Matthew Roth

One of my favorite memories from childhood was the first time my grandparents took my sister and me into San Francisco. We were country bumpkins who grew up on a ranch in northeastern Nevada and were mesmerized by the cacophony and tumult of the big city. My grandfather took us to all the tourist destinations of note, including Fisherman's Wharf and Ghiradelli Square, but the memory that remains the most vivid in my mind was the drive down Filbert Street.

When it comes to building new developments in the Bay Area, especially in San Francisco, the battle over limiting the construction of new parking spaces is pitched. Parking reform advocacy organizations like Livable City, which maintains a listserv populated by car-free and livable-city advocates keeping a keen watch on planning commission parking exemptions, have long encouraged city leaders to tighten the parking-to-unit ratios in dense neighborhoods flush with transit and bicycling options.

It has been six weeks since the MTA started diverting private automobiles off Market Street, an effort to improve conditions for pedestrians, Muni vehicles and cyclists in the eastbound direction, while measuring the economic impact of reduced traffic on the corridor. The traffic diversions are part of the Better Market Street vision to revitalize the Central Market streetscape between Van Ness Street and 5th Street, including musical programming, sidewalk tables, and the Art in Storefronts pilot program.

Despite the much ballyhooed talk by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom that his city will implement a public bike share pilot (two years of talk that has garnered numerous press hits), the first bike share program in the Bay Area will likely be implemented by the middle of 2010 in Santa Clara County by the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA).  While small size may still be a liability to its success and long term funding sources must be determined, the VTA is miles ahead of other transit operators in completing the process necessary to deliver a pilot.

San Jose is on the verge of adopting its new bicycle plan at the next City Council meeting on November 17th, which, as anyone who has cycled in San Jose knows, would be a welcome change from decades of traffic engineering focused almost solely on automobility.

Over the past two days at the Congress for the New Urbanism Project for Transportation Reform conference, attendees have called for transportation reform at local, regional, and national levels. In a panel debate about the future of transportation funding and the role of regional planning through MPOs, several speakers argued that the foundation of transportation and development funding had to be systematically overhauled.

The Congress for the New Urbanism's Project for Transportation Reform summit in Portland, Oregon, has brought together transportation engineers, city planners, and transportation reform advocates to share best practice policies for reforming transportation metrics, funding mechanisms, and regional practices that isolate transportation planning from land-use and growth targets.  The highlight of the first day of the program was Portland itself, as councilors from Portland Metro, one of the only elected municipal planning organizations (MPOs) in the country, elaborated on their multi-disciplinary mission, which seeks to limit development within an urban growth boundary and coordinate transportation, parks and recreation, and solid waste management to achieve a more sustainable city.

The week could be one of the most significant for bicycling in San Francisco over the past four years, as Superior Court Judge Peter Busch will consider lifting the bicycle injunction at a hearing today, Monday. Stay tuned to our Twitter feed for live updates. Also, Streetsblog Editor Bryan Goebel and Reporter Matthew Roth will be in Portland, Oregon, for the Congress for the New Urbanism's Project for Transportation Reform, so look for tweets and posts from the City of Roses. 

In our ongoing coverage of the adverse affects of traffic engineers' over-reliance on automobile level of service (LOS) measurements, we've examined how new amendments to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) would allow local jurisdictions greater freedom in choosing whether they want to develop their cities for cars or for transit, cycling, and livable streets.  Simply put, if the CEQA amendments are codified, cities all over the state could become more like San Jose.

San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom and MTA Chief Nat Ford have made repeated promises that they will act swiftly to build out large segments of the city's Bicycle Master Plan when the 3-year-old bicycle injunction is lifted. Behind the good rhetoric, the agency does appear prepared to begin striping lanes and adding bike racks when the long legal wait finally ends.