Day: September 25, 2009

"The Bike Quilt top is ready for quilting! Please come join us at a weekly drop-in quilting bee on Wednesdays from September 23 to October 28. No quilting experience necessary, but comfort with a needle and thread is helpful. Instruction and snacks provided. The quilt will be raffled off at Winterfest in December to raise money for the SFBC."

"In the 1970s, Copenhagen was an automobile-centered city. Huge public demonstrations in the early 1980s resulted in significant changes in the transportation infrastructure and in the years since it has become of one the preeminent cycling cities in the world. How and why did this change come about? What kind of policies and design principles were put in place to make Copenhagen such a cycling-friendly city? What has been the result of this change? This round table Q&A session features Niels Jensen, Senior Traffic Planner, City of Copenhagen, along with other Danish, Dutch, Belgian and German bicycle transportation policy professionals."

"Got the gift of gab? Volunteer to phone bank with the SFBC! No cold calling, just simple reminders to friendly lapsed SFBC members that their membership is expired. Come share in the fun. The more the merrier! We supply dinner and good company."

Agenda.

Agenda.

Lacking high-quality, free photos for use in your livable streets advocacy work? This fall, you can help build an open source library of photos and win cool prizes while you're at it.

One day after Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger tooted his own horn on climate change and carbon reductions mandated under AB 32, another California transit operator is taking drastic steps to stop the hemorrhaging of its operations budget by cutting back on future innovation, in no small part due to the fact that the governor and the state legislature zeroed out the State Transit Assistance (STA) fund.

Ninety years after city traffic managers widened Divisadero Street between Haight and Sacramento Streets, skimming off five feet of sidewalk and adding a travel lane on both sides, the Department of Public Works (DPW) is spending $3.3 million to upgrade the landscaping on the median, without adjusting the skinny nine-foot-nine-inch sidewalks. The DPW recently started construction on the project on Divisadero between Waller Street and Geary Boulevard, where it will add new bus bulb-outs, widen the median and plant trees on it, upgrade lighting fixtures, plant new sidewalk trees and install other furnishings. 

About two years ago, the Urban Land Institute published Growing Cooler: The Evidence on Urban Development and Climate Change, which argued that it will be crucial to build cities in a more compact fashion if the country hopes to avoid substantial growth in vehicle miles traveled and carbon emissions over the next few decades.