Bike parking at Embarcadero station. Photo via Oakland Local

Currently, four percent of passengers get to and from BART stations by bike. To bolster that rate, the agency is looking to roll out a targeted expansion of secure parking facilities, as well as reduce “blackout periods,” when bikes are banned on rush hour trains, and revisiting its ban on bikes on escalators. The agency even developed its own computer model, known as the Bike Investment Tool, to project the ridership increases derived from different types of upgrades at each station.

Overall, the plan has been widely praised: the SF Examiner called it a wise strategy to reduce emissions and “encourage smarter, denser growth around existing stations and new extensions” by reducing demand for car parking.

Bike advocates said they’re encouraged by the agency’s commitment to installing more secure bike parking, and that reducing blackout periods is also key to boosting ridership for those who need it. San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum said the organization “commends the BART leadership for stepping up their commitment to encouraging more bicycles on and to the BART stations. By implementing this new plan, BART is sure to draw even more new customers and lessen its overall cost per rider by encouraging more bike-transit trips replacing car-transit trips.” The SFBC is calling on members to urge BART staff to eliminate blackout periods.

Steve Beroldo, BART’s Bike Program manager, said staff is “going to look very hard at the blackout periods, see if there are some where we can narrow them down a little bit and do some experiments to see what’ll happen if more people are on board.” He and advocates noted that Grace Crunican, the agency’s new general manager, seems more willing to experiment with changes than previous management. BART also expects to roll out new train cars with more dedicated bike space in 2017.

Even with reduced blackout periods, space aboard trains will always be limited, said East Bay Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Renee Rivera, adding that the greatest barrier to “dramatically increasing the numbers of people accessing BART by bike” is the lack of “excellent, abundant, secure parking at the stations.”

“The surveys that BART has done show that half the people who bring their bikes on BART bring them on because of the lack of secure parking at the station,” Rivera said. As a model, she pointed to the wildly successful, valet-attended Berkley Bike Station outside Downtown Berkeley BART, and other rack installations inside paid areas. Oakland’s 19th Street BART station is also set to get a bike station within a year.

Home-to-BART bicycle access mode share by station. See the rest in the draft plan PDF on pg. 11.

Tom Radulovich, a member of the BART Board of Directors, said he hopes to see more measurable commitments to station improvements and policy changes included in the plan. ”Too often, plans are a vague statement of intentions, and less often a road map,” he said.

Beroldo said the plan is intended to provide “high-level” guidance for ongoing improvements, like parking expansions, which the agency is “actively” making. Demand is clearly high. The 65 bike rack spaces recently installed inside Oakland’s 19th Street station and the 30 racks at 12th Street quickly filled up, Beroldo said. Still, he said he’s eager to move forward with more.

“I want to take what we’ve done and make some choices as to which of those are really going to be the most productive in the short-term, and jump into the implementation stage,” said Beroldo. “While that’s going on, I want to be thinking about all the strategies, and at which stations it’s best to implement them, and what’s going to be involved.”

The plan also recommends “re-visiting” the agency’s prohibition of bikes on escalators. Currently, the agency requires cycling passengers to use elevators or carry their bikes on stairs, which the plan notes “can be challenging, particularly for children, elderly, and disabled cyclists.” Radulovich said he supports lifting the ban.

“Although staff has concluded that the ban should not be lifted due to safety and liability concerns,” the plan says, “this policy deserves review because of the high cost of stairway channels, the inconvenience and unpleasantness of some BART elevators and the perceived unfairness of banning bikes on escalators, but not other large items, such as luggage.”

Radulovich pointed out that people regularly take their bikes on escalators on many transit systems “without signs of carnage,” and that the ban seems to be a case of “the insurance department writing rules that don’t actually make a lot of sense.” No other American transit system expressly allows bikes on escalators, but systems in many other countries do, and Radulovich noted some American systems don’t expressly prohibit it, either.

Other recommendations in the plan include evaluating and increasing automobile parking fees, which the plan says have “a profound impact on bicycle access rates”; advocating for other agencies to make bikeway improvements on connecting routes; and improving signage for wayfinding.

Beroldo said staff will present a final plan to the BART Board on June 14, and that it should be adopted by the end of that month.

Check out the draft plan [PDF] for more, as well as a plethora of data on bike parking and usage. The public can submit comments to BART for the remainder of the week by emailing bikes@bart.gov.

Haight and Pierce Streets. Photo: Aaron Bialick

The SFMTA is installing ladder crosswalks at intersections along the Wiggle.

By increasing the visibility of the pedestrian right-of-way, the new feel they bring even seems to calm bike and car traffic. The crosswalks should also assuage concerns from those who say the growing number of bicycle commuters on the route makes the intersections less comfortable to walk across.

The improvements come along with green-backed sharrows guiding bicycle riders, which crews have installed at three intersections and along Waller Street. The southbound lane of Steiner Street, where a crossing was striped connecting Duboce Park to Herman Street late last year, appears to be slated next, as the old sharrows have been ground off there.

Both the green sharrows and ladder crosswalks arose from the SFMTA’s ThinkBike sessions with Dutch transportation planners.

More photos after the break.

Photo: Mark Dreger, San Franciscoize/Flickr

Waller Street. Photo: Mark Dreger, San Franciscoize/Flickr

Sens. Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe worked hard to negotiate an agreement on transportation enhancement funding -- a deal now threatened by House Republicans. Photo: Transportation Issues Daily

Transportation Enhancements is the primary source of funding for bicycle and pedestrian projects. It comprises less than two percent of total federal transportation funds but has been a source of bitter contention, nearly derailing talks in the Senate. The two sides eventually made a deal under which TE is subsumed under the Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality Improvement program’s “additional activities” category. Per that agreement, states can opt out altogether, and some road uses compete with bike and pedestrian projects for funding. An amendment to maintain some local control over the funds made it somewhat more palatable for advocates.

Sen. James Inhofe, the conservative top Republican on the Environment and Public Works Committee, warned House members at the outset of the conference that “the conservative position is to pass this thing,” even if members are not 100 percent satisfied with the compromise. The changes to the enhancements program constituted “the most meaningful reform to conservatives” in the bill, he said.

Transportation conference chairwoman Barbara Boxer said today that lawmakers “have a chance” to make the bill longer than two years, as the Senate bill is written. She also said that 80 percent of the EPW Committee’s portion of the bill is not controversial and has been agreed to. According to Boxer, House Speaker John Boehner told her last night that he has instructed House negotiators to get a bill done.

Still, a staffer familiar with the ongoing conference talks has told Streetsblog that TE is again an issue of contention. Freshman Republicans have made a point of expressing their dissatisfaction that any funding whatsoever remains in the bill.

In addition to TE, Republicans took issue with one of the most popular bill elements among transportation reformers: the provision allowing for more flexibility for transit agencies in times of high unemployment. The Senate bill allows agencies in such cases to spend federal funds normally reserved for capital improvements on operations. GOP opposition to these programs is part and parcel of the urban/rural divide, according to Streetsblog’s source, who said some House members are bent on redistributing money from urban areas to rural districts.

Many House members also oppose Senate bill language that would, for the first time, give safety oversight responsibility to the FTA. Though the federal government has a role in overseeing road, air and rail safety, conservatives have resisted expanding oversight to transit.

Changes to environmental reviews have also led to “lots of yelling,” the source said.

The Tea Party-backed House members making hay about these issues have been the only lawmakers showing up at meetings that are largely among staffers. Our source said it’s set up an uncomfortable dynamic and has put a chill on what should be frank conversations. The professional staff members understand they’re there to compromise, but the lawmakers themselves don’t seem inclined to do so. No one has conceded anything, we hear.

The much-ballyhooed Keystone pipeline is a significant point of contention, but it’s not the only one, and some Democrats complain that it’s getting far too much attention in the mainstream press — to the point that reporters often ask lawmakers whether they’re really going to allow the whole process to be stymied over the pipeline issue. Democrats, of course, feel that it’s Republicans who are hamstringing the conference by insisting on something they know will provoke a presidential veto.

Our source said the committee staff is still “walking through” the bill section by section and identifying areas of disagreement, of which there are many. Senator Harry Reid told reporters yesterday that 80 percent of the issues had been resolved, but the staffer we talked to, while not explicitly refuting the majority leader’s assertion, wasn’t so sure.

The Finance committee staff is reportedly meeting tomorrow for the first time to tackle the other thorny issue: how to pay for the bill.

The seven Tea Party members showing up to all the meetings aren’t the only obstacle to agreement — there are lots more compromise-averse freshmen in the House who could vote no on the conference report. If that’s the case, Republican leadership would need to count on Democrats to vote for it.

Bike licensing: Why? Photo: Wild Bell

Putting up barriers to healthy choices like biking makes no sense from a policy perspective — especially since many people cycling are children or very low-income, for whom the registration and licensing process may be especially difficult or offputting. (By the way, if you don’t have a car, how do you legally get to the registration point?)

But in case you needed another reason, James Sinclair at Network blog Stop and Move has a good one for us today: police profiling. Sinclair points to a recent statement from the police department in Clovis, California:

From what I understand, Clovis still has a law on the books requiring that all bikes be registered (with a fee). Fortunately, that law hasn’t been enforced in years, and it’s entirely possible the current PD doesn’t even realize that law exists.

Anyway, in the title of the post, I mention that profiling is included. What do I mean by that? Well, the ABC news broadcast has a very unfortunate quote from a Clovis PD rep.

Calli Biaggi of the Clovis Police Department is quoted as saying:

If we stop somebody and they’re on a bicycle and it doesn’t look like maybe they should have that bicycle, we can run the serial number of the bike and then we can see that its owned by someone else. And then we can contact that person and see if that bike is supposed to be with that person.

Sinclair responds:

That sounds exactly like a healthy dosage of profiling and it shouldn’t be something that department is boasting about doing.

Unless we’re talking about an adult on a bike intended for a small child, how exactly can an officer determine that “it doesn’t look like maybe they should have that bicycle”? We all know what’s actually going on here, and it’s wrong.

Sinclair says he does support voluntary bike registration as a way to assist police in recovering stolen bicycles. We concur.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Urban Velo goes into further detail about the problems with bike licensing. Bike Delaware celebrates the First State’s new status at the country’s 10th bike friendliest. And Copenhagenize is disappointed with New York City’s new pedestrian and cyclist safety campaign, because it is aimed at cyclists and pedestrians rather than motorists.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Photo: Frank Chan (geekstinkbreath)/Flickr

The SFMTA last week restored two-way traffic on four blocks of Ellis Street, from Polk to Jones Streets. It’s the final phase of a project that also converted two blocks of the adjacent Eddy Street last month, bringing humane traffic speeds to what used to be highway-like, one-way arterial streets.

In front of the Tenderloin National Forest at Ellis and Leavenworth. Photo: Frank Chan/Flickr

Check out more of Frank Chan’s always-stellar shots after the break and on his Flickr account.

Photo: Frank Chan/Flickr

Photo: Frank Chan/Flickr

The first Give Me 3 poster on 1st and Main in Los Angeles, 2010. Photo: LADOT Bike Blog

“The community of people who care about the safety of bicyclists continues to be the backbone of support for this bill,” said Jim Brown, spokesperson for the CBC. “Nearly 1,800 people have contacted their state senators to urge a yes vote this Thursday. This is a very large response by any measure, especially for bike-related legislation. It shows how strongly people care about making our roads safer.”

If passed, SB 1464 would require drivers to give cyclists a three foot passing berth when passing them. A nearly identical proposal, SB 910, was vetoed by Governor Brown in October due to pushback from AAA and the CA Highway Patrol (CHP), despite making its way through both houses of the legislature. As reported in Streetsblog  last month, the CBC worked with AAA and the CHP to revise the language they objected to and propose a new bill.

SB 1464 differs from last year’s bill by allowing drivers to cross a solid double yellow centerline (when safe) if necessary to give a bicyclist at least three feet of space. If three feet aren’t available, the bill requires drivers to pass by slowing down to a “reasonable and prudent” speed and giving bicyclists as much space as “feasible.”

The CBC launched the “Give Me 3” campaign to support the bill last year using imagery from Los Angeles’ bike safety campaign in 2010. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told Streetsblog that the passage of a safe passing law in Sacramento is “a top legislative priority” for him.

If the Senate passes SB 1464 on Thursday, it would then head to the State Assembly for approval by the appropriate committees and the full assembly. After that, it’s back to the Governor Brown’s desk, where he could sign it into law or veto it again.

TransForm and the CBC partnered to provide an easy form which supporters can use to write their legislators. By clicking on this link and entering your zip code on TransForm’s website, you can generate an email addressed to your senator. You can also modify the email with a more personal message, which is especially powerful if you know someone who was injured in a crash. If you would prefer to use email or regular mail, click here for instructions from the CBC.

Sample letter. Click here to generate your own.

Sorry, Ford: the honeymoon is over. Photo: Loti

The data tell us that young people are driving less; that Americans are driving fewer miles — and it’s not just because of the economy. Now the Washington Post asks a more transcendental question: Is the spark gone?

America’s fabled love affair with the car hasn’t ended, but like many a romance that gets off to a smoking-hot start, it has evolved over the years into more placid coexistence rooted more in need than pleasure.

There are a multitude of reasons: The roads don’t seem so free or open as they were when the affair blossomed after World War II. Congestion and the pillory at the gas pump have reined in some of the wanderlust.

Even the ad man who made muscle cars a status symbol, Jim Wangers, is quoted in the Post article saying, “In the 1960s it was absolutely mandatory that you had a swinging set of wheels. Now, personal mobility has been replaced by personal mobility on the Web.”

There are economic reasons and environmental reasons, as well as a culture shift away from the drivable suburbs of prior generations.

GM has hired MTV consultants to try to find out what makes young people tick these days but even their hired gun seems a little pessimistic about the auto industry’s chances of winning back this demographic. His prescient glimpse into the mind of today’s youth: “They think of a car as a giant bummer… Think about your dashboard. It’s filled with nothing but bad news.”

Less than half of 16- to 19-year-olds even bother to get their driver’s license anymore (compared to 64 percent in 1998), and Americans under 35 drove 23 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 2001.

To illustrate the point, the Post story uses two anecdotes: 1) More than a quarter of DC residents don’t own an automobile, and 2) NASCAR fans are graying. (Corvette owners are, too.)

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal ran an op-ed last week in which Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard asked readers, “Would you rather own a car, an iPad or a Facebook membership?” — as if it were a rhetorical question. But does everyone really want a car, Mr. Karlgaard? According to the research firm Gartner, 46 percent of drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would choose Internet access over owning a car.

To Karlgaard, though, there’s only one logical answer. “By 2050 the planet will have nine billion inhabitants and three billion cars,” he wrote, even while noting: “This will create huge demand for fuel and road access.”

Sure, we can keep building infrastructure for a car-choked future the data tell us isn’t coming, or we can ride the wave of diminished interest in cars to channel resources toward more sustainable forms of transportation.

Administration priorities for the conference bill came down from headquarters. Photo: Wikipedia

Everyone from the petrochemical industry to environmental and equity groups [PDF] to state DOT officials [PDF] are penning their missives to committee members, asking for everything from expedited project delivery to fix-it-first to automatic approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

U.S. DOT got in on the letter-writing campaign last week too, expressing the Obama administration’s priorities for the bill [PDF].

The letter, signed by Secretary Ray LaHood, started off reiterating the promise to veto any bill mandating automatic approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. The administration opposes the GOP’s bid for coal ash deregulation but doesn’t threaten a veto over that issue. It also opposes some of the streamlining proposals made by the House, saying they “would radically change the application of environmental laws” and would undermine the National Environmental Policy Act.

The administration says it “strongly supports local decision-making and boosting the capacity of agencies that perform statewide, metropolitan, and rural transportation planning” — staying agnostic in the battle between state and city power. It supports the Senate’s Buy America language, which the House has instructed its conferees to accept. New Starts, high-speed rail, and TIGER all get a shout-out too.

U.S. DOT supports transit operations funding in times of high unemployment and in the wake of a disaster, and it reminds conferees that the administration’s 2013 budget included $3.2 billion for for transit maintenance. It mentions CMAQ only to oppose a House change to the program that never passed but does not weigh in on the changes to CMAQ in the Senate bill.

The Bullitt Foundation's "Living Building," which it calls the "greenest commercial building in the world" was nearly hamstrung by environmental regulations. Photo: The Bullitt Foundation

The problem, Adam Bejan Parast at Seattle Transit Blog writes, is that we are stuck with environmental regulations from a bygone era:

I have thought for a while that each generation of environmentalists is shaped in response to the differing environmental challenges of their time. While older generations of environmentalists were shaped by the back-to-the-land movement, one that believed in an essentially rural solution to environmental problems, young environmentalists are exactly the opposite, believing that dense cities are the primary solution to the problems we face.

Call it Vashion Island environmentalism vs Capitol Hill environmentalism. I find these underlying beliefs to be a helpful organizing structure when talking about density, tree preservation, parking requirements or other issues facing infill development.

Parast links to a post by Dan Bertolet, who argues we are entering a “fourth wave of planning,” influenced by climate change, energy concerns, food systems and sustainable regional development. How long will it take for our environmental regulations to catch up?

Elsewhere on the Network today: The League of American Bicyclists unveils its project aimed at memorializing every cyclist killed on American streets. Steven Can Plan compares traffic injury rates in the Netherlands to Chicago. And Brown Girl in the Lane discusses obstacles to women in the cycling movement, and how she developed a sisterhood of supporters.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Photo: Google Maps via SFist

Forty-seven year-old Sena Putra was killed by the driver of a gasoline tanker last Thursday at 13th and Folsom Streets under the Central Freeway. He is the seventh pedestrian killed in the city this year.

According to the SF Chronicle, police said Putra was in a crosswalk on 13th Street at 12:55 p.m., crossing with the green light, when the northbound truck driver turned right and hit him. The driver stopped and “cooperated with investigators.” No arrests or citations have been reported. It’s unclear how fast the driver was going and why he or she failed to yield to Putra.

Putra was returning from lunch to his job as an accountant for UCSF’s Langley Porter Psychiatric Hospital, according to the Chronicle. He had just become a U.S. citizen after emigrating from Indonesia almost 10 years ago. Colleagues told the Chronicle he was looking forward to voting in the U.S. for the first time.

Under the shadow of the Central Freeway, 13th Street is dominated by high-speed motor traffic that divides SoMa and the Mission. Many neighbors have lamented the reconstruction of the traffic-inducing freeway less than ten years ago at the insistence of Caltrans, despite the city’s proposal to replace it with a street-level boulevard.

“The biggest tragedy is that this could have been prevented if this city prioritized safe streets for walking,” said Walk SF Executive Director Elizabeth Stampe. ”This intersection and the whole area are built around freeways, not around people. But people still need to cross, just like Sena Putra did.”

“It’s time to put people’s safety first.”

Pedestrians rush across 13th Street at Mission (where it becomes Duboce Street). Photo: Aaron Bialick

Here are all the highlights from the Streetsblog calendar:

• Tuesday: SFCTA Board of Directors Meeting. The board may approve state and regional funds for the Free Muni for Low-Income Youth pilot and speed improvements on the 8X Bayshore and Mission corridor routes. SFCTA staff will also present an update on ongoing transit, pedestrian, and bicycle improvements in Districts 3 and 9. 11 a.m.
• Also Tuesday: SPUR Lunchtime Forum: Implementing Bus Rapid Transit in the Region. Join Kevin Connolly of the Valley Transportation Authority, the SFCTA’s Tilly Chang, and the SFMTA’s Timothy Papandreou for a review of upcoming BRT projects (and the challenges they face) in the South Bay and on SF’s Van Ness Avenue and Geary Boulevard. (Also, don’t miss SPUR’s Thursday forum on Jane Jacobs.) 12:30 p.m.
• Wednesday: Shaping SF Talk: What Are Our Streets For?  Representatives from the SF Bike Coalition, Walk SF, the Planning Department’s Green Connections Project, and Nature in the City host this discussion on exploring ways to “challenge the 20th century paradigm of automobile-centric streets.” 7:30 p.m.
• Thursday: SF Planning Commission Hearing. On the agenda is approval of the final environmental impact report for the Transbay Transit Center, which is expected to transform the surrounding downtown district with the addition of a new skyscraper and regional transit hub for high-speed rail, Caltrain, AC Transit, and Muni. 10 a.m.
• Also Thursday: SF Bicycle Advisory Committee Meeting. Hear all the latest updates on the SFMTA’s bicycle projects and provide direct feedback to planners. You can see this month’s SFMTA bike project report here [PDF]. (Note: this month’s meeting is held at the SFBC offices.) 6:30 p.m.
• Friday: Critical Mass. Kick off your weekend with a ride in the San Francisco-born monthly tradition of reclaiming the streets for bicycles. 5:30 pm.
• Saturday: SFBC Connecting the City Ride: America’s Cup and Bay Trail Bikeway. Join the SFBC for this ride from the Ferry Building to Crissy Field, exploring the Bay Trail and learning about the SFBC’s vision for this important segment of their Connecting the City campaign. 10 a.m.
• Also Saturday: Green Connections Walk: Holly Park to Alemany Farm Butterfly Walk. The SF Planning Department continues its series of walks for its Green Connections project, an effort to “improve the city’s streets and routes that lead to our parks, waterfront and open spaces.” Explore the area around Bernal Heights and ”provide feedback about what you like along the way and how certain elements could be improved.” 1 p.m.

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

Georgia Democrat John Barrow is doing the GOP's bidding on the Keystone pipeline. Photo: Statesboro Herald

On top of all that, members are beginning to submit “instructions” to their fellow conferees, telling them how to vote.

On Friday, the House passed two instructions. The first was sponsored by T & I Ranking Member Nick Rahall and it instructed House conferees to reinforce “Buy America” provisions by closing certain loopholes. The Senate bill includes Buy America language to ensure that more manufactured goods and commodities are produced within the United States.

The Amalgamated Transit Union is in favor of Buy America provisions because they protect manufacturing jobs in the U.S. But many other transit advocates oppose them because they can make transit so much more expensive and present many bureaucratic obstacles.

It’s no surprise that Rahall, a Democrat from West Virginia coal country, would support a provision intended to create American manufacturing jobs. But the second set of instructions was a little more surprising. John Barrow — a Democrat — put forward a motion instructing House conferees to “insist on Title II of the House bill, regarding approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.”

According to Politico, Barrow is a conservative Georgia Dem who’s highly vulnerable in the next election. Perhaps he thought he could score some right-wing points with the vote. But it’s no indication that Democrats are warming to the pipeline idea. In fact, as Larry Ehl mentioned in Transportation Issues Daily, “Fewer House Democrats support Keystone XL than House Republicans claimed.” The House bill to go to conference got 69 Dem votes, but many of those held their nose voting for a bill containing Keystone just to get a conference process started. Only 26 Democrats voted “yes” on Barrow’s motion Friday. And as Ehl points out, that means “the House does not have the votes to override a Presidential veto” – in the “somewhat remote case” that the bill passes Congress with the Keystone XL language.

Once conferees have been named, House members have 20 calendar days and 10 legislative days to submit instructions if a conference report has not yet been filed. The “motion to instruct” is a privileged motion, which means the House majority can’t stop them from being voted on. “It’s a recipe for crippling the House floor and forcing votes on uncomfortable topics, if the Democrats want to play it that way,” wrote Kathy Wolfe at Politico.

Both Barrow and Rahall indicated that their instructions were intended to force the conferees to act, but the instructions are non-binding recommendations on highly contentious issues, which members will vote according on to their own values and constituencies.

Despite the fact that the House is on recess this week and the Senate is on recess next week for Memorial Day, staff members have been working hard to come to agreement on the issues in the bill. If they make progress, they’ll have some points of agreements to show their bosses when they are all back in DC at the beginning of June. Boxer has said the committee needs to pass its bill by June 7 in order to get it voted on by both chambers and signed by the president in time for the June 30 deadline. Some experts are beginning to show a cautious optimism that it could actually happen.

This is the message and image being used to promote a $6 billion transit-and-roads referendum in greater Atlanta. Photo: Decatur Metro

We’ve written a few times about how transit referendums need a simple, to-the-point message summarizing what voters can expect to receive in return. Here’s how they’re doing it in Atlanta.

In their quest to win voter support for a $6 billion funding package that would be split about evenly between transit and roads, proponents have settled on the phrase ”Let’s Untie Atlanta’s Knot.” Equating the ballot measure to a referendum on Atlanta’s notorious congestion woes seems like a smart idea.

Network blog Decatur Metro decided to evaluate the “untying” claim on its central promise — congestion relief — and found that it passes the sniff test, especially when it comes to transit:

The AJC this morning has summarized the Atlanta Regional Commission’s findings from a 10-year traffic simulation program and shown that the figures overall are either impressive or underwhelming, depending on what area you look at and/or which expert/non-expert you speak with. Atlanta’s infrastructure is a big ol’ expensive mistress, and though $6 billion may sound big compared to, say, our annual salaries, it’s a drop in the bucket for the metro area’s collection of road and rail. Or Mark Zuckerberg for that matter. But some figures seem heartening…

From the Atlanta Journal Constitution:

On average, the number of metro Atlantans able to reach job centers in under 45 minutes would rise just 6 percent by car, and about 20 percent by bus or train, if the projects are built. The new transit projects expect perhaps 75,000 or more daily boardings.

Regional planners insist that in the world of transportation design, a 6 percent or 20 percent jump in good commutes is a big deal.

This should be a slam dunk for Atlanta. We’ll be following it through voting day in July.

Elsewhere on the Network today: Grid Chicago continues to evaluate Chicago’s transportation “Action Agenda” in a second sit-down question-and-answer session with DOT Commissioner Gabe Klein. Bike Lane Living shares a video documenting Indianapolis’s Bike to Work Day. And Alex Block weighs in on the density debate spurred by Richard Florida’s comments at the Congress for the New Urbanism conference in Palm Springs.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Photo: Mark Dreger, San Franciscoize

Dozens of speakers, young and old, said the project was vital for improving the safety of people who already bike as well as those who will only feel safe riding with the separated bike lanes.

“The three blocks of terror, as I call them, really have been a big impediment to me biking in San Francisco,” said Julia Uota, who lives in the Richmond. “I am new to biking, and I’m terrified to bike Fell Street on my way home. During rush hour, I make it a point of getting off my bike and walking as a pedestrian on the sidewalk, where it’s not really wide enough to have a bike next to me.”

D5 Supervisor Christina Olague told hearing officers: “My office hears from people who ride bicycles through this area, including parents biking their children to school, people biking to shop on Divisadero, and people of all ages biking to work. We must prioritize this kind of project and safety improvements, I believe, in our district.”

Although SFMTA staff said they couldn’t approve the project for recommendation until the environmental review is finished, it’s expected to go to the SFMTA Board of Directors in the fall or winter. Staff said the project could return for another public hearing for official recommendation to the board, depending on the changes in the finalized designs, which would be informed by the comments at today’s hearing.

This father said he bikes on Fell and Oak, but wants to be able to bring his wife and child along. Photo: Mark Dreger

The relatively few opponents of the project repeated complaints about removing car parking, and called for bicyclists to instead be routed onto neighboring Hayes and Page Streets, despite explanations from agency staff and pro-bikeway speakers that steep grades and extra distances already deter riders from using them.

A few project supporters said the SFMTA went too far trying to mitigate the loss of car parking. They criticized the agency’s proposal to create roughly 60 new parking spaces on other streets to offset the 103 that would be removed to make room for the bike lanes, citing the adverse impacts. Under the current plan, three bus stops on Hayes would be removed, which the agency will help speed up service on the 21 Muni line. However, some complained of having to walk farther to reach their bus stop, and a few speakers said it makes more sense to remove the stop at Lyon Street rather than the adjacent one at Central Street, since Central appears much more heavily used. Staff said it chose to keep the Lyon stop to avoid inconveniencing the residents of a senior housing center it fronts.

About 43 other spaces would be created by converting parallel parking lanes to perpendicular and angled parking on nearby streets, but a few commenters said perpendicular parking is difficult to use and is an eyesore.

Luis Montoya, project manager for the SFMTA, said the details of the final design could be adjusted based on the comments, but that the project is necessary to meet the city’s goal of achieving 20 percent bike mode share by the year 2020.

“The city has a transit-first policy in which we will prioritize transit and bicycle improvements over those of the personal automobile, so with those goals in mind, we’re trying to create a project that minimizes the negative impacts to the community,” he said.

Neal Patel, community planner for the SF Bicycle Coalition, praised the SFMTA’s community outreach and planning process. ”I have never participated in a community process that was as well attended and where the community was as engaged as this one,” he said. Handing a thick stack of support letters to the hearing officers, he noted that despite the harrowing conditions on Fell and Oak, there are already 1,500 to 2,000 people biking on Fell Street each day.

“That’s a lot — it’s one of the highest in the city,” said Patel. “I think it’s the responsibility of the MTA to improve safety for those people.”

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Source: The Demand Institute

The data suggests otherwise, though. Earlier this week, the Demand Institute (a think tank created by the Conference Board — “a global, independent business membership and research association” — and Nielsen — yeah, the TV ratings people) released a report on the housing recovery. They say the worst of the housing crash is over and glimmers of recovery are on the horizon. But hope isn’t spread out uniformly across these United States. Those exurbs like Blaine and Farmington, Minnesota? They’re not coming back so fast.

Urban areas didn’t lose as much value during the recession. Home prices didn’t crash so hard. Not so many people found themselves under water, owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. And urban areas are bouncing back faster. The Demand Institute calls these places “Resilient Walkables.” Only 15 percent of the U.S. population lives there.

The report bases its prognosis for recovery on seven factors: population size, walkability, severity of the crash, current affordability, unemployment, foreclosure inventory, and foreclosure policy. The Institute found what Angie noted earlier: Walk Score is positively correlated with strong housing prices. The Institute’s analysis of almost 1,700 U.S. cities showed that walkable cities had more positive price growth.

And it found that these “Resilient Walkables” were resilient indeed, with house prices projected to rise three percent next year and five percent a year for the four years after that.

Compare that to the places the Institute calls “Slow and Steady” – where more than a third of Americans live and where double-digit housing declines destabilized the market. Economic indicators are gloomy for these areas, but the authors find the planning solid, so the future is relatively bright. These are places like Charlotte, NC, Dallas and semi-urban D.C. suburbs like Gaithersburg, MD, and the study forecasts three percent growth starting in two years.

Then there are the “Damaged But Hopeful” areas – a category that encompasses big but depressed cities like Chicago and smaller ones like Stamford, CT. Thirty percent of Americans live in these places, too many of them fighting foreclosure. It will take them a little longer to get to three percent growth but from 2017 onward, the Demand Institute predicts that they’ll beat the national average.

And then there are the exurbs and small suburbs. Twenty percent of Americans live there, but perhaps not for long. The report classifies them as “Weighed Down” – by precipitous price drops and high foreclosure rates. “The fact that housing is relatively cheap compared to the national average will not greatly assist recovery,” the report states. “Indeed, long-term prospects are most uncertain. We do not expect price rises to reach the national average even by 2017.”

The relative cheapness of land was the big draw out to new suburbs over the past few decades. The report seems to be foretelling the end of “drive till you qualify.”

The authors also predict the rental market will grow faster than the homebuyer market, and they say house size will shrink, as necessitated by the mass gravitation to a denser development pattern. Houses are already smaller now than their peak of 2,500 square feet in 2007, and the study forecasts they will shrink by another 10 percent by 2015 to about 2,150 square feet – still plenty of space.

So, while some people are content with the wide-roads-and-big-yards way of exurban life, many more are getting out – as soon as they can sell their house, which for many, won’t be anytime soon. Those who can are fleeing the toxicity of foreclosure, the soul-sucking commutes at $4+ a gallon, the dead street life.

And young families, who in the last decade fueled outward growth with their zeal for big houses with small price tags, are pulling back now. When they move out of their parents’ basements they’ll be looking to rent instead of buy. Home ownership rates among people in their early twenties has gone down 17.5 percent, while the home ownership rate for all age groups is down less than three percent.

It’s all part of a pendulum swing back from the mass drive out to the suburbs in the postwar period. According to this research, the growth is now in cities and close-in suburbs that offer a mix of uses within easy and pleasant walking distance. Transit plays a role too, as one major amenity being sought in urban areas is access to public transportation, “a significant advantage as traffic pressure in major metropolitan areas worsens owing to limited investment in road infrastructure,” the report says.

Some of the callers this morning made their outer-ring lifestyles sound lovely and bucolic. One of them said he and his wife both worked from home, so one of the major downsides of the exurbs – the commute – was a moot point for them. That may be, but they are increasingly isolated in their decision to live in that kind of place. As Chris Leinberger has noted, the places that were supposed to be a refuge from urban crime are finding that big-city problems have followed them. Nothing destabilizes a neighborhood like a vacant house – even if that house is a McMansion.

Image: Arizona Department of Transportation

Does walkable development really lead to worse traffic congestion? Opponents of urbanism often say so, citing impending traffic disaster to rally people against, say, a new mixed-use project proposed in their backyards. But new research provides some excellent evidence to counter those claims.

A recent study by the Arizona Department of Transportation [PDF] found that neighborhoods where houses are closer together actually have freer-flowing traffic.

Researchers compared some of greater Phoenix’s denser neighborhoods – South Scottsdale, Tempe, and East Phoenix — with a few of its more sprawling ones – Glendale, Gilbert, and North Scottsdale. Some interesting patterns emerged.

In the more compact neighborhoods, the average household owned 1.55 cars, compared to 1.92 in more suburban areas. Residents of higher-density neighborhoods also traveled shorter distances both to get to work and to run errands, the study found.

The average work trip was a little longer than seven miles for higher-density neighborhoods; in the more suburban neighborhoods, it was almost 11 miles. Residents of the three compact neighborhoods traveled just less than three miles to shop, while residents of sprawling locations traveled an average of more than four miles. All of this led the more urban dwellers to travel an average of nearly five fewer miles per day than their suburban counterparts.

The density divide also played an important role in transit use. Rates varied from as high as eight percent transit ridership in high-density neighborhoods to as low as one percent in the more sprawling areas.

All of this translated into a reduced strain on roadways in the places that had more people — running counter to one of the strongest objections to mixed-use development. Comparing one suburban corridor to two of the streets in the more dense neighborhoods, the study found that on the more urban streets, traffic congestion was “much lower,” or about half as high (measured by the ratio of the capacity of the roadway to the actual volume of cars on it).

How did more compact neighborhoods manage to have less congestion? It’s not just because residents there drive less overall. Two design characteristics also ease traffic, according to AZ DOT. Fine-grained street networks distributed traffic evenly across the higher-density neighborhoods, while every driver in the suburban neighborhoods was funneled onto the same big arterials. At the same time, improved pedestrian conditions in commercial centers made it easier for some drivers to park once and walk from destination to destination, taking cars off the road precisely in the areas that attract the most people.

The results of the Arizona study may not apply everywhere, due to the state’s extremely spread out pattern of development. The higher-density neighborhoods still only had between six and seven households per acre, compared with between three and four in the lower-density places. As the report notes, “By Eastern U.S. standards, all of these densities are effectively suburban in character.”

But the report controls for a host of factors, strengthening the conclusion that the different travel behaviors were really the result of design, rather than income, say, or the student population.

The Arizona Department of Transportation deserves credit — first of all, because this is a fantastic, thorough, well-timed study, but also for pointing out the important policy implications. The agency’s recommendations include a public awareness campaign about the benefits of mixed-use, compact development; better planning and public engagement tools; and providing incentives for smart planning.

The authors noted, for example, that outdated policies sabotage planning efforts that are beneficial for livability, public health, and the environment in the name of maintaining traffic flow. The supreme irony — in light of the study results — is that these policies ultimately fail the congestion test too:

Local planners and planning commissions are still using traditional traffic engineering approaches to assess the impact of development projects. By looking only at traffic congestion levels on adjacent links, ignoring through travel, and failing to account for the efficiencies of mixed-use development on lower vehicle trip rates and VMT, progressive projects are likely to be rejected or unreasonably downsized.

The DOT also concludes that congestion isn’t always a bad thing, that density is the key to successful transit, and that short blocks are critical for building vibrant, mixed-use places.