Year: 2009

Chronicle Covers Plan to Revitalize Market Street: “Pilot Program to Limit Traffic” DPW to Break Ground Next Week on Divisadero Street Improvements (SF Examiner) BART Service Reductions to Take Effect on Monday (SF Examiner) Muni Inspectors Continue Crackdown on Fare Evaders (The Snitch) Transpo Officials Warn Bay Bridge Project Could Face Another Delay and Cost … Continued

Five San Francisco agencies, together with a number of community partners, will initiate a series of bold trials this month, which they hope will eventually help transform Market Street into a revitalized, thriving city thoroughfare, bustling with "activated public spaces." In addition to altering traffic patterns, the project intends to convert the streetscape, with art projects in empty storefronts, new mini-plazas and entertainment venues.

The SamTrans Board of Directors voted today to cut nearly all express routes to San Francisco, reduce service on several local lines, and raise adult one-way fares by 25 cents in an effort to narrow a $28.4 million budget deficit. The express route cuts include the MX, NX, PX/RX, DX, and the FX. The KX will survive, but will no longer serve Palo Alto and will be reduced from 30-minute to 60-minute headways. The 342, a local route serving Millbrae, will also be discontinued.

Cities don't stand still. Going back at least to WWII, U.S. cities have been radically altered again and again. Economic restructuring has been part of it, as urban areas have shed manufacturing in favor of the so-called service sector: FIRE (Finance, Insurance, Real Estate) and Tourism (restaurants and hotels plus retail and entertainment). Transportation changes have played a big part too, with the suburbanization of the 1950s-60s fueled (literally) by the interstate highway system and intraurban freeways, and the inexorable expansion of private cars at the expense of public transit. The populations that occupy various neighborhoods in cities, once relatively stable for generations, have moved away, leaving behind spaces whose character has changed with the arrival of new city dwellers, whether from other countries or just elsewhere in the U.S.

There is probably no more beloved figure in urbanism than Jane Jacobs, who fought to preserve some of New York City's most treasured neighborhoods and who gave urbanists some of the field's fundamental texts. As Ed Glaeser notes in the New Republic this week, Jacobs died in 2006 "a cherished, almost saintly figure," while her principal antagonist, Robert Moses, remains popularly reviled as a villain.

As Washington conventional wisdom has it, raising gas taxes or creating a vehicle miles traveled tax to pay for transportation is impossible during the current recession. After all, who would want to squeeze cash-strapped commuters during tough economic times?

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT) announced this afternoon that he would stay on at the helm of the Banking Committee, which also has jurisdiction over federal transit issues, rather than move over to lead the health panel previously led by his friend, the late Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA).

The San Francisco Great Streets Project is hosting an evening of music, drinks, food, and livable streets discussion tomorrow evening at the Mission District home of architect David Baker. The Art - Streets - Life event will include the grand opening of an Andrew Schoultz mural, and the unveiling of a new Great Streets Project presentation.

When Joshua David formed Friends of the High Line in 1999 and started raising money to transform abandoned train tracks in mid-Manhattan into an elevated urban park, more than a few people thought him nuts. With the opening of the High Line in June and the warm reception it has received by the public, however, planners who have their eyes on other abandoned rail infrastructure are feeling emboldened and hopeful their projects will receive more serious consideration, including a new proposal to preserve the existing east span of the Bay Bridge for a park and development.