Bicycle Infrastructure

A wise man once said there are few if any urban planning problems that haven't been solved somewhere on earth--the challenge is just finding the best stuff to copy. That's the approach of Low Car(Bon) Communities: Inspiring Car-Free and Car-Lite Urban Futures, a new book by Nicole Foletta and Jason Henderson, published by Routledge. Foletta is Principal Planner with BART, with experience working in Europe. Henderson is a geography professor at San Francisco State University and Streetsblog contributor.

This morning from 7 to 10 am BART officials, consultants, and even a legislative aide for Supervisor John Avalos's office answered questions and heard comments from the public about plans to modernize Balboa Park Station, one of the busiest in both BART and Muni's networks.

Last April, businesses on Mission Street started to gain some traction in pushing against SFMTA's "red carpet" bus-only lanes, which they claim—contrary to the available evidence, it should be noted—are hurting their bottom line. The result: Supervisor David Campos asked the SFMTA to "make a radical shift in the program," as he put it in a Facebook post.

As Facebook prepares to expand its West Campus in San Mateo County, it is presenting environmental reports to groups such as the Menlo Park Transportation Commission. Commissioner Adina Levin brought this to Streetsblog's attention from the report: apparently more Facebook employees started driving in the past couple of months to the social media giant's headquarters in Menlo Park. From a post by Levin in the Friends of Caltrain Blog entitled "San Francisco shuttle changes increase car traffic:"

Streetsblog reader Karen Lynn Allen sent this satirical musing on the physics of road murder about a week ago. Given the recent crash in Michigan that killed five cyclists on a group ride, it seems like an appropriate time to run it. Sometimes we need some dark, quirky slapstick in this asphalt asylum known as the USA.

Thursday, SFMTA joined several agencies at the Bay Area 2040 open house in Oakland. One of the projects presented was the M-Ocean View improvement plan. As the Examiner reported today, SFMTA is now leaning towards an all-underground option, with a tunnel stretching from West Portal to Parkmerced. This project, at around $3 billion, would re-align the M-Ocean View to the west of 19th Ave. and put it in a tunnel. Ostensibly, the project's objective is to increase capacity and the speed of the trains to better serve SF State and the burgeoning community of Parkmerced.

San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee released his 455-page budget proposal on Tuesday. It includes $9.6 billion in fiscal year 2016-17  for transportation, police officers, and street cleaning, a $700 million increase in funds. The fiscal year runs from July 1 of this year until June 30 of next year.

A few weeks ago, I found an apartment in the Outer Mission. It had a view of Twin Peaks, plenty of room, and it was in my price range. It is a short bike ride to the great transportation links at Balboa Park Station. It also was a half-block from a stop on the 14-Mission bus. There's a nice cafe down the street, a couple of small markets within a few blocks, and pretty much everything a Livable Streets advocate could ask for, except for bike lanes, but hopefully those will come.

"BBnet3000" posted this video of an assault on a cyclist on Market Street on the Streetsblog website this morning: