Livable Streets

Transportation consultants and planners associated with the San Francisco Transportation Authority's (TA) ATG working group sent excited bursts of email to each other earlier this month about a new development coming from the state Office of Planning and Research (OPR), the body responsible for writing and amending the CEQA guidelines related to transportation and traffic.  The OPR had adopted much of the spirit of the working group's recommendations and proposed an amendment (PDF) to CEQA guidelines that de-emphasized LOS and indicated that it would be much better to use measures for vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reductions such as ATG.

One of the unintended consequences of San Francisco’s bicycle injunction, which Rob Anderson and fellow NIMBYs will likely rue for some time to come, is the arduous thought and labor that advocates and professional planners have invested in doing away with LOS all together.  

The idea that the speed and free-flow of cars is the proxy that is being used across the state of California to measure whether a project is [environmentally] impactful is in the long run undermining the very quality of life [we] are working to protect.

Potrero hill merchant Joel Bleskacek came up with a clever solution in 2003 to provide more seating for customers outside of his Ruby Wine Shop and former Scoops ice cream parlor on 18th Street. He built simple wooden benches edging the tree trunks in front of his businesses, allowing his customers to linger and enjoy the public realm.

The SF Examiner published an excellent editorial from Walk San Francisco Director Manish Champsee today that calls on the city and the media to improve conditions for pedestrians and not immediately blame the victim in crashes.  When a vehicle killed 87-year-old Victor Cinti in mid-December, the Examiner ran a front-page headline "Jaywalker Killed."  Sells papers, sure, but the headline and the article missed the details of the story and found culpability where they shouldn't, argues Champsee.

We walk on layers of history. In our neighborhoods, in our cities, there were once natural phenomena, like creeks, sand dunes, hills, and forests. Over time they were covered in farms, factories, houses, and most of all, streets. At first those streets were dirt, often thick and muddy. Around the middle of the 19th century they started to be used for railroads, both intercity, and local streetcar and cable car lines. Sometimes the shape of our 21st century streetscape is a ghost of those old train lines.

After seven rounds of voting and nearly an hour of exasperating political theater, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors chose newly elected District 3 Supervisor David Chiu as its president.  A voluble cheer erupted in the North Light Court at City Hall, the overflow room where more than three hundred people crowded around a television monitor.

Jane Martin is a longtime resident of San Francisco's Mission District, a licensed architect, and an avid gardener. She is the founder of PlantSF, an informational website dedicated to reconfiguring the design and use of urban spaces, primarily sidewalks and to a lesser extent, residential streets. PlantSF started in 2004 after Martin had spent considerable effort establishing a sidewalk garden in front of her then-home on Shotwell between 17th and 18th Streets.