), have not yet been released, the agency will hold a series of public meetings starting next week to discuss the general principles of congestion pricing and how it could work in San Francisco. At the public meetings, the SFCTA will detail several possible scenarios to charge drivers for driving into San Francisco's downtown during peak periods, a prospect that should spark significant public and media debate.

In the best-case scenario, the SFCTA predicts raising $80 million for transit and non-driving mobility options like bicycling and pedestrian improvements, with traffic reductions of up to 12 percent, emissions reductions up to 16 percent and transit speed improvements of up to 20 percent.

While these numbers sound great, the agency still has to convince a lot of people about the benefits of congestion pricing, including Mayor Gavin Newsom, who was an early advocate for the concept, but who is not so sure now is a good time to try it.

"I've worked very hard to promote this construct, but I want to do it in a thoughtful and judicious way and I want to do it in a way that's not going to hurt the economic growth of this city at a time when we're trying to recruit companies and trying to recruit people," Newsom told Streetsblog. "We have a lot more work to do on that. We need a lot more outreach, a lot more consensus."

"I'm not ideologically opposed by any stretch," added Newsom, but "I'm not sure this is the right time to be having this debate."

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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."

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With the help of the Board of Supervisors acting as the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) Board, Muni got a step closer today to finishing out fiscal year 2010 in the black, but there are major strings attached. In return for sending $7 million to the city's transit agency, the supervisors expect Muni to reduce a planned 10-percent service cut by half.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which operates Muni, is already planning to roll out the cuts on May 8, but Supervisor David Campos said he's not convinced the agency has turned over every rock for alternatives to service cuts.

"I would simply say that I respectfully disagree in terms of how far the MTA can go with respect to reducing the service cuts," said Campos at a special meeting of the TA's Plans and Programs Committee this morning. "I think there are a number of ways without increasing fares to do that."

SFMTA Executive Director Nat Ford presented his agency's case before the committee. Coming up with the $14.4 million necessary to halve the cuts for next year would be a "pretty challenging effort," said Ford, but he didn't rule out the possibility. "Maybe there's an opportunity as we continue to deliberate."

The most promising opportunities to restore service would be concessions from the Muni operators union and further work order reductions from other city departments, Ford said. Campos pointed to both of those as well as to extending parking meter enforcement hours as areas he'd like the SFMTA to look at more closely.

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With six months of hindsight since San Francisco began trial traffic diversions and art in shuttered storefronts on Market Street, city leaders are taking stock of what has been successful and what has been less so. Within weeks, they expect to complete a scoping document and put out bids for a three-year design and transportation plan that will remake the most iconic street in San Francisco.

With repaving scheduled in late 2013 or early 2014, planners hope to maximize efficiency between the many agencies responsible for the street, the sidewalks, transit operations, and public space improvements, what could be the most important example of the city delivering on its Complete Streets policy obligations.

"I think it’s a synergy of a lot of things," said Kris Opbroek, Better Market Street project manager from the Department of Public Works (DPW). "With coordination, you get a better, more beautiful, more complete street that serves all the users, not just one, and that really is the goal."

The budget for the planning process will likely be between one and two million dollars, depending on the success of several grant applications. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA), the county congestion management agency with the power to dispense sales-tax revenue to transportation projects, has an available pool of $750,000 in Proposition K funds that the Board of Supervisors (acting as the TA's Board of Directors) could release for the project. The MTA has $200,000 of Safe Routes to Transit money that has already been awarded for Market Street planning. The city team has also applied for a $250,000 Caltrans Transit Planning Studies Grant and might seek federal EPA grants if those are applicable.

Though the scope of work for the project has yet to be finalized, planners expect to choose a consultant team to begin public outreach and planning by this summer. From there, they will work with the community and business stakeholders along the corridor to develop a vision for remaking the street. Planning is expected to take one year, followed by one-to-two years for environmental review.

While no decisions have been taken for what the finished product for Market Street will look like, several principles will guide the team of consultants that will be chosen to spearhead transportation and design changes.

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As we reported last month, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) released an innovative new application for mobile devices that allows users to track their bicycle commuting patterns with a GPS-enabled iPhone or iPod and share those trips with the agency responsible for improving bicycle networks around the city.

Now CycleTracks is compatible on the Android platform, including the Verizon Droid and several models from Sprint and T-Mobile, which means every major mobile carrier has phones that can run the application.

"The iPhone app has been a great success so far," said Billy Charlton, Deputy Director for Technology Services at the TA, in an email. "We now have more than 1,500 bike trips logged by almost 400 users. That's great, especially since it's been raining a lot the past couple weeks."

Charleton said the TA hadn't run thorough analysis yet of the data, but confirmed that they would like more diverse users.

"I can already tell that we need more women using it, and more infrequent cyclists too," said Charleton. "Those may be hard to find but we're doing what we can."

So now that all you Android users can help, get out there and log some trips, dear readers, and pass this along to your friends!