Pedestrian Infrastructure

The U.S. Department of Transportation announced $600 million dollars in TIGER II grants today and the only project in Northern California to make the cut was the East Bay Regional Park District's proposal to fill in seven key gaps on the 200-mile bicycle and pedestrian trail system that runs across Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

Get ready to peek into a possible future for San Francisco parks.

Transit use is correlated with decreases in the number of traffic crashes. Image: “Evaluating Public Transportation Health Benefits” A new report written by the Victoria Transport Policy Institute’s Todd Litman for the American Public Transit Association [PDF], the trade organization for the nation’s transit agencies, reminds us that one of the most valuable benefits of … Continued

Though San Francisco has been getting a lot of attention recently for its trial pedestrian plazas and "parklet" sidewalk extensions in former parking spaces, which has drawn interest from cities around the country and even spawned a copycat in New York City, the Big Apple has raised the bar considerably on improving pedestrian safety with the release this week of the NYCDOT's groundbreaking Pedestrian Safety Study and Action Plan.

It’s payback time again for state DOTs. The fine print on the jobs bill Congress just passed includes a $2.2 billion rescission from state transportation funding, and projects to make biking and walking safer are especially at risk of losing out.

Standing in the glaring Mission District sun yesterday on a wide new sidewalk, before a crowd of advocates, city planners, merchants, construction crews, artists and many others celebrating the completion of the Valencia Streetscape Improvement Project, Mayor Gavin Newsom officially released a bold vision for improving the pedestrian realm in San Francisco called The Better Streets Plan.

The one-way traffic sewers around my neighborhood on Sutter Street in the Tendernob (aka Lower Nob Hill) encourage speeding, so as you can imagine, there are constant near-misses by drivers intent on ignoring the pedestrian right-of-way. What you see in the photo above happened Monday evening on Sutter Street at Jones, as I was taking a leisurely stroll through one of the densest neighborhoods on the West Coast.