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- 18083 Pinwheel disappears into the crowded Stockton St. sidewalk at Jackson
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From: geekstinkbreath
January 20, 2012
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Anonymous
Feel free to take my Bay Bridge West Span Bikeway potential ridership poll if you like: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dHFyOUpGc1U3UGp3STBmUVhpOFc0QlE6MQ
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Anonymous
@86883e1d8289f5b704d6504ff6f52ab9:disqus The downsides of the Bay Bridge bikeway project have already been (almost gleefully) laid out by its detractors: cost, distance, elevation, wind… Fewer people seem willing to compare its strengths, of which there are many, in an effort to make an accurate cost/benefit analysis.
Strengths: Unlike the popular and well-used GG bridge, it connects two of the largest population and employment centers in the region. Unlike the typical bike commute, the bridge route would be uninterrupted and with no cars to contend with, making it less stressful than the average stop and go traffic. Bridge elevation is very gradual compared to most bay area hills. Great connection to the Bay Trail on the east side, leading through Emeryville, Berkeley, and Richmond (and the new LB Labs site). Great connection to the new Transbay Terminal on the west side. Lots of untapped tourism potential between SF and the East Bay. Gives bikers full access during commute times, and takes some strain off of BART the rest of the time. Considerable future development on Treasure Island means many commuters would only be riding the western span. Provides better cross bay connectivity during low transit hours (late night). In 2022 through 20?? when the pathway would actually be completed and in use, fuel prices will likely be much higher and auto congestion much worse than it is today. Millions and perhaps billions of dollars in deferred health care and air quality mitigation costs resulting from higher rates of non-motorized traffic. If the cantilevered bike path is built, then there would also be reduced auto congestion and fewer lane closures on the bridge caused by routine maintenance.
I am sure I am missing many additional points, but I am also sure that the path detractors are vastly underestimating the potential ridership and overlooking many of the positive effects the path would have on the bay area, even to non-cyclists.
“Dedicating a single lane in whatever the reverse commute direction is (managing that would be a headache)”…
I’m not sure it is a great idea for a bike/ped path, as they would need better separation from auto traffic, but this is already done in the Caldecott Tunnel using a pretty creative solution of pneumatic, pop-up bollards in the roadway. Undoubtedly this would be harder to implement on a bridge, but I think some professional engineers could figure it out.
As with most bridges, the congestion mostly occurs at the toll booths and in the intersections leading up to the bridge, and not on the bridge itself, since much less passing and merging occurs there. So taking away an auto lane for bike traffic even in the commute direction would not contribute as much to additional congestion as one would think, as long as the approaches are handled elegantly. However, an on-bridge bike path would be much less appealing and comfortable to the non-hardcore commuter, and would inevitably receive a lower ridership than the more expensive option.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Sprague
Perhaps I should reserve judgement, too, because I certainly don’t want to add to further delays. However, I think it would be best to have the bike lane be exclusively for cyclists at all points without any automobile merging. At intersections, “crossbikes” could enable safe cross street crossing for cyclists just like crosswalks do for pedestrians. This is common in Europe and in Manhattan, I believe, and it is how the Masonic bikeway is designed.
The JFK Drive and Kezar intersection design looks very good. It appears to legitimize and improve a common usage of the median. Thank you Streetsblog for sharing these designs.
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
Anonymous
Oh, and here is a map of the four routes as I plotted them on Google Earth. It would be good to redo them with a more reliable data source– I’m fairly sure, for instance, that there’s no 10-foot rise on Baker between Fell & Oak. But it’s mostly accurate, as far as I can tell.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Anonymous
Ok, I found the problem (apparently Google Earth freaks out if you ask it to draw an elevation profile more than so many pixels wide). So here is attempt #2, with all four streets. I still think some of the data is off– indeed, Google Earth seems to give me different results for the same graph at different times. But the gist is there. They should be to scale both vertically and horizontally.
Compare especially the third & fourth images– Oak and Page.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
marcos
@465e3c020e944cc091ce94c6ffbb5c7d:disqus I thought that the City provided that field in the street centerlines GIS shape file, but no. It is trivial to calculate grade by performing geospatial database queries on the street centerline and terrain elevation datasets to calculate slope of a street segment.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Peapod mom
I wonder where the SFBC gets data for those handy maps with street grades and so forth? It seems like not enough of the bike skeptics have seen those maps. Perhaps they’re a handy tool for outreach, too. You could snip insets from the maps and also show side-view elevations like you were trying to create there.
Every now and then I try to point out to the naysayers who think we all should be using Page (as if that’s never occurred to us before–?) that the climb up there from the Panhandle is impossible for many of us if we’re loaded down with kids in the back or with a cargo bike with a surfboard or…use your imagination.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
marcos
We’re at the point where perhaps half of motorists realize that cyclists need to conserve momentum and while stopped at a stop sign will wave cyclists through.
You are not the elephant in the room @jd_x:disqus . There are times when it is perfectly okay to bike wrong way on a one way street where that is very dangerous for a car, but a cyclist does that at their own risk. Biking slowly and cautiously can be faster than going around 3-4 blocks. There are times when it is safe to bike on the sidewalk as well where that is very dangerous for car to do, again cautiously when there is any chance of a ped popping out from inside or behind anything.
No harm = no foul, bikes are not cars, the dangers to others and risks are mostly borne to cyclists and that threat of imminent execution or maiming does wonders to clear the mind.
in response to Misguided Enforcement Precedes ThinkBike Improvements on the Wiggle
Mario Tanev
I figured this much, but are there any plans whatsoever or is that explicitly off the table for some reason?
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
Anonymous
I think it would help to make a poster that demonstrates the need for the Fell/Oak bike lanes. It should show the four proposed streets which connect the corner of the Panhandle with the intersection of Page & Scott: Hayes, Fell, Oak and Page.
For each street, it should have an elevation profile (with distance), all to scale, so that it’s clear how they compare. I’ve tried to do this with Google Earth, but I’ve hit some bugs (it’s now showing a 20-foot cliff on the route), and getting things in the same scale is tricky. In addition, I’m a little dubious about the elevation data they use: it seems to show the block of Baker in front of the DMV as being only slightly less sloped than the block to the south, which is absurd.
You could add some data like distance, elevation gain, maximum slope and average slope.
If this could be done, though, I think it would make a persuasive image.
The image below is supposed to be the Page St. and Oak St, but they’re not quite right– especially that second bump on Oak.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Anonymous
In terms of Muni absorbing more passengers, I think there is some low-hanging fruit that that can be picked with relatively little cost (but more political will). Essentially, speeding up service (as mikesonn says) allows you to make more runs for the money, increasing both capacity and passenger satisfaction, and could be done with things like signal priority and exclusive (and enforced) lanes. And reliability is vital, because most of the memorable crush-loads people experience aren’t the result of a lack of capacity, but a messed-up schedule: there’s probably a skipped run there, or just one that was five minutes late and then delayed further by the masses of passengers that had been waiting. Solving that would probably require measures unpopular with the union. Again, politics, not money. It can be done if enough people demand it.
Parking: yes, SFPark actually benefits drivers. Yes, this may actually lead to an uptick in the number of cars. But not all that much, really: you’re going from near-100% occupancy to… 90% occupancy. Ok, so there might be a few more drivers taking short trips instead of staying all day– but it’s usually the commuters who cause the worst traffic. In the long run, I think it also makes it easier, politically, to discuss the pros and cons of replacing parking spaces with other purposes: if you can show that people pay $17 an hour for a given block of parking, but that Muni would save $25 an hour plus a lot of passengers’ time if it were used as a transit lane, then that’s a much easier sell than trying to take it away when people believe it’s their entitlement, and that it’s impossible to find parking elsewhere.
Driving to the south bay? I find this a strange fear. You expect people to move to a place where one of the major attractions is alternative transportation and access to local job centers, pay a hefty premium for doing so, and then ignore it to sit in traffic? The combination of living-in-the-city fashion and Silicon Valley money does lead to this result, but it doesn’t mean that we should base long-term planning on it. If it’s a real issue, well, you can limit residential parking construction in the increased residential– in other words, what’s already happening.
Rezoning is a long-term plan, which will have effects over decades. Restriping streets can be done in a month. It makes no sense to impose limits on population for the next fifty years, just because we don’t have enough buses today.
And while transit systems may have a challenge dealing with peak loads, increases off-peak are just gravy: more fares for scarcely any more expenditure. Transit systems have a lot of problems, but “too much density” is generally not one of them.
And maintenance curves for roads and highways (and asthmatic children) aren’t great either. Let alone that gas price curve…
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Mark Dreger
Did you guys catch the intersection treatment at Dahlia? Dashed lines with 4 sharrow symbols minus the chevrons. It’s key we don’t drop our bikeways off at intersection – I’d prefer boxes or green paint, but I’ll take it.
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
Mark Dreger
Unfortunately not part of this project. This is Stanyan to Crossover/Transverse only.
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
Mario Tanev
Any word on Crossover Dr to Great Highway? I cannot find any mention of that section.
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
Oes-not-exist
waste of money that could have been spent on real bicycle improvements, such as those that were clearly delineated and legislated in the bike plan. i am sad the the sfbc chooses to change priorities without follow through for prior projects, and demands that the city follow suit.
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
Anonymous
It’s great this project is moving forward. Though this is a bit of a “low hanging fruit” I think it’s very important to get cycle tracks down so people understand them better. they are essential to getting the bike mode share to 20%.
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
TL
It will be very interesting to see how those merge lanes work at intersections. I’ll reserve judgment until the facility is on the ground. Fortunately, SFMTA is doing detailed data gathering. Perhaps the results could even inform Fell/Oak design.
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
Shmoozilla2000
People who live in the neighborhood can support the bike lane AND be concerned about the impacts its installation will have on their daily lives. My 2 cents as a resident of the neighborhood. Sorry to bore you Peter. Please return to your circle jerk foks, I won’t interrupt again.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Reginald Stonebody
Wise choice to segway around the tenderloin.
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
murphstahoe
Stay tuned for updates as construction gets underway (or doesn’t).
Don’t let Ed Lee see this article or he’ll call it off…
in response to JFK Drive Bikeway Street Plans Released. Construction Coming Next Week?
marcos
another issue is that the wider the street, the more latitude cyclists have to keep at speed and swerve in front of or behind crossing peds without incident. narrowing the street might slow autos, but it offers less room for maneuver for cyclists. again, more of an issue for faster inbound bicycle traffic.
in response to Misguided Enforcement Precedes ThinkBike Improvements on the Wiggle
marcos
Re: bicyclists not stopping at stop signs where there is no contention from autos or pedestrians, no harm = no foul.
My favorite bike ride in the City is down Oak from the park to Steiner at speed with traffic past synchronized lights, center striping before Divis, keeping speed to head down into the Lower Haight and the Wiggle via Steiner which is very calm. At times there is contention running the stop sign between cyclists on Page who both run stop signs, but rarely from motorists and peds. The danger of running stop signs is more so heading inbound, downhill than it is for slower bikes which run stop signs heading outbound and uphill, but still totally manageable.
That said, there are race and class issues with the focus on the wiggle when there are more cyclists facing greater dangers on Market and in some intersections in SOMA and into the Mission. Removing politics from the situation (as some want to happen with removing parking as an issue) would mean that scarce public resources are allocated purely according to the observed public health threats of the built environment, not to the loudest, whitest and best off voices as appears to be the case in the wiggle.
in response to Misguided Enforcement Precedes ThinkBike Improvements on the Wiggle
peternatural
http://disqus.com/guest/b061ae0867336435bc888589c1dc4e26/ Yes, I know what Karen wrote, and it’s not what you claimed.
This statement:
“If I didn’t care about the environment, then I would favor free parking.”
is not the same this:
“If a person doesn’t care about the environment, then they favor free parking.”
Or this:
“If I favor free parking, then I don’t care about the environment.”
Least of all this:
“If a person favors free parking, then they don’t care about the environment.”
Anyway, you should drop it, or come up with something substantial, because this is boring.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Karen Lynn Allen
Shmoozilla2000,
I believe you are referring to this comment I made lower down in this discussion thread:
“Yes, it’s understandable that the people who both own a car and park it
on the street in this neighborhood (a minority of the residents) don’t
want to give up their free parking. If I were getting free parking and
didn’t care about the environment, the economy, or the health and safety
of my fellow human beings, I would howl at losing it, too.”
I presented this as an opinion, not a statement of fact, but I am glad to back up my opinion with the facts on which I based it.
Fact: The residents who are objecting to the loss of 80 parking spaces place a greater priority on access to these parking spaces than they do to the proposed three blocks of protected bicycle infrastructure that will connect up the major east-west bicycle artery of the city. Whatever their reasons for this prioritization, I don’t think this can be interpreted any other way. For now, the city also agrees that these 80 spaces are more important than connecting up the major east-west city bicycle artery.
Fact: the adult human body needs 30 minutes of moderate exercise (such as walking or biking) each day to be healthy.
Fact: 5 in 6 Americans do not get 30 minutes of moderate exercise each day.
Fact: People who use active modes of transportation (walking or biking) are much more likely to get the recommended 30 minutes of moderate exercise.
Fact: People improve their health when they walk or bike to work.
Fact: Providing safe, comfortable bicycle infrastructure induces people to bicycle.
Fact: The additional health care costs due to someone not getting 30 minutes/ day exercise is $544 per sedentary person.
Fact: The US spends 17% of its GDP on health care, (2% of its GDP on diabetes alone.)
Fact: Countries with high rates of cycling participation such as Denmark and the Netherlands spend less than 9% of their GDP on health care with better health outcomes in almost every measurable category.
Fact: “If everyone
in America lost weight and returned to the same weight levels of 1991, we would
save one trillion dollars. We would cover all the uninsured, and we would be
able to quadruple the money for medical research.” (Milken Institute)
Fact: The average cost of car ownership per year in the US is $8776. (estimated by AAA) For people residing in San Francisco, 90% of this sum leaves the local economy. (Only 80% or so if the car is financed through a local credit union or San Francisco-based bank.) Median household income in San Francisco is $65,519. People who are car-free have more money to spend in the local economy than if they owned a car.
Fact: Drivers impose on their fellow citizens external costs of $.47 a mile (in 2005 dollars) from particulate matter-related health costs, accident costs, cost of congestion, and road maintenance and repair costs. This number does not include costs due to carbon emissions, noise pollution, water pollution, other ecological damage or damage to buildings due to vibrations. So every mile that could have been walked or bicycled but was instead driven in a car costs San Franciscans $.47. (Transit–since it is subsidized and buses do appreciable road damage and diesel buses emit particulate matter–does not save San Franciscans quite as much, although the congestion savings of transit are considerable.) See http://www.spur.org/publications/library/article/estimatingtheexternalcostsofdrivinginsf09012005
Fact: 40% of all trips taken in the US are under 2 miles, easy biking distance.
Fact: in the 2008 San Francisco State of Cycling Report conducted by the SFMTA, the top three hindrances to biking in San Francisco among infrequent and non-cyclists are “not comfortable biking with cars” (79%); “too difficult to cross major streets” (73%) and “not enough bike lanes (75%). These were also the top three hindrances reported by frequent cyclists, except that “not enough bike lanes” was first (80%), and not comfortable biking with cars was second (71%).
Fact: Half of all heath care costs in the US are paid for by businesses and individuals, the other half are paid for by taxpayers.
Fact: American imports of foreign oil account for roughly half of the U.S. trade deficit.
These are just some of the ways bicycle use reduces health costs and has positive effects on both the environment and the economy. But let’s turn our attention to my use of the word “care,” which, again, was an opinion, not a statement of fact, but probably the most controversial aspect of what I was saying.
To care is (from my dictionary) “to feel concern or interest; to attach importance to something.” Now one could argue that even the most callous coal magnate would “care” if all oxygen were to disappear from our planet’s atmosphere tomorrow, so in a sense everyone “cares” about the environment to some extent. And most everyone would also care if all money, goods and services suddenly ceased to exist overnight. But I think most of us would say that a mother who prioritizes a phone conversation about a television show over her toddler wandering into a busy street does not “care” about her child, that the appropriate preference has not been made.
At some point there is a moral, ethical distinction to be made that cannot be discerned by a scientific study or public survey. So yes, if someone says they care about the environment or the economy but prioritizes free parking over bicycle use, I can’t but believe either they don’t understand the consequences of their prioritization, or they are insincere. And at some point willful ignorance of the consequences of one’s actions is a choice, and implies culpability. (Now if someone wants to argue that the circumstances of their life demand that they give little priority to the environment, the economy, their long-term financial well-being, their own health, or the health of their fellow citizens, that is indeed a different matter. And if their circumstances are truly extreme, I may even agree with them. But again, that would be a matter of opinion, not an assertion of fact.)
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Shmoozilla2000
Here is what she said:
”Yes, it’s understandable that the people who both own a car and park it
on the street in this neighborhood (a minority of the residents) don’t
want to give up their free parking. If I were getting free parking and
didn’t care about the environment, the economy, or the health and safety
of my fellow human beings, I would howl at losing it, too.”
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
murphstahoe
marcos – take a gander at the heavy bike commute traffic on the GG Bridge. While the bridge itself is only a mile and a half, the South End of the bridge is 5 miles from the job centers in SF, and at minimum a couple of miles and a hill from Sausalito, the nearest residential center. Your generalization is completely false. 8 miles is trivial.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
peternatural
Except Karen asserted no such thing. Oops.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Shmoozilla2000
Karen, how about your assertion that residents of DMV Heights don’t care about the environment or the economy? Was that in the Chronicle? Did you mail out a survey, go door to door and talk to people? Or were you just being self-righteous?
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
peternatural
Sounds terrible. There’s nowhere to park because all the spots are… vacant.
In my neighborhood, street parking is free. As a result, residents have to park up to 18 blocks from their homes because there are absolutely no free spots closer. The alternative is pay the landlord $300/month for a spot in the garage. If there was an SFPark meter out front charging 25 cents / hour (because no one ever parks there, so demand is low), then I could park in front of my place for only $0.25 per houir X 24 hours X 30 days = $180 / month. (Assuming I never move the car.) That’s jolly steep^H^H^H^H^H cheap! Someone tell my landlord he’s ripping me off!!
Speaking of landlords and ripoffs, taxpayers (all of us, no just you) are the landlords of the street parking spaces. Giving it away for free is the real rip-off here.
in response to SFPark Mission Bay Plan Sees Backlash from Potrero Hill Residents
marcos
Do you live in the Palms?
in response to SFPark Mission Bay Plan Sees Backlash from Potrero Hill Residents
Francis
SF
Park is an EPIC FAILURE! Jay Primus and the rest of the SFMTA are not listening to the residents!! SF Park came through my neighborhood in SOMA and replaced half of the Residential (Y) Zone parking with meters.
The end result is that taxpaying city residents can no longer park their cars near their homes, apartments, and businesses. The epic failure is that **NO ONE IS PARKING AT THE
METERS** along the Caltrain line Near Townsend and 6th street. Residents on Bluxome Street now
have to park our cars up to 4 blocks away from our homes or pay $2.00 an hour to park at the meters to bring on groceries or off load our children. Is it any wonder why families have given up on San Francisco?
It is a huge
inconvenience to the businesses and residents in my neighborhood and
it’s has made SOMA a less desirable place to own real estate, or operate a business. The residents see this as a money grab by the SFMTA who rammed these meters through without regard for the needs or input
of our neighborhood. The city takes away street parking from
hardworking residents so that the SFMTA can build useless parking apps. Seriously, people should not need to use software to park their cars.
Residents in other parts of the city should fight this fascism and not allow these meters to be installed. The people who implemented this bloated poorly run project should be ousted from their Ivory Towers and replaced with people who are willing to work with residents.
in response to SFPark Mission Bay Plan Sees Backlash from Potrero Hill Residents
Andy Chow
The primary purpose for bike sharing is to facilitate short trips so it would help fill the gaps between transit centers and destinations. That would help make transit more competitive, and allows transit riders to use bikes for errands in the middle of the day. I don’t think the purpose of this program is to compete or replace the existing bike rental companies that cater to tourists.
I am pleased that there would be a single program. If this works the way it is intended, then a single membership would provide access to all the sites. In some ways, it would be similar to county-wide library systems.
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
jdbig
I thought the roll out for america’s cup was going to be larger, at least to Fisherman’s Wharf down the Embarcadero. Perhaps we’re getting less bike infrastructure yet again… Page 40 of the People Plan
http://www.oewd.org/media/docs/AC34/09-30-11%20People%20Plan.pdf
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
Aaron Bialick
Well, from what I’ve heard about it, consolidating transit agencies is a whole nother can o’ worms. Sounds simple enough, but for starters, there’s the issue of consolidating differing wages at each agency, and it’s been discussed for decades… there’s a story for a day when I’m feeling really, really investigative.
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
Anonymous
About time! Of course, I wish it was a bigger roll-out and am skeptical 500 bicycles are enough to get it to catch on ….
And I’m also having a hard time understanding how this will work down in the Peninsula. For example, in Palo Alto and Mountain View, how many stations will there be? If there are only a few, I just can’t see that many people using it. Of course, if they target Caltrain riders (which I think they are), then that will help. But I think the details here will make all the difference.
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
Mario Tanev
I think it’s good that there is no fragmentation between agencies, but I surely hope that allocation will be based on ridership potential, rather than political allegiance. The problem with regional transportation agencies (e.g. BART) is that they care more about geographic equity than ridership potential. That’s why we’re talking about BART to Livermore, but we’re not talking about BART to 30th and Mission.
A way to make this work could be if administration and some baseline funding was done by MTC, but local agencies were in charge of funding the supply of bike stations and bikes. This way SF can quickly ramp up supply with its own funds (for which SFBC would have to lobby).
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
Karen Lynn Allen
“The system will include 500 bicycles at approximately 50 stations in downtown San Francisco.”
“The system will launch ‘just in time for America’s Cup,’ said Rose, as a key component of the “People Plan” announced by Mayor Ed Lee last April. Bike-share will be part of the initiative to encourage the hundreds of thousands of spectators expected to travel to the Embarcadero this summer to get around by foot, transit, and by bike.”
500 bikes is a very, very small number. (New York is rolling out a bikeshare program soon with 10,000 bikes.) Though I do understand it’s good to get something off the ground sooner rather than later, there is no way 500 bikes located in 50 stations (with most of the stations not located where America’s Cup spectators want to go) can be a “key component” of moving around hundreds of thousands of people. Maybe even 10,000 bikes couldn’t move around hundreds of thousands of people, but 500 certainly won’t do the job. The “People’s Plan” should encourage folks to bring their bikes with them on BART and Caltrain. This will provide the greatest happiness level for all concerned.
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
mikesonn
@google-c1054b713ae4d63cc3ebaf620c20fb35:disqus Don’t bother.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
OctaviusIII
For the tourist crowd I sure hope Sausalito gets in on the action. I’ve heard but have yet to confirm that cyclists are often turned away at the ferry terminal due to lack of space; a bikeshare ought to help.
The Transportation Authority of Marin is studying bikeshare right now, and Lord help me if they start their own piddly suburban system without tying it into San Francisco.
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
murphstahoe
One can dream, but maybe the regional membership model of this bike share will set a precedent for consolidating some of the region’s transit systems – Aaron that goes on the front page
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
Jarrett
Sure, the number of bikes and stations needs to be higher, but we should commend the MTC and local agencies for implementing a regional bike share program. If bike share were divided into several different municipal systems, like the original proposal, that would be a disaster. Can you imagine having multiple memberships just to ride in San Francisco and Mountain View? Yuck.
One can dream, but maybe the regional membership model of this bike share will set a precedent for consolidating some of the region’s transit systems.
in response to Bike-Share Coming to SF and Silicon Valley This July
Francis
Jay Primus and the rest of the SFMTA are not listening to the residents!!
SF Park is an EPIC FAILURE! SF Park came through my neighborhood in SOMA this and replaced 70% of the Residential (Y) Zone parking with meters. The end result is that residents can no longer park their cars in front of their homes. Here’s the best part.
**NO ONE IS PARKING AT THE METERS** Near Townsend and 6th street. Residents on Bluxome Street now have to park our cars up to 4 blocks away.
It is a huge inconvenience to the businesses and residents in my neighborhood and it’s not really helping anything. It’s just a money grab by the MTA. The SFMTA rammed these meters through without regard for the needs or input of our neighborhood. The city takes away street parking from hardworking residents so
that they can keep paying the bloated salaries of our politicians and
city workers.
in response to Jay Primus: Too Early to Evaluate Results of SFPark
Sean Rea
@86883e1d8289f5b704d6504ff6f52ab9:disqus please go back and reread my comments where I specifically indicated I did not vote for Lee and figured this is how he would act.
I don’t speak for SFBC so I won’t make any claims on their behalf.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
marcos
@mikesonn:disqus it is only you and the sfbg that see this as a ‘parking war.’ there are valid criticisms of staff’s proposals that staff was just not hearing until we made them listen. There is a difference between opposing parking controls on principle and pushing back hard on staff when they decline to negotiate over reasonable changes in their proposal.
You might think that variable price parking as presented by staff is the perfect proposal. But I don’t think that it is a stretch to conclude that there are a range of varied proposals that are roughly equivalent which will move us in the direction we want to go.
One-size fits-all policies appropriate for a NCD or R* district might not be appropriate for a mixed use neighborhood. That is not radical, that is reasonable. Our neighbors are not demanding free parking by any means.
Some of us fought to get the EIR started on the bike plan in what, the 2006-07 FY budget. I urged Ross to find $1m to get the ball rolling but the SFBC and City Attorney assured us, no, we’ve got it covered. Greg Hayes and I alerted them to this in 2002 and thy assured us no, don’t worry, we’ve got it covered. I wrote the resolution for Ross that set City policy to move away from LOS to a more sustainable non-auto centric metric. We’ll find out tonight at the MTA CAC if what staff produced moves us forward as pertains to insulating transit from delay due to projects like SFPark availability pricing or if it just gives the green light to development with impacts mitigated in the aggregate and down the road. My achievement at the TEP was to get the 47 rerouted to serve the big box corridor in SOMA along Townsend onto Caltrain so that there would be a more direct, intense rapid service to a multimodal station and so that folks might be able to shop via transit. We worked with Nick Carr’s group to traffic calm our notch of the North Mission.
I’ve not been fighting for sustainable transportation for some time now and not ineffectively.
@google-c1054b713ae4d63cc3ebaf620c20fb35:disqus If you all were duped into supporting Ed Lee, and many of us saw his coalition coming from afar, then why should we trust your political intuition when it comes to balance competing constituencies to move the non-car agenda as far as fast as is politically possible under the circumstances?
Don’t get me wrong, on some issues Ed Lee has a much less petulant tone than Newsom and does not carry himself like a spoiled entitled child, but any time that rubber hits the road and it is the 99% up against the 1%, we know that Rose Pak and Willie Brown give Ed Lee 1% latitude and no more.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
marcos
@google-cd6ac603016b207eed1e6a32f6c3abfa:disqus I think that the logistics of the bay bridge are an impediment to its use as a bicycling corridor. The bridge itself is 8 miles, most folks don’t bike that far on flats. The bridge rises up 85′ or so at the west anchorage. It then crests at, what 300′ at YBI. Then it begins a 4 mile moderate grade to the Oakland anchorage where it is another 5 miles to reach the closest destinations. In reverse, the east bay side is a 300′ climb up a grade and into the afternoon winds.
Dedicating a single lane in whatever the reverse commute direction is (managing that would be a headache) to bikes and peds would be infinitely preferable to blowing $300m on a side track. But not so much to privilege the incumbency of autos, I’d want to see that the if structural impediments of a tough slog of a commute that would only appeal to a segment of the cycling community would make this a good public policy choice. It would be cheap and reversible tho, so a pilot project to take data would be okay.
Taking a lane in each direction for transit, however, would be cool.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
marcos
@KarenLynnAllen:disqus I was writing about the general case of Muni’s posture with respect to absorbing mode shift from autos, that there are some limits that need to be considered. And we need to keep in mind the more unpleasant aspects of the big picture: the topological impediments to cycling such as hills and wind, the needs of the non-healthy folks who will never be able to bike (again) no matter how safe and the other elements of public policy that create traffic congestion that delays transit.
Currently the City sees seniors and disabled, those who cannot bike, the transit dependent as plantation dwellers with no place else to go and whose special needs can be ignored.
@mikesonn:disqus “Reduced traffic would speed routes which means more runs per hour and therefore increased capacity.”
And pricing parking to create availability and make parking more convenient as compared to transit or making parking so expensive that folks drive down to jobs in the south bay reduces traffic how again?
Rezoning for increased residential without putting augmented transit into place as units go online elicits mode shift how again?
These are all is a systems in motion over time as well, and the maintenance and operations funding curves are not boding well.
If you’re not willing to revisit your assumptions when confronted with evidence that they are faulty, how can you expect for a motorist who hears nothing but shrill froth from the alternative transit groupthink to revisit theirs?
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Karen Lynn Allen
Shmoozilla2000, The data backing up my assertions has been presented repeatedly on Streetsblog. I assure you I make none of it up. Check out this article for extensive data and links to studies:
http://sf.streetsblog.org/2011/10/12/commentary-drive-a-car-in-the-city-time-to-embrace-bike-infrastructure/
As to parking regulations, most people who live in San Francisco are fairly well-acquainted with them, but if you live out of town you can check out the MTA website:
http://www.sfmta.com/cms/phome/homeparking.htm
As to gas prices, I find the weekly EIA data (US Energy Information Administration) interesting to follow
http://www.eia.gov/petroleum/gasdiesel/
If you are interested in learning more about Peak Oil, this is a good article
http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/commentary-in-nature-can-economy-bear-what-oil-prices-have-in-store
As to what-have-you, I’m afraid you’ll have to be more specific.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Sean Rea
All I can say is thanks to @86883e1d8289f5b704d6504ff6f52ab9:disqus for stating the obvious in the most condescending of ways. Do you really think that I am driven by the sole issue of whether or not they improve Fell/Oak? I don’t even ride there.
Or maybe, just maybe, this being a transportation blog, we’re going to discuss issues relevant to that subject?
The point it was those who were duped into supporting Lee thinking he would actually have a spine should have known better. I didn’t vote for him and we’re getting about what I expected from him.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
Karen Lynn Allen
Marcos, I agree that indeed some Muni lines may be at or near capacity, but, again, anyone ready to give up their car is likely already biking or taking Muni extensively. And even if this program did net 60 additional Muni riders who took, say, as many as 4 trips a day, that would be adding 240/680,000 Muni passenger trips per day, which would be 4 hundredths of a percent increased load, a change so small it could not accurately be measured.
For the physical and economic health of the city we should definitely make Muni pleasant, safe and reliable for everyone, and figuring out how to add more service on the most crowded lines is part of this. As Mike noted below, reducing traffic congestion would significantly help Muni’s throughput, increasing capacity.
As to whether encouraging the population of the entire city to go car-free or car-lite will decimate Muni service, as we create more and better bicycle infrastructure, a high percentage are likely to go car-free by relying much more on bicycles than Muni use. I found that dropping down one car three years ago has meant both fewer car trips and *fewer* total Muni trips for me, because as I gained confidence I could get almost anywhere in the city by bike, I have found bicycling usually faster, more direct, and more convenient than Muni. (And I value the exercise it offers and the opportunity to be out-of-doors.) My husband, an avid cyclist, hardly takes Muni at all, and my son prefers to bike as well. My teen daughters often prefer Muni to biking, partly because they find traffic intimidating, partly because we live up a big hill. But when they take Muni it’s a double bonus for traffic reduction because it avoids two car trips–me driving them to a place and then me returning home after I’ve dropped them off.
It is likely that economics are going to push people into going car-free or car-light whatever we do. If politicians are smart, they will realize that creating safe and pleasant transit and biking options that make this transition a lifestyle improvement rather than a lifestyle reduction will, in the end, cause them far, far less pain than multitudes of unhappy people who are faced with the choice of biking on dangerous, polluted roads or taking miserably crowded buses.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay
mikesonn
She does often, click on her icon to go to her profile and read her past comments.
in response to Commentary: The Eds Respond to Frustration With Fell/Oak Bikeway Delay