The first lady visited "Sesame Street" last fall as part of her push to fight childhood obesity. (Photo: NYDN)

Mrs. Obama appeared with six Cabinet members, the Surgeon General, and several lawmakers and mayors to mark the president's official creation of a new Task Force on Childhood Obesity. As part of the first lady's new effort, the White House plans to expand the President's Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, while setting up a Safe and Healthy Schools Fund during hte next reauthorization of federal elementary education law.

In her remarks to the press this afternoon, Mrs. Obama paid particular attention to the lifestyle shifts that have led many kids to a more sedentary routine -- and helped contribute to obesity rates of 17 percent for children and teens, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association. (The same study found that one of every three U.S. kids are oversight.)

The first lady said:

In my home, we weren't rich. The foods we ate weren't fancy. But there was always a vegetable on the plate. And we managed to lead a pretty healthy life.

Many kids today aren't so fortunate. Urban sprawl and fears about safety often mean the only walking they do is out their front door to a bus or a car. Cuts in recess and gym mean a lot less running around during the school day, and lunchtime may mean a school lunch heavy on calories and fat. For many kids, those afternoons spent riding bikes and playing ball until dusk have been replaced by afternoons inside with TV, the Internet, and video games.

Now that the Obama administration has awarded $8 billion in high-speed rail grants to more than two dozen states, with $2.5 billion more coming soon, why not keep thinking big when it comes to bullet-train expansion?

That's the ethos of a new report released today by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) calling for a New Deal-like public works juggernaut that would eventually connect all major cities located within 100 and 500 miles of each other. For a look at how such a system would remake the American rail map, check out the image above.

"The first step in building the network is to set a national goal with an ambitious time frame, just like we did for the Interstate Highway System or getting to the moon," U.S. PIRG senior analyst Phineas Baxandall wrote in a blog post unveiling the report. "We can link all our major cities by 2050, if we set our minds to it."

Given the political wrangling over the deficit that continues to paralyze Washington, however, it's worth asking how an ambitious rail program would be funded. The U.S. PIRG answers that question in several ways: First, the group calls for a dedicated revenue stream for inter-city passenger rail in the next long-term transportation bill, with local investments matched by the federal government in the same 80:20 ratio that highway plans receive.

"By financing transportation projects equitably," the report's authors write, "states will be able to make rational transportation decisions based on the needs of their residents, rather than on the chances of securing a lucrative federal match."

Secondly, the U.S. PIRG aims to put government support for Amtrak -- often derided by conservatives for its reliance on federal subsidies that also benefit road projects -- in perspective. When evaluated as a share of U.S. GDP, government investment of passenger rail looks stunningly low compared with other industrialized nations. The imbalance is visible in the chart below:

(Chart: U.S. PIRG)

From the U.S. PIRG report:

To begin to dig out of that hole, the federal government should invest steadily increasing levels of funding in passenger rail. We probably cannot hope to match the $300 billion China will be investing in its high-speed rail system between now and 2020, but we should endeavor to match the level of investment provided by other industrialized nations, as a share of GDP, in their rail networks.

We turn to the Streetsblog Network for a little inspiration this morning, courtesy of Robin Chase -- author of the blog Network Musings and former CEO of Zipcar. Chase shares a story from a friend in India, Vinay Jayaswal, who believes that meaningful change on the most overwhelming issues can, and must, begin with the actions of individuals:

Just think what he could accomplish if he put his mind to it. (Photo: Network Musings)

The moral of the story for Vinay is that people want to help, want to do the right thing, want to improve society. They just don't have the confidence to act and take the first step. They can't figure out the first step; they think the process will be complicated and difficult. They think no one will follow. They expect government to be the enabler.

Just do it, says Vinay. Think globally. His most pressing issues were environment, sanitation, and health -- intractable issues for the common Indian. Act individually. Vinay isn't going to wait for government. He believes individuals can work together to help themselves. His budding idea will include a website and hope to spur Indian youth to take action on issues that affect their daily lives.

Many people in India are making those individual efforts. In the nation's most populous city, Mumbai, they've organized a Car-Free Day for February 21st. It's the first such effort in Mumbai, which suffers from some of the world's most chronically congested traffic conditions.

And in the small town of Ferezopur, on the India-Pakistan border, temporary street closures for a festival inspired a few individuals to push for a permanent car-free zone. Local merchants were skeptical at first, but have been happy with the results, and the zone may eventually expand.

These are just a couple of examples of how, even in a nation of 1.17 billion people, individuals can take responsibility and drive progress -- if they just choose to act rather than wait for someone else to take the lead.

Don't count out Boston just yet, but it looks like Minneapolis may be the first American city out of the gate with a public bicycle system of 1,000 bikes or more. Last week, the non-profit Nice Ride Minnesota selected the Public Bike System Company (the same firm behind Montreal's Bixi) to install its system, which is slated to feature 1,000 bicycles at about 75 stations when the first phase wraps up later this year.

The first phase of Minneapolis's bike-share system will consist of about 1,000 bikes at 75 kiosks. Image: Nice Ride Minnesota.

The multi-city horse race is fun to track, but Nice Ride director Bill Dossett downplayed the competition. "My view is that if all of us weren't doing this, then none of us would be," he said.

As each of these cities figures out how to make bike-share work, one of the interesting things to watch is how they get people excited about the idea of public bikes. For Nice Ride, the name of the game is public health and economic development. The project has attracted a broad range of support, with major chunks of funding coming courtesy of health insurer BlueCross BlueShield and contributions from local businesses.

A $1.75 million federal grant will cover much of the initial cost, with $1 million from BlueCross providing most of the remainder. "BlueCross BlueShield is all about fighting obesity right now," said Dossett. "They're interested in anything that encourages physical activity."

Small businesses in Minneapolis's downtown retail area are bullish on bike-share, he added, "because it's an economic development tool. It gets people to come out to lunch from office towers a mile away."

Subscriptions ($60 per year, $5 per day) will cover 80 percent of the cost of running Nice Ride, with contributions from local businesses -- who can pay to sponsor individual bike-share kiosks -- taking care of the rest. Other bike-share systems, including Washington's SmartBike and Paris's Velib, rely heavily on contracts with major outdoor advertising firms, which have proven problematic on more than one occasion.

After Nice Ride's first season, which runs through November (the kiosks will be removed during the winter), Dossett hopes to expand beyond the downtown core and the University of Minnesota Twin Cities campus. "Our plan is to expand into new neighborhoods through partnerships with local businesses," he said. "We hope to be doing those kind of constantly."

Moving mulch on the old Central Freeway on-ramp that is becoming Hayes Valley Farm. Photo: Matthew Roth

Since the Loma Prieta earthquake made the Central Freeway unsafe for travel, leading to its eventual removal and the re-design of Octavia Boulevard, those ramps have been one of the more poignant reminders of a distant vision of San Francisco, with freeways crisscrossing the urban environment, whisking motorists above the unfortunate city dwellers below. 

The new Hayes Valley Farm (HVF) inverts the paradigm and reclaims the space for city dwellers, if only temporarily. "We call it 'freeway to food forest,'" explained Chris Burley, Project Director for HVF and former organizer of My Farm. Burley was joined by nearly fifty volunteers at a HVF work party Sunday. "We're trying to create a successful, sustainable urban farm in the heart of San Francisco."

Burley and several other organizers were approached by Mayor Gavin Newsom's Office of Economic and Workforce Development (MOEWD) last year with the idea to transform the unused lot into a farm. The HVF received a $50,000 grant from MOEWD for the first year of the project, money that comes from the operation of parking facilities along Octavia Boulevard. Burley expected to work the farm for between two and five years, depending on when the economy turns around and the land is developed.

While the city owns the property, the MOEWD has selected Build, Inc, to develop it when they secure their financing. According to Richard Hillis at MOEWD, the site will be broken into ten parcels and built as 50 percent affordable homes, 50 percent market rate. Because the housing construction market is so bleak right now, said Hillis, the city worked with the neighborhood groups to develop a plan for activating under-utilized lots, starting with this very visible one.

In addition to the community benefit of a farmers market and mobile food vending, the city benefits from having the lots used by the farmers. "It helps us save money on cleaning them and maintaining them," Hillis said.

Opening the fence around the former freeway ramps. Photo: Hayes Valley Farm

Because the project is temporary, Burley said they are not planning to rip up the existing asphalt, which would cost thousands of dollars. Rather, the farmers will plant up to 150 fruit trees in pots that can be moved to other gardens or planted in back yards. Burley also said that in honor of the old Highway 101, they will be planting 101 beneficial plants among the fruit trees to help with pest control.

"A lot of our energy is being spent in creating things that can travel off-site," said Burley. "This is more like a springboard for urban agriculture all over the city."

Burley and other organizers hope to use the temporary farm as an educational resource and are developing a curriculum for schools that are interested in working at the facility. Currently, they are planning to collaborate with John Muir Elementary, the French-American School, and the Hayes Valley Neighborhood Parks Group.

Addressing concerns about growing food on the site of a former freeway, the group has lab tested 64 soil points from the site and found that all parts except for one came back with less than the EPA's standard for lead in soil. The HVF also notes on its FAQs page that using organic soils up to two feet thick generally makes food grown there safe for consumption. Nonetheless, the group will measure lead in the roots and leaves of the food they harvest before it can be eaten.

Though Burley said they were rushing to get plants in the soil and trees in pots while still in the rainy season, the lot will be sustained with water from the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, which donated a line for the plot to set up a drip irrigation system. While no estimate was available for how much food the facility would yield, Burley said their first priority was demonstrating the prospects for urban farming.

"Our main yield is education," he said. "We’re trying to teach folks about growing their own food on balconies, back yards, open-air parking lots and pavement backyards."

The next two HVF work parties will be Thursday, February 11th, at 2:30 pm and Sunday, February 14th, at 12 pm.

A truck delivers steaming pile of organic soil. Photo: Hayes Valley Farm.

Pots to be used for fruit trees. Photo: Matthew Roth.

Former off-ramp for the Central Freeway, now home to tons of soil. Photo: Matthew Roth.

Cass Sunstein, chief of the White House budget office's regulatory arm. (Photo: Wonk Room)

Another watchdog group traced the change to the White House Office of Management and Budget, which evaluates new agency regulations through a smaller arm called OIRA (short for the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs). The president's nominee to lead OIRA, Cass Sunstein, has taken heat from green groups for his past criticism of government's role in the rule-making process.

What's the significance of the OMB's change to the EPA rule? "The fewer the monitors, the more likely it is that many metropolitan areas will be able to exceed EPA’s limits without detection or correction," CPR president and law professor Rena Steinzor wrote on the group's blog in late January.

Steinzor's post also addressed the significance of the new nitrogen dioxide rule, noting that the pollutant tends to be especially common, and dangerous, in lower-income neighborhoods located near busy roads:

Scientific evidence links human NO2 exposure with various respiratory health problems. ... The biggest source of NO2 pollution is automobile emissions, though power plants and heavy industry are also significant contributors. NO2 pollution levels tend to be greater in urban areas and near major roadways, which means NO2 pollution tends to disproportionately harm the poor and communities of color.

A future commuter rail station along Boston's Fairmount Line, one of five areas selected for EPA sustainable development aid. (Photo: Globe)

The latest moves came as Obama administration officials gathered in Seattle for the annual New Partners for Smart Growth conference, where HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan officially tapped Shelley Poticha and Ron Sims as leaders of his agency's sustainable communities office.

On the HUD website, Donovan's aides are seeking input and suggestions from local planners as they prepare to award an initial $100 million in grants to cities with plans for transportation and land use reform.

Not to be outdone, EPA took the opportunity to launch two pilot grant programs aimed at using clean water funds to boost community development and rebuilding brownfield communities around transit access.

The water-funding pilot will focus on New York, California, and Maryland, while the brownfields -- former industrial sites where hazardous materials may impede environmental cleanup -- selected for transit-oriented development aid are located in Indianapolis, Iowa City, Denver, Boston, and the San Diego area.

July 2009, Critical Mass circles Union Square

In the following months, the ride grew steadily, hitting a couple of hundred by February 1993, and still there was no police presence. I think there may have been one motorcycle cop who came upon us during those months and just rode on. In April 1993 it changed though. The ride had grown to several hundred cyclists, and those of us who were publishing the monthly "Critical Mass Missives" and preparing proposed routes with maps, writing flyers, handing out stickers (all under the happy neologism of "Xerocracy") were already worried about the culture of the ride. Too many people were bleating that Orwellian chant "Two Wheels Good, Four Wheels Bad!" and admonishing motorists in an entirely unpleasant self-righteous moralistic tone.

Behaviorally, we already had identified the "Testosterone Brigade" as a problem, young men who seemed to be looking for confrontation, perhaps exercising unresolved anger with their parents by taunting motorists or deliberately riding into oncoming traffic. Another group was dubbed the "snails" because no matter how often we stopped at the front to give everyone a chance to "mass up," a bunch of folks would just dawdle way at the back and never catch up. This led to long stretches of thinly-occupied streets, where just a few cyclists were noodling along. In April 1993 in just this kind of scenario, a motorist tried to cross Market to Guerrero and when cyclists surged in front to block him, he hit one girl. Her bike was totaled, ending up under his car, which careened into a hydrant on the corner while he was trying to escape. The girl was not physically harmed luckily, but her boyfriend, not knowing that she wasn't under the car, reached in and took the keys out of the ignition. The cops came up and arrested the girl and her boyfriend and let the motorist go, treating him as the victim, even though it was widely felt by all present, including bystanders on the street, that he had behaved with homicidal intent.

The 16th birthday ride in Sept. 2008, here on Polk Street.

In June 1997, rumor has it Mayor Willie Brown got stuck in his limo during Critical Mass. He was soon fulminating in the press about how something had to be done! He tried to bring Critical Mass representatives into a meeting (I was invited and refused to go) and managed to get some SF Bike Coalition board members to show up. His pet supervisor at the time was Michael Yaki, and it was Yaki who appeared on the steps of City Hall after the meeting impersonating Neville Chamberlain in 1938 ("peace in our time!"), waving a piece of paper which he claimed was an agreement with Critical Mass (impossible by definition) about how the ride would proceed on the following Friday.

What happened was beautifully documented in Ted White's documentary "We Are Traffic!" which you can see online. The police and Mayor Brown put up a sound system and stage and had the gall to welcome the riders to our own event. They were roundly booed. Brown, realizing that he had not managed to co-opt Critical Mass, decided to unleash the police. They were happy to oblige and a mini-riot took place in mid-Market where several cyclists were arbitrarily pushed to the ground, violently arrested, and their bikes impounded. Critical Mass had split into dozens of groups roaming the city's streets for hours, in what was probably one of the most chaotic evenings in Critical Mass history. The police could not get a handle on things, in spite of their license to repress, and it wasn't until very late that night that they corralled one of the mini-masses still riding, surrounding them in the financial district and arresting them all. The day after the Chronicle's false headline was "250 cyclists arrested!" The actual number was about 112, and most of them had been in the illegal roundup. Howard Besser, one of the arrestees, filed a suit against the police and won, and won a second time when the city appealed, and was awarded about $1,000 in damages. No one was ever convicted of any crimes that occured that night, because there had been no crimes!

The following month, August 1997, after a month of torrid bad press, online flame wars (much like you we still see on the SFGate) denouncing all bicyclists, and a remarkably one-sided representation of what had happened (no mention of Mayor Brown's land-swap shenanigans with the Transbay terminal property that was going on behind the scenes during the same summer), about 5,000 bicyclists showed up in defiant celebration at their own monthly gathering. This time, anticipating a very heavy-handed police presence, the plan was to follow the Good Soldier Schweik approach, that is, ride to rule. Each cyclist would ride as if it were a motor vehicle, obeying all laws, stopping at every light and sign, signaling every turn, etc. That held for the first hour or so, and the traffic downtown was MUCH WORSE than it had ever been before. Thousands of cyclists filling the streets, obeying the traffic laws, turned out to be much more disruptive than following the safe and predictable method of Critical Mass that had evolved over time. 

From that time forward, a kind of truce developed with the police. The ebb and flow of policing over the ensuing years has been unpredictable, going back and forth between angry belligerence and benign tolerance. Sometimes a bunch of bicycling cops joined us, sometimes there were hardly any police at all, and sometimes a whole bunch of motorcycle cops and paddy wagons would come. They've never made any mass arrests, but they do ticket riders on occasion, usually in a somewhat punitive fashion if they see someone they particularly want to inconvenience (it's generally for running red lights, or impeding traffic, or other normal Critical Mass behaviors). When they do, like a few months ago on Broadway coming east out of the tunnel, it led to a half hour traffic jam blocking the streets. Critical Mass riders don't always stop in solidarity with every rider who gets hassled by the cops, but when they do, it raises the costs to the city in terms of traffic blocked and the number of officers who gather to secure the area while a traffic infraction ticket is written.

It is a useful reminder to all that the best approach (usually the one taken by the cops when they're being reasonable) is to facilitate the ride moving continuously through the city until it's finished.

Police repression, when it comes, is part of a larger culture war between those who think the American Way of Life is fundamentally about cars, business, and private property (almost always a strong bias of individual police) and the growing movement to shift into a new way of organizing our lives, based on ecological principles, reduced resource use, and a more convivial, publicly-oriented cityscape. Most of us riding in Critical Mass are not out to break the law or antagonize anyone, but we do feel strongly that we have to demonstrate firmly and directly a different way of life. To those of us committed to a life with a greater sense of conviviality and a commitment to a public sphere, the childish and antagonistic behavior that a few cyclists bring to the ride has been dismaying.

Unfortunately, the old xerocracy mostly died out (with the notable exception of the 10th anniversary ride in 2002--four different beautiful posters were made and put all around town, dozens of stickers and flyers were distributed at the ride, a book was published). Once or twice a year someone shows up with a flyer addressing the culture of the ride, or prepares a suggested route, but in general, cultural production, once so essential to the experience, went into hibernation. After more than a decade the transmission of the culture from oldtimers to newbies has broken down. People riding in Critical Mass these days might have been infants when we started it 18 years ago!

Sadly, some people show up because they believe all the media lies about this big anarchistic confrontational experience, though they are tiny in number. Still, when they behave badly they get an inordinate amount of attention, not just in the media when it deigns to address this ongoing cultural phenomenon, but weirdly, from other cyclists. There's a mentality that has been shaped by our profit-driven media: when it bleeds, it leads. I'm afraid all too many people on all sides of Critical Mass tend to fall into this same mental trap, focusing their attention on the tiny few who behave like jerks, rather than the overwhelming thousands (and not just here, but across the planet in over 300 cities worldwide) who manage things well, extend courtesy and kindness to bystanders, have joyful interchanges with people briefly stuck in buses and cars, and are greeted exuberantly from neighbors in their windows as we roll through central city neighborhoods.

Now the police seem to be threatening Critical Mass again, but to what end?

It's a small thing, lasting 2-3 hours a month, inconveniencing lots of people for a short time, but keeping an important cultural space open. In that space, a different kind of life is in gestation, where new friends and networks continually discover one another, where we experience radical direct democracy, rolling through the streets. And it is available to all comers. Historically it's been self-managed, and recently a new website and discussion list have been started to remedy the fact that the culture hasn't been handed down well between generations of riders.

As for what could work, I'd suggest that Chief Gascon start by removing all motorized vehicles from accompanying the ride, send whatever police he deems necessary on bicycles, and reiterate that Critical Mass is a cultural fact of life in San Francisco. Anything else is likely to make things worse and cost the city a lot more money over the long haul.

Despite Senate Democratic efforts to move quickly on a new jobs bill that includes infrastructure investment and takes steps towards solving the nation's transportation financing dilemma, Congress has just two more weeks of work until time runs out on the latest short-term extension of the five-year-old law governing federal transport policy.

"We will bring Republicans to the table," Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) said last week. (Photo: Cleveland.com)

Republicans in the House mounted a surprisingly vocal opposition to the first short-term extension in September, suggesting more resistance to come when Democrats in both chambers attempt to agree -- sometime before February 28 -- on legislation giving another planning reprieve to local transportation officials.

Even calls for a new extension by the road and business lobbies, reliable campaign donors to Democrats and Republicans alike, have fallen on deaf ears as lawmakers brace for a midterm election season dominated by anti-incumbent sentiment. Politico noted today that the GOP is preparing to oppose a $20 billion-plus infusion of taxpayer money to the highway trust fund, citing "concern about rising deficits."

That politically motivated foot-dragging is in some ways a nod to the extent and complexity of Washington's transportation financing problem. Rescuing the highway trust fund again may be a bitter pill to swallow, but with congressional leaders unwilling to look at a gas tax increase -- and no certainty that such a hike would even get the job done as Americans drive less in more fuel-efficient cars -- lawmakers have little to lose by extending the highway-centric 2005 transportation bill again this month, effectively hitting the snooze button on infrastructure policy.

Still, not every Republican is opposed to making the hard choices necessary to raise revenue for a new transportation bill. That was the message that Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH) delivered to Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood during a recent House Appropriations Committee hearing. As LaTourette told his former GOP colleague (emphasis mine):

[E]ven though I have the greatest respect for you and the president ... kicking this can down the road to March 2011 is irresponsible. This has to be worked out. This isn't a problem that you're all of a sudden some light bulb's going to go on after listening for 18 months. We knew it when we passed [the 2005 federal transport law], we knew we were going to have this problem [with financing].

And I'm telling you, as I told Mr. Oberstar, we will bring Republicans to the table. I get that the Democrats are scared because of some of the election results, they don't want to have a tax increase on top of the other things that are going on around here. But the fact of the matter is, it's time for leadership on this issue, and it is irresponsible, in my opinion, to not deal with this.

LaTourette added that LaHood may be under pressure of his own not to put the White House on record in favor of a new tax increase -- even one that might help break the transportation financing logjam. "Early in your tenure," LaTourette told LaHood, "[you] made some observations about [the prospects for a] vehicle miles traveled [tax]. I got the feeling you were summoned down to the White House pretty quickly after that, and you stopped talking about things like that. But it's got to be done."

Could LaTourette's confidence translate into GOP support for new taxes to help pay for the next long-term transportation bill? A tax increase of some kind is likely the only chance Congress will have to close the $140 billion-plus gap between estimated gas tax revenues and the six-year legislation envisioned by the House transportation committee.

But Republicans won't have to consider coming "to the table," in LaTourette's words, if Democrats stay silent on the issue before the midterm elections. And LaHood's preferred extension timetable of spring 2011 still may be too early for gun-shy lawmakers to sit down and solve the government's transportation funding problem.

"March of 2011 will be a new Congress," Rep. Tom Latham (IA), the senior Republican among House transportation appropriators, told LaHood . "Lord knows what's going to happen. That really kicks it, probably, another year down the road."

Like a good love triangle, there are two Valentine's Day-related events for local urbanists to choose between this Friday. But first, show your love for Muni on Tuesday. Here are the week's highlights:

• Tuesday: SPUR Lunchtime Forum: Our Better Nature: A conversation with author Philip J. Dreyfus. Join environmental historian Philip J. Dreyfus to discuss his new book Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco. Learn how cities develop by reshaping nature and how "re-imagining the place of our cities in nature is necessary for building a more environmentally equitable world." 12:30 p.m.
• Tuesday: SFMTA Town Hall Meeting. With drastic service cuts looming, this is your chance to speak up for Muni. 6-8 p.m.
• Thursday: SPUR Lunchtime Forum: Shanghai's Fabric of Everyday Life: A conversation with UC Berkeley professor Renee Chow. This talk describes the evolution of urbanism in Shanghai from its early settlement within the Yangtze River Delta to its rapid fragmentation. 12:30 p.m.
• Friday: SFBC's Love on Wheels. The SFBC plays cupid for another round of Love on Wheels, the dating game exclusively for bicyclists, just like the original 1970's game show. 6-10 p.m.
  
• Friday: SPUR Young Urbanists: Love is in the Air: City Connections Happy Hour. From SPUR: "Love is in the air and it's the time to socialize with your city. Join us to make new friends and find out how to engage with some of San Francisco's hottest networks." 6 p.m.
• Saturday: Do the Wiggle Bike Tour. Celebrate the route bicyclists generally use to avoid hills. A natural history of the Wiggle with plenty of social history thrown in. 12:45-2:30 p.m.

The cul-de-sac's glory days may be past. (Photo: piermario via Flickr)

Early last year the state of Virginia became the first state to severely limit cul-de-sacs from future development.  Similar actions have been taken in Portland Oregon, Austin, Texas, and Charlotte, North Carolina.  What they are beginning to realize is that the cul-de-sac street grid uses land inefficiently, discourages walking and biking, and causes an almost complete dependence on driving, with attendant pollution and energy use. Furthermore, town officials are beginning to realize that unconnected streets cost more money to provide services to and force traffic onto increasingly crowded arterial roads, which then, in many cases, need to be widened (more tax money)...

With municipal and state budgets at the breaking point, why aren't CT officials looking at land use patterns and their accompanying expenditures and begin the process of growing smarter? I don't know about you, but I am willing to live without the cul-de-sac if it would save me some tax money. 

More from around the network: Beat Bike Blog has a great little item about an older gentleman who rides his bike in Hartford, Connecticut:

In this bike's owner, we have personified the nullification of every excuse anyone has ever given for not riding. You think you're too old? Unless you are well into your 70's or older, this man has you beat. Too cold? Temps were in the low 20s this particular afternoon. Are you too tired, too sore, too out of shape? I invite you to check out the custom cane mount. This man walks with a cane, hooks it on to the rack and frame of his heavy single-speed bike and rides on.

TWU Prez Irwin Lum outside an MTA Board meeting last year. Photo by Bryan Goebel.

Details of the agreement were not disclosed, but sources told Streetsblog the deal would help reduce service cuts and take Fast Pass fare hikes for youth, seniors and the disabled off the table.

"After several days of negotiations, tonight TWU leaders, Mayor Newsom and MTA agreed to a framework of a proposal that will go to TWU members this week and be voted on by TWU members in the next two weeks," Newsom communications director Tony Winnicker said in a statement.  "We cannot discuss the details of the proposal until members have a chance to hear about it, but TWU deserves great credit for being an active partner in negotiations and working collaboratively to help close MTA's unprecedented budget shortfalls."

Lum, whose union represents Muni operators and fare inspectors, would not call any of the proposals concessions. "They're proposals that try to look at all angles of the cuts that are going to face our members and the public."

"There's a lot of issues going on in terms of service reductions and fare hikes which we're concerned about, and also the issue of layoffs that affect our folks," Lum said. "I think we're mindful of the needs of riders that they need transportation that gets them wherever they need to go, and with further cuts and hikes it's really going to impact the city as a whole."

Lum refused to give a figure on how much the proposals would help reduce Muni's deficit, but the Chronicle reported it was $14.9 million over two years. The newspaper also said the service cuts would be reduced from 10 percent to 6.5 percent, but sources told Streetsblog it was closer to 8 percent.

Operators originally faced 170 layoffs from their ranks as part of a proposed 10 percent reduction in Muni service, but a smaller service reduction might mean closer to 110 operator positions would be eliminated.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd had proposed a ballot measure to amend the City Charter and set operator salaries entirely through collective bargaining, instead of setting them at the second highest in the country. That was yanked Thursday, reportedly at the the Mayor's request.

The idea, sources say, was that Elsbernd retracting his proposal would cause the TWU to bring a significant amount to the table. Since the charter amendment is still in effect, TWU employees may be the only city employees to get a raise this year, estimated to be somewhere between 8 and 10 million dollars.

Updated 11:55 p.m.

Michael Rhodes contributed to this report.

Fewer cars means more walking and healthier kids.

By most measures, San Francisco is a great place to walk and bike, with its compact street grid, mixed-use neighborhoods and relatively mild weather. But a new study conducted by UC Berkeley professor Michael Jerrett suggests the city may need to focus on taming traffic before kids will get the full health benefits of that dense development.

Streetsblog New York's Noah Kazis reports on the study, which links traffic volumes to youth obesity:

Jerrett shows that not only does the built environment matter, but traffic volumes matter too. His team's long-term study tracked children from across Southern California, starting from ages 9-10 and continuing through high school. Controlling for a wide variety of factors, they compared the children's body mass indexes (BMI) to the density of traffic near their homes.

Children living within 150 meters of high-traffic areas were found to have, on average, BMIs five percent higher than those living near low-traffic areas. Only the immediate surroundings seem to matter: Traffic levels within 300 or 500 meters didn't affect BMI.

The researchers put forward two reasons for why traffic volumes contribute to obesity. High asthma rates could be part of the equation, making kids less likely to engage in physical activity. Kids - and their parents - also seem to be especially sensitive to the real or perceived danger from cars, much more so than adults.

To put the findings in context, a regular San Francisco block is about 600 feet, or about 180 meters. If kids live on a street with a lot of traffic, or if the next cross street is overrun with cars, there's a real chance they'll be less likely to bike or walk.

Ben Caldwell, who runs the Presidio Community YMCA's Bicycle Program, said the city needs to do a lot more than just install bike lanes and sharrows to make kids feel safe traveling the city's streets by bike or foot. "Few parents think that bike lanes and sharrows are enough to keep kids safe," said Caldwell. "Frankly, I think they're right in most cases."

Even with a long-standing injunction on any improvements to the city's bicycle infrastructure, cycling has grown at an impressive rate over the past three years. Still, Caldwell said it will take a lot more to get kids out of their parents' cars and riding bikes and walking to school, the library, or the park.

"Rather than a Bike Plan, we need a trails and bikeways master plan that looks at the entire network of trails and bikeways and paths and staircases and plazas, the entire non-motorized transportation network," said Caldwell.

But where to start?

"There's infinite number of examples of where we could do better out there," said Caldwell. Park Presidio, for example. "It's a nasty street but actually has a lovely path along the ridge that is effectively useless because it's so nasty to cross all the streets."

He suggests looking at the Buchanan Street mall in the Western Addition, which could be fixed up to provide a mixed-use pathway from the Rosa Parks school to the Buchanan YMCA and even Hayes Valley.

Not that San Francisco lacked for reasons to bring more livable streets to its residents, but Jerrett's study is a hard reminder that our tolerance for traffic has measurable consequences.

Teamsters Local 665 workers protest a parking lot at the future site of the Transbay Transit Center. Photos: Matthew Roth.

Teamsters Local 665, which represents city parking workers and some private sector parking workers, has been picketing this week in front of a parking lot administered by ABC Parking, a non-union company, demanding that TJPA and Caltrans shut the parking lots down and use the property for open space.

"If you are going to drive into San Francisco, it’s the premium way to get into town and [it should] not be subsidized by Caltrans," said Local 665 President Mark Gleason, who asserted that Caltrans and TJPA lots were half the price of nearby municipal parking facilities. Gleason argued the MTA, which runs Muni, could be getting a lot more money from parking if those facilities were not in business and drivers had to park in municipal lots. Even if they chose to park in private facilities, said Gleason, they would pay more money and the city could collect more parking tax revenue.

"The service they are providing should dovetail with the Transit First Policy and should not be adversarial to it," said Gleason. The union estimates there are at least 7,000 parking spaces in more than 15 Caltrans easements that could be closed.

Additionally, Gleason sent a letter to City Attorney Dennis Herrera [PDF], requesting he open an official investigation into the business of the previous parking operator on the site, US Parking, which Gleason accused of owing $7 million dollars to the city in unpaid taxes.

Because of state-mandated furlough days, a Caltrans spokesperson was unavailable for immediate comment.

TJPA spokesperson Adam Alberti responded that it was a non-issue because Caltrans was signing over ownership of its easements within the next few months to the TJPA in the preparation for construction of the new Transbay Terminal, which was recently awarded $400 million in federal stimulus money. Groundbreaking and construction on the terminal is expected by late spring or summer.

"Their letters don’t make a whole lot of sense," said Alberti. "They made complaints about the state of the site and the suitability of parking and the operator is working with the Planning Department on those issues."

As far as converting the site to a park or open space, Alberti said the timeline is too narrow and the TJPA is leasing the lot it controls for parking because it generates revenue the Authority will use for the terminal. "This is a very short-term parking operation," he said. "The protests that are ongoing are outside of our control."

A spokesperson for the City Attorney's Office, Matt Dorsey, confirmed receipt of the Teamsters letter and said "we are taking it seriously," but declined to provide more information.

Covered parking at a lot across the street sells for roughly 40 percent more than the 80 Natoma Street/81 Minna Street open lot.

A rendering of Phoenix's SkyTrain, which has applied for TIGER aid to link light rail with the airport. (Photo: SW Contractor)

Metro and rural areas around the country are eagerly awaiting word on the fate of their TIGER applications. Nearly $57 billion in bids were submitted for the stimulus law's much smaller pot of transportation aid.

LaHood also addressed the fate of the $600 million that Congress included in its 2010 transportation spending bill for more grants in the vein of TIGER, which rewards projects that meet a core group of benchmarks -- including job creation and sustainability -- rather than running funds through often-politicized state DOTs.

That extra $600 million in TIGER grants will spark a new round of competition, LaHood said, with a second round of winners announced in the coming months.

The Transportation Secretary also broke some news relating to the White House's proposed National Infrastructure Fund, which has some key differences from previous congressional plans for an Infrastructure Bank located outside of the U.S. DOT. LaHood told lawmakers that "we will be proposing authorization language very soon" so that Congress can examine the details of the White House's Fund plan.

It's a complicated question, and we suggest that you go and read his very thoughtful post in full. Here's a taste:

Too many roads to nowhere. (Photo: Peter Zarria via Flickr)

Among urban and rural areas, who subsidizes whom?

It's methodologically difficult to measure net taxation, but the studies that have been done suggest that, contrary to the belief of some, urban areas are big time net tax donors. For example, a recent Indiana Fiscal Policy Institute study found that Indiana's urban and suburban counties generally subsidize rural ones...

Exhibit A is transportation. Two-thirds of Americans live in large metro areas, yet less than half the federal transportation stimulus funds are going to the top 100 metro areas. Missouri is spending half its stimulus money on 89 small counties that account for only a quarter of the state's population. In Ohio, the state cancelled plans to spend $100 million in stimulus funds on the crumbling Cleveland Inner Belt bridge in order to divert them to paying for a $150 million bypass around Nelsonville -- a town of only 5,000 people. This is part of a plan to construct a four-lane divided highway into sparsely populated southeast Ohio as part of a “build it and they will come” economic development plan. Mecklenburg County, NC, the state's largest and home to Charlotte, received only $7.8 million out of the first $423 million in projects in that state. The Atlantic Monthly described this as a contest between a “mayor's stimulus” and a “governor's stimulus” -- and the governor won.

State after state has rural “roads to nowhere.” Without any legitimate economic development strategy on offer for depressed rural areas and small industrial cities, salvation is said to lie in access to four lane highways. The logic is that until every county in America is crisscrossed with these things, somehow residents are deprived of their due. This plays well to rural resentment, allowing people who are by nature proud believers in self-reliance and dismissive of welfare to claim instead that they've been cheated out of their “fair share” of transportation money...

Regardless, a lack of transportation investment is crippling our cities, many of which have congested, crumbling roads and shaky bridges... [G]overnance reform at the state level is critical to bring transportation funding allocations in line with real population and economic development measures. That's not to say that rural areas should get no funding. There are many areas where legitimate state funding is warranted, such as replacing substandard bridges or correcting roads with dangerous geometry. But that doesn't mean states should spend huge amounts of money on large rural expansion projects of dubious value that rob urban areas of the funds needed for projects with genuine transportation merit and real economic development potential.

More from around the network: Westside Bikeside has problems with a plan to use federal funds for a $30 million bike path along the beach in Los Angeles. Biking in LA sees it another way. And Bike Delaware News has an open letter asking Rep. Mike Castle to support the Active Community Transportation Act.

From left: MTA Board Vice Chairman Rev. Dr. James McCray, Jr., Chairman Tom Nolan and Director Shirley Breyer Black. Photo: Michael Rhodes

With the MTA facing massive budget shortfalls in the coming years on top of a mid-year budget crisis, a progressive majority controlling the Board of Supervisors, and a Mayor in his final two years in office, transit advocates and many supervisors are looking for appointees who will be independent-minded and engaged members of the MTA Board.

"In general, I think that the MTA commission has not been examining all options available to the MTA in the context of our budget crisis," said Board of Supervisors President David Chiu. "I think it's fair to say a majority of the Board of Supervisors believes we need commissioners who are independent enough to consider all options on the table."

For her part, Black is happy to continue serving, but hasn't heard what the Mayor is planning. "No one has told me anything," she said last week.

That may in part be because the Mayor is waiting to hear from the City Attorney's office on whether Black and McCray are eligible to serve additional terms. Proposition E, which created the MTA in 1999, set director term limits at three, but it's not clear whether Black and McCray's first terms counted, since both were shorter than the regular four years. Black was a member of the original MTA Board, which had staggered term lengths. Her first term, beginning in March 2000, was only two years long. McCray's first term, which began in 2002, was barely a month long, since he filled in the end of another director's term.

"Those are pending determinations made by the City Attorney's office that will be part of the Mayor's review of many upcoming Commission appointments," wrote mayoral spokesperson Tony Winnicker in an email.

"The Mayor is reviewing but has not yet made a decision on several dozen appointments to Boards and Commissions coming up soon, including these two important MTA appointments," said Winnicker.

Note: In several cases, directors were appointed to serve out the end of another director's term. Those terms weren't included in the counts above if they were less than a year. The City Attorney's office has not yet said whether those terms count towards the three-term limit. Graphic: Sean Reynolds

The Mayor's Transportation Agency

Though the MTA Board is ostensibly independent, in practice it answers first and foremost to the Mayor. Under the City Charter, the Mayor has authority over all MTA Board appointments, but supervisors can reject those picks by a majority vote - a lever of influence over the agency they've only exercised once.

This time around, the prospect of deep Muni service cuts and fare hikes has left the supervisors searching for options to wrangle more control over the MTA's policies.

Supervisor David Campos has proposed a ballot measure that would give the supervisors power to nominate three of the MTA Board's seven members. Campos has also requested an audit of the agency's management, and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi has vowed to use his new position as chair of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority to sway Muni by attaching more conditions to money it transfers to the MTA.

But the director appointment process could provide the supervisors with a more immediate opportunity to show constituents they're not taking devastating Muni cuts sitting down.

"I'll keep an open mind in terms of the reappointment of them," said Mirkarimi. "But I believe we need MTA commissioners that are not just parroting what Mayor Newsom wants, but what's best for the MTA."

Grading the Directors

Transit advocates generally gave Black and McCray - who served as Board chairman from 2006 until last February - middling grades as directors. Black, a former SEIU president, "has been a solid pro-labor vote, but I don't really feel like she's engaged much on the budget or Transit First," said Tom Radulovich, Executive Director of Livable City and a BART director who is often the lone dissenting voice on that board.

Jason Henderson, a geography professor at San Francisco State University, had a similar take. "They don't really seem to be pursuing the mandate to aggressively pursue creative and innovative ways to finance Muni."

Henderson, Radulovich and other transit advocates noted that criticism is applicable to most of the MTA Board and hardly limited to Black and McCray. "I always look at all of them and think, 'You could be a bit more proactive,'" said Radulovich.

But could the upcoming appointment process be an opportunity to push for directors who are more independent and advocate aggressively for transit?

Dan Murphy, head of the MTA's Citizens Advisory Council, declined to evaluate Black and McCray, but said the Board of Supervisors and advocates should closely scrutinize all MTA Board nominees.

Several transit advocates said they see the nomination process as an opportunity, but one that may only have a positive outcome if the Mayor is willing to try something bold. "Does the Mayor really want engaged, independent minds on that board?" asked Radulovich. "The answer from the evidence is no."

Still, Radulovich and Henderson both hoped the current crisis would propel the Mayor to consider candidates who are on the ball and engaged. "The calculus is different," said Henderson. "I actually think Newsom is capable of appointing some more outside-of-the-box people as a gesture, knowing with a wink and a nod that they're not going to get very far."

"To be bold like that would be great, especially as he's exiting out of office," said Mirkarimi. "It would really be inspired if he showed he's making those less partisan decisions and being more visionary and innovative, working with people he may not necessarily agree with and looking toward the future."

An 'Independent' Board

As the nominations from the Mayor loom, independence has been a key concern for advocates and the Board of Supervisors.

"Certainly, in recent months there have been many questions raised about the role of the MTA commission in independently reviewing the critical policy decisions," said Chiu.

"They have to reflect independence and critical thinking, and that might mean departing from those who you've benefited from," said Mirkarimi. Supervisor John Avalos called independence "a key litmus test."

By most measures, none of the current directors would pass that test. Over the past five years, 94 percent of the votes the MTA Board has taken have been unanimous. By a rough count, only 35 of those 582 votes had dissenting directors, and directors almost always approved MTA staff proposals - many of which are vetted by the Mayor before reaching the Board. That tally only counts procedural calendar items as one vote total per meeting, though, of course, many of the items the Board votes on are not controversial, even among transit advocates. The more telling fact may be that the Board virtually never votes against the privately expressed wishes of the Mayor.

McCray has actually shown more independence than many of the directors, finding himself in the minority on 3.6 percent of votes taken in the past five years. Black has been in the minority just nine times in that period, concurring with the majority on 98.5 percent of votes, with many of her dissents coming on labor issues.

By a great margin, all of the MTA directors vote according to the Mayor's wishes, especially on the most important matters, calling into question the notion of the Board's independence. The great exception to that rule was the Mayor's appointment of SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum in 2006. But when the Mayor was reelected in 2008 and asked all commissioners to hand in their resignations, Shahum's was among the three on the MTA Board he accepted.

A Greater Say for the Supervisors and Voters? 

While the CAC's Murphy thinks the need for independence is all the more reason for the supervisors to look closely at nominees, he's leery of proposals to give the supervisors control over three Board members - or to let voters elect some of the members.

"I am really skeptical of the idea, 'if we just figure the process for selecting the Board in just the right way, somehow we're going to end up with good policy,'" said Murphy, citing elected transit boards for BART, AC Transit, and the Denver Regional Transit District that he said are deeply dysfunctional. "The answer is to elect a Mayor who's committed to transit and who will appoint transit advocates to the Board."

Murphy also thinks the MTA Board has shown more willingness to make tough decisions - for better and worse - than the supervisors would be. "I think it's absolutely insane" to consider changing the nomination process, said Murphy. "What we have seen so far is elected officials have been much more reluctant to raise parking prices than the MTA Board has."

Even if the Mayor does nominate independent-minded transit advocates to the Board, he'll still have a five-to-two majority, assuming his other appointees remain loyal. (There is some evidence Director Bruce Oka may be asserting his own independence in light of the current budget crisis.) With increasing pressure to show he's working to save Muni, and just two years left in office, the Mayor may not have that much to lose by appointing a visionary director.

"My expectations are low," said Radulovich. "But sometimes, if your expectations are low, you'll be pleasantly surprised."

While expectations may be low, the stakes are higher than ever.

"In many ways, who's in charge is [MTA Executive Director Nat Ford, a mayoral appointee] and senior staff," said Mirkarimi. "But the MTA commissioners are in an important position, and not one to be squandered."