San Francisco

Urban space advocates the world over use best practice examples from other cities to raise the bar on policy and praxis in their own cities.  For years in New York, Transportation Alternatives and the NYC Streets Renaissance Campaign invoked the phrase "Lessons from London," pointing to congestion pricing and the pedestrianization of Trafalgar Square, among other excellent projects, that demonstrated that city's commitment to reconquering its streets for people over cars. They also pointed to Paris, Copenhagen and Bogotá for examples of brilliant bike share programs, four decades of urban design giving primacy to pedestrians and cyclists, and innovative use of street space and buses to move more riders on Transmilenio BRT than most cities move on their entire transit systems.

Bay to Breakers (B2B) is under attack.  For countless thousands both in San Francisco and around the world, the third Sunday in May has always represented an eclectic mix of athleticism and hedonism, one that no other event in any other city can deliver. But in their crusade to suburbanize our great metropolis, curmudgeons are set on destroying the most beloved of San Francisco traditions.

I just finished an interesting journey that took me to the World Social Forum at the mouth of the Amazon River system in Belem, Brazil, and then to Los Angeles and finally home, just in time to attend a presentation last night at CounterPULSE of Rick Prelinger's Lost Landscapes III. The show consists of rare and obscure footage of life in San Francisco going back over 100 years. A few of the clips are striking reminders of how much the basic "technology" of roads and how we use them has evolved during the past century.

Curb cuts, also known as driveways, theoretically provide vehicle access from the street into a private garage.  New development in San Francisco has been required to include off-street parking since the 50s, in an effort to ensure a convenient supply of on-street parking.  But as documented by Mary Brown’s comprehensive investigation in the Mission District, 49-percent of all residential garages are used for storage, not parking.

NACTO Action Alert

We walk on layers of history. In our neighborhoods, in our cities, there were once natural phenomena, like creeks, sand dunes, hills, and forests. Over time they were covered in farms, factories, houses, and most of all, streets. At first those streets were dirt, often thick and muddy. Around the middle of the 19th century they started to be used for railroads, both intercity, and local streetcar and cable car lines. Sometimes the shape of our 21st century streetscape is a ghost of those old train lines.

District 3 Supervisor and newly-elected Board President David Chiu says he would be willing to consider a car-free Market Street and study an idea by the Transportation Authority to charge drivers a user fee to manage congestion.

The Municipal Transportation Agency's "Climate Action Plan," a 96-page draft [PDF] released Thursday, strikes some hopeful notes but will it produce results? It calls for a reduction of the agency's overall carbon footprint to meet the city's goal of reducing carbon 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. Muni would like to achieve zero emissions by 2020 and thinks it can do it but so far there are no budget or implementation timetables.