Transportation Policy

The second of six Sunday Streets was a great success as thousands of people got out on a glorious sunny day to pedal, blade, run, skate, and stroll along the waterfront from AT&T park down to India Basin and the Bayview Opera House.  By coincidence, my father was in town and I got to take him on his first bicycle ride in a city.  Not a bad way to show him the type of streets we might hope to enjoy every Sunday all year long.

A portion of 17th Street in the Castro is being closed to cars at Market this weekend, marking the beginning of San Francisco's first trial street closure. The two DPT workers installing the new signs late this afternoon were a little taken aback by my excitement at first, but they happily directed me around. The street will be transformed into a pedestrian plaza by Tuesday afternoon, according to DPW. A press conference with Mayor Gavin Newsom is scheduled for Wednesday morning and a community celebration is planned for next Saturday. It will include a speech by Supervisor Bevan Dufty and a blessing by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

In a rally held at the Oakland Coliseum BART station yesterday, transportation and social justice advocates joined with transit and public health unions to call on the BART Board of Directors to study a full-BRT line connecting BART to Oakland Airport, instead of the proposed elevated people-mover that BART staff seems so intent on building. Advocates claim the BRT model could be built at such a cost savings that BART could provide free airport connector service in perpetuity.

The first new BART cars won't come online until 2014, but BART's Board of Directors, in a special meeting yesterday, reviewed staff's proposals (PDF) for procuring 700 new cars (there are currently 669 cars system-wide) and the possibility of upgrading them with new technology for customer communication, new interior fabrics and colors, and new modular seat configurations.  After months of somber meetings full of protests, arrests, and budget doomsday scenarios, directors were visibly excited to discuss details for improving cars that hearken to the 1970s era, when most were built, and by the possibility of experimenting with innovation and best practices from other major transit systems the world over.

California Senator Barbara Boxer will be at the center of a battle over whether or not the reauthorization of the transportation bill will address the global warming impacts of transportation, given her Senate Environment and Public Works (EPW) Committee is responsible for writing much of the bill's language. Any chance of reforming the transportation bill, which advocates are clamoring for, will require deft political maneuvering to mollify ranking committee member Senator James Inhofe. 

Eliminating the 26-Valencia, a route with low ridership and parallel service only a block away on Mission Street, would save Muni an estimated $2.4 million. But three members of the MTA Board expressed concerns at their meeting this week about staff's proposal to eliminate the 26, and it followed public testimony from a few riders who worried they wouldn't have a convenient way to get to St. Luke's Hospital.

Yesterday marked an important day for livable streets in San Francisco. In coordination with the Castro Street CBD, Supervisor Bevan Dufty, and the Mayor's Office of Greening, the nascent Great Streets Project (GSP) co-hosted a roundtable discussion about how to start and manage successful public spaces, with particular emphasis on the proposed street closure and public plaza at 17th Street and Market Street. 

While President Barack Obama promoted wind power and cap-and-trade legislation, VP Joe Biden spent Earth Day talking up transit. Public radio's "The Takeaway" reports that Biden held a presser at a bus maintenance facility in Landover, Maryland, to tout a $300 million investment in hybrid buses and other municipal vehicles as part of the federal stimulus package. Said Biden:

Nearly a month after a San Francisco federal judge ruled against a discrimination lawsuit against the MTC on behalf of AC Transit riders of color, attorneys representing a broad coalition of riders, labor and environmental justice advocates have appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals.