Bridges

Update: Caltrans officially announced the opening of the island end of the path will happen at noon on Sunday [PDF]. The press release includes a map of the shuttle route, which will run every 30 minutes between 7 a.m. and 6 p.m. on weekends and holidays. And here's an explanatory video they made.

I’m just back from a fantastic five-day visit to Vancouver to help celebrate and publicly ponder Car-Free Vancouver Day. The event started six years ago along East Vancouver’s Commercial Drive (“the Drive” as it is often called there). It has grown to encompass five separate neighborhood street closures, one being the very wide 4- to 6-lane Main Street where it is closed for about 17 blocks. To San Franciscans the event has a certain familiarity, combining something of our venerable tradition of street fairs with the newer excitement of “Sunday Streets.” But unlike the well-established and highly commercial street fairs, or the city-sponsored Sunday Streets, Car-Free Vancouver Day is a product of grassroots organizing, with hundreds of volunteers working hard for months to produce an exciting day of urban reinhabitation.

In today's New York Times, Bob Herbert celebrates the cause of infrastructure maintenance -- a less exciting proposition for politicians than cutting the ribbon at new transportation projects, but in many ways more vital to economic growth.

As I climbed the steps out of the Lake Merritt BART station this morning I heard loud chanting. "Wow," I thought, "those bicyclists have really pulled out the troops!" But the demonstrators that greeted me across 8th Street in Oakland were pile drivers, iron workers, carpenters and other trades workers, chanting "Jobs for Oakland Now!" Not far from their boisterous demonstration in front of the main doors of the Joseph Brot Metro Center were a few cyclists showing their signs to passersby, "Bridge the Gap Now" "All the Way Across the Bay" and "Safety Path!" Across the street, Transform and Urban Habitat were also making their presence felt, opposing the Oakland Airport Connector that the building trades unionists were clamoring for.

In the wake of the 2007 collapse of Minnesota's I-35 bridge, Washington policymakers vowed a renewed focus on repairing the nation's aging infrastructure. But weeks after the fatal collapse, Congress approved a transportation spending bill with 704 earmarked projects, at a total cost topping $570 million -- and just 11 percent of those earmarks went towards bridge repair, according to a new report released today.