Pedestrian Infrastructure

When it comes to infrastructure improvements that encourage more people to walk or bicycle to transit stations, how long will commuters be willing to travel? The Federal Transit Administration (FTA) has officially answered that question, proposing a significant expansion of the rules governing how close bike-ped projects should be to transit in order to receive government funding.

When Streetsblog San Francisco took part in the Congress for the New Urbanism's Project for Transportation Reform in Portland last week, city planners and transportation engineers treated participants to numerous tours of innovative network solutions that city has embraced, including its greenstreets program for stormwater treatment on street rights-of-way. With nearly five hundred greenstreet facilities already in the ground, Portland has plans to add another five hundred in the next five years, greatly reducing the burden stormwater can place on its sanitation system.

Just how dangerous is San Francisco for pedestrians?

When Tim Tompkins took over as President of the Times Square Alliance, one of New York City's largest Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), the primary concerns were the security and cleanliness of the most iconic, if chaotic, public space in the world. Despite incessant traffic and pedestrian gridlock ("pedlock" to borrow Tompkin's phrase), his Board of Directors and city officials on the whole weren't initially interested in Tompkins' vision for transforming Times Square into a world-class public space, with less traffic and higher design concepts.

Ninety years after city traffic managers widened Divisadero Street between Haight and Sacramento Streets, skimming off five feet of sidewalk and adding a travel lane on both sides, the Department of Public Works (DPW) is spending $3.3 million to upgrade the landscaping on the median, without adjusting the skinny nine-foot-nine-inch sidewalks. The DPW recently started construction on the project on Divisadero between Waller Street and Geary Boulevard, where it will add new bus bulb-outs, widen the median and plant trees on it, upgrade lighting fixtures, plant new sidewalk trees and install other furnishings. 

While San Francisco Department of Public Works (DPW) Director Ed Reiskin has quietly pushed behind-the-scenes to accelerate Pavement to Parks plazas, the recently announced Market Street trial changes, and other visible projects that reclaim street space for green space and people, some advocates are concerned with how well his agency is coordinating around an arcane, but important process: DPW's five-year repaving plan.