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Unclogging the Cesar Chavez Traffic Sewer
One of the many casualties of the bicycle injunction has been the community led plan for reconstruction of Cesar Chavez Street between Guerrero and the 101. Over the past five years, community groups led by CC Puede, the Precita Valley Neighbors (PVN), Mission Antidisplacement Coalition (MAC), Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA), and PODER have participated in workshops and charettes that produced a plan to transform a traffic sewer into a livable street with greenery, a bike lane, wide sidewalks, and safe pedestrian crossing times.
February 4, 2009
Concrete Giveaway: Free and Exclusive Parking on the Public Street
Curb cuts, also known as driveways, theoretically provide vehicle access from the street into a private garage. New development in San Francisco has been required to include off-street parking since the 50s, in an effort to ensure a convenient supply of on-street parking. But as documented by Mary Brown’s comprehensive investigation in the Mission District, 49-percent of all residential garages are used for storage, not parking.
January 30, 2009
Paradise LOSt (Part III): California’s Revolutionary Plan to Overhaul Transportation Analysis
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.
January 28, 2009
No Crime in Fatal Pedestrian Crash So How About a Law That Makes It One?
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January 27, 2009
Paradise LOSt (Part II): Turning Automobility on Its Head
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.
January 27, 2009
Drivers Are Running the Red Light at Fell/Masonic, Imperiling Cyclists
Last September, San Francisco's city attorney asked Judge Peter Busch to allow an exemption to the long-standing bicycle injunction so the MTA could improve the city’s second most dangerous intersection for cyclists, where Fell Street meets Masonic Street. Even after the MTA adjusted signalization and gave cyclists a separate green light, cars are running the red light and hitting cyclists.
January 21, 2009
Unlocking San Francisco’s Privately Owned Public Open Spaces
“Here was a territory that existed for which there was no map,” said Rebar’s Blaine Merker. “We kept seeing little plaques that said these were public spaces, but you had to go past security guards and up elevators to get to them. We felt that art could be a form of urban research, but we needed to create art that was equally as absurd as the spaces.”
January 20, 2009
299 Valencia Appeal Fails As Swing Vote Dufty Sides with Developer
The Board of Supervisors, in one the first tests of the new progressive bloc, failed to muster a supermajority vote to support an appeal that would have overturned the Planning Commission's approval of a conditional use (CU) permit, which allowed seven more parking spaces than the ratio set in the Market/Octavia Plan for a proposed condominium and commercial development at 299 Valencia Street.
January 14, 2009
Depaving Uncovers Layers of History
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.
January 13, 2009
Jane Martin is a Force of Nature
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.
January 8, 2009