Streetsblog San Francisco

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee showed unanimous support today for a pair of proposals that will both have major impacts on people walking, biking, using transit and driving in the city.

The first is a measure to begin charging for on-street parking in the eastern half of Golden Gate Park, where many of the park's most popular attractions are located. The plan will turn over responsibility for on-street parking in Golden Gate Park from the Recreation and Park Department to the MTA, which will install meters and charge for some street parking in the park for the first time.

The Rec and Park department, the MTA, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu, and Supervisors John Avalos and David Campos expressed support for the measure on public policy grounds, since charging for parking may lead to reduced driving and increased walking and biking in the park, and is consistent with the city's transit first policy.

Given the impact on transit riders of recent Muni fair hikes, Campos said drivers should "share the pain" of balancing the budget.

The meters will be a financial boon for the MTA and the park department, with the MTA collecting citation revenue and the park department collecting meter fare revenue. Once the meters are installed, as early as next April, they're projected to bring in $500,000 in the fiscal year ending June 30 and $1.4 million in the second year for the park department. The MTA will bring in a net profit of about $379,000 per year.

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San Francisco complete streets advocates have an opportunity tomorrow to ensure that the city prioritizes bike route repairs and sidewalk enhancements if voters pass a proposed street safety and streetscape improvement bond measure this November.

The Department of Public Works is proposing a $388 million bond measure to fund street resurfacing and streetscape improvement projects for the next five years. The proposal currently includes $209 million for street repair and rehabilitation, $113 million for streetscape improvements such as corner bulb-outs, sidewalk widening, and pedestrian lighting along commercial corridors and other high-use areas, $24.9 for street structures repair and improvement, $30.6 million for ADA curb ramp repair and construction, and $10.1 for sidewalk repair.

The Budget and Finance Subcommittee of the Board of Supervisors will be discussing a resolution in support of the measure, sponsored by the Mayor and Supervisors Chiu, Dufty, Mar, Alioto-Pier and Campos, at its 10 a.m. meeting tomorrow.

In its current form, DPW’s bond proposal calls for the “presence of transit vehicles and bicycle traffic” to give a street “higher priority for maintenance.” The San Francisco Bike Coalition would like a more detailed, explicit commitment to repairing the bike network, and it is urging the Board to include language that would allocate 30 percent of the resurfacing funds for streets with existing bicycle facilities such as bike lanes or sharrows on them.

Neal Patel, SFBC’s community planner, said he views this as an opportunity to solidify DPW’s commitment to prioritizing the bike route network, and he was optimistic about increasing the proposal’s funding “from around 20 to 22 percent” for bike route repair to 30 percent.

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Victor Mendez, nominated by the White House to lead the Federal
Highway Administration (FHWA), spent more than an hour this morning
with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee — but the most
illuminating moment in the hearing came as the clock was running down.

Sen.
Thomas Carper (D-DE) asked the nominee a simple question: What does
Mendez, a former Arizona state DOT director and ex-president of AASHTO, think of recent legislation codifying "complete streets" principles and expanding the "Safe Routes to School" program on childhood bike and pedestrian safety?

Mendez, whose legacy in Arizona
centers on a massive Phoenix freeway project, wavered a bit. Both ideas
"fit neatly into what I believe is Secretary LaHood’s livability
concept," Mendez replied, describing Safe Routes to School as a good
thing for his state but not addressing "complete streets" directly.

Though
Carper was openly dissatisfied with the answer, he moved on to an even
simpler question: Given that previous hikes in auto fuel-efficiency
standards have ultimately led to more driving (and increased
congestion), does Mendez think that lowering carbon emissions from the
transportation sector should be a goal of the upcoming climate change
bill?

Theoretically, it should have been easy for Mendez to endorse that concept, especially on the same day that his future boss blogged on the benefits
of transit. But if the future highways chief encouraged decreasing
transportation emissions, then — horrors! — he might be open to the
transit sector’s plea for a share of the emissions allocations in the climate bill.

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With Congress out of town on its Memorial Day break, the nation’s
capital is a quiet place to be — but all of that will change next
week, as the appearance of the House transportation bill is expected to
kick off an intense battle to reshape federal policy on transit, bikes, roads and bridges.

Many urbanites remember the last congressional transportation bill as a disappointment
that pushed a pro-highways approach while forcing transit projects to
compete for a small slice of the federal funding pie. But that 2005
transportation clash brought us some instructive moments that escaped
the mainstream media’s focus at the time.

As a semi-regular
feature on Streetsblog Capitol Hill, I’ll be looking back at past
transportation debates that have the potential to impact the upcoming
re-write. For today’s installment, let’s look at the "complete streets"
amendment that fell six votes short of passage in 2005 but had a pretty crucial sponsor: then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL).

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Henry Waxman (D-CA), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has just struck a deal on his long-awaited climate change bill -- and though the agreement makes a number of concessions to polluters, it also takes a step forward towards popularizing the cause of "complete streets".

The House climate bill requires every state and metropolitan area with more than 200,000 residents to devise plans for reducing transportation-related carbon emissions. The bill directs states and localities to draft plans that "consider transportation and land use strategies" that encourage transit use, walking and bike riding, as well as equal access by all users.

In short, the House climate bill officially sets "complete streets" principles as planning goals for state and local transportation officials. The DOT and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) would enforce the deadlines for each state and local transportation emissions-reduction plan and hand out grants to help areas implement innovative strategies for diminishing auto dependence.

The funding for those grants would have to come from future spending bills, not from the auctions of carbon-emissions permits to polluting industries -- the so-called CLEAN TEA plan that Transportation for America and other advocacy groups have been hoping for.

Today's deal would auction only 15 percent of the emissions permits, giving the rest away free to coal companies, electric utilities and the auto industry. Why did CLEAN TEA fall by the wayside? Sadly, Democrats from coal- and oil-dominant states were prepared to bring down Waxman's bill unless their hometown industries got emissions permits for free. Even those Democrats who are still fighting to make polluting industries pay for their permits want the revenue to go back to the public in the form of tax credits, rather than to green transportation.

As Waxman's climate bill takes flak from environmentalists who (rightly) lament its giveaways to industry, should the very presence of "complete streets" language in the bill be considered a minor victory? Or is the climate deal just another example of Congress kowtowing to Big Carbon?