Streetsblog San Francisco

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is officially allowing taxi drivers to block bicycle lanes.

A memo [PDF] from Deputy Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi and Accessible Services Manager Annette Williams says the agency is issuing bumper stickers to taxi drivers telling Parking Control Officers not to cite them.

John Han of Taxi Town SF first reported the story, writing that the move has been “more than a year in the making”:

The memo, signed by Deputy Director of Taxis Services Christiane Hayashi, says not only will the SFMTA issue the bumper stickers, but it has also issued “guidance” to the Parking Control Officers instructing them not to ticket taxi drivers who are actively loading or unloading in bike lanes.

Taxis stopped in bike lanes routinely endanger people on bikes in San Francisco, and legitimizing the practice could encourage more of it. When blocked, bicycle riders are typically forced into passing motor traffic or between parked cars, where drivers or taxi passengers may open doors in their path.

Condoning such a dangerous practice seems incongruous with the SFMTA’s goals of improving the safety of bicycling in the city.

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Wheels for Wellbeing, a UK program, helps get people with physical disabilities cycling and challenges conventional notions that equate their mobility with automobile dependency.

Using tricycles, handcycles and recumbent cycles, participants discover that there are options for nearly anyone to enjoy the freedom of cycling. For these folks, the health benefits that come with their improved mobility can be particularly powerful in treating their illnesses.

H/T to Copenhagenize.com.

The MTA had some good news to announce today about Muni amidst a deepening budget shortfall, service cuts, and fare increases: the agency is launching a pilot program to allow senior and disabled customers unlimited access to BART within San Francisco and all Muni transit services with a single pass. At least during the pilot phase, the pass will cost $15, the same price as the regular Senior/Disabled Pass.

When Muni raised the price of the monthly Adult Fast Pass from $45 to $55 on July 1, it also raised the price of the monthly Senior/Disabled Pass from $10 to $15. January 2010 will bring another $5 increase to the Adult Fast Pass price, and using the pass on BART within San Francisco, a feature now included in the base price, will cost an extra $10.

By contrast, starting in February 2010, senior and disabled customers in the pilot program will actually get more value out of their now pricier passes. Unlike Muni's TransLink trial program, however, each phase of the pass pilot program will be limited to 2,000 participants, who will be randomly selected from a drawing with a November 30 deadline. The first phase will last six months, followed by two more six-month trail periods with separate groups of participants.

According to its press release, the MTA says it will use the pilot to assess the "functionality, popularity and potential costs" of implementing a Senior/Disabled Pass with unlimited BART access. If the pilot is deemed successful, the pass could be made widely available to senior and disabled customers.

Full details about registering for the pilot program are available on the MTA's website.

With support for bus stop consolidation building, local leaders are starting to weigh in on political strategies for implementing a new stop spacing policy.

For Pi Ra of the Senior Action Network, the best political strategy is to start with a good policy, before recommendations to eliminate specific stops are out. The MTA has been working on a revised stop spacing policy, but Ra said the draft revised policy isn't adequate.

"So far, it's based solely about if it's flat or not flat, what degree of slope it is, and if it's a transfer or not," said Ra. "But they haven't really put in consideration the demographics of who uses that particular bus stop, and if it's a destination or not. So they should...do all their research and then come up with a criteria to judge whether or not that bus stop should be there."

Ra said he "does think we have too many bus stops, especially in areas where it's really flat," but he thinks the MTA needs to start with a solid policy before it makes specific proposals. "Do you want to go through this again every time you're going to eliminate a bus stop? It'd be best to come up with a criteria that everybody accepts, or closely accepts, so when you decide to eliminate a bus stop, you say, 'here's the criteria, it fits that criteria,' and since this is what we accepted, then you won't have such a big fight over it each time. And they seem like they still haven't learned that particular lesson."

In a presentation on stop spacing in June, the MTA recommended that the revised stop spacing policy should give consideration to "destinations such as schools, hospitals, and other community facilities," though it didn't mention senior centers or similar demographic considerations specifically. The MTA has resisted doing broad demographic surveys, but Ra said taking important institutions into consideration "will be fine," instead of trying to survey demographics at every stop.

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Celebrated Colombian urbanist and former mayor of Bogotá Enrique Peñalosa told a standing room audience of more than one hundred people at the San Francisco Public Library last night that San Francisco can be friendly to cars or to people, but not both. Further, he argued that there is no fundamental technical reason why streets have to function only as free-flowing arteries to move cars, but that the state of our cities in America is a political decision that we can overturn and that American's perceptions of what is possible in cities will follow suit.

"I don't say this as a car-hater--I have a car, I think cars can be wonderful to go to the countryside--but clearly the faster cars go in a city, the wider the roads are, the less pleasant is it to be around. The narrower the street, the slower the speeds, the wider the sidewalks, the better you can feel. High-velocity urban roads are sort of fences in a cow pasture."

Road space, he argued, is the most valuable asset in a city and it is a resource that society can use as it pleases, distributing it between all transportation modes or only one. He stated what is obvious, but what seems to rarely be acknowledged by traffic engineers and politicians in San Francisco: less space for cars will mean less cars. "There is no such thing as a 'natural' level of car use in a city. There is nothing technical about how much space you should give to cars or to pedestrians. It's not like you have to ask a transport engineer permission. What is clear is this is a political decision."

Peñalosa's trip was underwritten by the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) and was part of the kick-off of the Great Streets Project, a join initiative between the SFBC, SPUR, Project for Public Spaces, and The Livable Streets Initiative (parent company of Streetsblog). Peñalosa earlier in the day met with Mayor Gavin Newsom, which he said went quite well.

"I think [Newsom] was very sensitive to all these issues and he even told some of his people to look into how these things are being used in other cities, the designs that are being used to improve the pedestrian and bicycle spaces there," he said.

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AARP announced today that it will join the Transportation for America campaign to advocate for a "broad restructuring" of national transportation policy. In a letter sent to Congressional leaders last week [PDF], AARP said that it is "working to enable older adults to live independently in their homes and communities throughout their lifespan, and transportation is critical to maintaining the community connections that make that possible."

Forty million Americans over the age of 50 belong to the organization, which is increasingly focused on the next federal transportation bill. "America is aging rapidly and transportation policy and spending must acknowledge this demographic shift," said AARP's Nancy Leamond in a press statement. "The upcoming transportation authorization can help the nation prepare both for its graying years and a greener future by making roads safer for drivers of all ages and also offering more user friendly options for pedestrians and transit users."

AARP's publications have been turning an eye toward the benefits of reducing car dependence and making streets safer for older Americans. Recent articles in the AARP Bulletin have examined Safe Streets for Seniors programs and the need to invest stimulus funds in infrastructure for walking, biking, and transit. An ongoing collaboration with Project for Public Spaces produced a series of three books about how citizens can improve their streets.