Students check in for Bike to School Day at Buena Vista Horace Mann School this morning. Photo: Kate McCarthy, SFBC/Flickr

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) Executive Director Leah Shahum said an enthusiastic group of more than 50 kids rolled in on two “bike trains” at this morning’s ride to Sunnyside Elementary School, despite pouring rain.

The citywide attendance numbers aren’t in yet, but organizers anticipated about 2,000 participants this year – a sharp rise since the city’s first event in 2009, which saw about 600. Participation has steadily grown since. Last year, 1,600 students turned out for Bike to School Day, including 120 at Grattan Elementary in Cole Valley — one-third of the school’s students, Shahum pointed out.

Biking to school throughout the rest of the year is also becoming more popular among students and parents with the help of San Francisco’s Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program, which began promoting walking and biking at 15 schools in October 2009.

In May, Sunnyside Elementary will finish up its popular Walk and Roll Wednesdays, which offers kids prizes for walking, biking, or taking transit to school. Near Glen Park, Fairmount Elementary also holds multiple bike trains every Tuesday. SRTS staff also teach biking skills at the participating schools and provide family education along with the SFBC, which just released a revamped version of its Family Biking Guide.

Bike to School Day also seems to be attracting more city officials each year. SF School Board President Norman Yee rode in to the Sunnyside this morning, and five city supervisors biked to schools in their respective districts: Carmen Chu, Eric Mar, John Avalos, Christina Olague, and Jane Kim.

Parents say the event increasingly serves as an “entry into riding” for many students, said Shahum, who noted that 42 percent of elementary school students live within one mile of their school, according to data from the SF Unified School District (SFUSD). The district is also making it a higher priority to place students at schools within their neighborhoods, and the SFMTA is currently implementing 15 MPH zones at over 200 schools around the city.

“What we’re seeing more and more, especially among [SRTS schools] is more parents, teachers, and school leaders engage well beyond Bike to School Day,” she said.

Nik Kaestner, director of sustainability for SFUSD, said the bike racks “were overflowing” at Sunnyside this morning. To meet bike parking demand, SFUSD is close to installing up to four bike racks (which hold eight bikes each) at all 104 of the schools in the district, he said.

“We’ve put in the infrastructure that makes it easier for parents to leave the bike there during the day instead of having to schlep it back,” said Kaestner. SFUSD will also evaluate the usage of the racks at each school to determine which schools need more capacity. High schools, he noted, are particularly likely candidates.

“It definitely seems like biking is something that is in and hip right now in San Francisco, and our parents want their kids to be part of that culture,” he said. “We’re seeing that when we go to the schools that participate.”

A "bike train" on its way to Sunset Elementary. Photo: Marc Caswell, SFBC

Photo: Marc Caswell, SFBC

A bike train prepares for departure to Peabody Elementary in the Richmond. Photo: Andy Thornley, SFBC/Flickr

The Peabody bike train travels along San Francisco's first bike lane on Lake Street. Photo: Andy Thornley, SFBC/Flickr

Bike parking at Sunset Elementary. Photo: Marc Caswell, SFBC/Flickr

Mayor Ed Lee walks to school with students from Marshall Elementary in the Inner Mission. Photo: Marianne Szeto

Yesterday marked the first Walk to School Day since San Francisco began installing 15 mph speed limit signs near dozens of schools, and thousands of students were a little safer from speeding cars as they made their way to class.

“The new safer speed zones will calm traffic in neighborhoods throughout the city and help more people enjoy walking,” said Walk SF director Elizabeth Stampe, who joined students from Marshall Elementary in the Inner Mission on a “walking bus” along with Mayor Ed Lee, D6 Supervisor Jane Kim, Recreation and Parks General Manager Phil Ginsburg, and SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin.

Fourty-four schools around the city yesterday held Walk to School Day events involving over 7,000 students. According to the SF Department of Public Health, 56 percent of students at Marshall walk to school, and 70 percent live within one mile. School re-assignments this year allowed more students to attend schools in their neighborhood, close enough to walk or bike.

“Providing safer streets throughout San Francisco is a top priority for the SFMTA,” said Reiskin. “As we continue our work to install new speed-limit signs around schools like Marshall, we are collaborating with the Police Department to educate surrounding communities of the significant, but necessary change that will help keep our students safe.”

The SFMTA plans to install 15 mph signs at 213 K-12 schools by December 2013.

A Marshall Elementary parent speaks with Mayor Lee, Supervisor Kim, SFMTA Director Reiskin, and Rec and Parks' Ginsburg behind. Photo: Marianne Szeto

"Walk SF has been working on this campaign to get 15 mile an hour safer speed zones around schools for a long time, and we're so excited that it's coming to fruition," said Elizabeth Stampe of Walk SF (at microphone). In background: Mayor Ed Lee, SFMTA Director Cheryl Brinkman, Police Chief Greg Suhr and far right, SFMTA Chief Ed Reiskin. Photo: Bryan Goebel

San Francisco became the first large California city to implement a 15 mph speed zone around a school this morning, as SFMTA workers installed one of four signs that will go up around George Peabody Elementary School on 7th Avenue in the Richmond District. It’s part of a groundbreaking citywide initiative pushed by walking advocates to implement safe speed zones around 200 schools, and comes right as the school year is beginning this week.

“It’s really a very simple issue. Kids need to be able to get to school, to leave school and to have any other interface between the school and the street happen safely,” said SFMTA Chief Ed Reiskin, who started his job as the head of the agency on Monday. He was joined by Mayor Ed Lee, SFPD Chief Greg Suhr, Supervisor Eric Mar, walking and biking advocates, SFMTA officials, San Francisco Unified School District officials and others.

“It’s verified that the streets and areas around our schools are dangerous, that they need to be slowed down,” said Lee. “It’s been shown in study after study, and the last one that we looked at was in London, and it showed that when you slow down, even a fraction of the speed, you can get a high increase in safety and a reduction in the amount of fatalities that result from a car collision.”

Lee said the signs, funded by $361,700 in Prop K sales tax funds from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, should be in place at all schools in San Francisco by early 2012.

An SFMTA worker installs a 24x48 inch 15 mph zone sign, as the Mayor and other officials look on. Photo: Bryan Goebel

The 15 mph campaign is a victory for the pedestrian advocacy group Walk San Francisco, which has been relentlessly pushing the issue for some time.

“We’re here today to establish these speed limits because the thing is, speed kills. If you’re hit by a car that’s going 30 miles an hour you’re six times more likely to be killed than if that car is going just 10 miles an hour less, 20 miles an hour,” said Walk SF executive director Elizabeth Stampe. “Establishing these safe speed zones around our schools will make it safer not only for kids to walk to school, but for everybody.”

Stampe said the new speed zones will help make the streets safer for children at a time when the SFUSD has been forced to cut its transportation budget by 44 percent and significantly scale back yellow school bus service. More and more parents, she said, will need to find alternate transportation for their kids. In addition, new school reassignments will have more children going to neighborhood schools, which means they are close enough to walk, or bike.

SFUSD officials said they are working on boosting programs to get more kids to walk and bike to school as part of the Safe Routes to Schools program. Lee said the safe speed zone program will include education for drivers and stepped up enforcement by the SFPD.

“A couple of weeks ago, I was present when the young Phillies fan was hit by a car. Nothing impacts a person more than an injured child, especially as serious as that was, and it was so unnecessary,” said Suhr. “This speed limit will go a long way toward keeping the kids safe, and the enforcement will be strict. It’s a very expensive citation, but it’s one that if you’re putting the kids in jeopardy will be well deserved and will be given. Please, slow down around schools, no electric devices, no texting, avoid the ticket.”

The SFMTA recently legislated the first batch of 15 mph school zones, and another list is scheduled to go before an SFMTA engineering hearing tomorrow prior to proceeding to the SFMTA Board in the next few weeks.

“I think these signs and the community education that the police department and all of the city family will be working on in the 200 different schools and sites will help save lives,” said District 1 Supervisor Mar.

Mayor Ed Lee talks to parents driving their kids to school about the new 15 mph zones. Photo: Francis Tsang, Mayor's Press Office

Photo: TreeHugger

This week, the Safe Routes to School National Conference convenes in Minneapolis, a progressive city determined to become the most bicycle friendly in the nation. But even here, far from the nation’s capital, in a region celebrated for its massive greenway system, drama inside the Beltway has instilled an air of urgency to the event.

In 2005, SAFETEA-LU (Safe, Accountable, Flexible and Efficient Transportation Equity Act) created the federal Safe Routes to School program to get more kids to bike and walk to school by improving infrastructure and creating encouragement programs that make those active trips safe and appealing. The funding for the program is but a tiny drop in the mammoth transportation budget — a mere 0.25 percent of federal transportation spending. But those dollars have been a crucial foundation in building a wide and growing movement.

Deb Hubsmith, director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership. Photo: Carolyn Szczepanski

As is the case for so many progressive programs, though, there’s a very real threat that the well of dedicated dollars for Safe Routes to School could dry up in the next transportation bill. That was apparent from the opening moments of the biennial gathering.

Deb Hubsmith, the director of the Safe Routes to School National Partnership and a key player in developing and advancing “Safe Routes” nationwide, appealed to a huge crowd of more than 600 participants for three things: courage, faith and immediate action.

“As you know, we have some challenges,” she said. “Some people might be discouraged by what they’ve heard about Congress and the federal debt. The transportation bill is up for reauthorization and there’s fighting about what will happen with the future. Some say Safe Routes to School is not a federal priority.”

“In the face of this discussion right now, we need to have courage,” she added. “We need to know that some of the best outcomes come from challenges in front of us. When something is at risk it creates an opportunity; do we want to go backwards or have a future with healthy kids and healthy communities.”

The Obama administration seemingly showed its support for that healthy future by dispatching Victor Mendez, the administrator of the Federal Highway Administration. In his keynote appearance, Mendez not only highlighted the success of the program but indicated a need for more dollars.

“Since the program started in 2005, we’ve made more than $900 million available to the states and DC for Safe Routes to School programs,” he said. “All 50 states have funded projects and… the total national program is oversubscribed in terms of need. Maybe 40 percent of all applications actually get funded, which means we need to do a little bit of work in that regard.”

New data, just released by the National Center for Safe Routes to School (the government clearinghouse for SRTS data and technical assistance), shows those in-demand dollars are having a wide impact. As of June, funding has reached 11,371 individual schools and, perhaps more importantly, it hasn’t bypassed the nation’s most vulnerable children.

According to the analysis, while 21 percent of the nation’s schools are defined as low-income, 23 percent of the schools announced for SRTS funding fall into that category. In addition, projects with a specific focus on the inclusion of children with disabilities have been funded in 17 states and Native American children on tribal lands have been the focus of projects in seven states.

When asked by an audience member the best means to convince Congress members to maintain those important dollars in the next bill, Mendez said he couldn’t tell Safe Routes believers to lobby their elected officials. But another big name from Washington — James Corless, director of Transportation for America — did just that in a later session. “One thing I know is that, if none of you in this room work on these things, get active and engaged, we could lose Safe Routes and dedicated bike-ped funding,” he said. “There are just too many things pulling in that direction.”

Safe Routes supporters are already warmed up to flex their political muscle. When Rep. John Mica (R-FL) released an outline for the House transportation bill that didn’t include dedicated funding for biking and walking, more than 60,000 citizens flooded their members of Congress to demand those dedicated dollars. Both Corless and Hubsmith emphasized another, even bigger, uprising has the potential to preserve the Safe Routes program.

Still, the uncertainty has sparked discussions about how to continue the Safe Routes momentum even if Congress pares back, or eliminates, dedicated funding. Some advocates are leveraging private funding from major foundations, community grants and corporate supporters. Others are looking to the health arena, including hospitals, insurance providers, or public health departments with local- or state-funded programs that dovetail with Safe Routes objectives. Local ballot initiatives and bond measures could be a source of new dollars, too, given the successful track record in funding progressive issues in states like California.

But Hubsmith, in her remarks, didn’t even go there.

“We’ve faced these challenges before,” she said. “In 1997, there was talk about killing the Transportation Enhancements program. In 2003, there was another move to kill TE… We need to have faith. As Martin Luther King Jr said, ‘Faith is taking the first step even when you don’t see the whole staircase.’ We need to have courage. When we have courage and faith, we can win.”

Carolyn Szczepanski is communications coordinator at the Alliance for Biking & Walking.

Kids cross Monterey Boulevard on Walk to School Day last year. Flickr photo: Adrienne Johnson

Roughly half of the more than 200 schools proposed to have speed limits reduced to 15 MPH on surrounding streets were quickly approved at an SFMTA hearing today. The rest are expected to be approved at another hearing in three weeks before heading to the full SFMTA Board of Directors for final approval.

“We think this is an excellent way to make areas all over our city safer for kids, for seniors, and for everyone who has to walk around to meet their daily needs,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe.

SFMTA Associate Engineer Maurice Growney said up to one hundred 15 mph school zones could be in place by the end of the year, and all 211 implemented by the end of 2012. Staff will aim to distribute the zones evenly around the city as they go in, he said. Funding for the program was approved by the SF County Transportation Authority on Tuesday.

“It’s a step in the right direction towards creating a better city where people have the options [to walk and bike to school] and feel safe and comfortable doing so,” said Neal Patel of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition.

The approved zones are expected to go before the SFMTA Board of Directors at a meeting later this month.

Flickr photo: Lynn Friedman

Many streets could become safer for children walking and biking to school with a project in the works to lower speed limits within school zones to 15 mph. New signs warning drivers could be in the ground as early as this winter, according to an SFMTA staff report [pdf], granted the funds are approved next month by the SF County Transportation Authority.

“It’s a very important item because it’s very visible and we think it will have a measurable impact on school safety and it can be done fairly quickly,” SFMTA Sustainable Streets Director Bond Yee told the Board of Directors yesterday.

About 200 schools have already been identified by staff as potentially eligible within the criteria of the California vehicle code, the report states. The project was mandated in an Executive Directive issued by former Mayor Gavin Newsom last December and has been urged by advocates and city officials.

“I know there’s a lot of thought from the supervisors and the public that we’re not doing enough,” said Director Cheryl Brinkman.

Each school zone would need to be approved by the board, and each local jurisdiction would have to adopt the changes by resolution, said Yee. But the number of streets that could be affected is no small number.

“It’s a pretty big scale,” said Yee. “When you draw a radius around each school in San Francisco, 200 schools would probably cover most of the city.”

Board Chair Tom Nolan expressed support for the measure but cautioned against its potential to slow down already crawling Muni lines. Yee said staffers are doubtful the impacts would be significant.

“Muni operates more on the major streets, and these signs are more applicable next to the schools on streets that are 30 mph or less and with a certain number of lanes,” he said.

Conditions like a street’s history of crashes and a “residential density threshold” are also taken into account during evaluations. The project’s total costs are estimated at $361,700, with $30-40,000 of that needed for planning.

Children walk to Sunnyside Elementary School, one of the 15 San Francisco schools that are part of the city's Safe Routes to School program. Photo: Adrienne Johnson.

With childhood obesity a growing national epidemic, it is surprising that more parents don’t walk to school with their kids or organize amongst neighbors to encourage physical activity as part of the daily routine. Though San Francisco has extensive public transit and is quite walkable, the current school assignment policy results in longer school commutes, a problem city officials and advocates for increased walking blame in part for children not getting enough daily exercise.

Coinciding with yesterday’s International Walk to School Day, the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) and the Department of Public Health (SFDPH) discussed a study they have undertaken to collect baseline data on school commute patterns in an effort to encourage more walking. This initiative is especially important now, say officials, because the city will change the way it assigns children to schools starting in fall 2011 and they will have the opportunity to measure the impact local assignments will have on travel choice.

Officials plan to collect data at the fifteen schools participating in the Safe Routes to School program, as well as others that are not, and they hope the resulting information will demonstrate how effective improved traffic engineering, enforcement and eduction can be.

Ana Validzic, a SFDPH pedestrian safety coordinator, was at Fairmount Elementary School in Noe Valley yesterday to raise awareness for Walk to School Day. Fairmount and nine other schools were added to the city’s Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program this year, in addition to the five from last year. These schools are at the top of the city’s priority list for traffic calming treatments and better enforcement of traffic safety violations.

“One of the biggest obstacles right now is the way students are assigned to their schools,” said Validzic. With the change in the SFUSD assignment policy, she said, children will live much closer to their schools and parents won’t have as much of an impetus to drive. “It’s going to make programs like Safe Routes to School much more realistic.”

Students at Fairmount Elementary School line up to listen to morning announcements after they walked to school in a "human school bus" procession. Photo: Matthew Roth.

Validzic cobbled together $15,000 in funding for the baseline study, which will be coordinated with the University of California San Francisco and the SFUSD. The researchers will document commute patterns among students in kindergarten and 5th grade throughout the district, comparing the 15 schools in the Safe Routes to School (SRTS) program with non-SRTS schools to see which aspects of the program are the most effective (the five E’s are education, encouragement, engineering, enforcement, and evaluation).

“We’re trying to see if a switch to more neighborhood focused schools also leads to changes in commute behavior,” said Nick Kaestner, SFUSD Director of Sustainability. “If it does in fact do that, that would be a big plus in terms of walking and biking.”

Validzic said SFDPH and SFUSD are limited by current funding, but they hoped to find additional money over the next decade to enhance the study to include factors like student body mass index before and after the assignment policy change, which would allow them to more precisely measure the link between traffic engineering changes, safety, enforcement and physical activity. Given the impending assignment policy change, Validzic believes an expanded study would be the only one of its kind in the country and the data would prove vitally important to public health and transportation officials trying to combat obesity.

For Elizabeth Stampe, the new executive director of the pedestrian advocacy non-profit Walk San Francisco, educating and encouraging parents to walk their kids to school is a vital component for improving pedestrian safety citywide and compelling the political class to make streets safer.

“It’s not safe to keep our kids from walking, because of the growing problem in our country of obesity,” said Stampe, who noted her disappointment that San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom was inagurating a cruise ship, rather than participating in Walk to School Day. “I wish he would come out with us to see the conditions kids have to face when walking to school and make needed changes right away.”

To draw attention to those dangers, Walk SF has partnered with The Friends of Monterey Boulevard, a community group comprised in part with parents whose children attend SRTS affiliated Sunnyside Elementary School, to prepare a report on the dangerous conditions on the street. The groups will present the report to the city soon and hope to work to realize numerous solutions to lower traffic speeds and improve visibility for pedestrians in the area.

Nick Kaestner, SFUSD Director of Sustainability, hands out stickers to kids who walked to school on Wednesday. Photo: Matthew Roth

Back at Fairmount Elementary, District 8 Supervisor Bevan Dufty, spoke to a restless gathering of students still excited from the group walk, or “human school bus,” they formed a few blocks away on Dolores Street and San Jose Avenue, before proceeding to school.

Dufty told Streetsblog he was encouraged by the number of parents walking their kids to school, but he said the city needed to do more to improve safety.

“To be a great city, we have to have great schools and to have great schools, kids have to be safe and able to walk to school,” he said. “Our children, our future, cross the streets and walk down the street every day getting to school and we need to be mindful of them.”

Among other solutions, he argued Muni service had to be better and crosswalk visibility needed to be improved. San Francisco, he said, must “draw attention to the fact that motorists need to be aware that there are pedestrians, and not just pedestrians, but children coming to school.”

Addressing the Fairmount students, Gaby Marin, the school’s “Mother of the Year,” asked other parents to follow her lead and commit to walking their children to school more often.

“A great way to start your day is to get up and walk to school,” said Marin (author’s translation from Spanish). “These twenty minutes of walking each day allow us to share ideas, to talk about what the day will be like. For my family, it’s very important part of our day.  I want to encourage you all, at least once a week, to walk to school. Leave the car, take public transport, and walk to school, even if it’s only 20 minutes once a week.”

Jeremy Hilinski, Fairmount’s principal, said he was proud of the way parents had organized themselves for Walk to School Day, but he pointed to San Jose Avenue as a significant impediments to more walking. “Many of our families live on the other side of San Jose Avenue,” he said, praising the  crossing guard who works the intersection of San Jose and Randall each morning.

Hilinski saw promise in encouraging parents to work together informally to promote more walking. “I hope it gets bigger and bigger and bigger, that we have more people walking to school, critical masses of people walking from similar neighborhoods, crossing the streets together, getting out there and walking, as opposed to parking and driving and creatomg traffic congestion, things that create dangerous conditions around schools.”

SFUSD’s Kaestner said Fairmount could look to other SRTS schools, like Longfellow Elementary, where last year’s Walk to School day inspired some parents to organize regular Walk to School Wednesdays. “In the short term, we have to rely on parents with some gentle prodding to make this happen, because we’re not going to get the infrastructure changes we need in that time frame,” he said.

“Longer term, of course, we hope the city of San Francisco will prioritize some of the changes in the streetscape that are around schools first, because those are the changes that will make a difference in students’ commuting habits and that will change the way they lead the rest of their lives,” he added.

The BP oil spill goes on. And on. We watch the oil on live web cam pouring into the Gulf of Mexico. And we watch. Political rage is muted, practical responses even more distant. What to do? How do we “take action” on something like this? How can individuals meaningfully respond to this catastrophe? Stop driving? Boycott one brand of gas? Stop buying things made of plastic? Let’s not flatter ourselves. A few folks I know are planning to go to a local ARCO gas station (owned by BP) to protest, which will surely be a big moment for the minimum wage employee in the cash booth, and probably an irritant to the half dozen or more motorists waiting to fill their cars.

The numbing impotence we feel is painfully calibrated to our inability to affect what’s happening. Consumer choices we might make will have zero impact on this disaster, and can’t shape the larger dynamics of a globe-spanning, multinational oil industry either. Just listen to Democracy Now on Friday morning to hear how Chevron has destroyed thousands of square miles of the Nigerian delta in its incessant exploitation of the oil there, or how the Ecuadoran Amazon too is covered in vast lakes of spilled oil.

The deeper questions about technology and science are far from our daily lives. The world we live in is embedded in complex networks of technological dependencies, which none of us have chosen freely. Nor do any of us have any way to participate directly in deciding what technologies we will use, how they will be deployed, what kind of social controls will be exerted over private interests who organize and run them for their own gain, etc. (supposedly the federal government regulates them in the public interest, but that is clearly false as shown YET AGAIN by this disaster). The basic direction of science is considered a product of objective research and development, when it has always been skewed to serve the interests of those who already have economic and political power. Public, democratic direction for science and technology is not only non-existent, we really don’t even discuss it as a possibility!

British Petroleum should be given the death penalty. Oh wait! They don’t have death penalties for corporations. In fact, though they apparently have all the rights of individuals with respect to “free speech” (which they are free to buy at any price they wish), they cannot be held accountable as individuals for overtly criminal behavior. And even if they were, their bottom-line obsessing, litigation-phobic approach to the worst oil spill in history is just an example of normal corporate behavior in 2010. Their efforts to control press access and spin the story to their advantage have been consistent since the original accident, insisting on journalists being embedded on BP boats or planes so they can control what is seen and reported.

Penalizing corporate executives that get “caught” only legitimizes the rest of the criminal class in their everyday destruction of the planet. Maybe BP executives will be held criminally responsible (probably not), but the entity whose logic controls the behavior of anyone who is its executive is virtually immune. Unlike its political competitors in human form, the corporation is also apparently immortal.

The abject obeisance of the Obama government during the first 30 days of the oil geyser is a shame. Government ignorance and inaction, following the routine corruption that granted safety and environmental waivers to BP for this drilling project, should rock its legitimacy as much as Chernobyl did the Soviet government’s in 1986. I hope that blind faith in technology would also suffer a severe blow. Assurances about safe technology, proper safe guards, etc. are made about all our energy sources, from undersea oil drilling to nuclear power to the fictional “clean coal.” (Just last Tuesday I was speaking at a class at UC Santa Cruz where a couple of earnest students tried to argue that nuclear power was the solution to global warming!) This oil geyser resembles nothing so much as an uncontrollable nuclear meltdown. But rather than radiating thousands of square miles of countryside as happened in the Ukraine in 1986, this is filling the Gulf of Mexico with billions of gallons of crude oil. The sea is already dying, which is beginning to cascade into seaside communities and economies. The death of the Gulf will have unknown further effects on weather, ocean ecology, bird migration, and much more, and that’s before the massive underwater oil plume reaches the gulf stream in the Atlantic and does even more damage. It’s an insane, unwanted experiment in a foreseeable and preventable ecological catastrophe of unprecedented scope and severity.

Turns out that BP is closer to us, in a bigger way, than a lot of folks realize. Only a couple of years ago BP and the University of California at Berkeley signed a $500 million deal that will build a new biofuels research institute at the school, to be managed by BP and it is to BP that all patent discoveries will go. Obama’s Energy Secretary Steven Chu was the UC official who made the deal. Now his deputy energy secretary is the former chief scientist for BP! Maybe folks who want to protest this disaster should explore an alliance with the dynamic student movement that has already been in motion since last fall. Protest and obstruction do have their place.

Nature in the City's new proposal for a 10-mile "wild" corridor.

But other things are afoot in San Francisco too of a more affirmative nature. A couple of weeks ago the Public Utilities Committee of the Board of Supervisors held a well-attended public hearing regarding new ways of working with local water supplies from ground water and storm water to rain catchment and graywater. On Wednesday night Nature in the City presented their new campaign for a Bioregional Park (PDF) in the heart of San Francisco, a long-term feature of which is a 10-mile corridor that sweeps from the Presidio in the north down the spine of the City’s major peaks and then angling east across McLaren Park to Bayview Hill and Candlestick Point.  A natural corridor that knits together as many existing open spaces and parks as possible, planted with native plants to restore basic habitat for local critters, bugs and plants, would also help them to migrate through the urban environment. Bikeways, hiking paths, even daylighted creeks could be part of this.

And the SF Bike Coalition just announced their new campaign Connecting the City—San Francisco's Crosstown Bikeways for All (which is not as ambitious—after all these years—as a modest little flyer I put out in 1987 calling for a City of Panhandles). So far it’s a campaign to raise money, but it demonstrates a willingness to finally push for a more serious challenge to the dominance of private cars over our public streets. It’s a campaign that dovetails nicely with the notion of a wild corridor, new ways to think about watersheds and underground creeks, and more. It’s welcome development for the bigger agenda of altering how we live.

Ultimately these small choices are the only way we CAN start to lay a new foundation, technologically and socially, for a real transformation of life that will preclude disasters of the magnitude in the Gulf. A materially comfortable life for all should be the goal of a creative and energetic campaign of social and technological re-invention so that we radically reduce our use of energy, water, and other materials.

Combining the various incipient insurgencies for other uses of public streets, maybe we can start by getting some accurate numbers. What percentage of the land area of San Francisco is covered in public streets? What percentage of that street area is dedicated to cars as opposed to bicycles, pedestrians, or even transit lines (obviously buses use the same streets as cars, but not nearly as many streets as cars; nor do they generally park curbside)? What percentage is open space, parklands, sidewalk gardens, etc.? What are the largest contiguous zones of open lands not built on in some fashion?

I propose that once we get the numbers, which we can only guess at now, it will be possible to raise the demand for a specific percentage of city streets being permanently turned over to new uses, including daylighting subterranean waterways, building city-spanning parkways for crosstown bicycling, walking, and for the critters, scurrying and slithering. What do you think? Five percent of the streets converted to new auto-free uses? 10 percent? 25 percent? How far can we go?

Our era is characterized by a profound impotence in the face of national and global breakdowns. We don’t have a political vision, let alone a movement of movements, ready for prime time. We have to build the capacity to reinvent life one block, one neighborhood, one city at a time. The good news is that thousands of your friends and neighbors are already involved in just these efforts. Paul Hawken in his book “Blessed Unrest” identifies 30 million grassroots environmental organizations around the world! He calls them the immune system for Earth. Let’s hope the immune system will behave like our own bodily immune systems, and start killing the threats to our global health, the corporations that left unchecked will certainly kill us and everything else on the planet.

A typical greenstreet facility in Portland, Oregon. This one compines a stormwater treatment facility with a bulbout to reduce pedestrian crossing distances. Photos: Portland BES.

Portland's greenstreet facilities often take up multiple on-street parking stalls and replace the asphalt with beds planted in native species that help absorb significant volumes of streetlevel wastewater, near 100 percent in some locations. Facilities include swales, curb extensions, planters, and infiltration basins, and are typically linear and pool 6 to 9 inches deep [PDF].

David Elkin, a Landscape Architect working for Portland's Bureau of Environmental Services (BES), explained on the tour that the first experiments with greenstreet facilities in Portland were necessitated because the city had to meet mandates in a Clean Water Act lawsuit for polluting the Willamette River, which flows through Portland. The city faced the challenge of increasing the number drainage pipes in east Portland, at a cost of $150 million, or develop another solution for reducing "upstream" water volumes, those that came from surface streets. By adding the greenstreet facility network, which initially cost $11 million, the city met its target stormwater capture and estimated that it saved $60 million in pipe replacement costs.

"We can talk about all the multiple benefits that greenstreet facilities provide, but the bottom line is it saves taxpayers dollars," said Elkin, noting that the first on-street facility was installed in 2002. "Instead of just a patch or trench in somebody's street, we're going to leave behind a green, vegetated facility."

The holy trinity of intersection design: a combination of greenstreet facility, painted bicycle lane and bike box, and pedestrian bulbout.

Elkin described the extensive outreach the BES conducted in conjunction with the city's Department of Transportation (DOT) to explain the benefits of the system to Portland residents. He said a particular sticking point was the removal of parking spaces--some facilities required removing up to five spaces. When the engineers talked vaguely about the importance of reducing upstream volumes, they met with relatively little interest from the public, according to Elkin. When they spoke about cleaning up the Willamette and protecting the water supply, they received resounding support, including several ballot measures re-affirming the public's trust in the initiative.

The coordination between city agencies was so thorough, when the DOT reviewed its program for Safe Routes for School treatments, it asked BES to determine where it could match stormwater facilities and pool resources to reduce the costs of doing both. Elkin explained that the two agencies routinely build five facilities together each year.

Mike Faha, co-leader of the CNU tour and Principal of Greenworks, P.C., said, "Only in the last few years have public agencies locally figured out they have the responsibility to [treat stormwater run-off] for public right of ways--obviously that's a good source of pollution out there with vehicular traffic. The public sector has come to the plate and they're starting to adopt greenstreet standards."

Faha admitted they had made mistakes in planning earlier facilities ("There are stormwater facilities that are sitting high and dry because the inflow was not designed properly"), but that the city was willing to admit those mistakes and improve upon them.

Understanding pedestrian access and safety and coordination with bicycle infrastructure were two of their current priorities. "We've gone through an evolution in our thinking - how do you not create conflicts with vehicles, how do you plant it in such a way that it doesn't block vision from vehicles [at] crosswalks. The big issues are pedestrian safety, maintenance, and the types of plants you use."

As though on cue, a planner from Ohio asked Faha and Elkin if they only used native plants, what he described as unsophisticated and "country," which brought loud protest from a Portlander who volunteered with a local planting group to be sure the city used as many natives as possible (a first-ever New-Urbanism brawl between the plant people was narrowly averted).

Faha conceded that these issues tended to draw some of the most vehement concern from the public, though it was clear to all participants that our two guides relished the fact that these minor qualms were the worst of it. Said Faha: "We're figuring it out and I think the city of Portland has some pretty good design standards for greenstreet facilities."

This facility treats the cascade that used to come off Mt. Tabor during a strong storm. It also rationalized a difficult intersection and shortened pedestrian crossing distance by more than 50 feet.

This facility combines pedestrian, bicycle and stormwater facilities, with a unique twist. This is one of the first advance bicycle stop bars in Portland, where cyclists (lower right of picture) yield when pedestrians are present, but then move forward to the stop bar to gain a view of perpendicular traffic.

Before the greenstreet treatment, this was an asphalt parking lot that routinely flooded.

A generation ago, nearly half of all U.S. kids walked or bicycled to school. Today, less than fifteen percent do, with the majority arriving at school in private automobiles. It’s no coincidence, then, that studies show more than a quarter of San Francisco’s children are overweight. But a new program hopes to change that trend, while reducing greenhouse gas pollution and increasing fun.

With the help of a $500,000 grant from the federal government, San Francisco has launched its own “Safe Routes to Schools” program, aimed at encouraging students and parents to walk or bike to school.

At Longfellow Elementary last Wednesday, October 7th, students joined parents on a “walking school bus.” Although the date was part of International Walk to School Day, organizers plan group walks to school every Wednesday—with the ultimate goal of walking to school every day.

Longfellow Elementary students make signs celebrating Walk to School Day. Photo: Jason Serafino-Agar

While the adults present may have been excited about the policy details - a $500,000 grant for five schools this year, 15 schools next year, and an opportunity to make strides in encouraging walking and biking to school - the children got the message loud and clear that walking, especially with hordes of peers, is fun business.

Warming up with a call-and-response cheer of "Longfellow: WALKS!", students welcomed guest speakers to the celebration, including Jacquie Chavez, co-founder of Walk to Win Wednesdays and mother of a first-grader at Longfellow.

"Remember, it's good for you, it's good for your community, it's good for the planet. Get out and walk to school," said Chavez. "It's actually pretty fun. I do it every day, not just on Wednesdays." Chavez organizes a similar walk every Wednesday: "I hope see you out there too," she told the crowd.

Block-long lines of kids walk to Longfellow. Photo: Jason Serafino-Agar

The Department of Public Health's Ana Validzic told the gathered schoolchildren that Safe Routes to School organizers are working "to make sure that everyone can walk and bike" safely, and have "a lot of fun while they're doing it."

Principal Phyllis Matsuno pointed out another benefit: "We can concentrate so much better in our learning," Matsuno said, when the day starts with exercise like walking or biking.

With the start of the school day fast approaching, the students got to hear one more short speech, from Supervisor John Avalos. He congratulated Longfellow and presented the school with a leadership certificate for its "efforts to promote active, healthy lifestyle, reduce pollution, teach children to walk safely, and make our streets safer for everyone, and address global climate change while reducing traffic on our roads."

Longfellow was among the five schools chosen for the Safe Routes to School program this year because over half of its students live within a mile from school, so walking or biking is a viable option. Today, instead of waiting in the usual block-long line of cars wrapped around the block, students discovered that the walkers were the ones having all the fun.

A day before Walk to School Day, block-long lines of cars waited to pick up students from Longfellow. Photo: Jason Serafino-Agar

Walking home from school with company. Flickr photo: Thomas Hawk

Walk to School Day has become a popular event at schools in San Francisco, regionally, and beyond, but with the two-year, federally-funded $500,000 Safe Routes to School grant, SFUSD aims to institutionalize and coordinate programs that promote walking. The grant is about "pulling together different programs that everyone already does in San Francisco, and to try to tighten them up and add in a more comprehensive approach," said Jason Serafino-Agar, the SFBC's Safe Routes to School program coordinator.

The program will start with five schools this year, expanding to fifteen next year, and is based on the "five Es": education, encouragement, engineering, evaluation and enforcement.

The education component will include classes for second graders on pedestrian safety, classes for fourth graders on bicycle safety, walk and bike maps for each school, and traffic safety information packets for drivers near the participating schools. On the enforcement end, SFPD will be doing targeted enforcement near the schools. There will be walk and bike audits to identify infrastructure shortcomings that need to be addressed, and officials will collect and analyze data on how schoolchildren get to and from school, and on parents' attitudes and knowledge about walking and biking.

Walk to School Day fits into the program's encouragement component, along with Bike to School Day and the annual ten-week Shape Up SF Walking Challenge.

To launch Safe Routes to School in the city and mark Walk to School Day, parents and students will be forming a "walking school bus" at the McDonald's parking lot at 5454 Mission Street tomorrow, departing at 8:10 a.m. and arriving at Longfellow Elementary School ten minutes later. At 8:40, a special morning outdoor rally will be held at Longfellow, with Supervisor John Avalos, Safe Routes to School coordinators, parents, kids who walked or biked to school and school administrators.

"It's exciting that we get to work to change the habits of a generation," said Serafino-Agar, "to show them what's possible and support them in the choices that they can make."

In Portland, fears of liability turned Safe Routes to School to "Safer Routes." Photo: BikePortland.org

"It’s pervasive throughout the country and we’re hearing about it more and more,” [Ping] said. The problem, according to Ping, is that many school principals and administrators feel that biking and walking to school is simply unsafe. They are concerned about being held liable for anything that happens during the trip to and/or from school.

In addition to studying the current scope of the problem, the Safe Routes National Partnership is putting together a team of legal experts who will craft a legal statement directed at school principals, outlining why improving biking and walking options will not increase their liability exposure. They hope the legal statement will also help allay the fears that lead to bike ban policies in the first place.

Though, as Ping points out, principals can't actually stop students from walking and biking, they can use their influence to discourage it. Administrators can also deny students a decent place to store their bikes during the school day. But if the issue is safety and liability, what about those high school parking lots?

Ping said one safe routes advocate he heard from countered a bike ban in their community by asking the principal whether or not he felt liable for kids who drive to school. “That’s a great way to push back on this idea.”

All morning I've been asking myself (and some others) why kids riding bicycles to school is a pressworthy event. Don't kids always ride bikes to school or have we become so car-dependent that even this sancrosanct part of being young and carefree is a thing of the past?  Unfortunately, the latter is the case, as no school in San Francisco sees even 5 percent of walking and bicycling trips to school.

Today's inaugural Bike to School Day is the start of a shift for the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) to promote cycling as a healthy and environmentally sound way to get to school.

"The school district has recently started promoting biking to school as a way to commute efficiently, however they haven't done an actual event to promote biking to school before this," said SFBC Program Manager Marc Caswell.  "Today is the day we're actually going to reward students that want to ride to school."

Nik Kaestner, Director of Sustainability for the SFUSD, said the district is now focusing on expanding bicycling through its Safe Routes to Schools educational efforts.

"The more that this becomes commonplace, the more we change culture, the more people will come around," he said. "I think that’s the goal around the district. If you're just throwing facts at them, I don't think that makes a difference. I think it needs to be cool."

Kaestner relayed an anecdote from this morning at Roosevelt Middle School, where a kid came up to him after seeing the bagels and juice that kids who cycled enjoyed and said he needed to ride next year. "It's nice to see the kids that are biking are being rewarded for doing it and other kids are taking notice."

When asked why the walking and bicycling numbers are so low in San Francisco, Kaestner suggested that many parents fear for their child's safety on the street.  "There's a general fear of what might happen to their kid if they walk or bike. They think putting them in steel boxes is safer."

Ironically, one of the biggest dangers to kids near schools is parents in cars. According to the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, parents dropping off their children in cars are responsible for half the car-kid injuries reported around schools.

Organizers of Bike to School Day hoped to draw at least 500 students at the 22 schools that participated and if the action at Monroe Elementary School in the Excelsior was any indication, they will reach their target.  At final count, there were over sixty kid's bicycles and scooters, which represents more than 10 percent of the students at Monroe.

Monroe parent Birgit Cory and her two sons. Photo: Matthew Roth

For kindergartner Yoloxy Escobar, the experience was new, though her mother, Sara Torres, said she would continue to ride. "She loves it," said Torres. "This was a success today."

Mario Malagon, a special education teacher at Monroe, saidthey rarely get more than four or five students riding to school regularly and asserted that events like today were important to change that low number. "I'm very happy and satisfied.  We're going to try to get the kids excited about the bicycle movement, because it is extremely important.

Pointing to the railing where the bicycles were leaning as part of bicycle valet at Monroe for the day, Malagon highlighted one of many obstacles for increasing riding: lack of a safe place to lock the bicycles. "Right now one of the parents wants to get this access here for the students to park their bikes in the future," he said.

Leah Shahum of the SFBC said that only eight schools had added bicycle racks this year and the SFBC had to raise the funds from a foundation on the East Coast to pay for them. Monroe was not one of the schools to get racks and is not on the list for new racks. In reference to the SFUSD, Shahum said, "They're being skiddish about finding funds while the injunction is in place."

She said the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) had paid for bike racks elsewhere and suggested that the agency could be approached by the SFUSD.

When asked if the SFUSD would consider reaching out to BAAQMD, Kaestner said, "We're working with the BAAQMD in other ways, so that makes sense. We'll consider everything."

Another concern often cited by school principals as a rationale for not adding bicycle racks is fear of lawsuits.  Shahum said that liability issues are a red herring, that schools are no more liable if a child gets hurt on the way to school riding a bicycle than they are riding in a car.

Kaestner agreed with that logic and said, "We just passed a board resolution to dispel those issues and put the board's weight behind increasing bicycling."