Streetsblog San Francisco

The good people at Dwell Magazine and Inhabitat.com have narrowed submissions in their Reburbia: A Suburban Design Competition to the top twenty proposals for re-envisioning the sprawl that blights the American landscape and keeps us locked in our foreign-oil dependent, ever-expanding commute patterns.

From their announcement:

In a future where limited natural resources will force us to find better solutions for density and efficiency, what will become of the cul-de-sacs, cookie-cutter tract houses and generic strip malls that have long upheld the diffuse infrastructure of suburbia? How can we redirect these existing spaces to promote sustainability, walkability, and community? What would a McMansion become if it weren’t a single-family dwelling? How could a vacant big box store be retrofitted for agriculture? What sort of design solutions can you come up with to facilitate car-free mobility, ‘burb-grown food, and local, renewable energy generation?

While there are some very interesting proposals--like turning old big-box stores into residential units and converting freeway signs into horizontal windmills to generate electricity from the movement of cars--there are some other proposals that make personal rapid transit (PRT) look anachronistic.

Actually, it's the blimp transport proposal that currently has the most votes, so maybe you want to go over to the site and vote for something more practical?

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Last week, BART hosted a brunch meeting for Bay Area transit bloggers, explicitly acknowledging that journalism is trending away from traditional media to online and niche outlets. Organized by BART spokesperson Linton Johnson, writers from Streetsblog, The SF Appeal, The Overhead Wire, N-Judah Chronicles, and Transbay Blog had the opportunity to ask BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger and her team unvarnished questions, to which we received fairly straightforward answers.

Johnson prefaced the meeting with some stats the agency is proud to publicize, such as the average salary of BART employees, which is $123,145 (40 percent of the total is benefits). BART station agents make 45 percent more than the national transit agency average, 3.8 percent higher than MTA; BART train operators make 37 percent above the national average, 25 percent above Bay Area average; Bart mechanics make 38 percent above national average, 13 percent above Bay Area average.  BART's lowest paid employees, entry level BART police, make nearly $59,000 annually without overtime (not including benefits). BART police managers are the highest paid employees on average, making $146,468 with overtime (not including benefits).  Senior staff make considerably more, with Dugger the highest paid employee with over $300,000 annually.

Dugger said a lot of the right things, though some of her opinions will not make the regular transit advocates who read this blog happy.  Here's a snippet:

For a state that is as urbanized as California, that has the policy objectives that the state has established for climate change, for environmental objectives, where transportation sources contribute--more than the national average--50 percent of the climate change problem, reducing vehicle miles traveled has got to be part of the solution.  Our economy can't afford for that to happen simply by people stopping traveling.  We're going to have to find smarter and cleaner ways for them to make the trips that they need to make. 

Continue reading excerpts from the meeting after the jump.

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The first new BART cars won't come online until 2014, but BART's Board of Directors, in a special meeting yesterday, reviewed staff's proposals (PDF) for procuring 700 new cars (there are currently 669 cars system-wide) and the possibility of upgrading them with new technology for customer communication, new interior fabrics and colors, and new modular seat configurations.  After months of somber meetings full of protests, arrests, and budget doomsday scenarios, directors were visibly excited to discuss details for improving cars that hearken to the 1970s era, when most were built, and by the possibility of experimenting with innovation and best practices from other major transit systems the world over.

Staff presented the time line for procurement, which begins with the board workshop and public outreach meetings over the next year and ends in 2024, when the last of the cars is expected to go into service.  The first 200 cars will be paid for with $1 billion in pledged funds from the MTC in their 2035 regional plan.  The $2.4 billion needed to pay for the remaining 500 cars will need to be secured at some point in the future. Of the many particular details available to BART, staff reminded directors that they sought to strike a balance between the capacity needs of the system and comfort for customers.

"This is one of the most exciting things we get to do as a board, plan for our future cars," said Director Gail Murray, who represents primarily suburban riders from Concord, Lafayette, and Orinda.

In choosing details about the interiors on new BART cars, Director Murray underscored the dichotomy between the demographics of BART riders, some who use the system as commuter rail from distant suburban ends, and those who live in urban areas and view the system as a metro subway. She asked staff to consider two kinds of material sets or modular interiors that would serve long-haul riders in a different way than short-distance riders.

It's very important to me and my constituents that we have a lot of seats.  So I was trying to find a way of making everyone happy, having the downtown people have lots of room for standing to get on and off quickly, but not sacrificing the seats out in the ends and the suburbs.  Those [riders] are our bread and butter because they provide two-thirds of the revenue.  I think we can't make them stand that long. It's just not good customer comfort.  That's my bottom line.

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So Gav made it official yesterday that he's running for Guv by tweeting it to his more than 283,000 followers, announcing it on Facebook, and even running a strange pseudo-article with a lot of donate hyperlinks in the Huffington Post, all of which made a splash among bloggers and traditional media icons.  All the hullabaloo aside, I need convincing on Gav's record on the issues important to this blog.

For his transportation platform, he leads with the right foot, making a strong link between transit improvements and climate change, job growth, and energy independence.

We must leave the era of the car behind and refocus our investment and energy on building smart, environmentally sustainable transit options

Creating robust mass transportation systems will connect our local and regional economies, create jobs, give Californians better affordable transit options and ease traffic congestion.

Amen, brother.  I couldn't have said it better and I hope all environmental and transportation advocates will hammer on those points this election cycle, namely that any candidate who claims green cred must embrace transit and that public transportation equals jobs. No governor serious about addressing climate change can stand by idly (or sit by in a hydrogen Hummer) as all state funding for transit is zeroed out and environmental review for highway projects is thwarted.  Any candidate for governor that wants my vote will immediately reverse the trend away from funding transit operations and widening highways.

So I'm sure the very first platform point will be a solution for restoring desperately needed transit operating money?  Hmm, not so much.  He leads with "innovative technology," claiming that he's modernized Muni with NextMuni and Translink. While it's important to give riders information and make their transfers more fluid, we learned in the kerfuffle over 311 work orders to MTA that more than 60 percent of total call volume to service were questions about bus and train schedules, which NextMuni provides for much less money.

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As livable streets advocates work to make headway in breaking the cycle of American auto dependence, the folks at Planetizen have put together a video narrative that explains how we got here. "The Story of Sprawl," a double DVD set produced by Managing Editor Tim Halbur, is a compilation of historical films dating from 1939 to 1965, documenting the confluence of factors that fostered the quintessential land use motif of the 20th century: far-flung, low-density, driving-intensive residential and commercial development. The discs include commentary from planning notables including Andrés Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, John Norquist, Neal Peirce, James Howard Kunstler and Robert Cervero, featured in the clip above.

"The Story of Sprawl" is available now. Check the Planetizen promo page for more clips and ordering info.

I'm sorry I'm late.  You know how it is, if it's not in the Facebook calendar, I'm pretty much worthless at remembering.  

Similar to the premise behind Tax Freedom Day, on March 1st, the San Francisco Bay Area celebrated (did it?) Transportation Freedom Day, the day when an average household has worked enough to pay off its yearly transportation costs, according to data compiled by the non-profit Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT).  The analysis was completed for the Brookings Institute, as part of a project to develop the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index.

The San Francisco Bay Area is the first among metropolitan regions nationally to work off its transportation costs, followed by New York City on March 7th, and Washinton DC, Minneapolis, and Denver on March 10th (complete list, PDF).  Not surprisingly, regions with higher densities tend to pay off their costs sooner than less dense cities, though the correlation is not perfect, in part because the metric takes into account the quality of transit connectivity, job density, households per residential acre, household income and size, etc.  A complete methodology can be found here. 

CNT and Brookings have developed an interactive map that allows users to show housing and transportation costs relative to annual incomes accross a region.  While it does make sense that most of the urban areas along the BART spine would see transportation costs at 0 to 48 percent of income, I'm surprised Marin is so expensive, in part because I assumed higher incomes.

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When USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood last month suggested that the country should consider replacing the gas tax with a tax on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to compensate for the dwindling Highway Trust Fund, which is primarily supported from gas taxes, the White House immediately rebuffed him, assuring the public and angry editorial boards that Obama had no such priority.  With a sluggish economy and greater fuel efficiency in new vehicles, a VMT tax would replenish the Highway Trust, though it would also allow planners and policy makers to develop solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through better land use policies.

Several states, including Oregon, Washington, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Texas are studying the feasibility of the transition and what infrastructure and technology would be needed to plan for a VMT tax.  In 2001, Oregon DOT (ODOT) launched a study called the the Oregon Mileage Fee Concept (PDF), and in April of 2006, ODOT tested GPS systems in vehicles belonging to several hundred volunteers.  Based on those findings, Oregon governor Theodore R. Kulongoski this year called for outfitting every Oregon vehicle with a GPS device that would assess a tax at the pump based on how many miles had been driven, regardless of the fuel efficiency of the vehicle.

In California last month, Assembly member Nancy Skinner of Alameda and Contra Costa counties introduced AB 1135, which would require every motorist to report their odometer reading when they register or renew their vehicle.  The state DMV would provide overall VMT data publicly. It would theoretically be available through fairly specific tracts to aid planning, though whether it would be by block face, census tract, voter district, or county has yet to be determined.

As the bill points out, accurate VMT data is essential not only for immediate compliance with the greenhouse gas reductions mandated in AB 32, but also for smarter regional planning and the reduction of sprawl mandated in SB 375: 

More accurate data about vehicle-miles-traveled--the mileage driven annually by Californians--would provide essential information to guide local transportation and land use planning. Location of transit corridor improvements, light rail, bicycle paths, and high-occupancy freeway lanes now depend on the estimates done by various state agencies, but all of these projects would benefit from more accurate data. Better data would also provide more consistent local and statewide estimates for transportation planning, city planning, and air quality planning efforts. The data would be essential in establishing long-term, historical trends in vehicle use, traffic congestion, energy consumption, and air quality measures, including ozone precursor pollutants and greenhouse gases.

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It's a good day to talk about the costs of car ownership on individuals and families and the need to integrate transportation and land use planning regionally.

The New York Times Wheels blog today has posted a piece that tries to quantify the costs of car ownership and it is garnering spirited feedback.  As we've reported here in a story about the merits of car-sharing, transportation costs as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics are the second largest spending block behind home ownership, at nearly $9,000 annually.  

From the post:

American “consumer units” (similar to a household) spent an average of $8,758 on all forms of transportation in 2007 (up 2.9 percent from 2006).  In 2007, a statistically average household, with an annual pre-tax family income of $63,091 and 1.9 vehicles, spent more on transportation than it did on clothing, health care and entertainment combined ($7,432).

While we understand that health care reform is going to dominate much of President Obama's first term, given transportation costs, swelling VMT, and the need to address climate change, we hope he will give considerable support to USDOT Sectretary Ray LaHood's good initiatives, like the one he just announced with HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan to marry transportation and land use funding for support of transit-oriented development and environmentally sustainable and affordable housing under the aegis of strong regional planning.

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Far be it from us to take political sides on Livable Streets issues--you don't have to be a donkey or an elephant to appreciate pedestrian safety, traffic calming, and quality public space--but why is it that two of the best columns connecting transportation policy reform, land use, and energy independence have come from conservative pundits? 

First was David Brooks' This Old House piece in The New York Times, which posed serious questions about how we should change transportation patterns and build dense, mixed-use residences that facilitate community.

Then Weekly Standard editor Christopher Caldwell wrote a very good critique of the 1956 Eisenhower Highway Act last week in the Financial Times, even citing William Holly Whyte.  Although you have to read around the knee-jerk politicking that book-ends the article, Caldwell dissects the negative impacts that automobility and sprawl have had on the economy, the environment, and the demographic makeup of America.

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