Streetsblog San Francisco

When it comes to building new developments in the Bay Area, especially in San Francisco, the battle over limiting the construction of new parking spaces is pitched. Parking reform advocacy organizations like Livable City, which maintains a listserv populated by car-free and livable-city advocates keeping a keen watch on planning commission parking exemptions, have long encouraged city leaders to tighten the parking-to-unit ratios in dense neighborhoods flush with transit and bicycling options.

Why, these advocates ask, would any city seeking to be a model of sustainability require developments to have one parking space per unit, as is the case across San Francisco outside of the downtown core and certain neighborhood plan zones (the mandatory parking ratio can be higher in other Bay Area cities)? San Francisco is the city it is because it was built densely, with minimal parking, and areas like the Mission or North Beach would be impossible with 1:1 ratios.

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

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

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

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

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Zipcar kicked off its second annual Low-Car Diet challenge today in the 13 cities around the country where the company does business. The challenge asks participants to give up their personal cars for one month and walk, ride a bicycle, and take transit in place of driving.

In San Francisco, Zipcar provided each participant with weekly Muni passes and BART tickets as needed. Should participants need to drive at some point throughout the month, they can use a Zipcar.

Michael Uribe, General Manager for San Francisco Zipcar, stressed the economic benefit of not owning a car, saying that 19 percent of household income is spent on auto-related expenses. According to Uribe, Zipcar users spend only six percent of their household income on cars. He also said car-sharing in general is meant to chip away at the idea that owning a car is necessary, or that a family needs two cars when one is rarely used.

"Growing up, owning a car is really a rite in America," said Uribe. "This reverses that paradigm and frees up money to go back into the local economy. Also, for every one Zipcar on the road, we're replacing 15 to 20 vehicles."

Uribe himself is a recent convert to carlessness. "It took me a while to learn to live without a car," he said.  When asked how he finds the lifestyle, he smiled and said it was stress-free. "I don't think I'd ever own a car again. I don't have to pay for parking, I find myself exploring the city more, various neighborhoods. I find I eat better because I'm exploring different neighborhoods and buying locally grown organic foods."

"I eat a lot more," he added, but said he hasn't put on any weight given how much additional walking he is doing.

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Welcome to town Chase.  I'm super impressed you have been reading Streetsblog San Francisco and made an ad that reflects some of the knowledge you've acquired here. This is obviously a shout out to the car-free community. Might the admen understand the incredible cost savings of ditching the car for a bike, which can save you more than $9,000 every year in direct vehicle costs, not to mention the health savings from an active lifestyle and the peace of mind of contributing fewer greenhouse gases to a dangerously warming planet?

Or maybe this is an homage to the cyclist as hero, walking into the sunset after defeating the highway lobby in Washington and securing billions for transit in the re-authorization of the transportation act.

I'm not sure a big bank like that has the time in between taking billions of taxpayer bailouts and spending them on new airplanes to focus on the subtleties of the message they're sending to the more than one-hundred thousand San Franciscans who ride weekly.

What do you think, Streetsblog Nation?

Electric Vehicles (EVs) are all the rage these days and the press seems to treat them as a palliative for all that ails our fossil-fuel-driven, automobile-dependent transportation network.  The New York Times has fallen in love with Better Place, an electric-car battery maker that seeks to replace much of the U.S. fleet of vehicles with ones that run on electric batteries, which could be changed at battery stations much the way we currently fill up at gas stations.

Then Mayor Gavin Newsom yesterday announced San Franciso's new agreement with City CarShare and Zipcar to include two electric plug-in vehicles in their fleets (one each), proclaiming that "Electric vehicles are the future of transportation and the Bay Area is the testing ground for the technology." 

Unfortunately, that's a future I don't find attractive, and one that should concern livable streets urbanists.  It hearkens to the "something for nothing" culture bemoaned so eloquently by James Howard Kunstler and implies that Americans don't have to give up any of the convenience of cars to become energy independent.

As Kunstler put it:

We became a nation of overfed clowns who believed that it was possible to get something for nothing, who ravaged the landscape in an orgy of wanton carelessness, who believed they were entitled to lives of everlasting comfort and convenience, no matter what, and expected the rest of the world to pay for it. We even elected a vice-president who declared that this American way of life was non-negotiable.

We now face the most serious challenge to our collective identity, economy, culture, and security since the Civil War. The end of the cheap fossil fuel era will change everything about how we live in this country. It will challenge all of our assumptions. It will compel us to do things differently - whether we like it or not.

That is, unless we can just find a clean source of fuel, the electric-car folks might contend.

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Editor's note: Yesterday we asked readers to write and share their stories about car-sharing. This is the first installment. We'd like to know how you feel about car-sharing services, whether they've changed your transportation choices and travel behavior, whether you've sold your personal car, or held off on buying a new vehicle. Feel free to send your story to tips@sf.streetsblog.org.

Living car-free, or car-lite, as I like to say, has had a huge impact on my life. My husband and I haven't owned a car since 2001 when we sold the 1998 Honda Civic we bought new not long after we got married. The push to sell the car came from me. I had changed jobs and instead of working in South San Francisco I was working in downtown SF. Since I was the one who drove to work 2 to 3 times a week (taking my bike on Cal Train the other days) I was sick of worrying about getting parking tickets if we failed to move the car on street cleaning days, tired of wondering if it would be broken into or stolen. And the fiscally prudent Yankee in me hates depreciating assets sitting around eating up insurance and maintenance money.

What allowed me to sell my husband on going car-free was City CarShare. At the time we were more concerned about our ability to get out of the City on the weekends to do things.  Back then we "needed" a car to do things.  Now, when I look back at how worried we were it makes me laugh. Car-schmar, who needs it? 

In 2001, there was only one Car Share Pod within a mile of our place.  We walked about 10 blocks to get a car. Now we have 4 pods within six blocks of where we live yet we use cars less then ever. Yes, our vehicle miles traveled has definitely gone down, while our miles walked and miles biked continues to climb. Interestingly, our miles traveled by Muni is probably about the same. NextBus makes Muni more convenient than it used to be, but my bike is still more reliable.

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A spirited debate broke out a few weeks back on the Car-free Living listserv run by Livable City about the merits of car sharing. Does it reduce driving and car ownership or increase the impetus to drive among the car-free? One poster who didn't own his own car called car-sharing a gateway drug that encouraged him to increase the number of times he uses a vehicle for all manner of trips, while others argued that VMT is reduced when fewer people own their own cars and share more.

Despite an initial analysis of San Francisco's City CarShare service showing an inducement to drive, in large part because early adopters were "self-professed environmentalists and avid cyclists," a 2003 study on car sharing found that over time the service showed the opposite trend.

By City Car Share's second anniversary, 6.5 percent of emember's trips and 10 percent of their vehicle miles traveled were in carshare vehicles.  Mathed-pair comparisons with a statistical control gropu suggest that, over time, member have reduced their total vehicular travel.  Because carshare vehicles tended to be small and fuel-efficient, per capita gasoline consumption and greenhouse gas emissions among members also appeared to go down.

The study also found that 30-percent of members had sold one or more vehicles and that two-thirds had decided not to buy a vehicle.

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