Community, Advocacy and Labor

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.

City planners have been on the hook for some of the last century's greatest metropolitan mishaps: urban freeways and "slum clearance," arbitrary minimum parking requirements, and land use laws that have left little room for the mingling of uses. Understandably, today's planners are a bit humbled. But when planning directors from some of North America's most progressive cities spoke at City Hall this week about the political challenges that face urban planners, several of them said the field needs to move beyond worrying about past mistakes.

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 injunction that has hung like a pall over San Francisco's efforts to improve bicycle infrastructure for the city's growing number of bicyclists will remain for at least another ten days, and could continue in partial or full form until March 2010 or beyond. A judge today delayed decision on lifting the three-year-old bike injunction, instead ordering both the city and Mary Miles, attorney for Rob Anderson, who first sought the injunction, to submit additional materials by November 12. The judge could then lift the injunction completely, lift it partially for sharrows and bike racks but not bike lanes, or uphold it until a 2010 hearing on the city's environmental review of the bike plan.

A San Francisco judge today delayed a decision on lifting the city's three-year-old bike injunction, and instead ordered both parties to submit briefs by November 12th on his authority to lift the injunction, and then reverse it, if he later determines at a separate hearing that the exhaustive 2,000 page document is not adequate, although that seems unlikely.

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.

Surprise! San Francisco has its first new bike lanes in three years, five days before a scheduled court hearing on lifting the bicycle injunction.

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.