Matthew Roth

The San Francisco Planning Department will release the Draft Plan for the new Transbay Terminal and development project after the Planning Commission meeting tonight at 5:30 p.m. According to Planning's Joshua Switzky, the plan will be presented to the commission but there will not be extensive discussion about its details until future public hearings.

California residents living in sprawling suburban developments could save billions of dollars every year if they lived in denser, urban zones and along transit corridors, according to a study released today by smart growth and transit advocates TransForm. Analyzing four metropolitan areas--Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, San Diego, and Sacramento--Windfall for All found that shifting populations in those regions to denser development along transit corridors would save save $31 billion per year, or $3,850 on average per household [Report Summary PDF].

More headlines over at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

Without question, Portland's Greenstreets program is the benchmark for American cities seeking to manage storm water and runoff from the street level before it enters the sanitation system pipes. Now, San Francisco is on its way to constructing its first on-street stormwater facilities in two places in the Bayview and Visitation Valley, pilots that should be instructive for the city going forward with the Better Streets Plan.

The MTA parking meter extension study, and the recommendations to extend meters past 6 pm on weekdays and all day Sundays, which Mayor Gavin Newsom strongly opposes, is being circulated to business groups and community stakeholders throughout the city, though the pace of setting up meetings is underwhelming and MTA staff have no schedule for bringing the matter before its Board of Directors anytime in the near future, raising the prospect that the agency will have to balance its significant mid-year budget deficit on the backs of its riders, again.

When Streetsblog San Francisco took part in the Congress for the New Urbanism's Project for Transportation Reform in Portland last week, city planners and transportation engineers treated participants to numerous tours of innovative network solutions that city has embraced, including its greenstreets program for stormwater treatment on street rights-of-way. With nearly five hundred greenstreet facilities already in the ground, Portland has plans to add another five hundred in the next five years, greatly reducing the burden stormwater can place on its sanitation system.

More headlines over at Streetsblog Capitol Hill.

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA), the city's congestion management agency responsible for modeling transportation and development patterns, has released its new bicycle route data application, Cycle Tracks, for iPhones and GPS-enabled iTunes players at the iTunes store. Like similar applications that give information such as speed and distance traveled, users of the TA app can map their bicycle ride, but the data they collect will be aggregated anonymously in the TA's server so that it can be applied to their SF-CHAMP modeling and travel forecasting tool.

Chrome Bags has undertaken a new initiative to further root themselves in the local bicycle community that affords them much of their customer base: using bicycle couriers to deliver bags in San Francisco. Starting November 20th, anyone buying a bag in San Francisco by 3 pm will get that bag same-day, delivered by a hot and sweaty Godspeed Courier, at no extra charge.