Day: May 21, 2009

The Port of San Francisco last week installed the first 8 of more than 100 new multi-space meters along the Embarcadero from the Ferry Building south to AT&T Park in what will become San Francisco's new pilot in dynamic parking management, SFPark. The Port meters are the first of what will be a year and a half trial with 6,000 curbside spaces and 11,500 garage spaces in seven pilot areas around the city, most of them downtown and in heavy-traffic tourist destinations (see map below).

Ray LaHood is known for his disarming candor -- his recent admission that he's not "that great a transportation person" being a case in point -- and those qualities were on vivid display today as the Transportation Secretary delivered an address to the National Press Club.

Caltrain has dropped an idea to make bicyclists pay a $1 surcharge to help solve its budget deficit. In an email this afternoon, Mark Simon, the special assistant to the Caltrain CEO, wrote "a bicycle surcharge will not be part of the budget proposals for the coming fiscal year." He also updated efforts to create more bicycle capacity on the system:

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank has a knack for puncturing Capitol Hill's bubble of obliviousness. His classics include the spotting of Senate Environment & Public Works Committee Chairman Barbara Boxer (D-CA) leaving an event that protested high gas prices in an 18-miles-per-gallon car -- for the one-block trip back to her office.

As the reauthorization of the federal transportation bill draws nearer, the need for clear, simple explanations of why reform is important grows greater. The folks at Transportation for America have stepped forward to make the case with Route to Reform: A Blueprint for a 21st-Century Transportation Policy, a 100-page document that lays out the most important issues. In the coming weeks, they're going to be breaking it down further. In a blog post today, T4A is talking about "performance objectives" related to health and safety:

CO2 Emissions Declined By 2.8 Percent in 2008; Higher Gas Prices Cited (SF Gate) Environmental Groups Fight Chevron Refinery Expansion in Richmond (ABC7) Pedestrian Killed on Highway 101 in Santa Rosa (Press Democrat) Toronto Prioritizes Peds Even as Drivers Continue to Buy Cars (Toronto Sun via Planetizen) Can Stop Signs Calm Traffic? (Newtown Streets via … Continued