Cities, Counties, and Countries

Who would have thought that one of the best Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in the U.S. would be in its most crowded, congested, sprawling city? Well check this out. It's really fabulous.

A new mural is taking shape in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, at the corner of Jones and Golden Gate, diagonally across from St. Anthony’s Dining Room where hundreds line up every day for a hot meal. Muralist Mona Caron and Project Manager LisaRuth Elliott can be found on scaffolds these days, grabbing the good weather when they can to paint on a nondescript building housing a local “sewing company.” In this first of two parts, I talked with LisaRuth Elliott about her experience with the street scene in the Tenderloin. In part two, I’ll explore Mona Caron’s murals from her well-known Bike Mural on Duboce and the Market Street Railway mural on Church, to her recent Noe Valley diptych, all of which make streets and transit central themes.

Seattle's South Lake Union Streetcar is a 1.3-mile line that opened in December 2007, the first leg in the city's commitment to new transit and light rail. It passed the half million passenger milestone in its first year, surpassing ridership projections.

A large and divided crowd turned out last night in Marin County to help decide whether the long-neglected Alto Tunnel between Mill Valley and Corte Madera should be reopened to cyclists.

Carla Saulter pens a very eclectic blog called Bus Chick, Transit Authority, which you can find on the Seattle Post Intelligencer's web site.

Last week, State Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) introduced legislation that takes aim at how California's municipalities think about parking and parking requirements.  What SB 518 (PDF) is missing in co-sponsors it makes up for in chutzpah.  If enacted, the legislation would require that every municipality in the state earn at least "20 points" in parking reforms.  These reforms range from eliminating a city's parking requirement for development, which is worth 20 points to requiring that employers offer transit passes en lieu of parking worth only 2 points.

Anthropologists and transit advocates have long bemoaned the rise of The Sacred Rac, its subsequent worship by the majority of the people of the Asu tribe, and the attendant demise of bipedus norteamericanus, or the common pedestrian.  But new evidence appears every day that the once-endangered pedestrian may be seeing a resurgence in urban habitats throughout the nation.  

Cycling enthusiasts have long dreamed of reopening the rotting, 125-year-old Alto Tunnel as a key link in a greenway stretching from the Golden Gate Bridge to Cloverdale. Now they may get their chance, as the county's Non-motorized Transportation Pilot Program begins a $225,000 study of three routes between the two southern Marin towns.