Mayor Newsom

Supervisor Bevan Dufty, armed with numbers and documents he obtained detailing MTA work orders from other city departments, scolded two members of the San Francisco Police Department's top brass Wednesday, calling the department's raid on Muni's budget "excessive" and "unbelievable."

Mayor Gavin Newsom yesterday announced one of his most ambitious plans for re-shaping San Francisco, telling reporters at a press conference with Caltrans Director Will Kemption and Caltrain Director Michael Scanlan that the city would move forward with plans to tear down sections of I-280 through San Francisco.  

Five decades after activists killed plans for a major freeway traveling through San Francisco’s Panhandle, construction companies are lining up for the contract to break ground in August on another major freeway through a park – the Presidio Parkway, which will replace Doyle Drive in the Presidio National Park.

One of San Francisco's cherished literary icons -- poet, painter and City Lights publisher Lawrence Ferlinghetti -- is celebrating his 90th birthday today, and I thought it would be fitting to bring you his vision for transforming a small block of Vallejo Street in historic North Beach into what would be called the Piazza Saint Francis. 

As we reported last week, several city agencies have begun to look at ways to improve Market Street when it is repaved, including an inter-agency process spearheaded by DPW and the Planning Department.  Yet, we've still heard nothing from Mayor Gavin Newsom that suggests he'll make the transformation of San Francisco's most significant street an urgent priority. 

Just about everyone who visits San Francisco's grand Market Street is awed by its hustle and bustle, the myriad modes of transportation, and some of the beautiful architecture the city hosts. But just about everyone also agrees that Market Street has a much bigger potential as a people space that accommodates its users in more efficient and human terms. Parts of the street are in disrepair; whole blocks contain more boarded up facades than functioning businesses.

How hard is it to fix the most important street in San Francisco, one that is vital to transit, that is the spine of the bicycle network, and that could be the crowning jewel of the city, a Champs d'Elysee or a newly pedestrianized Broadway?  Without Mayor Gavin Newsom spearheading the process, it doesn't bode well.

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.

Transportation and social justice advocates packed the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) board meeting today to demand that the agency not spend a proposed $70 million of federal stimulus money on the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) project.  MTC commissioners heard testimony for over two hours from some of the more than one hundred members of the public who were mostly opposed to the OAC, claiming it would take money from the operations of AC Transit and other transit operators.