Streetsblog San Francisco

One of the themes of the financial and economic crisis we’ve faced
over the past two years is that government, pressed into responding to
serious economic pain, has often found itself supporting the activities
that got us into this mess in the first place.

Irresponsible
behavior by banks led them to the brink of collapse — a collapse which
would have sent the global economy into a terrifying period of decline
– and so the government stepped in to prevent bank failures (after
learning a lesson from the dreadful experiment with Lehman). But these
interventions have put banks in a situation where they stand to gain
enormously from taking large and dangerous financial bets.

Similarly, government policies such as low gas tax rates and
import protections on light trucks encouraged the development of a
bloated domestic auto industry focused on the production of inefficient
SUVs.

When high oil prices and deep recession then
threatened to push General Motors and Chrysler into bankruptcy, leading
to hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, the government felt it had no
choice but to step in to keep the companies afloat.

Now the
government owns large stakes in companies that will only profit if the
American public goes car-buying crazy over the next few years.

The
list goes on. The economic crisis that currently afflicts us has made
it clearer than ever that we need to change the way we do many things,
but because the economy is in such difficult shape, it is hard to
pursue anything other than policies designed to keep the economic
engine from stalling out completely. Big transitions must wait for
later.

Can the same be said for sprawling urban development?
Have government interventions essentially bailed out the very places
that proved most vulnerable amid oil shocks and housing busts?

Read more…

San Francisco is renowned for the beauty of its its Victorian homes almost as much as its rugged seaside setting. But with most buildings in the city, the architectural grace starts at the second level. For pedestrians walking down the street, seeing buildings the way most people actually see them, the view is not always so pretty. The main culprits, as the photo above illustrates, are garages and curb cuts.

As we've written about before, curb cuts cost the city dearly in both meter revenue and public parking spaces, and a comprehensive study by Mary Brown showed that barely half of all garages in the Mission District are even used for parking: 49 percent are used for storage. Preservationists have been up in arms about the impact garage additions have on historic homes, pushing to institute stricter requirements for moving additions through the planning approval process. At the same time, most new homes in San Francisco are still required to be built with garages.

Perhaps the greatest cost, however, is not the sum of individual architectural maulings, but the collective impact of an endless garagescape on the pedestrian realm. Buildings new and old in San Francisco are often not designed with the view from the sidewalk in mind, and, collectively, the result is a city of houses best viewed from afar. Perhaps most emblematic of this is the famous "painted ladies" of Steiner Street on Alamo Square, which are nearly always photographed with a row of delicately-placed trees obscuring their garage doors. Walking down Steiner, the immediate view of each house is dominated by their gaping garage cuts more than what is stacked above.

As a consequence, San Francisco's sidewalks often feel hostile to pedestrians even when there aren't any automobiles zipping past. Massive, faceless garage doors, sunken driveway entrances, and neglected remnants of front gardens are the norm.

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The crowded sidewalks on 18th Street between Dolores and Guerrero in the Mission are usually packed with foodies inching their way into renowned eateries like Tartine Bakery and Cafe or Delfina Pizzeria and Restaurant. Couple that with a high volume of bikes and a scarcity of bike racks and the block screams for improvements to benefit the public realm. 

"I think everyone looks at 18th Street as this great pedestrian-oriented street with these really amazing businesses on it where the sidewalks are too narrow and too crowded," said Tom Radulovich, a neighborhood denizen and Executive Director of Livable City, who is working with other advocates and merchants to make the block near Dolores Park more pedestrian and bicycle friendly.

"You see so many more people walking or bicycling through the neighborhood than driving, and a lot of them are locals."

As a first step, the MTA is considering -- and is likely to approve -- eliminating the 7-9 a.m. tow-away zone on the south side of 18th Street eastbound between Dolores and Treat, which would help calm speeding automobile traffic during peak morning hours, and hopefully reduce the amount of collisions in the area.

On a sunny Friday afternoon, while gathering interviews for this story, I witnessed a car collision on Guerrero at 18th, followed by a chorus of "whoas" from Tartine patrons. No one was hurt, but a Tartine employee said she's witnessed or heard at least six collisions in the last year.

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Paved roads are a fact of life in most of the country, but should they
be permitted in the nation’s protected forest areas? The Obama
administration says no, as Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack affirmed
today in a directive that prohibits road construction in nearly 50 million acres of forest land.

As the Associated Press reports,
the most immediate impact of Vilsack’s move will come in Alaska, where
the Tongass National Forest was poised for a road-building project
linked to new logging. But preserving roadless forests is a hot issue
all across the west, particularly in California, where Gov. Arnold
Schwarzenegger (R) has sought to keep roads out of three national forests that are close to the Los Angeles metro area.

It’s
important to note, though, that Vilsack’s directive is only in place
for a year — meaning that roadless forests won’t be assured protection
unless Congress steps in to pass the bills sponsored by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and Rep. Jay Inslee (D-WA).

And for anyone wondering whether keeping roads out of forests is a local issue, check out the Forest Service’s list of pavement-free zones in each state. You may be surprised to know how many protected areas there are.

Why is San Francisco -- considered by many around the world to be a “progressive” and “green" city with a Transit First policy -- still debating whether to extend meter hours and parking enforcement, even in the face of a crippling Muni budget deficit? Didn't we merge Muni with the Department of Parking and Traffic precisely so policy decisions about management of the streets would benefit the operations of transit, bicycling, and walking?

Some politicians, including the Mayor, apparently can't stop viewing these issues from behind the wheels of their SUVs. They can't see past the myth that raising parking fees will drive away business, thus perpetuating an erroneous stereotype that most urban shoppers drive. My colleague Matthew Roth wrote a great piece debunking that popular fallacy, noting that the majority of shoppers don't drive to shop in areas like North Beach and that in aggregate, transit riders, cyclists and walkers spend more than drivers. Other cities that have managed street space in accord with Shoupian market-rate pricing and curbside vacancy targets, and have invested additional revenues in pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure improvements, have seen a rise in business, not a drop.

San Francisco could and should do the same, but the MTA -- namely its chief, Nat Ford, and its Board, all appointees who rarely act independently -- has bowed to pressure from the Mayor, and Supervisors Carmen Chu and Bevan Dufty and taken Sunday and evening parking enforcement until 10 p.m. off the table as a much-needed revenue measure to fund Muni. Instead, the MTA is going to study extending it to 8 p.m. Supervisor John Avalos and four of his colleagues on the Board want it penciled back in the budget. Supervisor Sophie Maxwell, who was on the fence, is coming around and might join other members of the Board of Supervisors next week in rejecting the MTA budget if Ford doesn't follow the recommendations of a "Transit Justice Package," and make some changes. As Supervisor David Campos has noted, asking for a $15 million readjustment is not a radical proposal.

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This morning our friends over at Transportation for America are launching a new site called My Commute Sucks, designed to give people around the country a place to vent their frustration over the nation's overburdened and inefficient transportation systems. Commuters can share their tales of commuting woe, upload photos and videos, and also take action by contacting members of Congress to ask for a more sane and sustainable approach to transportation policy.

Already the stories are starting to pile up. Here's one from a New Jersey commuter named Betty:

The Garden State Parkway in New Jersey is a nightmare, just like Jersey's other main arteries.

I would love to bike to the train, but the town of Little Silver doesn't have safe cycling roads. Pedestrians are also at risk on some of the very busy, sidewalk-free and shoulderless roads. 

Finally, the trains are a mess with many discontinuous lines, requiring bus/taxi/light rail connections between stations. ugh 

Build bikeways and we will come! Fix the trains and we will ride!

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When she wrote a column for the New York Sun last year about letting her nine-year-old ride the subway on his own, Lenore Skenazy was pilloried by many as an irresponsible mom. She stuck to her guns, though, and started a blog
dedicated to "sane parenting", advocating the idea that we are
over-sheltering our children from infinitesimal threats such as
stranger abduction. According to Skenazy, the kind of independence
represented by that subway trip is necessary and healthy for children
– and their parents as well.

Now she’s making the publicity rounds promoting her book, Free-Range Kids. In a recent interview with Salon,
she pointed out that  while many American parents are terrified to let
their children walk a few blocks or ride public transit, they think
nothing of driving them everywhere — even though car crashes are the leading cause of death for children in the US:

Skenazy:
If you don’t want to have your child in any kind of danger, you really
can’t do anything. You certainly couldn’t drive them in a car, because
that’s the No. 1 way kids die, as passengers in car accidents.

Salon: Rationally, why aren’t cars the bogeyman instead of stranger abduction?

Skenazy:
It would change our entire lifestyle if we couldn’t drive our kids in a
car, and it’s a danger that we just willingly accept without examining
it too much, because we know that the chances are very slim that we’re
going to have a fatal car accident. But the chances are 40 times
slimmer that your kid walking to school, whether or not she’s the only
one, is going to be hurt by a stranger.

Skenazy’s
answer gets to the heart of why it is so hard for people to accept the
many ways in which automobiles hurt everyone in society, perhaps
especially children — through crashes, through polluting the air, through promoting obesity.
We can imagine a life in which our children are not allowed to play
outdoors, walk to a friend’s house or spend any time unsupervised. But
we just can’t imagine life without cars.

Or can we?

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

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

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

What do you think, Streetsblog Nation?