The new plan for this block of Cesar Chavez, which includes an additional lane on the north side rather than a parking lane on the south side. Image: SF Dept. of Public Works.

Snowballs are piling up in hell. I’m about to defend car parking.

The rug has been pulled out from under those living on the nastiest block on Cesar Chavez between Hampshire and York, closest to the 101 highway ramps. With only a belated chance to weigh in on changes to the design that never underwent the public scrutiny of the rest of the plan, a decision to add a one-block westbound traffic lane and remove a parking lane on the south side to make room for a curbside bike lane was made at the behest of Caltrans (which is providing $5 million for the project).

Since 1997, the southernmost lane on that block has been a part-time bike lane, part-time parking lane — a compromise that never satisfied anyone. Through the recent five-year redesign process, the plan shifted to include a full-time bike lane next to a full-time parking lane. Residents who had opposed the bike lane back in the 90s applauded that plan.

Although the change was originally scheduled at an SFMTA engineering hearing on January 6 along with several other improvements on the street, it was postponed until February 17 because the legally required postings were not done on the affected block. However, several residents never got the message. They learned about the January hearing only the night before and hastily took off work to testify. I went to City Hall, too, to testify in their support while wearing full cyclist regalia.

Why should I care about these car parking spaces? Several reasons, in addition to the lousy hearing notification:

• The change is a bait and switch. Neighbors saw one design and were now being subjected to another, with no chance for input.
• It discredits the whole project’s planning  process. Our organization, CC Puede, always took care to involve affected neighbors in the discussion and work toward some consensus, even in the face of often pretty heated disagreement. No one who initiated the process or who lives in the affected block was consulted.
• Physically, the block in question has a narrow sidewalk, and parked cars would act as a buffer for pedestrians and residents. Several homes on that block have been hit by cars.
• Public transportation for that block is not good and may get worse. Now, the nearest bus is the #27-Bryant, and that may move two more blocks to Folsom Street under a proposal in the Transit Effectiveness Project. Walking to the #9-San Bruno involves the hair-raising navigation of the Hairball.

The reason for the change is even more infuriating. Last night, city engineers held a community meeting to explain the change and listen to neighbors vent their frustration. They said that Caltrans, which had zero presence at any of the meetings, demanded that the original plan to include two vehicle travel lanes in each direction (down from the existing three) be changed to keep the third westbound lane to prevent cars piling up on the freeway sometime in the next 25 years. Even during the construction now clogging Cesar Chavez, such pileups have failed to materialize. And even if they did, why should the potential temporary inconvenience of drivers passing through our neighborhoods take precedence over the safety of the people actually living there?

I appreciate the irony of getting on my high horse about traffic to defend parking. I hope the day will come when the residents of the affected block, who do seem to have garages in almost all of the buildings, won’t feel, as one resident said she did, trapped in their homes because they’re afraid to lose their parking space. And I would not advocate sacrificing the new bike lane to restore the parking. As mitigation, the new plan does include several trees and bollards on the block to act as buffers.

But what Caltrans has done is unconscionable. And the city agencies who have been visionary and supportive throughout the Cesar Chavez Street process failed to notify the community in time to let us agitate against this change. Finally, I fault myself for neglecting to check in on the process and nag the city officials for more details, once it seemed like smooth sailing, losing the chance to alert the opposition. I let myself and the community be blindsided.

Lesson learned: Never let up! And never trust the guys in charge.

Image via SFMTA. See full PDF here.

The Transportation Sustainability Program (TSP) would reform the city’s transportation practices in three key areas: by eliminating reliance on the automobile-centric measuring stick known as Level of Service (LOS), by instituting a system of development impact fees that fund sustainable transportation improvements, and expediting the review process for pedestrian, bicycle, and transit projects. The details are on the wonky side, but if the city delivers on these reforms, SF could be looking at a much more rapid build-out of transit corridors, bikeways, and pedestrian safety measures.

“This program is taking a look at how we manage, regulate, and mitigate for development as it relates to transportation to develop a process that’s more transparent, equitable, and meaningful, and provides a much better nexus between land use planning and transportation,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin.

SF Planning Department Assistant Director Alicia John-Bauptiste presented details [PDF] about the TSP Tuesday to the SFMTA Board of Directors. The program, currently planned for adoption in late 2013, is a coordinated effort between the SFMTA, the Planning Department, the SF County Transportation Authority, and the Office of Economic and Workforce Development.

One key component to the TSP is the Transportation Sustainability Fee (TSF), which would replace the current Transit Impact Development Fee (TIDF) that building developers pay to the SFMTA to account for infrastructure costs due to car trips and transit trips made by users of those buildings. The TSF would be based on offsetting car trips added by a project, and its revenues could only be spent according to a spending plan to directly fund projects that improve transit service and bicycle and pedestrian safety. Developers would receive discounts on the TSF for building less car parking, and it would apply to residential buildings (except affordable housing), which the TIDF doesn’t.

According to John-Bauptiste, many developments and transportation projects will also no longer be required to conduct an environmental impact report (EIR) as part of the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), which would lead to major time and cost savings. “Individual projects will be relieved of having to study cumulative transportation impacts because the TSP EIR will study those impacts. Project-specific analysis will be limited to site design issues such as loading docks, curb cuts, and pedestrian and bicycle safety,” the presentation says.

Planners would also be relieved of having to measure projects using LOS, a tool that grades transportation projects based on how much they might slow down cars. LOS often calls for planners to take measures that “result in inconsistencies with achieving the city’s transit-first policies,” said John-Bauptiste.

A recent cartoon about LOS by Andy Singer.

Image: Andy Singer

“If what we’re concerned about is how quickly automobiles are moving through a particular intersection or roadway segment, a logical mitigation might be to expand roadway capacity, to add a lane of traffic,” said John-Bauptiste. “That is, first of all, often infeasible in a built-out, urban, dense environment such as San Francisco. It, secondly, can often be in contradiction to our policies supporting the bike network or pedestrian safety.”

Instead, the program would implement a new metric called Transit System Performance, which turns the LOS approach on its head by evaluating the transportation network holistically and focusing on reducing driving and improving conditions for walking, bicycling, and transit. This metric was developed as an alternative to LOS over recent years, and in 2009, San Francisco agencies successfully lobbied the state to allow cities to use alternative metrics.

“This is the latest in a long-running conversation about reconciling our practice of CEQA with our city’s wonderful adopted policies,” said Andy Thornley, policy director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “We decided as a city quite a long time ago that we didn’t want to use LOS in CEQA.”

Under the TSP’s new environmental review system, projects would move so much faster that Reiskin said some improvements currently in development might get finished sooner by waiting until after the reforms are adopted.

“One of the main cost- and schedule-drivers of environmental review is transportation analysis, and that’s for any large development project,” said Reiskin. ”Somewhat ironically, that has created cost and schedule extensions for our own projects, even those that on the surface would appear to be very clearly imparting positive environmental impacts to the city — the Bike Plan is perhaps the poster child for that.”

As another example, he pointed to the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP), which Mayor Ed Lee has said is his #1 priority for Muni. The SFMTA is now at the outset of a 21-month, $2 million environmental review process for the TEP, said Reiskin. The TEP “is really about speeding up transit — a very clearly environmentally-beneficial initiative, but because we currently are under a Level of Service methodology… the TEP is subject to a full environmental impact report,” he said, though he noted that the TSP reforms won’t come soon enough for the project to take advantage.

The SFMTA Board roundly praised the program, and directors Joél Ramos and Bruce Oka emphasized the urgent need to implement it. “Every month that we don’t have a policy like this in place, we stand to lose, who knows, millions of dollars,” said Ramos.

Director Malcolm Heinicke hailed the program as a “creative way to restructure at the more local level to meet our goals and still satisfy the state act.”

“There’s always complaints about the CEQA process. There’s always calls to reform it at the state level,” he said. “It’s impressive that someone is actually doing something about this rather than just throwing up their hands and saying, ‘CEQA screws up everything.’”

Aside from the program’s cost savings, the TSF is expected to generate $630 million over 20 years and leverage $820 million more in other funding. The streams of revenue would fund “a comprehensive and strictly regulated $1.4 billion plan targeted at highly-efficient transportation system improvements,” according to the SFMTA presentation. Every two years, the city would dedicate funds to projects like the Market Street redesign, Muni’s TEP, Bus Rapid Transit on Van Ness and Geary, regional improvements like Caltrain electrification, the bikeway network, and pedestrian improvements.

City staff are currently reaching out to stakeholders for the program. This month, they plan to introduce a legislative ordinance and begin conducting the program’s EIR, which should finish next summer. The program is set to be heard and adopted by the SF Board of Supervisors in fall of 2013.

John Mica and John Boehner would have you believe their bill is a blessing for transit. It isn't.

Republicans are not anti-transit, but we do recognize that the Highway Trust Fund is paid for by highways users, and cities and local governments must look at developing a similar user fee system for transit users.

This bill gives more flexibility to states to fund their most critical transportation needs, and under this bill states can also use the funds authorized under the highway program for transit systems if they so choose.

Because of the struggling economy, changing driving patterns and more fuel efficient vehicles, the Highway Trust Fund is in repeated danger of running dry. The Republican bill stabilizes the Trust Fund for the next five years, ensures states have the ability to fund their most critical transportation needs, and also guarantees transit funding.

Transportation myths die hard, and here the House GOP is trotting out a bunch of them — plus a few new sadistic rhetorical flourishes — to justify what’s quickly becoming known as the worst transportation bill ever. A quick primer on how the Republican leadership is lying about their bill:

1. The House GOP is not guaranteeing transit funding. They’re eliminating guaranteed transit funding.

Ask anyone who works in public transit, and they’ll tell you this bill would wreak havoc as soon as it is passed. By ending the policy begun by Ronald Reagan of funding federal transit programs with gas tax revenue, House Republicans would cast a pall of uncertainty over just about every transit agency in America. The Republican “guarantee” is nothing but a guarantee of more haggling over limited dollars as transit programs go up against other spending priorities in the general fund. Without the certainty that gas tax revenues provide, transit agencies will immediately move to cut service and raise fares, exactly what Americans don’t need while gas prices are rising and jobs are still scarce.

2. Highways are not “paid for by highway users.”

Gas taxes and tolls don’t cover the cost of highways, not by a longshot. In 2007, for example, user fees only covered 51 percent of highway costs, according to Subsidyscope. In other words, roads are subsidized — on a much larger scale than transit.

The House GOP bill would leave transit riders stranded. Photo: ifmuth/Flickr

Streetsblog Network members are on the case: Darla at Walk Bike Lee, in Lee County Florida, says the bill unfairly pillages the pittance given to sustainable transportation modes and urges her readers to voice their concerns to Rep. Connie Mack. Yonah Freemark at The Transport Politic says the bill is the pinnacle of bad transportation policy. And Daniel Nairn atDiscovering Urbanism writes that is tailored to the interests of oil companies, not your average citizen.

Opposition to the proposal is starting to emanate from editorial pages: The New York Times and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel have called it “terrible” and “not worthy of passage.”

Meanwhile, Deron Lovaas at the NRDC’s Switchboard blog points out that House GOP bill doesn’t even pass the rudimentary test of fiscal discipline. Congressional Budget Office projections show that John Boehner’s plan to plug the transportation funding shortfall with $2 billion in oil drilling revenues only kicks the can down the road:

The bill is larded with extreme measures, including bills passed last week that would annihilate dedicated funding for public transportation (see a report on that here) for the first time in thirty years,slash public oversight required thanks to the 40-year-old National Environmental Policy Act and for the first time ever tie the federal transportation program to speculative drilling revenue.

These bills touted as the panacea for a revenue-starved transportation program don’t prop the program up at all! As Taxpayers for Common Sense has noted this is fiscally reckless. And as they, along with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Reason Foundation and NRDC have noted, it violates the “user pays” funding principle that has underpinned transportation investments for at least the past half-century.

Fiscally reckless. Environmentally damaging. Attacks anyone who rides transit, walks, or bikes by swiping funding for those options. It’s time to kill this bill.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Steven LaTourette, an Ohio Republican, said he opposes the House transportation bill as it is currently written. Photo: Cleveland.com

So there’s a chance that House leadership will fail to round up the 218 votes needed to pass this bill. Based on Streetsblog’s initial conversations with House GOP members, the bill could be too anti-transit and too hostile to street safety to pass, even in this extremely partisan political climate.

Streetsblog began reaching out to House GOP members this morning to see where they stand, and already we’re finding representatives who think the current bill is too extreme. One Republican with misgivings is Ohio Rep. Steven LaTourette, who represents rural and suburban areas in the northeast part of the state, east of Cleveland.

LaTourette has been a supporter of common-sense transportation reforms in the House, co-sponsoring national complete streets legislation as well as a bipartisan measure that would have increased flexibility with federal funds for struggling transit agencies.

Through his chief of staff, Dino DiSanto, LaTourette’s office had this to say about the bill:

In its current formation there are lots of things we don’t like about it. If it’s not changed drastically, we’re not going to support it.

What they’re doing to highway funding — removing [Transportation] Enhancements, not allowing more flexibility for transit agencies? There’s no reason [transit agencies] should be able to buy buses but not operate them.

Infrastructure used to be something that was widely popular among both parties, and for some reason over the last few Congresses, they’ve become highly polarized.

Meanwhile, Bob Turner (R-NY), whose district encompasses parts of Queens and Brooklyn, has reservations as well. In a statement, Rep. Turner indicated his disapproval, specifically for the portion of the bill that would eliminate dedicated funding for transit:

Now that the House bill is taking shape, I have concerns about how the funds will eventually be allocated. We cannot underestimate the importance of providing efficient, safe, mass transit, roads, bridges and tunnels to the people who live and commute in New York City. As this bill evolves, I will continue to work with my colleagues both in Congress and New York to find the best approach in meeting our infrastructure needs. However, I will not support any bill that does not allow New York City to sufficiently meet those needs.

Another GOP representative from New York, Peter King, told Crain’s via his spokesperson that he “has serious concerns about this legislation and the impact it will have on mass transit both on Long Island and New York City.”

The House and Senate transportation bill proposals are both expected to go up for votes next week. Streetsblog will be tracking the positions of key House Republicans throughout the week.

Six cities will adopt innovate street designs for safer cycling over the next two years as part of a new program from Bikes Belong.

The Green Lane Project will provide financial and technical assistance for cities to develop physically protected cycling infrastructure. The six to-be-determined cities will then serve as models for other American cities looking to incorporate street designs that make cycling appealing to residents of all ages.

A few major cities including New York and Washington DC have implemented protected bike lanes, but the designs are still “When a city is out on the front like this and they have a problem, it’s not always clear where they go. We’re trying to help those cities figure it out,” said Green Lane Project Director Martha Roskowski. “So they don’t have to go to Copenhagen to see how these things work.”

Bikes Belong is looking for cities that have political support for creating world-class bike infrastructure, as well as a plan in place. The organization also wants to include three “emerging cities” outside the superstars like New York and Portland, Roskowski said.

“We’re looking for six cities where they have elected officials that are on board with this,” said said. “They’ve gone through some type of a planning process. They get it. They want to do these things.”

Bike Belong sent out invitations to 33 cities that have fairly developed cycling transportation programs. Those include Houston, Memphis, Los Angeles and Columbus, Ohio, as well as San Francisco, according to Roskowski. But any city can apply, whether it was invited or not.

One city that has already been chosen is Chicago. The city’s DOT chief, Gabe Klein, is serving as an adviser on the project, as is New York City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Roskowski said Bikes Belong has not determined what New York City’s role in the program will be, whether strictly as an adviser or as a participant.

The Green Lane Project will build on the work done by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) to create a design guide for a new generation of cycling infrastructure. The Bikes Belong Foundation will be focusing most of its resources on the six chosen cities over the next two years, Roskowski said. They hope the results will be instructive to cities everywhere.

“We’re focusing on putting resources into six cities,” said Roskowski, “the other half is trying to capture what’s happening and share it with all the other cities.”

Applications for the program are due by March 9.

This intersection, Chicago's North Avenue at Kedzie Avenue, would be eligible for automated speeding enforcement under new legislation in Illinois. Between 2005 and 2010, 22 pedestrians and cyclists were injured by auto collisions at this intersection. Photo: Grid Chicago

Speeding Cameras Coming to Chicago: New legislation has cleared the way for automated speeding enforcement — speeding cameras — in Chicago. The cameras will be used only in “safety zones,” or areas around schools and parks. Fines will be $50 – $100 depending on the magnitude of the violation.

Steven Vance at Network blog Grid Chicago is dispelling some common misconceptions about speed cameras, pointing out that they will save lives. “Speed correlates with the survival rate of a pedestrian involved in an automobile crash. If a pedestrian is hit by a person driving a car at 30 MPH, there is an 80% survival rate. If a pedestrian is hit by a person driving a car at 40 MPH, there is a 30% survival rate.”

Will the cameras be effective? Vance summarizes three studies that looked at the efficacy of speeding cameras in preventing traffic collisions. The studies found that speeding cameras were indeed useful in motivating drivers to reduce their speed, improving safety. “There have been reductions in the number of people speeding, and the number of injuries and fatalities, in locations where speed cameras are installed and operated,” Vance writes. “In my assessment of multiple studies, it seems that speed cameras are a main cause of these reductions.”

Why Subway Construction Has Gotten to Be So Expensive: Building new subway lines is more expensive than ever — even when adjusted for inflation. Yesterday Benjamin Kabak at Second Avenue Sagas reviewed a recent Salon article by Will Doig, who identified seven issues that contribute to skyrocketing costs and ballooning construction time tables. Some of the culprits: the slow wheels of bureaucracy, the difficulty of assembling funding for large transit projects in an environment that marginalizes public transportation in favor of auto travel, and NIMBYism. Salon also identifies some progressive reforms, including environmental impact statements, ADA compliance and union rules, as hurdles that aren’t impeding China’s ability to lay down tracks for metros seemingly overnight.

Kabak looks at the issue through the lens of the Second Avenue subway New York City has been planning for decades. “The MTA issued its notice of intent to prepare an environmental impact statement for the Second Ave. Subway in March of 2001,” he says. “The FEIS saw the light of day 38 months later in May of 2004, and the authority had to further revise its assessment in 2009 to find no material impact when it had to redesign station configurations at 72nd and 86th St.”

Red Lights to Be Optional for Paris Cyclists: Systemic Failure points us to a story in the London Timesabout an experiment in Paris that will allow cyclists in one district to “turn right or to go straight at a T-junction even when the lights are red.” The news come after a contentious campaign by cycling advocacy groups which claimed it was “idiotic for them to stop at traffic lights.” Proponents of the measure argued it would reduce the risk of traffic collision — a sharp departure from American sensibility on the topic. It will be interesting to observe the safety outcomes of this one.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

One section of the faltered plan for Second Street. Image: SFDPW

A plan for streetscape improvements on Second Street has faltered after the city agencies overseeing it neglected to implement them before dedicated funds expired.

The project that won’t receive the funds is a package including bike lanes, pedestrian safety improvements, and road repaving on Second Street between Market and King Streets.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, acting as the SF County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) Board, approved a measure today redistributing the expiring $4.8 million in federal funds to three other projects in order to avoid forfeiting them.

The Department of Public Works (DPW) and the SFMTA “failed to steer the project toward successful implementation,” states a memo from DPW Director Mohammed Nuru and SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin to Jane Kim, supervisor of District 6, which includes Second Street. “While we are deeply disappointed that the project has stalled at this juncture, we want to assure you that both DPW and SFMTA are dedicated to implementing this project in the near future.”

The SFCTA, which oversees transportation financing in San Francisco, approved the funds in 2010 from a federal Congestion Management Agency Block Grant. That grant was awarded on the condition that it be spent by February 1, 2012.

But in what the SFCTA called a “surprise,” the SFMTA and DPW failed to meet that deadline after a series of communication breakdowns between the agencies. The SFCTA board called today’s special last-minute hearing to vote on a new plan to divert the funds.

According to an SFCTA document [PDF], $3.4 million of the diverted funds will go to the Cesar Chavez Streetscape Improvement Project, $948,200 to the Two-Way Haight Street Project, and $529,815 to add overhead SFGo signs on Second Street — a program aimed at facilitating wayfinding for drivers which has faced criticism for making city streets look more like freeways.

The memo details a long sequence of bureaucratic tangles, including the agencies’ failure to finish revising plans for the bike lanes on Second in response to public feedback. The bike lanes are one of 11 SF Bike Plan projects not initially greenlighted by the SFMTA Board of Directors. The SFMTA’s project revisions stalled in 2009, and DPW’s project manager was not aware the bike lanes have not been legislated.

Biking and walking advocates said that regardless of the merit of the projects now receiving the funding, the redistribution sets a dangerous precedent for protecting dedicated funds.

“While it’s a relief that city leaders are committing to advance critical pedestrian and bicycle safety improvements on Second Street, we are still deeply concerned that nearly $5 million could almost fall through the cracks,” said Leah Shahum, executive director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition. “This should be an urgent wake-up call that city leaders must do a better job of prioritizing pedestrian and bicycle projects and working together for safer streets. As someone who worked hard to pass the [Proposition B] streets bond last fall, I worry about the city’s readiness to deliver on tens of millions of dollars of pedestrian and bicycle projects that people are clamoring for.”

Staffers from the three agencies said they were working on a new plan to fund the Second Street project, which may now cost as much as $8 million, “depend[ing] on the desired level of bike improvements that come out of the planning phase,” according to the memo. Potential funding sources include the Prop B street improvements bond, Proposition AA (a local vehicle license fee), and the federal One Bay Area Grant. Staff said they are continuing the public outreach process, and the new timeline sets project completion at no sooner than 2015.

“This isn’t about picking one project over the other,” said Walk SF President Manish Champsee. “However, I do think there is a contract, if you will, between public agencies and the public, that when the public is promised something such as pedestrian safety and walkability improvements, that those improvements do get made.”

A press release from the Mayor’s Office states:

Since 2006 when 4,862 bicycle riders were counted, San Francisco’s bike counts have increased an impressive 71 percent to 8,314 riders, and have increased 7 percent since 2010. Bike trips accounted for 3.5 percent of all trips in the City compared to two percent in 2000…

The 2011 Bicycle Count Report relied on a new methodology and more comprehensive approach which included American Community Survey findings, manual intersection counts, loop-detector automated corridor counts and Metropolitan Transportation Commission manual counts. The purpose of changing the methodology was to bring San Francisco’s data in line with national reporting standards.

“These counts back up what is apparent on our streets everyday — that San Franciscans love bicycling, and that bicycling has never been more popular,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum said in a statement. “We look forward to continuing to work with city leaders, neighbors and local businesses to help even more people bicycle by connecting the city with safe and inviting crosstown bikeways, helping the city reach its goal of 20 percent of trips by bicycle by 2020.”

Would you use a rototiller to get rid of weeds in a flowerbed? Of course not. You might solve your immediate goal of uprooting the weeds — but oh, my, the collateral damage that you would do.

Yet when we try to eliminate congestion from our urban areas by using decades-old traffic engineering measures and models, we are essentially using a rototiller in a flowerbed. And it’s time to acknowledge that the collateral damage has been too great.

Image: Andy Singer

Image: Andy Singer

First, an explanation of what I call the “deadly duo”: travel projection models and Levels of Service (LOS) performance metrics.Travel projection models are computer programs that use assumptions about future growth in population, employment, and recreation to estimate how many new cars will be on roads 20 or 30 years into the future.

Models range from quite simplistic to incredibly complex and expensive. Simple models deal primarily with coarse movements of vehicles between cities, while complex models deal with the intricacies of what happens on the fine grid of urban areas. To be truly accurate, growth projection modeling can be expensive. Therefore, absent compelling reason to do otherwise, most growth projections tend to be done using less expensive techniques, which usually lead to overestimates.

Levels of Service (LOS) is a performance metric which flourished during the interstate- and freeway-building era that went from the 1950s to the 1990s. Using a scale of A to F, LOS attempts to create an objective formula to answer a subjective question: How much congestion are we willing to tolerate? As in grade school, “F” is a failing grade and “A” is perfect.

Read more…

Denver's plan to add 122 miles of passenger rail is boosting the local economy. Photo: The Fast Lane

The secretary’s blog, The Fast Lane, discusses how this project promises to be, on many levels, a winner for the Mile-High City:

The enthusiasm in yesterday’s crowd was electric. It’s not hard to see why. The West Rail Line is 85% complete, and the mock-ups and progress to date indicate a beautiful, state-of-the-art transit system.  The new line will allow tourists and commuters to spend less time in traffic and less money on gas. That’s something everyone can appreciate.

Not only will the FasTracks program provide an efficient and cost-effective way to get to and from work, school or the airport; but it is also creating jobs right now.  There are more than 500 men and women working on the West Rail Line alone. FasTracks estimates that its plan will eventually provide work for 4,200 others.

But we can’t be content to see this progress in just one city.  All across America, there is work to be done on projects like the West Rail Line.  More and more Americans are looking for greater choices in transportation today, and it’s important we provide the funding to ensure transit remains one of the available choices.  Now is the time to connect people who need work with the work we need to do improving our nation’s transit centers, highways, railways, airports and ports.

This is exactly the type of investment in the future that other cities would miss out under the House GOP proposal to strip transit projects of dedicated federal funding stream.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Mobilizing the Region reports that political leaders in the New York-New Jersey region are united in their opposition to the House transit proposal. Streets.mn asks if traffic engineers’ roadway classification system is an outdated way of understanding transportation dynamics. AndSuburban Assault introduces Dallas’s first bike café.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

A "stripped down" version of the street plan showing the basic geometry of changes planned on Jefferson Street between Jones and Hyde. See full PDF here. Image: SF Planning Department

As the plan to revamp the public realm on Jefferson Street in Fisherman’s Wharf develops, planners recently announced that two blocks of the project could be brought to life by summer of 2013 in time for America’s Cup.

At a recent public meeting, staff from the San Francisco Planning Department’s City Design Group presented the latest designs for the Fisherman’s Wharf Public Realm Plan. Some changes have been made from concept designs presented as late as last year, including the decision to rescind a proposal for a curb-less “shared street” where cars are allowed, but people are granted priority. Instead, the project will feature curbs as conventional streets do, though it won’t include curbside car parking.

Despite the change, the project is still intended to transform Jefferson into a “beautiful, lively and memorable street that strengthens the identity of Fisherman’s Wharf,” planner Neil Hrushowy told the San Francisco Chronicle:

The work will include adding 15 feet to the sidewalk along the water side of the street, where visitors now must wend their way past crab stands, street vendors, entertainers and outdoor dining tables that take up much of the walkway.

On the other side of Jefferson Street, current plans call for the removal of parking meters, trees and other sidewalk obstacles.

The biggest changes will be to the street itself. The wider sidewalk will mean a narrower roadway, with no street parking and traffic limited to two 11-foot-wide lanes. For the first time in decades, Jefferson will be opened to two-way traffic, dramatically slowing the cars and trucks and making the road safer for cyclists and pedestrians.

“This is a way to show San Francisco as a model for a pedestrian-priority city,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. “I look forward to more projects like this throughout the city to benefit residents as well as visitors.”

Restoring two-way vehicle traffic on Jefferson and Hyde Streets is another one of the main differences compared to previous designs, along with maintaining the current streetcar alignment and shelving restrictions on private autos, according to the Planning Department’s presentation from the meeting [PDF].

The rationale for the changes, the department says, is to “simplify the design, improve bicycle safety, calm the street, increase [the] flexibility of circulation, minimize cost,” and speed up the timeline.

Construction is being expedited on the project’s first phase between Jones and Hyde Streets — two of the five blocks in the project scope — to greet the hundreds of thousands of additional visitors expected for the America’s Cup yacht races next summer. Work on those blocks doesn’t include the rail tracks and overhead wires for the F-Line streetcars, making it “the easiest, quickest way to get the project in the ground and demonstrate the plan to the community,” Hrushowy told the Chronicle.

“I think it’s important to have projects like this in extremely visible places,” noted Stampe, who said she hopes the city will also consider piloting wayfinding signs in the area to help visitors be aware of how quickly they can walk to various destinations.

As for the rest of the project, no timeline has been set yet, but it will require finding an additional $7.5 million in funding on top of the $5 million identified for the first phase, according to the Chronicle.

Planners are consulting with merchants as they finalize the plans for details like street furniture, pavement, and lighting. Those are set to be presented at another community meeting later this month. Construction is scheduled to begin in October.

Jefferson Street as it looks today. Photo: SF Planning Department

A rendering of a previous proposal for a "shared street". The project will still look similar this, but will include differences like curbs separating the roadway from the sidewalks. Image: SF Planning Department

• Tuesday: SPUR Lunchtime Forum – Time’s Up: the End of Temporary. “From parklets to bike lanes, gardens to pop-up stores, temporary urban interventions have emerged as a powerful source of innovation, experimentation and rapid implementation. But while temporary approaches can fast-track things into existence, their day of reckoning must eventually come… Join innovators Kit Hodge of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Michael Yarne of the Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development and John Bela of Rebar to discuss the evolution and future of temporary urbanism.” 12:30 pm.
• Also Tuesday: The SFMTA Board of Directors meets. On the agenda is adoption of the America’s Cup People Plan, a resolution supporting the quick implementation of High-Speed Rail, its termination at the Transbay Transit Center, and Caltrain elecrification; and a presentation on the city’s Transportation Sustainability Program. 1 pm.
• Also Tuesday: The SF Board of Supervisors meets. On the agenda is the appointment of Cindy Wu as Planning Commissioner, an ordinance to expedite sidewalk expansions, and more. 2 pm.
• Wednesday: Cesar Chavez West Streetscape Improvement Project Update Meeting. “The SFMTA has just announced changes to the long-awaited community-based design for Cesar Chavez between Bryant Street and Hampshire Street. Caltrans, the State Department of Transportation, is now requiring an additional vehicle travel lane on Cesar Chavez between Bryant Street and York Street, forcing the loss of on-street car parking on the south side of the street in that section. Attend a community meeting to hear more about how those decisions were made and ask questions of the city team.” 6 pm.
• Thursday: SF Planning Commission Hearing. On the agenda is a major parking reform amendment from Supervisor David Chiu and Livable City Director Tom Radulovich that would remove many parking requirements in northeastern neighborhoods of the city. 12 pm.
• Sunday: SF Bicycle Coalition Family Biking Series: Biking Pregnant/With Your Baby and Toddler. New parents and mothers-to-be can join this free two-part class to learn the facts about biking safely with their young ones and meet others who are in the same boat and share experiences. Part 1: 10 am. Part 2: 11:30 am.

Keep an eye on the calendar for updated listings. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

New Orleans' Claibourne Overpass is this year's Congress for New Urbanism choice for "Freeway without a Future." Photo: CNU.org

Latest week the Congress for New Urbanism released its updated list of “Freeways Without Futures” — 12 transportation anachronisms that are increasingly likely to meet the wreaking ball.

This year’s top finisher was New Orleans’ Claiboure Overpass — a 1960s-era eyesore that replaced a thriving, tree-lined commercial street at the center of the city’s oldest, most culturally vibrant black neighborhood. The teardown for this highway has some real traction; a master plan to remove the elevated portion is expected to be endorsed by City Council shortly, according to CNU.

The Sheridan Expressway in the Bronx is runner up, the same position it held in CNU’s 2008 Freeways Without Futures list. This riverfront disaster was bestowed by the master highway builder himself, Robert Moses. Residents of the Bronx have successfully fought off two separate proposals to expand the Sheridan, which runs right along the Bronx River. A coalition of community groups and advocates called the Southern Bronx River Watershed Alliance has led the charge to replace the freeway with housing and parks, and a group of cities agencies are now examining teardown scenarios with the help of a federal TIGER grant.

The third-place finisher is New Haven’s Route 34 (the Oak Street Connector), which is slated for demolition. New Haven received TIGER funds to convert the road into a pedestrian-friendly boulevard and local officials are currently haggling over the design details — there’s a chance they’ll opt to replace a highway with a road that feels like a highway.

Seattle’s Alaskan Way Viaduct fell 11 spots in the list from last year, due to the fact that while the elevated highway will be demolished, the city is moving ahead with an underground replacement, the so-called deep bore tunnel that has sustainable transportation advocates up in arms.

There’s more: Buffalo, Miami, St. Louis, Cleveland, Rochester, Syracuse, Toronto and Hartford all have urban freeways that CNU has identified as endangered. Kudos to the state of New York, by the way, for leading on sheer volume. Streetsblog reported on efforts to remove the elevated portion of Interstate 81 in Syracuse and West Shoreway in Cleveland last year.

CNU’s 2012 Top Tear-down Prospects:

1.  I-10/Claiborne Overpass, New Orleans
2.  I-895/Sheridan Expressway, New York City (Bronx)
3.  Route 34/Oak Street Connector, New Haven
4.  Route 5/Skyway, Buffalo
5.  I-395/Overtown Expressway, Miami
6.  I-70, St. Louis
7.  West Shoreway, Cleveland
8.  I-490/Inner Loop, Rochester
9.  I-81, Syracuse
10.  Gardiner Expressway, Toronto
11.  Aetna Viaduct, Hartford
12.  Route 99/Alaskan Way Viaduct, Seattle

CNU attributes the rising popularity of highway teardowns and highway-to-boulevard projects to declining DOT budgets and greater local understanding of the benefits of a connected, urban street grid. CNU’s “Highways to Boulevards” program helps educate communities about the benefits of freeway removal and offers technical assistance.

The House transportation bill passed committee on solidly partisan lines. It would reverse decades of reforms that promote safer streets, sustainable transportation, and urbanism. Photo: The National Journal

The Senate managed to put together bipartisan support for legislation that weakens biking and walking programs while including a fewprogressive reforms to transit policy. House Republicans, meanwhile, have lined up behind a draconian vision for highways-only transportation policy that would reverse decades of pragmatic reforms.

Crystallized in the House bill is a strident position that seeks to undermine any form of transportation beside the private automobile, one that rejects cost-saving reforms while cloaking itself in the pretense of fiscal rectitude.

This position — clearly a favorite of industries that profit from highways and sprawl — has even become a talking point among Republican presidential contenders this primary season, reports Yonah Freemark at the Transport Politic. Advocates for green transportation and urbanism have no choice but to fight, says Freemark:

As I have documented, density of population correlates strongly and positively with the Democratic Party vote share in Congressional elections; the result has been that the House Republicans have few electoral reasons to articulate policies that benefit cities. Those who believe in the importance of a sane transportation policy need to make more of an effort to advance a sane transportation politics to residents of suburban and rural areas, who also benefit from efforts to improve environmental quality, mobility alternatives, and congestion relief, but perhaps are not yet convinced of that fact. Doing so would encourage politicians hoping for votes outside of the city core — Democratic or Republican — to promote alternatives to the all-highways meme that currently rules the GOP in the House.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Construction on the JFK Drive bikeway in Golden Gate Park should begin next week, the SFMTA tells Streetsblog. The agency recently posted street plans [PDF] on the project website, showing how the geometry of the city’s first parking protected bike lane will work.

John F. Kennedy Drive is still without parking-protected bikeways. Photo: davidhanddotnet/Flickr

If construction does begin next week, it will mark tangible progress on a project that was initially supposed to be completed in December 2010. Even now, new delays seem to come each week. Following the initial delay, prompted by revisions to the project scope, implementation had been slated for December 2011. Then it was pushed back again one month.

That delay, an SFMTA planner said, was due to further revisions to the project design and concerns that construction could negatively impact museums during a peak season. An exact construction date didn’t surface until two weeks ago, when SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said the project would start last week. Today, work still has yet to begin, but Rose says it will start next week.

The reasons for the recent delays are unclear, but at a Pedestrian Safety Advisory Committee meeting last month, SFMTA planner Dustin White said staff has had to make last-minute modifications to assuage concerns raised by some disability advocates that the project could hinder wheelchair access to pedestrian pathways. The first phase of construction will involve adding a number of curb ramps, and a number of parking spots will be reserved for disabled placard holders, he said. Construction will also involve drainage improvements. The overall project is expected to take at least several weeks, and according to the latest update from transportation staffers it will be completed in March.

Stay tuned for updates as construction gets underway (or doesn’t). After the jump, see samples of the project drawings.

Click to enlarge.