Community, Advocacy and Labor

Among several initiatives San Francisco has developed to put an aesthetically pleasing face on the economic downturn, such as Art in Storefronts, which brightens shuttered retail spaces with murals, a new effort to utilize empty lots for green space, called Green Development Agreements (Green DAs), would transform the way the city's development approval process works, a move some open-space advocates question.

By now, you've probably heard that SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum is taking an eight-month sabbatical to one of the world's great cycling cities, Amsterdam. Shahum will be missed by many during her absence, but I'm excited to announce today that she'll be chronicling her experiences and thoughts from Amsterdam for Streetsblog San Francisco.

As transportation planners and transit agencies around the country celebrated the announcement of the $1.5 billion in Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery, or TIGER grants, yesterday, BART received more troubling news that could hurt the feasibility of its planned Oakland Airport Connector (OAC).

With the continued raids on voter mandated transit funding sources to plug holes in California's general fund, representatives from the state's many transit agencies and locally elected officials are pushing for a sweeping ballot initiative this November, one which supporters say would finally put an end to the raids, and force lawmakers in Sacramento to come up with solutions to their fiscal nightmare that don't come from the backs of transit riders.

In a stern letter to BART [PDF], Federal Transit Association (FTA) Administrator Peter Rogoff informed the agency that it would not be able to develop a suitable action plan by March 5th to comply with equity and race requirements for the $70 million in stimulus funds for the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), a move that may kill the project.

In San Francisco it's almost as cliche to kvetch about Muni as it is to misquote Mark Twain about chilly summers, but what can possibly be done to fix a transit system that seems to have so many problems and almost no solutions that everyone can agree upon?

The MTA might have a solution for the dangerous conditions at the Fell Street Arco gas station, where motorists queueing up to buy gas routinely block the bike lane and force cyclists to navigate between bumpers or try their hand a lane over in speeding traffic. 

Dozens of local elected officials and community leaders donned their novelty hard hats today for a Central Subway groundbreaking ceremony under the I-80 freeway overpass. Tunneling for the subway won't start for at least another two years, so a utility relocation project at the future site of the tunnel's SoMa portal had to suffice.

Two new online campaigns are helping transit supporters pressure the Mayor to save Muni from the brink of massive service cuts.