Streetsblog San Francisco

Stockton Street. Photo: geekstinkbreath/Flickr

Before you head off to one of the SFMTA’s ten public workshops on how to make your Muni route faster and more reliable, first you can take a peek at the proposed plans on the agency’s website.

The SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) web page now features a route-by-route summary of the proposals tailored to each of its eight priority “rapid” lines: the 28-19th Avenue, the N-Judah, the 30-Stockton, the 8x-Bayshore Express, the J-Church, the 14-Mission, the 5-Fulton, and the 22-Fillmore. Although the website doesn’t provide maps or detailed designs, it features a rough look at the street changes proposed for each line, including new transit-only lanes, extending transit bulbs and boarding islands, moving stops across intersections, removing stop signs or adding transit-priority traffic signals, increasing stop spacing, and widening narrow lanes to fit buses.

If you want to see Muni move more efficiently, it’s especially important to show up and support proposals to increase stop spacing to speed up trips (or, in other words, remove stops). At the first of these TEP workshops, which focused on the 28 and N-Judah lines, attendees generally voiced mixed feelings about removing stops, according to agency staff.

Overall, the idea of setting stops farther apart is popular: A 2010 survey found that 61 percent of riders would consider walking longer distances if it would speed up their trip. And once stop spacing is optimized and riders can experience the difference, the changes seem to be appreciated. SFMTA staff said the agency has received mostly positive feedback from riders on the 28-Limited line after the agency removed several stops last fall.

Seventy percent of Muni stops are closer than Muni’s own guidelines call for, according to the SFMTA. With stops as frequent as one (or more) per block, it’s a top complaint among riders. In a 2010 Streetfilm, SFMTA TEP Project Manager Julie Kirschbaum explained that “over time, bus stops have sort of creeped in for various reasons” in “places that aren’t necessarily optimal.”

The SFMTA also held a workshop last weekend on the 8x and 30 lines in Chinatown and will hold two more this week. Tonight’s workshop will focus on the J-Church and 14-Mission (south of Cesar Chavez), and tomorrow’s will look at the 22-Fillmore and 14-Mission (in the Inner Mission). The final workshop on May 5 will address all of the proposals.

See the entire schedule of workshops on the TEP website. You can also weigh in on an online poll.

SF Bike Coalition staffers enjoy the partially-completed JFK bikeway. Photo: SFBC/Flickr

Bike network expansions are going in at a rapid clip so far this spring. In Golden Gate Park, parking-protected bike lanes on John F. Kennedy Drive are mostly finished on the stretch in front of the Conservatory of Flowers, and drivers already seem to be picking up on the new parking arrangement.

Progress on new bike lanes connecting eastern neighborhoods continues on Bayshore Boulevard, Eastern Cesar Chavez Street, and Cargo Way. Folsom Street in the Mission has also been re-paved, and the SFMTA said bike lanes should be striped there soon.

New buffered bike lanes are almost finished on Bayshore. Photos: Aaron Bialick

On Bayshore Boulevard, the SFMTA is striping buffered bike lanes similar to the recent Caltrans project on Sloat Boulevard, reclaiming a roughly 9-foot travel lane for bicycle traffic. In the coming weeks, the street markings should create a safer bicycling connection and calm traffic between Cesar Chavez at the 101 Highway south to Silver Avenue.

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The SFMTA announced yesterday that it would no longer include areas of the Dogpatch, Potrero Hill, and Mission neighborhoods in its pilot expansion of SFPark after pushback from a vocal group of opponents.

This misleadingly labeled website, sfpark.info, is chock-full of some pretty outlandish claims about SFPark. Should San Francisco bend to this kind of hysteria?

However, SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said the agency is still proposing to install conventional parking meters, which lack the technology that allows the agency to measure demand and adjust prices accordingly. At upcoming community meetings, SFMTA staff will also discuss residential parking permits (RPP), which give residents priority for street parking in those neighborhoods, Rose said.

An SFPark statement reads:

Many neighbors in the 12th & Folsom, 17th & Folsom, Dogpatch, and Potrero Hill areas have expressed uneasiness about being part of the SFpark pilot project until further evaluation of its success. Based on this feedback, the SFMTA will no longer propose for these areas to be included as SFpark pilot areas. As the SFMTA revises parking management proposals for each of these areas, they will reflect regular its [sic] policies and practices.

Are the opponents any less ”uneasy” about conventional meters than SFPark meters? Members of the Eastern Neighborhoods United Front (ENUF — get it?), the leading group mobilizing against paying for parking, make a plethora of outrageous claims about SFPark’s motives on their misleadingly labeled website, SFPark.info (though ENUF asserts that it is not associated with the website). But the group’s opinion of conventional parking meters doesn’t seem any more favorable. According to Mission Local, ENUF organizer John Lum is “not ready to claim victory” since parking meters are still on the table.

But if ENUF is unwilling to accept anything besides the status quo of dysfunctional free parking, then if they ever do claim victory, who else will win? Not the drivers who’ll be circling for parking. Not the residents who’ll be burdened with more traffic in their neighborhood. No one, really, except the vocal contingent who believes free street parking is a “right.”

The SFMTA Board of Directors postponed a vote on a two-year budget yesterday in order to refine a proposal to provide free Muni for all youth. The board seemed to favor the rest of the budget, including enforcing parking meters on Sunday afternoons.

Photo: THE Holy Hand Grenade!/Flickr

The proposed budget would have included free Muni for low-income youth, but that measure failed after dozens of proponents argued that it should be expanded to include anyone under 17. The SFMTA estimates that doing so would cost about $9 million per year, roughly double the cost of the low-income-only proposal, which the agency has secured regional funds for. The board asked staff to return to the next meeting with a refined proposal that lays out a funding plan for an all-youth program.

Sunday parking metering saw opposition from religious institutions, but on the board the only skepticism came from Leona Bridges, who voiced concerns about car-owning residents who live above businesses with parking meters. SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin pointed out that those spots already aren’t free for residents during business hours the rest of the week.

Sunday metering may also see little opposition from the Board of Supervisors. In an article in the SF Examiner this week, Supervisor Sean Elsbernd said that West Portal residents “should be ready for Sunday enforcement.” At a recent SFMTA presentation to the Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee, members also voiced very little criticism for the proposal.

The budget will be up for approval again at the SFMTA Board’s April 17 meeting. It must be adopted by May 1 before heading to the Board of Supervisors for final approval.

Fell Street looking west from Divisadero. Images: SFMTA

The SFMTA revealed the design [PDF] for protected bike lanes on three blocks of Fell and Oak Streets at an open house on Saturday. The plan would create a safer connection from the Panhandle to the Wiggle by installing a one-way buffered bike lane on each street, partially separated from motor traffic by planters. The proposal would also paint green markings where bike traffic merges with turning motor traffic, re-calibrate the traffic signals for 20 MPH movement, construct pedestrian bulb-outs and zebra-striped crosswalks, and add angled car parking spaces (mostly on Baker Street) to replace over half of those removed to make way for the bikeways.

Leah Shahum, executive director of the SF Bicycle Coalition, said the organization is “encouraged to see the city officially proposing wider, physically separated bikeways on Fell and Oak Streets” and “grateful to see that the design includes many new corner, sidewalk bulbouts that will make it easier and safer for people to walk across these intimidating streets.”

“We believe the designs shared at the community workshop should move forward and be implemented to make it safer for the thousands of people who bike this corridor every day,” she said.

Although in January the SFMTA set the implementation timeline for next winter, staff said it has again been pushed back until spring, almost a year later than the city originally predicted. The SFMTA asserts that the project is on schedule according to the new timeline.

The plan uses green pavement treatments to emphasize a number of bike markings, including bike boxes, ”super” sharrows where bikes and cars mix, and bike lane “entrances” at the beginning of each block. The approach at the intersection of Fell and Divisadero Streets, where green markings have already been added to reduce conflicts with drivers queuing up for the Arco gas station, would remain mostly as it is, though a bike box would be added.

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A rendering of what a protected bikeway on Fell could look like. Image: RG Architecture for SFBC

The SFMTA will reveal the proposed design for protected bike lanes on Fell and Oak Streets tomorrow, and supporters need to make their voices heard to ensure the agency doesn’t water the project down or it delay it any further.

The project was significantly delayed after the SFMTA set out to replace some of the free curbside car parking that would make way for the bike lanes. Construction is now slated for the winter, but a small group of vocal opponents are still pushing against major safety improvements for this crucial bicycle connector.

SFMTA staff will present a design for the project tomorrow, but could still make minor changes based on the input they receive at the charette. (See here for designs presented at the last workshop.)

The open house will be held tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the San Francisco Day School, located at 350 Masonic Avenue (at Golden Gate).

The SFMTA unveiled its proposed two-year budget today, and it includes extending car parking meter hours to Sundays between 12 p.m. and 6 p.m., but not during evenings. On those afternoons, the proposal promises to curb the congestion that results from drivers cruising for free parking when it’s in high demand. The measure is one of many budget gap-closing components in a plan that avoids raising transit fares.

Photo: goincase/Flickr

SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin said parking meters wouldn’t run on Sunday mornings because there isn’t enough demand for commercial parking spaces at those times. When asked if church leaders had persuaded the agency not to charge for parking in the morning, he claimed the hours were only chosen to reflect commercial demand.

“The most concerns about Sunday mornings was that [they] start later than Saturdays, and it’s a little bit of a different business model, so we felt like this was the right approach,” said Reiskin. He also said complaints about church members needing to leave Sunday sermons to pay meters, which Interfaith Council member Rev. James Delange voiced to the SFMTA Board earlier this month, have largely died down because time limits would be three to four hours long, and many churches don’t even have metered parking.

Reiskin also said that Mayor Ed Lee and the Board of Supervisors seem more receptive to extending meter hours than the last time around. “I’ve been working on educating folks at City Hall as to the policy rationale and operating benefit of it,” he said. “I think when you just throw something out there, you know — ‘Do you like more taxes? Do you want to pay more for something?’ — everybody, of course, is going to say no.”

Running meters past 6 p.m., however, has drawn more resistance from car commuters who want to park for free after arriving home from work, said Reiskin. But he conceded that there is “an equally compelling argument” for pricing parking during the evening as there is on Sundays, and that “most of the cities across the country” price parking as late as 11 p.m. He also admitted that not metering high-demand parking in the evenings, which often forces drivers to circle for spots and slow down Muni, goes against the city’s transit-first policy.

Still, there’s cause for optimism that the days of evening parking dysfunction might be numbered. Reiskin said some businesses have been asking for evening meter hours, and that the SFMTA may still “pilot” evening meters in some districts “in the next year or two.”

“We’re trying not to do too much at once,” he said. “It was really, frankly, just a pragmatic decision, listening to the feedback we were getting. We’ll do a little bit more due diligence on the evening side before considering really jumping fully into it.”

The budget would also add 500 to 1,000 parking meters throughout business districts where parking is in high demand.

The budget goes to the SFMTA Board of Directors next Tuesday for approval.

The bike lane and the parking lane will soon swap sides around this ladder-shaped striping, which outlines the future buffer zone of the JFK Drive bikeway. Photos: Aaron Bialick

Crews have placed preliminary road markings for the coming re-design of JFK Drive in front of the Conservatory of Flowers.

Next month, JFK will become the first street in San Francisco where cyclists are protected from moving traffic by parked cars. The markings, for the time being, give bicyclists a teaser of how the protected bikeway will look, with the traffic pattern remaining the same for now.

Over the past few weeks, crews have been adjusting storm drains, adding curb ramps, and removing road stripes on JFK in preparation for the re-design. The project should be completed just before the city’s first on-street, two-way protected bikeway debuts in the southeastern neighborhoods.

See more photos after the break.

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