Urban Planning

When USDOT Secretary Ray LaHood last month suggested that the country should consider replacing the gas tax with a tax on vehicle miles traveled (VMT) to compensate for the dwindling Highway Trust Fund, which is primarily supported from gas taxes, the White House immediately rebuffed him, assuring the public and angry editorial boards that Obama had no such priority.  With a sluggish economy and greater fuel efficiency in new vehicles, a VMT tax would replenish the Highway Trust, though it would also allow planners and policy makers to develop solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions through better land use policies.

The news coming out of Washington last week jacked up expectations for national transportation policy to new heights. Cabinet members Ray LaHood and Shaun Donovan announced a partnership to connect transportation and housing policy, branded as the "Sustainable Communities Initiative." The second-in-command at DOT, Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett, told a New York audience that "building communities" is a top priority at his agency.

Who would have thought that one of the best Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems in the U.S. would be in its most crowded, congested, sprawling city? Well check this out. It's really fabulous.

As we reported last week, several city agencies have begun to look at ways to improve Market Street when it is repaved, including an inter-agency process spearheaded by DPW and the Planning Department.  Yet, we've still heard nothing from Mayor Gavin Newsom that suggests he'll make the transformation of San Francisco's most significant street an urgent priority. 

At a well-attended community workshop in the Women's Center auditorium on Wednesday night, the Planning Department presented the Mission Streetscape Plan (MSP), a set of tools for transforming streets in the Mission (large PDF).  Some of the proposed concepts are tried and true traffic calming, like bollards, neckdowns, and speed tables, while some are far more innovative and reflective of work that many Mission neighbors have initiated on their own, such as the planted medians of the Greening Guerrero project and the permeable driveways and sidewalk gardens in Jane Martin's PlantSF projects. 

Last week, State Senator Alan Lowenthal (D-Long Beach) introduced legislation that takes aim at how California's municipalities think about parking and parking requirements.  What SB 518 (PDF) is missing in co-sponsors it makes up for in chutzpah.  If enacted, the legislation would require that every municipality in the state earn at least "20 points" in parking reforms.  These reforms range from eliminating a city's parking requirement for development, which is worth 20 points to requiring that employers offer transit passes en lieu of parking worth only 2 points.

As we wrote a couple days ago about Jefferson Street, merchants on the commercial street there and throughout the city often assume parking spaces in front of their stores are vital to business, that their customers drive to buy, and that driving customers spend more because they can carry more goods home in their vehicles. 

The City Design Group at the Planning Department has released its proposal for transforming Jefferson Street at Fisherman's Wharf into a single-surface pedestrian priority street, the first of its size in San Francisco.

File the following in the "Can't Believe My President Gets It" category.