Photos: Aaron Bialick

The demand for car-free streets in San Francisco is easy to see at the Sunday Streets events around the city. If there’s no Sunday Street in your neighborhood, though, not to worry: You can bring a car-free event right to your doorstep.

With a little outreach to your neighbors, a permit application, and a fee, it may be easier than you think.

My block in the Inner Sunset did it this Sunday for the tenth year in a row for its annual block party, bringing neighbors together for a potluck, games, and conversation.

Organizer Walter Van Riel said once he put the vehicle barriers in place, the street was transformed in an instant. “Not more than five minutes later, I heard the sound of kids playing in the street,” he said.

Going car-free relieves streets of the noise and danger normally present, which can prevent kids from playing outside and inhibit relationships between neighbors. Mary Deely, who has lived on the block since 1970, said without the block party, she wouldn’t know her neighbors as well. “I wave to people, but I don’t really talk to them until the block party,” she said.

Neighbors from each side of the street compete for the trophy in the "pass the bucket" competition.

Mary Deely (right) enjoys the street with friends and family.

The neighbors on this block, as well as the SFMTA staff who issue the permits, have come to expect the party on the last Sunday before Halloween, making it easier to get everyone together each year and obtain a permit.

Cindy Shamban of the SFMTA Sustainable Streets Division, who oversees the permit program, said 91 block party permits have been issued this year.

The fee for the permit is as low as $150 for applications more than 60 days in advance [PDF], and permits can be obtained within a few days at the maximum rate of $450. Van Riel said the individual cost can be kept to a minimum by pooling contributions between neighbors.

The process requires approval from a committee and posted notification to all neighbors, which isn’t a major impediment to doing something once a year, but what if you want your street to function as a community space every day?

Neighborhood streets can be designed in ways that enable more social activity all year round. Examples can be found in other cities around the world. In the Netherlands, shared streets called “woonerfs” use traffic-calming features to tame motor vehicles and elevate human movement and interaction, allowing children room to play. Just across the border in Van Riel’s hometown of Antwerp, Belgium, he says common gathering spaces are taken for granted.

“Woonerf”-style streets could be common in San Francisco someday, if we have the will. As Donald Appleyard first documented in his 1981 publication “Livable Streets,” streets that prioritize social life over traffic bring real benefits to a city. Check out the Streetfilm on his work, followed by more photos below:

The potluck.

Walter Van Riel (in green) passes the water bucket.

Debi raises the trophy for the champions-to-be in the bucket competition.

Photo: Bryan Goebel

Two important projects will get a hearing before an SFMTA engineering panel tomorrow, and advocates say a show of support is crucial.

First up is a hearing for the third set of 15mph school zones, championed by Walk San Francisco. More than 70 streets are on the latest list. As we’ve written, the 15mph school zone campaign is part of a groundbreaking citywide initiative pushed by Walk SF to implement safe speed zones around 200 schools, and comes just a few weeks before Walk to School Day on October 5.

The second item to convert Haight Street between Octavia and Market into a two-way street is a project that could face some opposition, but is being pushed by pedestrian, biking and transit advocates as a much-needed measure to calm traffic, improve walking conditions and speed up Muni service on the 6 and 71 lines. The plan would also give us San Francisco’s first red bus lane.

You can read the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association’s letter of support here [pdf].

Tomorrow’s hearing starts at 10 a.m. in Room 416 at San Francisco City Hall.

Photo: ejbSF

Editor’s note: This is the first in a series of occasional stories on the “2011 Road Repaving and Street Safety Bond.”

A $248 million streets bond measure being pushed by San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee and other electeds is on its way to the November ballot after being approved this week in a 9-2 vote by the Board of Supervisors. The “2011 Road Repaving and Street Safety Bond” would provide funds over three years to repave the city’s crumbling streets and fix cracked and buckling sidewalks. Streets with high volumes of transit, bicycle and pedestrian traffic would be prioritized.

“With more than half of our 850 miles of roadways deteriorating, we must confront the crisis in the condition of our streets now or we will face even greater costs and threats to public health and safety later,” Lee said in a statement released yesterday.

The San Francisco Department of Public Works (SFDPW) recently posted maps online that give a citywide breakdown of which streets stand to benefit from the bond money. The final list of streets would be “geographically equitable” and the SFDPW would “ensure that projects are evenly distributed to all parts of the city” without raising property taxes.

The agency’s outgoing director, Ed Reiskin, recently appointed to head the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said funding sources to improve street conditions have gradually declined over the years, and the measure is urgently needed to rebuild a growing backlog of streets in poor condition.

“We have a huge need. That backlog is maybe three quarters of a billion dollars, and there’s just no way that we can dig out of that hole using the operating dollars that are funding police and firefighters and library services and health and human services,” Reiskin told Streetsblog in a recent interview.

General fund money has historically not been used for street resurfacing, according to city officials, and state and federal funding sources have been "volatile and subject to policymaker cuts." Image: San Francisco Capital Plan

The bond measure, which requires a two-thirds vote, would gear $148 million to street repaving and construction (a total of 1,389 street segments), $7.3 million to repair street structures such as bridges, retaining walls and stairways, $22 million for sidewalk repairs (including ADA-compliant curb ramps and repairing up to 75,000 square feet of damaged sidewalks), $50 million for pedestrian, bicycle and streetscape improvements, and $20.3 million for transit and pedestrian signal infrastructure improvements. It would also create about 1,600 jobs, according to the Mayor’s Office.

SFDPW has not released a list of specific bicycle and pedestrian improvements but Reiskin said many of the remaining projects in the Bike Plan could be built and that the city’s Pedestrian Safety Task Force was working actively to identify where the most pressing needs are. Supervisor Jane Kim, who supports the measure, has said that she would work to see that some of the money is directed to pedestrian improvements in District 6, which has the highest rate of pedestrian fatalities and injuries.

“The first thing this bond measure does is to start improving the average condition of the streets,” Reiskin said. “The second thing that is important is bicycle facilities, whether it’s striping or dedicated bike lanes. A lot more streets that serve bicycles will get done if this bond passes.”

Although a similar measure was defeated in 2005 — it failed to get two-thirds — Reiskin pointed out that 56 percent of voters still said yes, without any kind of campaign. This time around, he expects a campaign and seems more confident it will pass. He added that many major cities use debt financing to resurface streets, including New York City, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis and Houston, among others.

“We’re supporting it because the city needs money to fix our streets and make them safe to walk on, and this is one good revenue source among hopefully many that we can bring to this important goal,” said Elizabeth Stampe, the executive director of Walk San Francisco. “The bicycle and pedestrian improvements are investments in long-term, permanent improvements in our city streets, and that is exactly what a bond is for.”

“It’s not only about the repaving but investing in better bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure that is above and beyond maintenance,” said San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum. “There’s a lot of really important projects that are building momentum that this will give real legs to, just in the next three years. It could be a really big boost to great streets.”

 Some Transit Advocates Opposed

The vote to support the measure on the SFBC’s board was 10-1, with Amandeep Jawa casting the lone dissent. In an email to Streetsblog, Jawa explained that he feels the measure is “irresponsible” and a “bad deal.” He argues the lifetime of the debt could last longer than the repairs and construction.

“If we are to sign on to such a stop gap, it is only responsible to do so if it buys us time to fix the real problem.  But this proposal has no such long-term solutions in it,” Jawa wrote. “We are just signing on to ‘borrow money and hope for a better tomorrow.’ In effect, all we are doing by supporting this measure is kicking the can down the road so that in 10-15 years we will have the same crisis, but we will be in worse shape financially as a City.”

Tom Radulovich, the executive director of Livable City, shares Jawa’s concerns. Livable City is officially opposed to the measure, citing several reasons. For one, Radulovich is frustrated that SFDPW is not adhering to the city’s livable streets policies when it repaves most streets because of a lack of funds.

“When they’re rebuilding city streets, per city law, per the Complete Streets plan ordinance and the Better Streets ordinance, they’re supposed to be using the major streets rehab to do pedestrian improvements, but they’re failing to do that,” Radulovich said. “I love fresh asphalt. I just want less blood on it.”

Radulovich said the city shouldn’t conceal the costs from motorists, and ought to consider a user fee — such as congestion pricing, a gas tax, adjusting the price of residential parking — to help fund street and parking maintenance.

“As a driver, you’re not going to pay anymore to drive, but as a non-driver I’m going to pay more for automobile infrastructure. We’re sending the wrong economical signals by continually hiding the trust cost of motoring from drivers,” Radulovich said.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, who voted against the measure along with his colleague Mark Farrell, was also concerned there isn’t a long-term funding component “to ensure that 10 years from now we don’t have another backlog. That’s my frustration.”

“I agree with Tom that there is a cost associated with driving a car, owning a car and the impact that those cars have on our streets. Absolutely. I get that,” Elsbernd told Streetsblog, adding that he would support “some new fee or some new tax,” such as a hike in the vehicle license fee, to pay for street resurfacing.

A bill by State Senator Mark Leno would allow San Francisco to restore the vehicle license fee to previous levels, which he said could generate up to $44 million annually “to help restore and preserve essential programs.” The legislation, SB223, passed the upper house last month and is scheduled for a hearing before the Assembly Appropriations Committee August 17, said a spokesperson for Leno.

Supporters Say Short-Term Funds Needed

Supporters of the measure agree there needs to be a long-term funding solution, but argue that until there’s a consensus SFDPW cannot let the city’s backlog get worse.

“The fact that the cost of repairing a street gets exponentially more expensive over time means that rather than spending four dollars down the road we can spend a dollar now and save money in the long-term even if we’re borrowing to get that dollar. It’s still cheaper in the long-term,” said Reiskin.

“The streets are in such bad shape that even if this not long-term we need to do it,” said Bob Planthold, the chair of California Walks who is also the pedestrian coordinator for the Senior Action Network (SAN). “Otherwise, things get worse and the city assumes a great financial liability for injuries caused by broken jumbled pavement so that neglect, inactivity means greater litigation and damage costs that the city will incur in the future.”

Although Planthold supports the measure, SAN has not taken an official position on it. He said he planned to encourage SAN’s board to support it.

“We have been negligent, you know, for about 30 years and have systematically underfunded our roads and the chickens are coming home to roost,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener. “This bond will allow us, for three years, to really do what we need to do on our roads and start bearing the backlog and that gives a three-year period to establish a sustainable funding stream.”

Next: We’ll take a look at some of the long-term funding solutions that have emerged to pay for street maintenance and repaving, and the political realities of implementing them.

One option for a bikeway on Fell Street presented to neighborhood associations by the SFMTA. See the rest in this pdf.

Fourteen years of community-driven efforts to improve conditions on Fell and Oak Streets around the Panhandle are finally paying off. The outreach continues on a vision for separated bikeways that would provide San Franciscans safe access to the flattest route connecting the western neighborhoods to areas east while making the neighborhood more livable for residents and businesses.

For some fifty years, the city has chosen to prioritize automobile storage and speed on Fell and Oak, which serve as one-way, multi-lane residential freeways with car parking lanes on either side. The street invites over 30,000 daily drivers [pdf] (in each direction) to motor through the neighborhood while imposing a dangerous three-block gap for bicycle commuters on the Wiggle route and the Divisadero commercial corridor.

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), which represents 12,000 members, has surveyed [pdf] nearly all of the businesses along the three blocks of Fell and Oak between Scott and Baker Streets to field initial opinions on a bikeway proposal. Of the three options presented, the survey found most merchants were unsure whether replacing a parking lane, a travel lane, or using a peak-hour tow-away lane would be the best option.

“Only one respondent was explicitly against the project, while most were not against it as long as attention was paid to the concerns, and some were even supportive of the project with no concerns,” the survey said.

In June, Mike Sallaberry of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Sustainable Streets Division said the bikeway would go in as a trial next summer and made it clear that the agency wants to do its community outreach “correctly and diligently.” This week, SFMTA staff held community meetings with the North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association (NOPNA), the Alamo Square Neighborhood Association, and the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association.

“There was consensus that the process has to be as public and open as it can be,” said NOPNA President Jarie Bolander. “The SFMTA said, of course, that’s what they’re gonna do. In general, people were optimistic and hopeful that they could then get a safer area for both pedestrians and bicyclists and even cars.”

Bolander says there has long been a strong drive among the neighborhood and merchant groups along the Wiggle to make the streets safer and more inviting for people, and that a safe bikeway would be key to reaching those goals.

“For us, we don’t see this as car vs. bike or car vs. pedestrian, we see this as an opportunity to make these neighborhoods that are connected by the Wiggle have more of a destination feel,” said Bolander. ”When people walk around and they feel safe, and it’s a destination to come to, they’re going to spend more money – neighbors, tourists, people from around the city.”

Remy Nelson, president of the Divisadero Merchants Association and owner of Mojo Bicycle Cafe, said that although he is in strong support of the bikeway, members of the group have yet to voice strong opinions about it either way.

“I think there’s something to be gained by people traveling more slowly in a commercial district,” said Nelson. “It makes them stop, it makes them come and visit things more easily.”

NOPNA’s spring newsletter this year [pdf] featured a front-page article written by Bolander lauding the proposal, which is a key part of the SFBC’s Connecting the City vision.

Here are some selected excerpts from Bolander’s piece:

San Francisco is without a doubt one of the most socially integrated cities in the United States, if not the world. A new plan, if implemented, may make it one of the most topographically integrated urban centers as well — with our own neighborhood playing a primary role.

For NOPNA, this plan could be an exciting development. Our collective vision of a revitalized Panhandle encompasses needed repairs, including better paths, more seating and improved playgrounds. A separate Oak-Fell bikeway would provide the needed incentives to make those repairs happen…

Finally, pedestrians play a vital role in road use planning. They are among the most vulnerable users of our roadway infrastructure. When a car swerves to avoid hitting someone, it frequently jeopardizes the safety of other vehicles that, in turn, swerve to avoid hitting it. This chain reaction can snarl roadways and endanger everyone. Safe bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure helps reduce this danger.

Looking beyond our own area, the prospect of improving safety on San Francisco’s streets and sidewalks and connecting them with bicycle routes coincides with NOPNA’s goal of making our own neighborhood more livable and sustainable.

Connecting the City is a bold plan that provides San Francisco with an opportunity to meet the transportation demands of the one million people who are expected to be living and/or working here in the coming decade. Introducing an integrated bicycle and pedestrian network will change how we get to work, shop and ultimately live in this great city.

Just how the project would look will be determined through the SFMTA’s outreach, but replacing a car parking lane appears to have fewer obstacles than reclaiming a travel lane. While some car-owning neighbors have complained that there isn’t enough free parking to go around, the parking lot at the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) on Baker between Fell and Oak recently opened its roughly 120 parking spots to the public after-hours. The two parking lanes on the three blocks of Fell and Oak in question store roughly 80 cars.

“There are other parking options that have come up,” said Nelson. “The times when parking is the biggest issue is at night, so freeing up the entire DMV lot makes a difference, we just need people to know about it.”

Bolander pointed out that a bikeway would help motorists as well.

“When traffic calming measures are in place, they will be much safer, bicyclists will be much safer, and pedestrians will be much safer,” he said.

An SFMTA intern informs drivers of changes to keep the bike lane clear last year. Photo: Bryan Goebel

Replacing a travel lane would likely trigger a longer environmental review process and seems to bring about fears among some critics that there would be unfettered car congestion. Even if the bikeway were to replace a travel lane, Bolander says the trade-offs outweigh any predicted delays and is optimistic they could be mitigated.

“With the plan that we’ve heard of from the MTA, they could mitigate some of the issues related to narrowing the lanes,” he said. “They could time the lights differently so that the flow of traffic during peak times can continue as it has been.”

Past cases have shown that reducing road capacity, particularly in favor of more travel options, usually results in a reduction in car travel demand.

Bolander also stressed that extending the bikeways along the Panhandle west of Baker Street would provide a cycling alternative to the crowded Panhandle path and calm motor traffic by replacing the excessive fourth travel lanes on that stretch of Fell and Oak.

“We’ve had some challenges with the sharing of bicycles and pedestrians,” he said. “With bicyclists having a dedicated lane on the street, it frees up the Panhandle for walkers and joggers and moms with their strollers to enjoy the park.”

"Seniors and people biking rally for a safer Fell Street." Photo: San Francisco Observer via SFBC

Community efforts to improve the three blocks of Oak and Fell between Scott and Baker are nothing new. On its website last week, the SFBC laid out the timeline of community-driven initiatives and talks with the SFMTA that date back to 1994. Here are some highlights:

• February 1996: Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council holds public meeting to discuss proposals for traffic calming measures, including removal of a parking lane on Fell and Oak Streets between Scott and Baker to accommodate bike lanes.
• December 1999: Members of the SF Bicycle Coalition, Walk SF, Alamo Square Neighborhood Association, Haight/Divisadero Neighbors and Merchants, Oak/Fillmore Neighborhood Association, Western Addition PAC, North of the Panhandle Neighborhood Association, and Duboce Park Neighborhood Association begin public meetings to advocate for the neighborhoods’ livability. Goals include traffic calming, revitalization, and bike lanes along the Fell and Oak Street corridor.
• September 25, 2001: Rally organized the Senior Action Network, Walk SF, and the SF Bicycle Coalition advocating for a safer Fell Street at Scott Street. Seniors, bicyclists, and pedestrians came together to rally for safety improvements including adding bike lanes on Fell between Scott and Baker to connect to The Wiggle.
• August 2003: Bike lane striped on Fell between Scott and Baker for a six-month trial (followed by a 2004 hearing)
• January 2005: Board of Supervisors unanimously support retaining bike lane on Fell Street.
• November 19, 2009: SF Municipal Transportation Agency presents eight options for addressing the dangers on Fell at Divisadero at a North of Panhandle Neighborhood Association meeting.
• April 30, 2010: SFMTA public hearing, where proposed modifications were presented to accommodate concerns from nearby residents. Four parking spots east of the Arco station would be tow-away zones 7am-7pm instead of 24 hours/day.
• June 29, 2010: Bike lane re-striped on Fell at Divisadero with new left turn only lane configuration for cars turning into Arco gas station and onto Divisadero.
• July 9, 2010: SF Municipal Transportation Agency distributes fliers on-site to people driving about the new configuration of left turn queue lane into the Arco gas station.
• February 23, 2011: Mayor Lee comments that he would like to see a physically separated bike lane on Fell Street between Scott and Baker Street.

In the last few years, numerous neighborhood meetings with the SFMTA and even protests have aimed to protect bicycle riders from drivers on Fell.

The SFMTA will hold a general community meeting on the proposed Fell and Oak bikeways on September 13, 6:30 – 8:00 pm at San Francisco Day School, located at 350 Masonic Avenue.

The Central Freeway in 2003 missing the damaged upper deck. Flickr photo: geekstinkbreath

Eight years ago, the Central Freeway fell, and the sky didn’t. The neighborhood long obscured by the structure came up for a year-long breath of air during its reconstruction.

Author Carol Lloyd described the transformation in a 2003 San Francisco Chronicle article:

The buildings are familiar, but they look brighter, prettier, somehow. There are big swooshes of empty land, open views down Valencia all the way to Market Street, and a lovely glimpse of the new Victorian/postmodern Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Community Center, perched on the corner of Market and Waller streets. Sunlight is falling on asphalt that has been steeping in urine and shadows for decades. The air doesn’t smell anymore, nor does it vibrate with trucks rattling overhead.

“It was awesome,” said resident Alison Miller. “There was sunlight, and people started to really know their neighbors. You’d look at Valencia Street and think, how could they think of covering up this potentially vibrant neighborhood in the middle of the city?”

For fifty years, the motor-dominated streets around the Central Freeway have felt dangerous and forbidding to walk on, leaving a rift in the Market-Valencia commercial corridor. Even naming the ambiguous cross-section of districts has been a challenge for San Franciscans, who have called it “North Mission,” “SoMa West,” “The Valencia Bottoms,” and even ”Deco Ghetto,” though nothing has really stuck.

This year, the neighborhood is finally getting some long-awaited streetscape improvements, including a civic space unofficially dubbed the McCoppin Hub. The name goes back a hundred years to a time when “The Hub” was a major streetcar junction at the intersection of Market and Valencia Streets. It came complete with a cable car powerhouse and railcar repair shops, and even had a drink named in its honor: “Hub Punch”.

McCoppin Street was named after Frank H. McCoppin, San Francisco’s ninth mayor (1867 – 1869) and superintendent of the Market Street Railway.

The cable car powerhouse at “The Hub” existed from 1883 to 1906. Photo: Market Street Railway Archives via Robin Havens

A sign advertising “Hub Punch” just off Market Street circa 1883. Photo: SF Public Library courtesy of Robin Havens

Market and Valencia Streets before the freeway, 1945. Photo: SF Public Library courtesy of Robin Havens

Valencia Street looking north just after the Central Freeway was constructed as a double decker and opened in 1959. The top deck was damaged in the 1989 earthquake and removed in 1996. It was rebuilt as a double-wide freeway from 2003-2006. Flickr photo: Eric Fischer

The powerhouse was removed after the 1906 earthquake, and the double-decker Central Freeway was built one block away in 1959. In its location today are a Travelodge motel, Flax art store and a car parking lot.

After the freeway was damaged in the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, the upper deck west of Mission Street was deemed unsafe for use. San Franciscans voted twice to remove the stretch before approving a plan in 1999 to rebuild today’s ramp that ends at Market Street.

Alison Miller protested the freeway’s return along with Lynn Valente with a few other residents under the banner of McCoppin Street Neighbors (the North Mission Neighborhood Alliance has since become more prominent). But Valente said she found it wasn’t easy rallying together a “transitional” community where neighbors have few inviting places to get to know one another.

“It’s no man’s land,” said Valente. ”[The freeway] is our line. The merchants on the other side aren’t gonna get involved.”

“We had this whole ‘Halt the Ramp’ campaign,” said Miller. “We fought really hard to stop them from rebuilding the only freeway to be rebuilt in San Francisco.”

North of Market Street, the freeway was ultimately replaced with the Octavia Boulevard project, leading to a revitalization of the Hayes Valley neighborhood.

But despite the protests of residents and some supervisors, the city rebuilt it south of Market, under pressure from Caltrans, which manages the state’s freeways, and the result of a ballot measure sponsored by a coalition of driving residents, mainly in the Sunset and Richmond districts.

Building the Central Freeway was “a transportation planning decision that resulted in five decades of negative urban design impacts and blight on the surrounding neighborhood,” said a SF County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) [pdf] study of alternative design proposals to remove the freeway.

Today, the freeway sits over the neighborhood twice as wide, rather than twice as high. Its reconstruction, when compared to a boulevard alternative, saves two minutes for drivers, at the most, according to the SFCTA study.

“Nobody wanted to see the freeway end at Market Street. Nobody wanted to see the freeway go back up over Valencia or Mission Street,” said Livable City Director Tom Radulovich, who served on the Central Freeway Citizens Advisory Task Force.

“The reality back then was, from the task force at least, the Hayes Valley representatives who lived north of Market really wanted to see the freeway removed further south of Market,” he said. ”The Mayor’s Office really just didn’t have enough courage at the time to push back against Caltrans.”

Removing the freeway farther back, he noted, may have even garnered less car congestion than the current layout. “The SoMa street network has a lot more capacity than the north of Market Street network, so there’s a bigger opportunity to deal with the freeway traffic,” he said.

The campaign south of Market also lacked political support from then-Supervisor Chris Daly, who recused himself from voting on the issue due to a conflict of interest: he owned a condo at the corner of Valencia and McCoppin Streets, and removing the freeway would have likely increased his property value.

“It was too political, and Caltrans, they wanted a job,” said Miller. “We got shafted.”

Looking north from McCoppin Street across Market Street where the freeway ramp used to extend into Hayes Valley until 2003. Flickr photo: geekstinkbreath

Octavia Boulevard (at Market), which replaced the rest of the freeway in Hayes Valley. The Vision Boulevard Project would’ve extended the boulevard further back. Flickr photo: sfcityscape

Today, the streets around the Central Freeway remain neglected, and neighbors say they have long attracted unwanted activities like drug use, dealing and other crime. Those conditions used to extend all the way into Hayes Valley, said Miller, where “nobody would deliver pizza to your house” before that stretch of freeway was removed.

“Now look at it,” she said. “It’s improved their neighborhood, but ours, I would say, is the same.”

Some McCoppin neighbors may resent – or at least envy – the success Hayes Valley has enjoyed. In Lloyd’s 2003 article, resident Leslie Kossoff said those south of Market Street “got screwed.”

“They’re Oz, and we’re Kansas,” said Kossoff.

“One only need to look at Valencia Street and then cross Market to plainly see the difference,” said Miller. “On one side of Market is a beautiful tree-lined boulevard with a green park, community gardens and a farm, while here we have a dark overpass, filthy sidewalks and nothing but concrete.”

Valente, on the other hand, is pleased by the coming improvements to the neighborhood. The McCoppin Hub, when it sprouts up next year, could finally give neighbors a place to meet one another and help mend the fabric of the community.

“We’re not bitter,” she said. ”I’m proud that a small group of us have been successful in getting funding for amenities that will mitigate the effects of the project.”

“I hope that we can keep our eye on the big picture,” said Valente, “and that outside influences might give those of us who live and work here a chance to realize the neighborhood that we have planned and waited for for more than ten years.”

A preliminary vision for the "McCoppin Hub" at McCoppin and Valencia Streets. Image: Boor Bridges Architecture

Residents just north of the Mission District who have lived in the shadow of the Central Freeway are beginning to see a glimmer of light. The city appears poised to move ahead with plans to bring street improvements and green space to the area, including a public plaza at the end of McCoppin Street that abuts the Octavia freeway onramp.

The neighborhood has long been stifled by a lack of inviting places to gather as well as traffic noise and danger from the domineering freeway.

“Our neighborhood is not cohesive,” said Lynn Valente, resident of McCoppin Street, which lies just south of Market Street and Octavia Boulevard, and runs for a few short blocks from Otis to Valencia Streets before it stops at the wall of the freeway ramp. “It has a lot to do with the freeway.”

The long-awaited improvements were planned after Caltrans rebuilt the damaged stretch of freeway through the neighborhood in 2005.

The Central Freeway over Duboce Street looking toward Valencia Street. Photo: Aaron Bialick

“We had hoped to mitigate some of the things about having the overpass,” said McCoppin resident Alison Miller. “The city said they were going to build all this stuff – a skate park, greening. But look around, you can clearly see we have no greening projects, and it’s been all these years.”

The reason for the delay, according to the Department of Public Works (DPW) website, was a lack of funding from the city’s sale of empty land parcels along Octavia Boulevard where the freeway used to extend. The economic downturn, the DPW says, has made those parcels difficult to sell.

“It’s been six years, and they’re still only just now getting some of the parcels sold,” said Miller.

The South of Market (SoMa) West Improvement Projects, which would include greening, traffic calming, a public plaza, a mini dog park, and a skateboard park, could finally bring some inviting destinations and a stronger sense of community to the area.

“The goal is to enhance the urban fabric, calm traffic, and improve transportation safety,” the DPW said on its website.

The centerpiece of the improvements, unofficially being called the McCoppin Hub, would transform a leftover stub of asphalt at the end of McCoppin Street into an attractive civic space.

Neighbors met with Boor Bridges Architects two weeks ago in the latest planning meeting for the hub. Architect Seth Boor said he hopes to tailor its design to the wishes of residents, who would like it to attract a variety of community activities and serve as a gateway to the community and the Valencia corridor.

“People have said that they want this to be a space that’s worthy of pausing and slowing down and appreciating,” said Boor.

McCoppin Street (2003) looking towards Valencia Street from Market Street, where it intersected before the freeway was rebuilt to touch down there. The "McCoppin Hub" is now the space next to the U-Haul building. Flickr photo: geekstinkbreath

The McCoppin Hub today, looking east across Valencia Street. The freeway ramp runs perpendicular to the street behind the camera. Photo: Aaron Bialick

"Off the Grid" food trucks activate the space every Saturday. Photo: Boor Bridges Architecture

A preliminary design for the park with the food trucks present. Image: Boor Bridges Architecture

The design residents seem to favor would include a “meandering path” and triangular spaces with grass and planters to sit on. Two lanes of open grass would flank the park, providing space for activities like farmer’s markets and the food trucks that have been activating the space every Saturday since last fall.

The hub also serves as a bicycle and pedestrian shortcut connecting Valencia to the intersection of Market and Octavia. Neighbors said they would like to enhance that use with possible bicycle amenities like racks and the city’s first public air pumps similar to those found in Copenhagen, Denmark.

“I really like this as a place for all of us,” said one resident at the planning meeting. “There’s nothing excluding seniors or toddlers or people walking their dogs.”

Other improvements will add greening, traffic calming, and bike lanes along the rest of McCoppin Street and the alleyways adjoining it. A block down Valencia, parking lots underneath the freeway will also be replaced with the skateboard park next spring as well as a mini dog park, once the funding is secured.

Work on the improvements on McCoppin Street is set to begin this fall, and construction on the Hub is expected next summer.

McCoppin streetscape improvements coming this fall. (The flower garden design included for the Hub to the left is outdated.) Click to Enlarge. Image: SF Department of Public Works

Tomorrow, we’ll look back at the history of the neighborhood, including photos of the 19th century streetcar hub the project is being named after.

An auto repair shop on Ninth Avenue in the Inner Sunset. Photo: Aaron Bialick

San Francisco’s many auto repair shops are mostly concentrated along its motor traffic sewers, but when they’re placed without restriction in the thick of restaurants, shops, and pedestrian traffic, can they hinder our city’s most valuable streets as desirable places to be?

“Auto repair shops, and other auto-oriented uses like parking and gas stations, can degrade the pedestrian environment in neighborhoods,” said Tom Radulovich, the director of Livable City.

On Ninth Avenue in the Inner Sunset, one of the city’s many commercial streets, three repair shops sit in the mix of residences, shops and restaurants. Street life is plentiful on the stretch, but the space around the large auto shop between Irving and Judah streets in particular appears empty. Shelby, a resident of the neighborhood, was enjoying a snack outside Arizmendi Bakery a few doors down.

“Randomly, you’ll have a little strip of small restaurants and art galleries, but then you’ll have places like that that don’t seem to fit in because they just got there first,” said Shelby. She also pointed out that many vehicles pulling in and out of some garages, and the illegal parking they attract, can hinder and endanger passersby.

“It sucks as a bicyclist when you’re trying to go up a hill or something and there are three cars double parked,” she said. Cars left on the sidewalk aren’t an uncommon sight, either.

Customers and employees appear oblivious as pedestrians navigate around their cars left on the sidewalk at this shop on Fulton and Divisadero Streets. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Auto shops began appearing in the city around the time of World War I, growing primarily in the 1920s and largely around a stretch of Van Ness Avenue called Auto Row, according to architectural historian William Kostura [pdf]. Construction of buildings designed for fixing and selling automobiles continued throughout the mid-20th century.

Auto repair prior to the war was largely done as a secondary job in various types of mechanical facilities, and “the first business to advertise in city directories under the heading of ‘automobile repair’ was, in fact, a bicycle shop” on Larkin Street which began offering the service in 1904, writes Kostura.

But auto shops, if not integrated carefully, can impact a street’s quality as a place to be on foot, on bike, or to pass through on transit, something that city planners have taken more seriously in more recent years.

Transportation planner Jeffrey Tumlin, a principal at Nelson/Nygaard Consulting Associates, thinks there’s a place for auto shops in commercial districts “provided they treat them respectfully.”

“It’s possible to design them in a way that doesn’t destroy the positive qualities of walkable neighborhoods,” said Tumlin.

“For what’s effectively an auto-oriented use, they have some interesting qualities,” he said. “If you can minimize the damage and the danger associated with the driveway, the buildings themselves can be quite lovely. Watching cars being repaired up on their lifts with repairmen wandering around is a kind of interesting urban activity.”

Although Tumlin said they might not be ideal on the city’s “more precious commercial streets, it’s something that can lend authenticity and local character to the more work-a-day centers of neighborhoods.”

“If you recognize that some percentage of San Franciscans will continue to own cars for a long time, that repair needs to happen some place,” he said. “And for people who are getting their cars repaired, when their car’s in the shop, they need to be able to get around without their car, so putting auto repair shops in an industrial ghetto doesn’t really work very well.”

In order to lessen the impacts of auto shops on pedestrians, cyclists, and transit “and make the business a better neighbor,” legislation has been passed to make requirements on auto shops generally more restrictive, explained Radulovich. However, most auto shops were built under the looser regulations of decades ago and “grandfathered” in.

That means a new auto shop built on a neighborhood commercial street like Ninth Avenue today would be subject to stricter requirements, if permitted at all, than it would have been before the 1980s when restrictions on permits were put in place.

Currently, new auto shops are prohibited in residential districts, allowed in industrial districts, and only “conditionally permitted in other neighborhood commercial and mixed-use districts,” said Radulovich. But ”such businesses only have to comply with the current code if they move into another space, or if the building is rebuilt or undergoes certain major renovations.”

For new shops, restrictions are now in place under Planning Code amendments passed in April that were pushed by Livable City and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. They require smaller widths for garage entrances, restrict them from being placed “on important walking, cycling, and transit streets across the city,” and require that they be located on smaller side streets where possible, said Radulovich. Car storage is also required to be “screened behind active commercial or residential uses,” he said.

Ninth Avenue. Photo: Aaron Bialick

But constructing new auto shops in San Francisco hasn’t been an issue of late, as the demand seems to be dropping. Joshua Switzky of the SF Planning Department said he couldn’t think of any proposals for new repair shops or gas stations in recent years. If anything, he said demand is so low that on some corridors like Valencia Street, “they tend to be the few development sites that are left.”

Last month, the Planning Commission approved a project to redevelop a closed gas station into an 18-unit residential and commercial building on the corner of Valencia and 20th Streets.

Tumlin noted that auto shops can be converted into other uses, granted they’re designed well, and often have useful features like high ceilings, good natural light, and a lack of columns. San Francisco historian and Streetsblog contributor Chris Carlsson said he “would like to turn them all into community centers.”

Some buildings containing auto shops, like those built in the Tenderloin in the 1920s and 30s, have “spectacular” architecture and “bizarrely contribute positively in many ways to the vitality of the commercial districts there,” said Tumlin. Kostura’s report notes that “former auto showrooms, garages, and repair shops have found adaptive reuse as restaurants, stores or offices.”

This auto shop built in the 1920s at 1765 California Street at Franklin was converted into a grocery store several years ago, though with a parking garage underneath. Photo via William Kostura for the Planning Department

Still, Radulovich said current rules can make converting auto shops for other uses difficult. “While controls on new automotive repair and service station uses have generally become more restrictive, another provision of the code makes it very onerous to convert a service station to another use,” he said.

And, he noted, increased restrictions on auto shops can face resistance from labor advocates. “Some activists are concerned that they are eliminating blue collar jobs from the city, and limiting peoples’ access to auto repair services in their neighborhood,” said Radulovich.

Indeed, any auto shops that are converted or redeveloped would likely have to be phased out.

“If they choose to move out,” said Shelby, “then maybe we can go towards” turning auto shops into public spaces, residences, other businesses. “But that business is already there, and if they’re still making money and paying their due, then I think it infringes on their rights as business owners.”

This article was revised from its original version on June 6, 2011.

Sibelius Park, a housing complex in Copenhagen, has cooperated with the Danish Crime Prevention Council to carefully define private, semiprivate, semipublic and public territories in the complex. Subsequent studies have shown that there is less crime and greater security than in other similar developments. Photos: Jan Gehl

Editor’s note: Streetsblog San Francisco is thrilled to launch a three-part series today by renowned Danish architect and livable streets luminary Jan Gehl. The pieces are excerpts are from his book, “Cities for People” published by Island Press. Donate to Streetsblog SF and you’ll qualify to win a copy of the book, courtesy of Island Press. Visit the Island Press website to find many more great titles by the nation’s leading publisher of books on environmental issues.

Feeling safe is crucial if we hope to have people embrace city space. In general, life and people themselves make the city more inviting and safe in terms of both experienced and perceived security.

In this section we deal with the safe city issue with the goal of ensuring good cities by inviting walking, biking and staying. Our discussion will focus on two important sectors where targeted efforts can satisfy the requirement for safety in city space: traffic safety and crime prevention.

Throughout the entire period of car encroachment, cities have tried to remove bicycle traffic from their streets. The risk of accident to pedestrians and bicyclists has been great throughout the rise in car traffic, and the fear of accident even greater.

Many European countries and North America experienced the car invasion early on and have watched city quality deteriorate year by year. There have been numerous counter reactions and an incipient development of new traffic planning principles in response. In other countries whose economies have developed more slowly and modestly, cars have only begun to invade cities more recently. In every case the result is a dramatic worsening of conditions for pedestrians and bicycle traffic.

The concept of shared or complete streets suggests equality between traffic groups, which is a utopian ide- al. Integrating various types of traffic is not satisfactory until pedestrians are given a clear priority (shared space in Haren, the Netherlands, and a pedestrian priority street in Copenhagen, Denmark).

In cities where the car invasion began early and has lasted decades, we can now see a strong reaction against the myopic focus on cars that has dealt such harsh blows to city life and bicycle traffic.

In many countries, especially in Europe, traffic planning in the 21st century has changed dramatically compared to the traffic planning of twenty or thirty years ago. The importance of promoting pedestrian and bicycle traffic has gradually been acknowledged while better understanding of the nature and causes of traffic accidents has produced a considerably wider variety of planning tools.

When the first pedestrian streets were introduced in Europe in the 1960s, there were really only two street models: those for vehicular traffic and those for pedestrians. Numerous types of streets and traffic solutions have since been developed so that today’s traffic planners have quite a wide range of streets to choose from: vehicular traffic-only streets, boulevards, 30 km/h (19 mph) traffic, pedestrian priority, 15 km/h (9 mph) areas, pedestrian-streetcar, pedestrian-bicycle and pedestrian only. The experience gained in the intervening years has also made it possible to reduce the number of traffic accidents and make walking or biking considerably safer and more comfortable.

In choosing street types and traffic solutions, it is important to start with the human dimension. People must be able to move comfortably and safely in cities on foot or by bicycle, and when traffic solutions are adopted special consideration must be given to children, the young, the elderly and people with disabilities. Quality for people and pedestrian safety must be key concerns.

A number of recent urban planning ideologies deriving from accident statistics contend that the risk of accident can be reduced by physically mixing types of traffic in the same street under the heading of “shared space.”

The underlying idea of these so-called shared streets is that they will give trucks, cars, motorcycles, bicycles and pedestrians of all ages the opportunity to travel quietly, side by side and with good eye contact. Serious accidents will rarely occur under such conditions, or so it is thought, because pedestrians and bicyclists need to be extra vigilant at all times.

Obviously, if people are sufficiently frightened and keep a close watch on traffic, nothing untoward will happen. However, the price is high in terms of dignity and quality. Children cannot be allowed free rein, and older people and others with reduced mobility may be forced to drop walking altogether. In any discussion about people and traffic safety the risk of accident must be weighed against quality for pedestrians and bicyclists. Much of modern traffic planning continues to pay far too little attention to the quality of city life.

Mixing types of traffic is certainly possible, but not on the equal terms implied by the shared street concept. As the British “home zones,” Dutch “woonerfs,” and Scandinavian “sivegader” have demonstrated for years, pedestrians can thrive with other forms of traffic as long as it is crystal clear that all movement is based on the premises of pedestrians. Mixed–traffic solutions must prioritize either pedestrians or provide appropriate traffic segregation.

Copenhagen-style bicycle lanes take advantage of parked cars to protect bicyclists.

The principle of having bicyclists bike outside a lane of parked cars does not solve many safety and security problems. It does help to protect the parked cars, however!

There is every reason to applaud the many new types of streets and policies that ensure safety for pedestrians and bicyclists while allowing service vehicles to make door-to-door deliveries.

From project to project, planners must consider which types of streets and degree of traffic integration would be a good solution. The actual and perceived safety of pedestrians must always be the determining factor. It is not a natural law that motorized traffic should be allowed access everywhere. It is generally  accepted that cars are not welcome in parks, libraries, community centers and houses. The advantages to not having car traffic everywhere are obvious, so even though there are compelling arguments for allowing car traffic all the way to the front door, in many situations there are equally good arguments for establishing car-free areas surrounding the residences.

For centuries traffic in Venice has functioned on the principle that the transition from rapid to slow traffic does not take place at the front door but at the city limit. The Venice principle is hard to beat when prioritizing city quality. As mentioned above, a number of options have been developed for coexistence between pedestrian and motorized traffic. While these options open new doors, they also create more problems.

A pedestrian in Venice can be forgiven for thinking that many of the recent traffic solutions represent various forms of compromise com- pared to the vision of a true city for people. Or put in another way, in Venice it is easy to surmise that “there is only one thing better than slow cars — and that is no cars.” But as also mentioned, it is important to be pragmatic and flexible. There are many good new compromises, but they must be assessed and carefully selected.

In Venice the shift from rapid to slow traffic occurs at the city limits rather than at the front door. This is an interesting and inspiring for the contemporary vision of creating lively, safe, sustainable and healthy cities.

Already in the first chapter of her 1961 book The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs discusses the importance of safety in the streets. She describes the crime-preventive effect of life in the street, of mixing functions in buildings and of residents’ care for common space. Her expressions “street watchers” and “eyes on the street” have since become integral to city planning terminology.

Being able to walk safely in city space is a prerequisite for creating inviting well-functioning cities for people. Experienced as well as perceived safety is crucial for life in the city.

The safety discussion has a general and a more detailed dimension. The general focus is maintaining and supporting the vision of an open society in which people from all socioeconomic groups can move about side by side in the common room of the city as they go about their daily business. Within this general framework, safety can also be promoted through careful consideration for the design of the many detailed solutions in the city.

Juxtaposed with the idealistic visions of safe open cities is the reality of many urban societies. Social and economic inequality is the backdrop for high crime rates and the fully or semiprivate attempts to protect property and private life.

A profusion of bars, fences, signs and cameras signals the insecurity and fear that have crept into communities around the world.

Barbed wire and iron bars fortify houses, security patrols cruise residential areas, security guards stand in front of shops and banks, signs threaten “armed response” outside houses in exclusive quarters, gated communities abound: all of these are examples of people’s attempts to protect themselves against invasion and trespass of private property. The examples also illustrate a general retreat to the private sphere by some population groups.

It is important to point out that simple individual urban crime-prevention solutions are not of much help, where the invasive sense of insecurity is often deeply rooted in social conditions. On the other hand, many urban communities are less gridlocked, including hard-hit city districts. In these areas there is every reason to make a solid effort to avoid the retreat of the population behind bars and barbed wire.

Other parts of the world do have cities and societies in which cultural tradition, family networks and social structure keep crime low despite economic inequalities.

To conclude, in almost all situations there are good arguments for working carefully to reinforce real and perceived safety, a prerequisite for using common city space.

If we shift the focus from defending the private sphere to a general discussion about feeling safe while walking in public space, we will find a clear-cut connection between the goal to strengthen city life and the desire for safety.

If we reinforce city life so that more people walk and spend time in common spaces, in almost every situation both real and perceived safety will increase. The presence of others indicates that a place is acceptly good and safe. There are “eyes in the street” and often “eyes on the street” as well because it has become meaningful and interesting for people in nearby buildings to follow what is going on in the street. When people make their daily rounds in city space, both the space and the people who use them becomes more meaningful and thus more important to keep an eye on and watch out for. A lively city becomes a valued city and thus also a safer city.

Life in the street has an impact on safety, but life along the street also plays a significant role. Urban areas with mixed functions provide more activities in and near buildings around the clock. Housing in particular signifies good connections to the city’s important common space and a marked reinforcement of the real and perceived safety in the evening and at night. So even if the street is deserted, lights from windows in residential areas send a comforting signal that people are nearby.

Approximately 7,000 residents live in Copenhagen’s city center. On an ordinary weekday evening in the winter season a person walking through the city can enjoy the lights from about 7,000 windows.

The light from buildings along city streets can make a significant contribution to the feeling of security when darkness falls. Above: Bakery in Amman, Jordan.

The Apple Store in Sydney, Australia.

The proximity to housing and residents plays a key role in the feeling of safety. It is common practice for city planners to mix functions and housing as a crime prevention strategy and thus increase the feeling of safety along the most important streets used by pedestrians and bicyclists. The strategy works well in Copenhagen, where the city center has buildings between five and six stories high, and there is good visual contact between residences and street space. The strategy does not work as well in Sydney. Although the Australian metropolis has 15,000 people living in its heart, the residences are generally from 10 to 50 stories above street level, no one who lives high up can see what is happening down on the street.

Tall buildings can also land softly and elegantly along streets and soften the transition between out and in (Lloyd´s of London. Architects: Richard Rogers Partnership, 1978 - 86).

Ground floor building design has a disproportionately large impact on the life and appeal of city space. Ground floors are what we see when we walk past buildings. It is also from the lower floors that people inside can follow what is going on outside, and vice versa.  If ground floors are friendly, soft and — in particular — populated, pedestrians are surrounded by human activity. Even at night when little is happening  in cafés and front yards, furniture, flowers, parked bicycles and forgotten toys are a comforting witness of life and proximity to other people. Light streaming from the windows of shops, offices and dwellings at night helps increase the feeling of safety in the street.

Soft edges signal to people that a city is welcoming. In contrast, in streets with retail, where solid metal shutters close off shops outside opening hours a sense of rejection and insecurity  is produced.  The streets are dark and deserted in the evening, and there is not much reason to be there on weekends and holidays either. Given the general desire for safe cities and inviting ground floors, preferred façade options have open metal grills and other types of transparency to protect goods but allow light to stream onto the street, and they also give nocturnal pedestrians the pleasure of window shopping.

Life in the street and on the street, mixed functions along the street and friendly edge zones are key qualities for good cities — also in terms of safety and protection. The polar opposite is the perfect recipe for an insecure urban environment: lifeless streets, mono-functional buildings devoid of activity for most of the day, closed, lifeless and dark façades. To this list we can add insufficient lighting, deserted paths and pedestrian tunnels, dark nooks and crannies, and too many bushes.

In the face of this rather depressing scenario it is important to remember that almost any enticement to invite people to walk, bicycle and stay in city space will also contribute to a greater sense of security.

A soft edge and clear distinctions be- tween public, semiprivate and private territories provide good opportunities to signal where you live and decorate it with your favorite flowers (Almere, the Netherlands).

Another contribution to our sense of security is a good city layout that makes it is easy for us to find our way around. It is a mark of good urban quality when we can directly find the destination we’re looking for without hesitation and detours. Clear structure and organization do not require large dimensions and broad straight roads from point to point. It is fine for the streets to be winding and the street network varied. What is important is that the individual links in the network have clear visual characteristics, that space has a distinctive character and that important streets can be distinguished from less important ones. Signs and directions and good lighting at night are crucial elements of the relationship between city structure, sense of locality and feeling of security when walking in the city.

In the chapter on human senses, it was mentioned how different distances are used for various types of communication between people, and how these distances are continuously used to reinforce the character and intensity of contacts. Interacting with others and protecting our private sphere are two sides of the same coin. Just as close contact necessitates precisely defined territories, a clear articulation of private and public territories on the larger arena is an important prerequisite for social opportunities and a sense of security.

Human society is subtly organized around various social structures that define and reinforce the individual’s sense of affiliation and security. A university student is part of a structure with faculties, departments, classes and study groups that provide a framework. Workplaces have divisions, departments and teams. Cities have quarters, neighborhoods, housing complexes and single dwellings. Coupled with well-known designations and signals, these structures in themselves help reinforce a sense of affiliation within the larger entity and security for the individual group, household or person.

Also on a small scale — particularly in connection with individual dwellings — clarifying territories and affiliations is crucial for contact with others and for protecting the private sphere. Whereas efforts are made to graduate and soften transitions between private and public areas by building semiprivate and semipublic transition zones, the likelihood of contact from zone to zone increases, and residents gain the opportunity to regulate contacts and protect private life. A well-proportioned transition zone can keep events at a comfortable arm’s length.

In the previous section soft edges and their importance for life in the city are discussed. It is emphasized that edge zones, porches and front yards can make a decisive contribution to vitalizing life in public space. These transition zones between the private and public sphere must be carefully articulated in order to clearly distinguish between what is private and what is public.

Changes in pavement, landscaping, furniture, hedges, gates and canopies can mark where public space ends and fully or semiprivate transition zones begin. Height differences, steps and staircases can also mark the transition zone, providing critical prerequisite for the important function of soft edges as the link between inside and out, between private and public. Only when territories are clearly marked can the private sphere afford the degree of protection that people need to make contact with others and contribute to life in the city.

Pedestrian and bicycle traffic save a lot of space in the city. Bicycle paths have room for five times more traffic than car lanes. The sidewalk has room for 20 times more travellers than car lanes.

Cars barrel through on Oak Street at Divisadero. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Parents seeking a vibrant, community-filled urban lifestyle filled with chance street corner chats on the walk to the grocery store may find living on Fell Street leaves a lot to be desired.

That is, unless, crossing the street alongside four full lanes of car traffic is your idea of community.

“It’s ridiculous,” says Daniel, a father of two and five-year resident. “Fell Street is used basically as a freeway – it’s not really used as a street.”

For decades, neighbors of Fell and Oak have lived with the blight of at least 30,000 motor vehicles [pdf] invited to drive down each of the motorways every day. The one-way arterials were designed half a century ago to give priority to the massive waves of cars barreling through the neighborhood, creating an unwelcoming environment for those walking, riding a bike, or simply existing on the streets.

“If you live in a house on here, you’d better hope you have double-paned windows,” said Daniel. “It’s very noisy, and the amount of idling cars waiting for lights will make your house a dirty, dusty mess.”

Residents say dangerous, noisy, and polluted conditions brought on by the heavy motor traffic can present barriers to access in an area otherwise valued as rich with nearby shops, services, parks, public transportation and friendly neighbors.

An elderly woman crosses Fell Street with an aide. Photo: Aaron Bialick

“You want families to stay in San Francisco,” says realtor and Fell Street homeowner Bonnie Spindler, who warns that the threat of motor traffic can be restrictive to parents’ ability to walk with their children to enjoy the many amenities a neighborhood has to offer.

Walkability is an evermore important goal if San Francisco is to remain a place for children and reduce automobile dependency. “The more accessible a neighborhood is, the less you’re throwing your kids in the car,” said Spindler.

But with multi-block platoons of one-way motor traffic roaring through residential neighborhoods on a system of synchronized signals, drivers on the Fell-Oak arterials are prone to honk at others or even kill pedestrians with the slightest delay.

“If parents are terrified that they can’t get across the street with a stroller to get to the park because of the speed of the traffic, usage goes down,” said Spindler.

The playgrounds and green space of the Panhandle provide a ”natural meeting place” in the neighborhood that’s ideal for families, she said. “But parents are really worried about their children and traffic, and it really reduces the livability.”

Four speed-inducing lanes split the Panhandle from the adjacent neighborhood. Photo: Aaron Bialick

Even able-bodied pedestrians sometimes feel rushed to cross the street, and navigating the area can be particularly risky for the elderly and disabled, said Daniel.

“Although San Francisco may consider itself to be more pedestrian friendly than some cities, I think in a lot of instances they increase pedestrian risk,” he said.

That appears to be the case on Fell and Oak Streets, where motor uses take dramatic precedence over those of people. At the cross-section of Divisadero, three gas stations packed into a single block create a machine-dominated environment that’s particularly hard to call home.

“Every business that goes in here shuts down almost immediately,” said Kelly, a resident living a couple of blocks over just off Fell Street. She’s referring to a mixed-use building that houses the only storefronts on the block, which are all currently vacant, save a laundromat.

The current prospective tenants for that building are contending with other issues, but the space’s availability and high turnover don’t seem to be a coincidence. Any sense of place that might attract business-nurturing foot traffic appears to be destroyed by skinny sidewalks and the overwhelming presence of cars.

“This gas station and the way the streets are utilized are a negative part of living in this neighborhood,” said Daniel of the Arco gas station on the corner of Fell and Divisadero. It’s notorious for its queues of cars that routinely block the sidewalk and bike lane on Fell Street. ”It pretty consistently creates hazards,” he said.

Despite the Fell Street bike lane’s high traffic demand as part of the vital Wiggle route connecting the eastern and western parts of the city, measures taken to improve safety have so far only amounted to creating a queuing space and highlighting the lane in green, resulting in meager blockage reductions.

Even without the gas station queue, people riding the three-block Fell bike lane are squeezed between parked cars and three lanes of motor traffic with virtually no room to maneuver.

“The only thing I don’t like about [living in the neighborhood] is riding home,” said Kelly, who, like many in the area, depends on her feet and her bicycle to get around. “On my intersection of Fell and Broderick, I’ve seen so many people get hit. It’s just an accident waiting to happen.”

Although the number of commuters willing to brave the gap continues to grow by the month – doubling from March 2009 to 52,000 in September 2010 [pdf] – the number of potential commuters who continue to forego bicycling without a dignified way home remains to be seen.

Rush hour bike commuters brave conditions on Fell at Broderick. Photo: Aaron Bialick

“I’m kind of just waiting to get doored one of these days,” said Arjun Bhat, a nearby resident and architect who uses the bike lane. “While I personally am able to navigate the street alright, I would by no means feel safe if I was a less experienced city rider or a parent riding with my children in tow, or a tourist for that matter,” he said.

Neighbors and would-be cycling commuters seeking a return to civil, livable streets may soon see progress on the horizon. Recent support by Mayor Ed Lee and the SFMTA Board for a proposal to create physically separated bikeways on Fell and Oak present the potential to calm traffic and invite people of all ages to walk and bike in the neighborhood.

The proposal is a high-priority piece of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition’s Connecting the City campaign for continuous crosstown bikeways. The plan was roundly praised by neighbors and is sparking interest in new ways to transform the streets into better places for walking, talking, and cycling.

“The residents will benefit from improvements by being respected as human beings,” said Stuart Chuang Matthews of Fix Fell, an activist group which took direct action last year, calling for the closing of the Arco gas station driveway that encourages drivers to line up in the bike lane and endanger riders.

A physically separated bikeway plan that re-purposes travel lanes [pdf] could help solve the bike lane issues and have a major traffic-calming effect while reducing crossing distances for pedestrians. If it happens, the transformation could be one more step forward in the decades-long fight to return the residential freeways to places for people who live on them.

“They will be able to walk safely and breathe fresh air outside of their homes,” said Matthews. “They will be spared stressful traffic and honking noise while trying to relax inside. Their children will be able to play outside.”

“These are basic human rights issues.”

A father crossing Oak Street. Photo: Aaron Bialick

A driver accesses street parking the only way that seems possible on a residential freeway: by risking a multi-car wreck and invoking the angry honks of the drivers behind. Photo: Aaron Bialick

A quick hello between two people in front of a wall of cars. Photo: Aaron Bialick

"The Boulevard." Image: SF Planning Department's City Design Group

North Panhandle neighbors gave significant support once again for a complete re-design of Masonic Avenue in an online survey completed by 377 residents. Of the total, 87 percent favored the Boulevard option as the best way to make Masonic a safer street for all users. The plan offers a complete package of traffic calming measures, including a fully-landscaped median, bus bulb outs, a separated bicycle lane, improved traffic lane configurations, and sidewalk upgrades for pedestrians.

To make the improvements, the Boulevard proposal removes parking from both sides of Masonic between Geary and Fell. The other option, dubbed the Gateway, would employ less extensive measures to improve safe travel on Masonic. Compared with the Boulevard’s 87 percent support, the Gateway garnered significantly less with 54 percent preferring it. The North of the Panhandle Neighborhood Association (NOPNA) released the results of the survey along with the raw data Saturday.

In an executive summary, NOPNA President Jarie Bolander noted that “the vast majority of respondents want to see Masonic safer and feel that something must be done.” He added that most survey respondents (66.4 percent) had not attended the community meetings organized by the SFMTA last year. Thus, the NOPNA data reflect the preference of a great many residents not previously tallied and indicates even greater support for the Boulevard plan.

At the conclusion of last year’s Masonic meetings, 76 percent of participants who completed a SFMTA survey chose the Boulevard over the Gateway option. Based on that input, city staff recommended adoption of the Boulevard measures in a final report completed in January. The proposal has already been endorsed by the Ewing Terrace Neighborhood Association, a majority of University Terrace Neighborhood Association members, and Fix Masonic. The NOPNA board previously stated that they wanted to undertake the survey to obtain greater input from members before deciding what action to take.

In addition to the decided preference for the more ambitious street design, the NOPNA survey revealed other information pertinent to the discussion. Of the 373 who completed the survey, the greatest number of Masonic area residents heard about the proposals from three sources: the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) (46.9 percent), the NOPNA newsletter (41.4 percent), and BIKE NOPA (36.2 percent). More than 58 percent of respondents indicated they live within the NOPNA boundaries (Fell, Turk, Divisadero and Masonic) while 80 percent reside within or just one block beyond these streets.

Of the 477 residents who started the survey, 45 live on Masonic, and 81.8 percent of them strongly like or somewhat like the Boulevard proposal compared to 44.1 percent for the Gateway plan. Of the 127 who self-identified as being NOPNA members, 86 percent strongly liked or somewhat liked the Boulevard versus 59.9% for the Gateway.

When it comes to discussions about driving and biking in NOPA – as in other neighborhoods — residents sometime adopt an “us vs. them” approach, suggesting that motorists don’t care about road safety for others, that bicyclists only favor improvements for themselves, or that peoples’ modes of travel define their identity and affiliations. But the NOPNA survey shows much the opposite. Although the vast majority of respondents indicated that they belonged to the SFBC and 43 percent identified themselves as NOPNA members, a very high number (42 percent) actually belong to both groups. Other group affiliations mentioned include Fix Masonic (14.2 percent), NOPA+ (12.6 percent), Wigg Party (7.1 percent), and WalkSF (7.1 percent).

The removal of street parking for a safer Masonic was included in both proposals, although the Boulevard takes away parking on both sides of the street, while the Gateway removes it from just one side. Not surprisingly, those who support the Boulevard largely like the plan’s removal of parking to allow space for improvements. But Gateway advocates are almost evenly split on liking or disliking removal of half the parking.

The strong feelings of residents about changing Masonic are apparent in the large number of written comments for each proposal and for the overall situation. Nearly 300 comments were added to the survey. As can be expected, observations cover the range from enthusiasm to dismay for the proposed changes, but the tone was generally more positive than not. The plea of one neighbor is especially poignant:

Please fix Masonic. I’ve lived at Fulton and Masonic for less than a year and I regret moving here every day. The noise and speeding vehicles and honking horns is overwhelming. The crosswalks are terrifying. I drive occasionally and something about this street encourages aggressive behavior.

This story is republished from BIKE NOPA, a website that’s “all about bicycling and livability in San Francisco’s North Panhandle neighborhood.”

The Brian O'Neill Memorial Peopleway is one of the highlights of Connecting the City. It would circle around Black Point and land you at the Fort Mason firehouse so you wouldn't have to pedal up a steep hill. Image: RG Architecture.

After four years of an agonizing bicycle injunction that prevented the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) from adding any significant improvements to the city’s bike network, a judge earlier this year finally freed the SFMTA to begin building out the city’s long-promised Bicycle Plan.

In short order, the SFMTA made some very noticeable improvements, adding protected bike lanes on Mid-Market Street, installing thousands of sharrows on bicycle routes, striping ten miles of new bike lanes in a year and placing hundreds of new racks around the city. However, the game changing transformation that will elevate San Francisco into the upper echelon of world-class bicycling cities has yet to happen.

Those of us on the streets every day know the city can’t settle for six-foot lanes that leave cyclists straddling the perils of speeding traffic on one side and car doors swinging open on the other. Why should the only truly dignified bicycling space be a handful of blocks on Market Street, the Duboce Bikeway and the Panhandle? To bring San Francisco up to date with Copenhagen and Amsterdam, or even Portland and New York, the city must embrace the infrastructure that makes those cities safe and inviting to people who ride bikes.

Given how long it took to get this far, you might reasonably wonder if San Francisco will ever get to a point where cycling is a safe mobility option and welcoming for people of all ages. Maybe, though, if you consider the strong advocacy community we have here, elected officials who really do want to change the streets and the projected population growth that will stir a greater demand for bike facilities, it won’t take as long as you think.

Perhaps all the city needs is a new bike plan.

In its most ambitious undertaking to date, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) has launched an initiative it calls “Connecting the City,” where bicyclists of any age and ability would be able to comfortably pedal across the city on a network of continuous bikeways from the Ferry Building to Ocean Beach, Park Merced to Downtown or Mission Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“Connecting the City’s priority crosstown routes would take routes that are already being used and elevate it to 8 to 80 standards that feel comfortable and inviting for someone who is 8 years old or 80 years old,” said Renee Rivera, the SFBC’s acting executive director, borrowing a page from Gil Peñalosa.

Connecting the City's proposed three priority crosstown routes. Map: Jack Reinick for SFBC. (Click to enlarge).

The three crosstown routes in the plan are not a revolutionary idea. Bicycle advocates have been talking about similar concepts for years. This time, however, the SFBC, one of the city’s most influential advocacy organizations, is pouring its resources into Connecting the City and luring some of the Bay Area’s most talented transportation planners, designers and architects to fashion a plan that would be shovel-ready.

The 27 miles of crosstown bikeways are laid out over some of the city’s most important bicycle routes and would connect current gaps in the network. The SFBC is focusing first on getting those priority routes in place within 5 years, but it is also advocating for growing the current 55 miles of standard bike lanes to 128 miles of “next generation” bikeways in 10 years, a dramatic increase reflective of New York City’s recent expansion. The early estimate for what the whole plan would cost is about $100 million.

“Peanuts,” said Rivera, when you compare it to the cost of adding transit capacity.

Segments of each route might feature different treatments depending on the neighborhood, but the theme is comfortable and continuous, whether it’s a cycletrack with safe-hit posts, a green bike lane along the curb with buffered parking or a bike boulevard. As the SFBC’s Andy Thornley describes it, each route must produce the “aaah” effect, the sensation you get when you’re liberated from the anxiety of threatening auto traffic.

“Our design vehicle is the 60-year-old woman with two bags of groceries. How does that user look when you set her down on these various points?” Thornley explained during a recent presentation to Streetsblog. Connecting the City, he pointed out, is as much about calming bicycle traffic as it is about calming auto traffic and making the streets more pleasant for transit riders and pedestrians.

“What [San Franciscans] want is a neighborhood where they don’t have to live in the back of the house and can live up front, where you can take the dog for a walk and not worry about running across the street,” he said.

“This is not just bicyclists advocating for more street space. This is many groups coming together to advocate for a city that’s going to work better for everybody,” said Rivera.

The current bike lane on Fell Street would be transformed into a curbside cycletrack. Image: RG Architecture for SFBC.

“Bay to the Beach,” “Bay Trail,” and “North-South Backbone”

The Connecting the City “Bay to the Beach” crosstown route would provide a comfortable, continuous bikeway from the Great Highway to the Ferry Building, with protected lanes spanning the entire 8-mile route on JFK Drive, Fell and Oak streets and the Duboce Bikeway and Market Street. Parts of the Wiggle may not need separated bikeways, but streets would be traffic calmed. The route would feature a smooth ride for the entire length of Market Street, which is scheduled to be repaved in 2015, and continue through Harry Bridges Plaza to the Ferry Building.

Cars would have limited access to Market Street, transit would run in the two middle lanes and cyclists would pedal along a wide dedicated bikeway with high-visibility European-style treatments at intersections. A multi-modal trip from the Richmond District on the Bay to Beach route might include dropping your bike off at a new bike station near Market and 8th, a former boarded up storefront, and taking BART to work in Oakland.

The 11-mile Bay Trail route would begin in Indian Basin and end at the Golden Gate Bridge. You could start in Hunter’s Point and continue on to Hudson Street, the Indian Basin Pathway, Heron’s Head Point, Cargo Way, Illinois Street and Terry Francois Boulevard. Crossing the Lefty O’Doul Bridge would be a lot easier thanks to a two-way path that would become a two-way protected bikeway along the Embarcadero. If grandma and grandpa were visiting, you could check out a few bikes from a bike share pod along this route and ride peacefully to a pedestrianized Jefferson Street in Fisherman’s Wharf, where you could drop off the bikes near the Hyde Street Pier.

The 8-mile North-South Backbone ride would take you from Park Merced and San Francisco State University all the way to Aquatic Park. The continuous bikeway would run along Holloway Street, Lee Avenue, San Francisco City College, Ocean Street, Balboa Park, Tingley Street, the Still Street pathway, Phelan, Judson, Gennesee, Monterey/Hearst, Arlington, San Jose, 29th Street and Tiffany. When you get to Valencia Street you wouldn’t have to worry about double parked vehicles and delivery trucks blocking the bike lane: a protected cycletrack would be installed in the center of the street.

A two-way cycletrack would run through the center of Valencia Street. Image: RG Architecture.

You could then pedal onward to Market Street and Polk Street, where a counter-flow bike lane would take you north on Polk. Curbside bikeways protected by buffered parking would run on both sides of Polk. When you reach Aquatic Park, and want to head toward the Golden Gate Bridge, you’d no longer have to huff and puff your way up the MacDowell Road hill before Fort Mason or to the bridge itself.

One of the signature elements of Connecting the City would be a causeway that would circle around Black Point (see the first image in this story). The Brian O’Neill Memorial Peopleway, named for the late superintendent of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, would set off at Pier 4 and stretch over the water to the old Fort Mason firehouse, akin to Portland’s Eastbank Esplanade. The SFBC’s Rivera said funding for the bridge could be folded into the waterfront improvements that may come if San Francisco wins its bid for the next America’s Cup.

Moving along the route would take you past the Marina, Crissy Field and Fort Point, but what happens when you or your mom needs to climb yet another hill to get to the Golden Gate Bridge?  Borrowing an idea from Norway, the SFBC is proposing a bike lift that would take you from the Fort Point parking lot up to the visitor center.

“This is basically using cable car technology but on a smaller scale,” said Rivera. “You put your foot on a foot pad and then it goes about three miles an hour and carries you right up the hill.”

The three priority routes and all of the city’s bikeways would include simple wayfinding signs so any tourist or bicyclist unfamiliar with the city wouldn’t need a map to get around.

A draft network of 128 miles of bikeways in the city. Image: SFBC. (Click to enlarge).

From Conceptual Design to Implementation

The SFBC has a “plausible conceptual design” for the routes, but Rivera stressed that realizing the vision would take outreach and much more feedback from the public. The organization plans to present more information in 2011, but for now is working behind the scenes to vet Connecting the City with key agencies like the SFMTA, the San Francisco Planning Department, the Department of Public Works, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) and elected officials.

“We’re gathering the input and the conceptual framework and then we’re going to be out there meeting with neighborhood groups, with merchant groups and getting that level of input,” said Rivera. “I want to emphasize it’s not a baked cake. It really is going to be a constant process of refining to make sure that it really does work for everybody.”

Wanting to avoid the mistakes of the past, the SFBC is also thinking ahead about the CEQA process, so that projects don’t get stuck in environmental review or sidelined in court. Rivera said some bikeways could be done on a reversible trial basis, carrying a much lower environmental review threshold that would also speed the process “because it actually allows you to gather some real data.” Another question yet to be decided is whether the majority of projects could also fall within the scope of the current EIR since they are on the existing network.

“I think we’re mindful that it isn’t just about showing the vision and building the appetite. We really do have to fix the process and that notion that CEQA review is a big challenge,” added Thornley. “There’s no point in doing something that is going to set us back.”

Rivera also hopes an update of federal bike facility standards in the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) will help put Connecting the City and all innovative bike projects on a faster track.

For now, the SFBC is setting a near-term timeline for what’s most realistic. For the rest of this year, it will conduct further outreach and identify funding. In 2011, the coalition wants to see trials of innovative bikeways on the ground and “3 miles of continuous 8 to 80 bikeway.” By the end of 2012, it wants the city to complete its first crosstown route and reach a mode share target of 10 percent of all trips being made by bicycle.

Though currently 6 percent of trips are by bicycle, Connecting the City would help propel San Francisco toward achieving the SFMTA’s 2030 mode split goal of 20 percent of trips by bike.

Supervisor David Chiu, who recently returned from an inspirational trip to Amsterdam, thinks we can do better than the SFMTA’s goal. Today, before the SFCTA Plans and Programs committee, he announced the introduction of a resolution[pdf] before the Board of Supervisors that would set a goal of 20 percent of bicycle trips in San Francisco by 2020. Connecting the City, he said, will help get us there.

“If we want to grow as a city, if we want to ever get denser, if we want to protect our environment and make sure that our residents are healthy and make us a more livable city with a higher quality of life, I think this is a goal that we need to adopt,” he said.

Yee at a press conference recently celebrating the Valencia Streetscape Improvement Project. Photo: Bryan Goebel.

Bond Yee, a veteran traffic engineer who has spent thirty years designing and managing San Francisco's streets, will be named to fill the recently created Sustainable Streets Director position permanently, Streetsblog has learned. Yee was appointed interim director of the Sustainable Streets division eight months ago while the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) conducted a nationwide search for a permanent director.

"He was intimate in merging us toward the Sustainable Streets division over the last 8 or 9 months so he’s been putting the infrastructure there and I think it’s only fair that we give him a shot to bring it home," said SFMTA Chief Nat Ford.

Yee was the city's longest serving traffic engineer before Jack Fleck, who recently retired, and had been the director of the former Department of Parking and Traffic before stepping into his new role. He is greatly respected among many staffers at the SFMTA.

DPT was merged into Sustainable Streets last year as part of a directive passed by voters under Proposition E in 1999 to merge all departments into one agency to better govern the streets. Whether that has been working is something transit advocates have been debating. Some have even called the move a failure.

Many advocates had hoped to bring some fresh blood into the position and wanted the SFMTA to hire someone with a bold vision for streets governance, similar to what has happened in New York City under the leadership of NYC Department of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan.

Tom Radulovich, the Livable City executive director, said both Yee and the retired Fleck have been resistant to traffic calming measures over the years. He said the mission of the Sustainable Streets division has been "ill-defined," and was not pleased with Yee's promotion.

“It’s disappointing news. That department needs to not just be traffic engineering and for too long their idea of street design has been traffic engineering. It’s not the same thing. We need somebody with more of a multi-modal street design background and we need somebody who gets that streets aren’t just for moving cars. They’re not even just for moving people. They’re actually public spaces, social spaces, they’re environmental spaces and we just haven’t seen that from Bond.”

Radulovich has been pushing the agency and elected officials to consider moving streets management into a separate agency.

Ford defended Yee and said the characterization of him as an old-school traffic engineer who tends to prioritize automobiles over other modes was unfair.

"Under Bond’s watch we’ve done some very creative things with bikes. We’re one of the most bikeable cities in the country. We’ve done some innovative things with pedestrians. We’re one of the most walkable cities in the country," said Ford. He also noted that Yee has been overseeing the implementation of SFPark, one of the most innovate parking pilots in the country. "What perception may be is one thing, but let’s look at the results and look at where we stand as it relates to other urban cities."

The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition said it was looking forward to working with Yee, but offered no other comment.

In the interview with Streetsblog, Ford did acknowledge that part of the reason the position was being handed to Yee was because the agency has been eliminating management positions and two people they were eyeing for the job turned it down.

Photo: Keenahn

"Bay Area residents should be really excited about the 15 percent target. That's because it's high enough to trigger the transportation and land use changes we need to make the region more livable and affordable, especially as our population grows significantly by 2035," said Marta Lindsey, the communications and development director at TransForm.

Lindsey sent out an alert last week urging people to write emails to the MTC, fearing the commission would adopt a lower target of 10 percent, which its planning committee recommended at a meeting earlier this month.

"It's a realistic target given MTC's modeling and the kinds of investments and policies we already know really move the needle in terms of how much people drive their cars," said Lindsey.

Under the groundbreaking anti-sprawl bill, SB 375, most of the state's 18 MPOs are required to set a target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for passenger vehicles and light trucks by 2020 and 2035. The California Air Resources Board (CARB) recently adopted a set of draft targets (PDF) for the four largest MPOs (the Bay Area, Sacramento, Los Angeles and San Diego), which represent 80 percent of the state's population. Each MPO will then be required to development a Sustainable Communities Strategy (SCS) to show how it will meet its target. CARB is expected to adopt final targets in September.

The recommended target for the MTC was between 3-12 percent of 2005 levels by 2035. The commission's 8-4 vote for 15 percent followed a presentation (PDF) by Executive Director Steve Heminger and testimony from a diverse group of advocates who urged the MTC to adopt the stronger target. The dissenting commissioners -- James Spering, Bill Dodd, Bill Glover and Amy Worth -- represent Contra Costa, Napa and Solano counties.

Draft targets recommended by the California Air Resources Board. Sacramento's target is among the highest because the region is forecast to have the most growth. While most MPOs are required to recommend targets by June 30, Sacramento's MPO, SACOG, will not consider them until August.

In his presentation, Heminger told commissioners that combining an aggressive focused growth strategy (which would amount to a 12 percent reduction) with traffic diversion management programs such as telecommuting (a 3 percent reduction) and road pricing (8 percent) could probably bring the Bay Area toward an 18 percent target reduction by 2035. But he acknowledged that the region is less advanced in pursuing "road pricing, employer trip reduction, or 'smart driving' programs," which in many cities and counties are politically unpopular.

"It took us 20 years to get a congestion price on the Bay Bridge, so at that rate, god knows how long it will take to get the rest of the roads priced up," said Heminger. "That's tough politics. It's tough duty. It requires, in many cases, action by the Legislature, the Congress, whereas a lot of these land use strategies can be pursued on your own authority."

Using what the Natural Resources Defense Council has called a flawed model, Heminger calculated that a 25-cent fee per mile driven would be necessary to meet the MTC's 18 percent target. He estimated the fee would generate $14 billion annually, costing the average household about $4,500. The money could be used to fund more transit services and subsidize affordable housing, low-income tax credits and commuter costs.

Amanda Eaken of NRDC, who served on CARB's Regional Targets Advisory Committee along with Heminger, said the estimate was "significantly conservative" and that the agency wasn't properly calculating the impact of the costs of driving. She said such a fee, when considering that trip lengths have been repeatedly demonstrated to change with higher costs, would have a much more significant impact on reducing GHG emissions if the model allowed trip lengths to change. In an email, she explained it further:

Even a layperson can understand that if the model doesn't allow trip length to change as a result of higher cost, something is wrong. The estimate is further conservative because none of the modeled scenarios actually re-invested the $14 billion generated through the fee to estimate the GHG reduction potential of providing higher quality transit and other transportation options.

Eaken cited a figure from Elizabeth Deakin, a planning professor at UC Berkeley, who she said estimated that a 2. 5-cent VMT fee "would get you a four percent reduction. So, extrapolating that out, your 25-cent fee would get a 37 percent reduction. Now that's illustrative and there are certainly issues with that...but there are serious issues with this model."

Still, Eaken, in her blog post on The Switchboard, praised the MTC for its action. "This vote represents a significant improvement over MTC's starting place just a couple of months ago, when their adopted RTP (Regional Transportation Plan) would have increased GHG emissions by 2 percent per capita over 2005 levels."

Her testimony was followed by Cary Knecht of Climate Plan who said that a much more modest fee of four cents would be all that is necessary to achieve the reduction.

MTC graphic

One of the most compelling figures was a chart showing the difference in health care cost savings for each of the proposed targets, a point that was hammered home in public testimony by Julie West, the executive director of the Bay Area chapter of the American Lung Association.

"The difference between a 10 percent target and a 15 percent target is 40 million dollars in health care savings, lost productivity, school absences and premature mortality. So, a strong implementation of SB375 is a top priority for the public health community, as you can imagine."

She noted that the Cancer Society, the American Heart Association, the Northern California Council of Hospitals, the American Academy of Pediatrics, local health departments and every local medical association had signed a letter of support in favor of the stronger target. "We support a strong implementation of SB375 to combat the negative outcomes associated with communities designed for cars from asthma, to obesity, to traffic injuries and deaths."

Several speakers testified that the higher target will also benefit and impact low-income communities and communities of color, particularly those who have been moving away from urban centers.

"We think that low-income communities are gravely impacted moving farther and farther away from the cities and it costs more money for them to use the public transportation system and we'd like to see subsidies and some type of protected measures implemented to reduce the economic impact on the low-income communities as they're trying to get to work," said Azibuike Akaba, a policy associate overseeing the public health and equity impacts of SB375 for the Regional Asthma Management and Prevention program, or RAMP.

Parisa Fatehi of Public Advocates pointed out that her organization, along with 49 signatory organizations, including TransForm, sent a letter (PDF) to CARB's Chair, Mary Nichols, calling for the agency to consider six steps for a social equity approach to its target setting recommendations that "account for all races and social economic backgrounds."

"What does that mean? For example, increasing housing and transit affordability, improving what we call the jobs-housing fit, will mean that all workers can live closer to their jobs, vital services and grocery stores and health care, and thereby reduce their vehicle miles traveled," she told the commissioners.

Henry Hilken, the research and planning director for the Bay Area Air Quality Management District, said much of the hard work implementing SB 375 will involve reaching out to communities to build support for the kind of ambitious land use and pricing changes that will be required to set the Bay Area on a path toward more sustainable communities.

"We think it's going to be critical, in moving forward in the coming years, to really engage local governments, the public, businesses in a really frank discussion as to what those local land use decisions mean, what pricing decisions mean. Quite honestly, that's probably more important than the specific number that's set for the region."

Newsom spoke of leveraging the work happening at individual agencies and packaging them into a narrative for our public realm, versus scattershot, reactive decision making to appease those who yell the loudest.

"In the past, none of that really existed," Newsom said, brandishing the thick Better Streets Plan booklet. "We had communities that said enough's enough, we need you to focus on our streets and then someone with a louder voice came to the board of Supervisors or the Mayor's Office and said no, no, no, focus on our street."

"Now we have a deliberative, proactive plan, now we're codifying in the General Plan of San Francisco this vision," said Newsom. "This will anchor the future of this effort for decades and decades to come."

The Better Streets Plan, now in its final draft after years of community input and planning, envisions a transformational and sustainable future that brings San Francisco more in line with how it was designed to be before the automobile strangled many of its neighborhoods. 

In the plan's introduction, Newsom states: "The Better Streets Plan illustrates that the City and community working together can realize actual street changes that improve San Francisco's streetscapes - to make our streets more useable and attractive and universally accessible to all, to make them safer and more welcoming, to improve their ecological functioning, and to return them to their rightful place as the center of civic life in this wonderful city."

They are great words, but ironically, just as the Mayor was talking about how San Francisco will become the greenest city in America, news filtered out that a loud minority of Noe Valley residents, some of whom stormed a recent planning meeting in Tea Party fashion, had forced enough pressure to cause Supervisor and mayoral candidate Bevan Dufty to cave in and kill a proposed public plaza meant to convert the heart of the neighborhood into just the kind of vibrant social center Newsom talked about. 

At the Tea Party meeting, Andres Power, the Planning Department's tireless project manager for the Pavement to Parks program, was going to present the results of the SFMTA's traffic analysis of the trial closure of Noe Street at 24th Street, which the neighbors had requested. The anti-plaza crowd showed up early and took the front rows of seats so they could make a mockery of the meeting and disrupt the presentation.

Even this construct of focusing solely on the traffic belies the prejudice with which we view our streets, primarily for cars, secondarily for people and places.

Noe Valley is a good walking neighborhood, like most neighborhoods in San Francisco, but its sidewalks in the central commercial district on Noe Street don't do justice to the dense crowds of residents and visitors who bustle about on foot, and there are few public amenities to accommodate those who want to sit and take it all in. Killing the plaza to the cries of a handful of residents who managed to collect a few hundred signatures is an affront to The Better Streets Plan, and I fear the kind of neighborhood battles that will ensue until our electeds muster the political will to back up all their green talk with action.

We've made wonderful progress with the Pavement to Parks plazas and parklets, so why turn back now because of a vocal few? Isn't that exactly what Newsom said The Better Streets Plan was designed to prevent? There is talk of two new parklets on 24th Street between Sanchez and Noe in lieu of the plaza but why not do all three?

It's particularly dismaying, but not surprising, that Dufty, who indicated initial support for the plaza, buckled. If he wants to be mayor he should start touting the tenets of The Better Streets Plan and come up with his own ideas to get it done. Aspiring to make San Francisco a greater city for pedestrians, transit riders and bicyclists should not be a political liability.

It is true that if you build it they will come, and they will enjoy. The same complaints the Noe Valley few have voiced were trumpeted by neighbors on Hartford Street over the hill in the Castro, though that resistance vanished when the final product was constructed.

If our political leaders had the strength to move forward with the trial Noe Valley plaza, I suspect all of those worries would be cast aside and residents will demand more improvements over time. 

Among the ten elements that chart a course toward more livable streets, The Better Streets Plan calls for memorable neighborhoods that support diverse public life and healthy lifestyles that encourage "walking to daily and occasional destinations, minimizing pedestrian injuries and helping to decrease major chronic diseases related to air quality and pedestrian activity."

Considering our aging population, including those baby boomers and retirees who live in some of the old Victorians that make Noe Valley so charming, wouldn't the plaza be the perfect thing to help achieve this goal? Instead, worries about disrupting private auto traffic, one of the leading contributors to chronic diseases and obesity, trump the goals of making San Francisco a healthier and more livable city.

If Newsom and Dufty and all our local electeds want to keep talking about sustainability, they should work to embolden those visionaries in the advocacy community and within the Planning Department, the SFDPW, SFMTA and the SFCTA who are so anxious to implement innovative ideas, forged from community input and best practices from around the world.

Progress on the streets really boils down to political will.

Unfortunately, many of those advocates, city planners and community leaders who do the quiet work, spend their nights at community meetings, write the speeches and press releases -- and who often get little public credit -- frequently watch their ideas collect dust, or get shot down in one swoop by a few doubters, regardless of what city policy demands.

We cannot and should not let that happen to The Better Streets Plan.

Photo: SFBC

This interview originally appeared on the SFBC's blog.

San Francisco is experimenting with a number of innovative ideas to help create more public space to hang out and enjoy the city. New parklets and street plazas are sprouting on streets around the city, welcomed by local businesses and neighbors. The process of thinking about streets differently and making public space benefit everyone is only in its infancy in San Francisco, but like a healthy baby it’s growing fast right before our eyes.

At first guess, the Department of Public Works might not seem like the place to look for innovation, but San Francisco has a different approach. DPW’s website spells out a particularly environmental and community-minded mission: “The Department of Public Works is committed to making 
San Francisco a beautiful, livable and sustainable city. We design, build, operate, maintain, green, and improve the city’s infrastructure, public rights-of-way, and facilities with skill, pride, and responsiveness, in partnership with the San Francisco community.”

I had the opportunity to sit down with Ed Reiskin, the Director of the Department of Public Works recently, to talk with him a bit about the way he sees our city. The Department of Public Works has special relevance for people who regularly walk and bike as the keeper of our streets.

What is your experience bicycling in the city?

“As the guy who’s responsible for the city’s streets, there is no better way to get a flavor of the condition of the streets than to be on a bicycle. I think every Public Works Director should have to ride around their city on a bike. It’s a great way to know your roads.”

“I enjoy biking because it’s the best way to get around. Last week on my day to do kid drop-off I took my five-year-old on the back of my bike. And she was really excited: ‘can we do this every morning?’  But as we rode in, my wife and her sister (who works at the school) were also driving in. We all left at the same time—and the bike got there first on top of how pleasant it was.”

“I’ve also started to use bikes for meetings during the day—there’s a bike for use by employees at City Hall. After this I’m going down to our maintenance yard at Cesar Chavez and I’m going to bike.”

What do you see as the key to getting more people on bikes?

“My main job is to make the streets smooth so they’re safe. We work to get bike routes re-paved as soon as possible. I want to encourage anyone who’s seen something to call 311 or send a direct message to twitter: sf311. If you want to report a pothole, anything—we can’t fix it if we don’t know.”

“The implementation of the bike plan is really important and we support other departments on this. Separated lanes or demarcated lanes help, like the one on Market Street.”

“Perhaps, bike sharing, like in Paris—I wish I could run down the steps at City Hall and hop on a bike—not deal with stairs and locks and everything. And I wish I could bike to work more often but do it just one-way. When I’m doing multiple kid drop-offs on the bus in the morning, I could use a bike to get home at night, just one leg of the journey. So, more flexibility.”

“And we need more public realm improvements to make the city generally more welcoming for people so it’s less that the city’s built for cars and everyone else is an afterthought. We want to flip that around. The more this happens the more welcoming it will be for bikes. It will all slow traffic and improve safety for everyone—it’s indirect but that’s the long-term change.”

How can you continue to make public space a priority?

“When I sit and talk with Nat Ford (Head of Muni) and John Rahaim (Head of City Planning), we’re all coordinating well and we’re all interested in this stuff. The Board and the Mayor too. There’s critical mass (no pun intended). And the Castro plaza pilot and the parklet in front of Mojo Café: these are all attempts to create innovation on the fly and on the cheap leveraging the community’s expertise. And now by all accounts it works so now it’s a great candidate for other funding.

“My goal is to get the process right so it’s easier and simpler to do a lot more. I see these projects as part of a spectrum from block party permits to parklets to Sunday Streets to Pavement to Parks to public space to the Streetpark program—putting these all in a coherent framework and having the city processes to support them. Right now a lot of these are kind of one person or a small group busting their butts to make it happen. So to regularize that and to even re-think permitting it so people can easily request it, it’s not a hassle. That is the next step. Institutionalizing it.”

Are there other cities you look to for inspiration?

“New York is the inspiration for lots of this—Janette Sadik-Kahn is incredible. She gave a talk not too long ago and all the San Francisco department heads just said “there’s no reason we can’t do this.”  Sometimes we all think new things are difficult to get done in San Francisco. The best ammunition I have is, well—you think we can’t shut down fifty feet of 17^th street and Mayor Bloomberg has shut off Broadway in Midtown Manhattan?  I would love to be able to do more projects along these lines.”

“I was just in DC and that city has a ton more bike lanes than when I was last there. They’re also doing this incredible streetscape project where they’re putting in light rail along a pretty run down street in a low-income community — it’s going to be serving folks who generally don’t benefit from these improvements.”

How about repaving Market Street—what will happen there?

“Well it seems like everyone was kind of scared to touch Market because it’s such a challenge—a big job and disruptive to work on it. It needs to be repaired but it would be crazy not to improve it while we have it torn up too. I don’t know what the answer is but it has to be done right. Pulling together all the folks, Muni, fire stuff, sewer work—infrastructure but really we have to figure out how to serve everyone who uses it to commute, to move around the city. Nobody seems to think it works now: we’ve got to put it back together much improved.”

What are your markers of success in this job?

“A lot more people enjoying the public realm, that the infrastructure is solid and that the city’s neglect of the infrastructure over the past many years is turned around. Better coordination of all of the work and projects: departments, commissions. But it all comes back to the public realm.”

(Editor's note: This is Part 3 in a 3-part series on the Bay Area watershed. In Part 1, we examined a radical new daylighting proposal in Berkeley; and in Part 2, we looked at the changes that SF streets may face under a bold plan by the Public Utilities Commission.)

Phalen Creek in St. Paul, MN

Early daylighting projects like the Napa River, Strawberry Creek, and Codornices Creek formed the basis for a worldwide shift in the possibilities presented by urban watersheds. Now, a series of best-practices has begun to emerge from the ever-growing number of daylighted streams around the world, which could inform the proposed transformations of creeks here in San Francisco.

The SF Public Utilities Commission is now studying the feasibility of daylighting Yosemite Creek, Islais Creek, and Stanley Creek. While their research is underway, Streetsblog decided to take a closer look at successful urban water projects around the world from which planners might draw inspiration.

Emerging Best-Practices

The Las Vegas Wash

At one time, the standard treatment was to place streams into culverts underground; now, aquatic restoration is viewed as a top priority. The EPA's "Principles for the Ecological Restoration of Aquatic Resources" describes federal priorities for restoring wetlands. The EPA calls for an increase in wetland area of of 100,000 acres per year, and provides municipalities with 17 guidelines, including "Address ongoing causes of degradation," "Design for self-sufficiency," "Use natural fixes," and "Focus on feasibility."

On a local level, some cities have made a similar effort to document the correct treatment of wetlands. The Seattle Public Utilities Commission provides citizens with a handbook for caring for natural drainage systems, making it easy for property owners to manage the Natural Drainage Systems near their homes.

"The science is pretty well-established at this point," said Mark Frey, a biologist working for the Presidio. Streetsblog spoke to him this week about the park's high-profile efforts to restore areas such as El Polin Spring, Thompson Reach, and the lesser-known Dragonfly Creek. As biologists continue to monitor and study urban waterways, there's a growing confidence in our ability to manage those projects.

Turning Sewers into Show-Stoppers

Some daylighting projects encounter success beyond what their designers could have hoped for.

Cheonggyechun in South Korea is the latest to dazzle observers. A prominent city feature for hundreds of years, it had become an open sewer by the mid-20th century and was buried. But this decade, a $384 million project cleaned the river, removed vehicular traffic, and established habitats along its shores. The revitalized waterway has become a destination not only for humans (90,000 visitors per day), but for fish species (which increased from 4 to 25), bird species (from 6 to 36), and insect species (from 15 to 192).

El Polin flows from a historic weir in the Presidio

Elsewhere in the park, the grasslands above El Polin Loop are being cleaned and replanted. A tributary that currently "short-circuits" the land in a plastic pipe will eventually flow freely through the trees. Dragonfly Creek, flowing near the Pet Cemetery beneath Doyle Drive, will see extensive rehabilitation as part of Caltrans' reconstruction of the highway.

The Presidio's location within San Francisco provides a unique opportunity for collaboration. "As an agency, we don't work with the city," the Presidio's Mark Frey told Streetsblog, "But as individuals, we visit the parks," including Glen Canyon Park and the wetland work at Lake Merced. When it came time to re-plant the native Islay Cherry in the Presidio, biologists ventured over to Bayview Hill to harvest seeds.

Providence's Waterfire

A decade of planning, fundraising, and construction began in the 1980s. By the time it was completed in 1996, the area was unrecognizable: railroad tracks and automobile thoroughfares were gone, replaced by a massive riverwalk. Now, rather than parking lots, the area features gondola rides and a late-night bonfire art installation on the river that has drawn millions.

Riverwalks have proven to be popular amenities in cities across the country, although few have required a daylighting project as extensive as Providence's. The Reno Riverwalk features kayaking on the Truckee River, and hosts an annual festival. In San Antonio, a $384.5 million project will revitalize 13 miles of river. And 1,900 feet of the Sawmill River in Yonkers, buried for 100 years, could be daylighted soon as part of the city's $1.5 billion revitalization project.

Blending in to the Landscape

Elsewhere, urban creek projects have sought a lower profile. They don't have to be the landscaping centerpiece of a city to make an important contribution.

Los Angeles has the lowest per-capita park space of any US city -- only 4% of the land is park. (San Francisco is more than twice that, at 9%.) In the middle of the city, plans are underway to restore Compton Creek, turning it from a polluted flood-control channel into a natural habitat. Despite several setbacks, watershed research continues.

A proposal for Vancouver's Still Creek

Seattle has also caught the daylighting bug, with several significant projects. Over six hundred feet of Ravenna Creek were daylighted in 1996 at a cost of under $2 million, restoring land that had been filled in during highway construction.

A decade later, Seattle's Madrona Creek was revitalized for $805,000 with bridges, ponds, cascades, and weirs, as well as human amenities like observation decks and trails. It's since become a habitat for the endangered chinook salmon.

Seattle's Thornton Creek

Seattle's Thornton Creek was perhaps the most difficult undertaking, requiring that environmentalists take the city to court. Seattle had initially claimed that the creek simply didn't exist; but in 2004, the city reversed course, with a plan to restore the creek. Credit for the Thorton Creek daylighting goes to persistent neighbors who fought for years on the water's behalf; one community leader recalls gatherings at which cardboard models of the proposed landscaping was built on a kitchen table, with children fabricating trees for the makeshift diorama.

At the time, the site was a paved-over lot, slated to become a shopping mall and parking garage. Thanks to activists -- and $6.85 million in funding -- it is now a transit-oriented mixed-use development, featuring a bioswale capable of treating stormwater through natural processes before releasing it downstream.

A Model for San Francisco

The Nedelbach in Zurich

Elsewhere in the city, the Wolfgrimbach incorporates runoff from local homes and the Frisenbergbach is used by residents for swimming. Since daylighting began in 1988, streams have been incorporated into children's playgrounds, along city streets, and though residential developments.

Although Zurich provides inspiration for San Francisco's future, it's far from the only source. From Napa to South Korea to Providence, imaginative new ideas have turned urban creeks from an unhygienic nuisance into a critical component of cities' watershed and of sustainable development. All that's required to imagine similar transformations here in SF is a willingness to acknowledge a landscape that predates our arrival -- a landscape that has owned the hills and valleys of our city for thousands of years.

One of the proposed designs for Center Street in Berkeley, by Ecocity Builders

(Editor's note: This is Part 1 in a 3-part series on the Bay Area watershed)

The proposal to convert Center Street in Berkeley from an asphalt thoroughfare to a park-like promenade -- revealing a long-hidden underground creek -- is the latest twist in the interesting and often-controversial story of the Bay Area's heavily-modified waterways.

The Center Street project is a striking reversal of a century-old trend towards burying Berkeley's creeks below ground. It's also an example of the relatively new practice of "daylighting" forgotten waterways, a trend said to have been unintentionally sparked forty years ago in nearby Napa.

"In the 70s, there was the redevelopment," Barry Martin, Napa's Public Information Officer explained to Streetsblog. "and a number of buildings were taken down. The creek ran underneath some structures, so as they were designing this urban renewal project, [daylighting] was part of that."

"I don't think there was any environmental thinking going on at that time," he added.

The Napa River

Uncovering the waterway didn't fix Napa's watershed problems, either.

Forty years after its restoration began, Napa still struggles with the health of the Napa River: Frequent flooding plagued the city during the past decades, and engineers are only now getting the water flow under control, in part thanks to tactics similar to those employed by the settlers of 200 years ago.

In the 1800s, residents recognized that the east side of the river's oxbow was too wet to use in winter, and set aside the land as a summer fairground. An amphitheater now sits on the land, but there's more to the park than meets the eye: It serves as a buffer during floods, redirecting overflow away from more vulnerable areas.

"You might go 4 years and never see a drop of water," Martin explained, "but when it's needed, it'll provide the capacity and move the water downstream into the wetland areas."

He added, "The Army Corps of Engineers uses us as an example of a new way of thinking about flood control."

And whether or not Napa's example meets the definitions currently used for daylighting, the re-engineering of the Napa River changed the way people thought about urban waterways in the Bay Area. 

Berkeley's History of Daylighting

Historically, Berkeley's land has been comprised largely of sediment pushed up along the Hayward Fault. Gradually, as many as a dozen streams carved their way from the Berkeley Hills into marshes along the bay.

In the late 1800s, after years of dumping sewage into those streams, Berkeley had a sanitation problem: Not only did the streams stink, they bred disease. And beyond the difficulties of sanitation, the water posed an obstacle to development, since developers couldn't build on a marsh.

So Berkeley built underground passages for the water, carrying it from its tributaries in the hills to outlets near the waterfront. During this time, many of Berkeley's streams -- a million years in the making -- were hidden from public view. Placed out of sight in the early 1900s, they were largely out of mind.

Advocates like Steve Donnelly like to point to Strawberry Creek as one of Berkeley's earliest daylighting experiments. Completed in 1984 at a cost of about $50,000, a 200-foot section of the creek was removed from a culvert beneath an empty lot and transformed into the centerpiece of the park. (The park cost an additional $530,000 on top of the creek construction.)

A class trip to Codornices Creek

The impact of that transformation has been significant. According to a study by the Rocky Mountain Institute, nearly 30 years after the daylighting, property values in the area around Strawberry Creek Park have increased, crime has decreased, and an empty warehouse has been converted to offices and a bakery.

Strawberry's success was followed in 1993 with the daylighting of Codornices Creek. This time, the city daylighted 400 feet of the creek between 8th and 9th Streets on the border of Berkeley and Albany, at a cost of $33,000. Nearly four hundred volunteers helped to restore the original meander of the water -- an important factor in regulating speed and controlling floods -- and the area saw a gradual increase in the population of species like crayfish, damselflies, garter snakes, mallards, egrets, and gophers.

"A 'sink' is where more animals die than are produced," explained Susan Schwartz, President of Friends of the Five Creeks, which protects and restores East Bay watersheds. Daylighting projects aren't necessarily sinks, she explained, but the possibility exists that a project undertaken for ecological reasons might wind up taking an unexpected toll on the environment.

Center Street Daylighting Could Be Berkeley's Crown Jewel

One of the champions of the Codornices Creek daylighting in 1993 was Bay Area urban planner Richard Register. He's also one of the primary supporters of the most recent push to transform Berkeley's Center Street.

The plan, which was recently endorsed by the Berkeley City Council, would create one of the most visible daylighting projects in the country on what is now a rather plain two-way street. Starting at the Berkeley BART station and stretching up to the UC Berkeley campus, Center Street would be transformed from its present-day asphalt into a pedestrian destination. And it would continue the work that began in the 80s: the body of water beneath Center Street is none other than Strawberry Creek, a section just upstream from the city's first major daylighting project.

"I think it's absolutely fantastic that Richard Register has fought for this," Susan Schwartz told Streetsblog, though she added that because the Center Street proposal is such a tiny, pedestrian-focused section of the creek, "it's not going to make any significant difference to the watershed." As such, Friends of the Five Creeks has not taken a position on the project.

Kristen Quay, Restoration Coordinator at the Urban Creeks Council, agreed that the Center Street proposal is more of a human amenity than a comprehensive daylighting. "The constraints are pretty extreme," she told Streetsblog. "The vehicular access and the location of the site make it not as, well, creek-like."

Creek daylighting can be controversial, unpredictable, and potentially dangerous. For example, in areas near the bay that were formerly industrial, additional groundwater could potentially stir up toxic pollutants.

But when done carefully, daylighting can bring multiple ecological benefits to a neighborhood. Historically, straight, deep culverts are particularly prone to flooding during storms; they're prone to earthquake damage and in combined sewage systems like San Francisco's, they place additional strain on water treatment plants.

In contrast, daylighting can increase habitat for wildlife, ease monitoring and treatment of water quality, and contribute to human recreation, education, and opportunities for sustainable development.

"Stream restoration is neighborhood restoration," explains Ann Riley of the Waterways Restoration Institute in "Urban Stream Restoration."

Significant portions of Strawberry Creek remain enclosed within culverts.

Probably not.

In the hundred or so years that the creek has been hidden below ground, there's been a lot of development up on the surface. Many private homes sit atop the underground culvert. Obtaining that land would be a nearly impossible.

Sometimes, a daylighting project will be fortunate enough to come along at just the right time and in just the right place. In 1992, Thousand Oaks Elementary School began to seriously consider daylighting Blackberry Creek. At the time, Blackberry ran directly underneath the school property and was prone to frequent floods. Once the plan to daylight was approved, it cost $144,000 to remove a dilapidated playground and restore 200 feet of creek to the surface. Now fifteen years later, it's a treasured feature of the school.

The Blackberry Creek project required years of work, fund-raising, and political campaigning. A similar project along Schoolhouse Creek was a massive undertaking. Future projects will be even more challenging.

The Future of Daylighting in the Bay Area and Beyond

Property acquisition aside, there are numerous other obstacles to daylighting. Determining the historic meander of the stream may be impossible; fully-restored creeks require significant space along their banks for sloping and vegetation; water can attract less-desirable animals such as wild rats and mosquitoes; and there are inevitable conflicts over public access to the water.

But for all of those challenges, a little bit of daylighting can go a long way. "The thing about riparian corridors," the Urban Creek Council's Kristen Quay said, "is they provide an inordinate amount of benefits to wildlife. Providing any habitat at all is worth a lot, it's certainly worth the average cost of these projects. Our more mobile species like birds and insects -- especially bees -- can reach these projects very easily and take advantage of their benefits."

Although each project is radically different, dozens of cities all around the world have managed to successfully rethink their treatment of creeks, streams, and lakes.

In future installments in this series, we'll be taking a closer look at those cities' plans. They include replacing the widest bridge in the U.S. with a river of floating bonfires, the creation of a kayaking facility in the middle of downtown Reno, and the possibility of unearthing buried streams in San Francisco.

People's Park in Berkeley

Let's hope that doesn't take another million years.

San Franciscans, like residents of most big cities, are in a continuous process of reshaping public spaces. There are pilot programs for new ways to use Market Street, for pocket parks in areas covered with underutilized asphalt, for Sunday Streets closures, for opening sidewalks to “green sewers,” and even some tentative efforts to launch more public art and/or urban agriculture in empty lots. All of these experiments are welcome departures from the long-simmering biases favoring the total unquestioned domination of private automobiles over public space.

Behind most of the experiments are deeper ideas of an improved life, what some people are quick to dismiss as “utopian.” The anti-utopians apparently consider change impractical or threatening, or have accepted the close-minded meme of the past few decades that any kind of “social engineering,” or public planning to improve human interaction, is inherently totalitarian. This mentality is rooted in a presumption that the way things are is always good enough, or that even if they aren’t, humans are so inherently corrupt or power-mad that any effort to improve things can only make it worse. The dark chapters of mid-20th century totalitarianism (now being regularly conflated to the present by Murdoch’s pompous blowhards) are somehow supposed to be examples of why trying to make life better is impossible. The American Way of Life, with all its poverty, racism, militaristic imperialism, shallow materialism, et al, is somehow the best we can hope for, and anyone who doesn’t accept that at face value is at best a dupe of some future dictator.

For those of us concerned with transit planning, or urban planning more broadly, this politico-cultural baggage comes with the territory. It shapes the discussion before it starts, and so a lot of folks have learned to think small, so as not to fan the flames of fear.

Paul and Percival Goodman series of plans for cities presented in their 1947 book "Communitas" propose a libertarian-yet-socialistic urbanism, focused on both efficiency and individual choice. "The Community with the Elimination of the Difference Between Production and Consumption" presents a hexagon-shaped plan with multi-use residential, commercial, public and industrial sector in the city center, surrounded by a ring of "diversified farms." From "49 Cities" exhibit at SPUR.

The center of this city is highly dense and irregular. The proximity of the urban core to the farms and countryside allows for easy access from one to the other, and the farms are valued for their educational and aesthetic value in addition to their productive use.

Curiously, SPUR is hosting an exhibit right now called “49 Cities” in which a variety of utopian urban plans are revisited, from the works of Le Corbusier to Owenite cooperative colonies, to Levittown and Brasilia, and even a Buckminster Fuller plan to put a giant Dome over midtown Manhattan. One curiosity of the exhibit is its organization of a “Fear Timeline” which plots various utopian urban visions over a four-century long timeline. Clustered largely in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, most of the visions were concocted to address the dominant “fears” of their era, whether it be military invasion by a foreign army, securing internal security against uprising masses, ensuring access to water or food, controlling disease, etc.

Given the overarching theme of utopia, I expected the exhibit to be more inspiring than it is. The authors of this study have chosen to flatten out the particularities of human culture, political movements, passion and visionary excitement, to instead present the studies as composites of specific statistical comparisons. The end result is a series of odd two-dimensional diagrams (like the one above) which allow plans from across time and space to be compared on total land areas, total housing, distribution of land-uses, population, green spaces in its variations, water use, etc.

Almost as an antidote to this numbing exhibit, Matt Hern came to town recently and gave a few talks. I caught him at the Studio for Urban Projects, an exciting new venue in the Mission on 17th Street near Guerrero. Hern is from Vancouver and has a new book out called Common Ground in a Liquid City: Essays in Defense of an Urban Future. I haven’t had a chance to read it all yet, but his presentation was quite a refreshing alternative to the kind of dry, bureaucratic approaches to which most urban planners tend to succumb. Hern is a fully accredited Urban Studies Ph.D., but standing in front of us in a white t-shirt and jeans, his head shaved, talking about planting community gardens in his East Vancouver neighborhood, and defending the right of the local junkies to hang out in the neighborhood park, he came across as the neighbor you wish you had. (He has small children too, and still says he’d rather have the drug dealing going on in the open in the middle of the park than being busted and pushed into the alleys and doorways of the surrounding neighborhood. That way he can see it and work around it.)

His book refers back to Vancouver, but it’s written from a number of other locales around the world. He has chapters from Thessaloniki, Greece, Istanbul, Turkey, New York City, Diyarbakir, Kurdistan, Portland, Oregon, and others. He explained to us that however you think about your own city, once you go elsewhere, it always develops in interesting ways. The comparisons one can make when far from home are often surprising. Suddenly you notice a sensible bus shelter, or an open streetside marketplace, and realize that an analogous locale in your home city could learn a lot from this new perspective.

Hern is concerned with gentrification, like most of us that live in cities that are rapidly evicting long-time populations of poor and working class people. San Francisco is a quintessential example of this process. Here in the Mission where I live, the process of turning into a mini-Greenwich Village proceeds unabated. You wouldn’t know there’s an economic crisis going on here by glancing in to the many new, crowded, upscale restaurants.

As Hern says:

The market puts us in Faustian bargain: almost any attempts to beautify, improve, develop, or embolden a community inevitably means it will price its most vulnerable/valuable citizens out and undermine all that good work. Capitalism values selfishness and self-interest above all. Progressive planning and social policy try to mitigate this, but are always behind the curve and at a pronounced disadvantage… Cities CAN do something other than smooth the way for capital and/or clean up its messes. It is possible to articulate and develop genuinely democratic and inclusive strategies that are not self-defeating, that don’t reduce “community” to a commodity. There have to be ways to imagine sustainable community development that doesn’t price people out. I think we can carve huge areas out of this economy for non-market life.

I agree. The specific remedy for the housing crisis that is pricing ever more people out of life in San Francisco is the limited equity co-op based on a land trust. We have functioning co-ops here in town, the most forward looking being the San Francisco Community Land Trust. They’ve already managed to acquire one building on Columbus in North Beach where the former elderly Chinese tenants are now owners, paying only slightly more than they used to pay in rent. Removing properties from the market in perpetuity should be the goal of an aggressive social capital fund under democratic public control -- not to make a revolution, but to start the process of wresting our lives from the vicissitudes of raw capitalism when it comes to home, community, and shelter.

Housing is only a small but important part of this larger agenda of radical change. To make San Francisco a city that connects with the needs of its residents requires a very different political structure and very different forms of power to emerge, ones that will allow for a wholly new kind of public planning to take place. The kind of transition to a low-energy, low-water, high quality-of-life future that we must begin to make will depend on a great deal of mutual aid and solidarity. Instead of building infrastructure that could facilitate a more robust common life, this city’s mayors have consistently put the interests of wealthy property owners and large corporations ahead of its working and middle class residents. The quasi-progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors since 2000 has done little to reverse this deep bias in city politics.

Utopian thinking is the only realistic way forward at this point. Leaving our fate in the hands of PG&E, Bechtel, Chevron, and the rest of that lot is to ensure our inability to face a future fraught with radical change.

Matt Hern sums it up nicely:

An ecological and an ethical city is one and the same thing—we can’t have a “green” city without reimagining our social institutions. And that can’t be made to happen by relying on politicians or planners or developers. They can’t lead, they have to get out of the way and allow the neighborhoods, communities, public spaces, and common spaces that make a great city to become the ongoing expression of a constant series of choices made by everyday citizens.

Fighting for our common spaces, our right to what we already DO have, is underway. This Saturday, March 27, from 10-5 all over town, take to the sidewalks. Sidewalks are for people! Use them! Many of us will gather at Castro and Market at 4 pm to dramatize our opposition to a mayor and police chief (and their political supporters) bent on destroying the fabric of San Francisco. Check it out online at www.standagainstsitlie.org.

As San Francisco moves closer to a decision on a new sit-lie ordinance that proponents say would facilitate the SFPD's clearing of unsavory elements off of sidewalks in neighborhoods like the Haight, resistance is building, and several organizers have called for a day of sidewalk action on Saturday March 27, from 10 am to 5 pm. I sat down recently with Nate Miller, one of the people who decided that they weren’t going to watch the City succumb to yet another pandering campaign of fear mongering without standing up to say no.

The sit-lie campaign has been orchestrated from behind the scenes for the past few months, trying to appear as a spontaneous grassroots effort by residents of the Haight-Ashbury. But as Miller tells it, there is strong evidence of coordination between “grassroots activists,” the Chronicle’s resident suburban attack dog C.W. Nevius, Mayor Newsom and Chief of Police Gascon. Together, they are using the decades-long presence of impoverished and annoying “gutter punks” on Haight Street to push a law criminalizing anyone who is sitting or lying on a sidewalk anywhere in San Francisco. Gabriel Haaland wrote an intelligent editorial in last week's Bay Guardian calling for a new approach to actual conflicts (greatly exaggerated in this case), rather than expanding the definition of so-called criminal behavior.

Here’s Nate in his own words: 

I grew up in San Francisco and lived here my whole life. For the past few months the Chronicle has been publishing really inflammatory articles talking about “thugs and bullies” in the Haight who are making it a living hell for residents, shoppers, and business people to exist there. The police have been talking about how this is a grassroots effort of the neighborhood, but the timing shows that is false. First the Chronicle starts drumming up all this stuff. Then they have the Mayor walk down the street when he’s supposedly undecided about this. He walks down the street with his baby, and supposedly sees a man sitting on the sidewalk smoking crack. Obviously it’s already illegal to smoke crack (and you can do it standing up!). He uses this to announce that we need to make it illegal to have people sitting on the sidewalk. Two days later he introduces legislation to the Board of Supervisors, already vetted by the City Attorney. He proposes two separate pieces of legislation. If you do anything in politics, you know that’s impossible [to get this done so quickly]. The Mayor must have been working on this since a long time ago.

The same day the Chamber of Commerce/Committee on Jobs does a poll that they claim shows there’s 71% support for a law outlawing sitting on the sidewalks. The question that they asked was not simply if you support a law that will make it illegal to sit or lie down on a sidewalk. It asked if you support a law that would arrest people who were harassing you. I’d support a law like that! I don’t want to be harassed. There are already laws against that. There’re laws against aggressive panhandling, against panhandling, against blocking the sidewalk, against smoking crack.

They say this is “a tool.” Supposedly “the police will use their discretion to use it appropriately.” Public Defender Jeff Adachi pointed out in a hearing that there were a lot of people that could be subjected to this law—tourists sitting on their luggage, students sitting on a sidewalk, homeless people—and all these people would be subject to $100 fine the first time, while repeat offenders could do 30 days in jail. The Chronicle’s Nevius said “that’s ridiculous, the cops would never arrest a tourist for sitting on their bag,” but the law states that it would be illegal to do that.

The argument made by Nevius and other Sit-Lie Law supporters is that the police can be trusted to implement this sweeping legal mandate in a reasonable manner. But the law defines a normal behavior, sitting on a sidewalk, as a crime!

Here’s Nate again:

Obviously the law will be used against the most vulnerable people. It’s a biological fact that some time during the day you’re going to need to rest. If you don’t have a home to do that in and you’re homeless you’ll have to sit on the sidewalk. I like sitting on the sidewalk! I just went to Vietnam and Cambodia to experience the vibrant, amazing things that go on in the streets. People are out there all day and it’s just a much better feeling. I feel a lot safer with a lot of people on the streets.

I think it’s a two-pronged approach. One is to scare people when they’re on Haight Street—just go shopping, minimize engagement with other people … (forget about people watching or anything else). This is also a serious effort by the Chamber of Commerce and conservative politicians to create a wedge issue for the November elections. That’s already playing out. You see people like Scott Weiner who is running for Supervisor in the Castro campaigning by saying “I support Sit and Lie because I care about public safety.” He can now run, playing to people’s fears that have been created by the Chronicle through all this fabrication, and make them feel safe.

There’s a lot of routes you can go besides this idea of “pre-crime,” that you can just make totally normal behavior illegal and then give the cops the discretion to punish people based on how they look or anything. Because if they’re not doing anything else illegal you are just arresting someone for sitting on the ground.

A few other people started talking about the broader implications of this law, that it is going to make it illegal to sit anywhere on the sidewalk. The first response was a very defensive one: hey, we’re under attack. But then we started talking about what we could do with this. What kind of conversations can we have?

Dangerous use of public space! Let's do it! (Photo: Kurt Bank)

Public space is important. On one hand there’s all these greening initiatives going on, but at the same time we’re trying to make it illegal to exist in public space, setting a really horrible precedent. We thought about Park(ing) Days, where people voluntarily occupy parking places and make them parks for a day, and people really enjoy it. We thought, why don’t we bring that on to the sidewalks for a day? We need to be encouraging more people to enjoy public space, to talk to each other, enjoying our vibrant and exciting city. Through talking about that we decided we were going to reach out to people who were interested in that. The basic idea is that anyone can bring out a table, or lawn chairs, or a mat, and do whatever you want, because it’s completely normal.

Bring yourselves and anything you like out to the street, and just relax. You can do whatever you want, argue with your family, party with your friends, make coffee for people. Some people are reclaiming the tea party idea and having a huge tea party. There’s going to be all kinds of fun things for people to go and see and engage with. We want people to contact us through the website we’re developing, or FB or email. Send us a location, a street corner where you will be situated. What time you’re going to be there, and a couple of sentences about what you think you’ll be doing. Afterward, we’re asking everyone to document it with a photo or a video, even a cellphone picture, and send it back to us. We’re creating a Google Map and hopefully there will be dozens or hundreds of locations where people were doing things. It will be a lot more cohesive after that.

Later on Saturday, March 27, everyone is going to Market and Castro to the new plaza there. By going there we want to connect to a bit of local history. In the 1970s Castro, they passed a similar law to target hippies that were laying around smoking pot or staring at the wall on acid or whatever, but what they really used it for was to target gay men who were flocking to the city to see this exciting new scene that was growing. There was this group called the Castro 14, guys who got put in jail for sitting on the streets. Harvey Milk was a huge opponent of this, and it eventually got repealed after he died because it was totally ridiculous and unfair and it was destroying part of the culture of the Castro.

It’s important that people contact us because we want to provide them with some basic infrastructure to make it a bit more focus and pointed. It’s unusual to do this kind of street activism when something is just being voted on at the Board of Supervisors. It’s going to go on the ballot this November regardless of how it’s voted on by the Board. We have this problem with Ross Mirikarimi and David Chiu who are basically bending to political pressure. They haven’t committed either way, but we’re going to send documents to everyone who contacts us with fact sheets and contact information to organize our opposition. Write us at info@standagainstsitlie.org and you’ll be getting good information, not spam, from us.

Another activity on the way to criminalization? (Photo: Kurt Bank)

Click to enlarge. Bird’s-eye view of the hairball shows how much real estate it takes up and how it creates a daunting barrier between neighborhoods. Photo: mike.teczno.com.

Now, city officials are teaming up with residents to plan a redesign of the aging structure that could encourage neighbors to visit one another on foot and by bicycle. A Planning Department award, announced in September, will fund a study of the maze to tap into the ideas of locals who have to live with it. As the freeway approaches the end of its natural life, neighbors fear that without an alternative plan, Caltrans will simply replace the old freeway with basically the same design.

Potrero was reconfigured in 2005, from six car lanes to four, with new left-turn pockets, bike lanes, and crosswalk enhancements. Bayshore and eastern Cesar Chavez are both slated to be restriped with bike lanes as part of the citywide bike plan. Western Cesar Chavez has inspired an ambitious Planning Department redesign that will create a landscaped median and changes similar to those on Potrero. All four roadways, however, feed into the notorious churning maze, leaving cyclists and pedestrians dashing across on and off-ramps and skulking along dark, threatening pathways.

The hairball wasn't always so forbidding. Bonnie Ora Sherk, president and founding director of Crossroads Community (The Farm), recalls holding musical offerings, poetry readings, art installations, dance performances, and public gatherings there. She planted lush gardens with local school children in the 1970s in the belly of the maze, the site under which the Islais, Precita, and Serpentine Creeks converge. Crossroads Community was so named by Sherk to be a place for people from the four surrounding communities to come together where the freeway had severed them.

Adjacent to the freeway interchange were multiple gardens on state and private land. In the complex of The Farm buildings was The Raw Egg Animal Theater, the indoor/outdoor home of the farm animals who lived at The Farm and a spectacular school-without-walls for all ages. The Farm, including the interchange, was one of the first alternative art spaces in the country and also a thriving multicultural community environmental education center. It inspired Potrero del Sol Park.

"We have an excellent opportunity now to transform the current dilapidated, unsafe, and scary maze into a healthy place for people, other species, and even cars," Sherk said. "It can reconnect people to the currently hidden ecological resources so prevalent at the site."

An art installation tucked in the freeway maze last summer featured hidden objects, paintings, and these hand-sewn custom pink cushions on the bleak Bayshore/Potrero connector. By Cameron Kelly. Photo by Carrie Galles.

The maze, opened in 1974, was intended to connect with the proposed Army Street (old name of Cesar Chavez) freeway to the Southern Crossing Bridge. The freeway revolt stopped that project, but the design of the interchange still reflects the original intention, making it much more complicated and extensive than is necessary.

The Planning Department study funding comes from a pot of Caltrans environmental justice grants. Other similar grants address mobility issues on Indian reservations and low-income communities in small towns and cities throughout the state. The Cesar Chavez/hairball funding amounts to $250,000. Another grant of $247,050 funds environmental reviews for Eastern Neighborhoods transportation projects. Andres Power of the Planning Department expects community meetings to begin in spring 2010.

"We were all very excited to hear that the city had been awarded this important grant from Caltrans," he said. "The community and various agencies have been working tirelessly on a redesign for Cesar Chavez Street west of the hairball, but we always knew that a design that stopped at the freeway was not the best we could do. With these Caltrans funds, we'll be able to think about connections through the hairball for people, cyclists, and vehicles all the way to the Bay."

Homeless people have long found refuge under the freeway ramps, and advocates for a better hairball must grapple with the question of how a redesign would affect these residents. The presence of their encampments in the maze has already led to some false solutions. Just sweeping the area of campers won't make it more welcoming. A completely deserted dark walkway is hardly more inviting than a dark walkway lined with shopping carts and their owners.

Proposals that focus on removing homeless people also play into divisions between some neighbors who may demonize poor people and others who resent any changes that smack of gentrification. The issue of what to do with a wide swath of dead space hostile to non-motorized travelers gets lost.

The problem isn't the homeless encampment. It's the lack of foot traffic and the secluded nature of the pathways, which make walking or cycling through feel creepy and unsafe, especially after dark. Opening up the passages and encouraging their use for people traveling from one neighborhood to another would mean that, at last, you can get there from here.