Mid-Market Deconstruction

The Southwest-most entrance to the Civic Center BART/Muni station is being deconstructed.  I noticed this was closed about a week ago when trying to exit the station, but I didn't know they were doing this kind of work until my walk to work today.

It's possible they're replacing the opaque - if high-quality granite clad - railing with a stainless steel grill, like the one that opens onto UN Plaza North of 7th Street.  Anybody know for sure what's up?

Don't Be a Jerk

San Francisco has the same rules as NYC: you can't ride your bike on the sidewalk if you're over the age of 12. So, you know...

Power Walking

During Sunday Streets today, interim mayor Ed Lee picked up one of Walk SF's awesome I [walk] SF t-shirts. This strikes me as a refreshing change from the previous administration, and gives me some hope that walkers in our city will start to see some real improvements.

Welcome to Smart Parking

The SFMTA has officially launched its cutting edge SFPark program.  Linking thousands of sensors embedded in San Francisco streets with an online database, the program promises to make it easier to find parking without circling endlessly.

Further, the MTA has pledged to use the real-time availability data to set the price of street parking such that 15% of spaces on any given block are free at any given time.  In other words, if a block is consistently full of parked cars, the price of parking will be raised until an average of 15% of spaces are empty.  The prices will change no more often than monthly in order to avoid freaking the delicate motorist class out, but the website is already publishing parking data in real time.

And so I give you April 27th, 2011, as seen by SFPark.  Enjoy:

First Do No Harm

Every day, St. Francis Memorial Hospital pulls one or several large trucks up to its "loading dock" on Pine St.  I put loading dock in quotes because it's actually just a curb cut with a garage door cut into the side if the building.  The sidewalk here is all of ten feet wide.

So when a truck longer that ten feet pulls up, the sidewalk disappears.  And, as I said, that happens every day.

For the sake of completeness, I should point out that Pine Street is no lazy cul de sac.  It's been a traffic sewer since the '50s when it was made one-way and widened to four lanes.  But Pine is still a residential street.

A hospital like St. Francis provides an invaluable service to the city, but it should not get a free pass to put its neighbors in danger.

Support Walk SF and Uncover Hayes Valley History

On May 7th Walk San Francisco, SF's pedestrian advocacy organization, is hosting a special fundraising walk created by Joel Pomerantz of Thinkwalks.  The walk will combine a specially designed Thinkwalks tour of the Hayes Creek watershed with a cooperative game that offers a challenge of competitive deduction and recall.

It promises to be a fun afternoon for anyone interested in the history of our city, and anyone who loves to play games with friends!

For more information and to reserve your spot, visit the Eventbrite page.

Not Particularly F***ed

The Chronicle Comical, in its infinite condescension, can only imagine how awful it must be to take the bus these days.  Why, Muni's own study shows it's on-timeyness is down "nearly one point!"  On-timeyness being a measurement of how not-too-early or not-too-late a given bus is in comparison to an unpublished schedule that only drivers and people doing on-timeyness studies know.  It's a measurement that offers no insight into the quality of my ride home last night on the K/T, which came as soon as I hit the platform, or on the 47 this morning, which also arrived within minutes but took me to work at a pace barely above walking speed.

I mean, everybody loves to complain about Muni.  Sometimes it can ruin your day.  Sometimes, complaining about the bus can make you look like an entitled princess (and Metro riders - I'm looking at you, N-Judah! - remember that over two thirds of Muni riders take the bus, not your train).

Muni can't be everything to all people.  But is it serving its purpose well or, to put it another way, is it fucked?  A man named Sam Kimbrel put together a clever and attractive site to ask that question: howfuckedismuni.com.  The answer may surprise you.  Clicking through line after line, I keep seeing the message "not particularly fucked."  I do expect that will change from time to time, nothing is "not particularly fucked" all the time.  But maybe the buses are alright.

Mayor Rides Public Transit

No, not our short-termed former Mayor, who famously never took a bus without a newsmedia photographer there to document it.

MYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually rides the Subway every day.  So maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that he rode BART on the way in from SFO to meet our interim mayor Ed Lee (who, it seems, met him at the BART station - Civic Center, I presume).

I'd love to hear his thoughts on the ride.

UPDATE BART TV has a little video of the ride:

Everybody Drives

I'm occasionally reminded of how lucky we are to live in a city like San Francisco that has sidewalks, inadequate though many may be, on pretty much every street:

Pulte Homes, one of the nation's largest builders, says sidewalks aren't a given in all communities, although it has seen an uptick in localities requiring them to be. Active communities for the over-55 set and "move-up" buyers, meaning growing families, will very likely get sidewalks, says Pulte spokeswoman Valerie Dolenga. "Where you won't see it is in multifamily and entry-level buyers," she says.

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal online.

Temporarily Stairs

Broken escalator at the Van Ness Muni station

Has anybody ever been on an escalator when it breaks?  BART and Muni escalators are old and live outside, so it's not too surprising that they're broken fairly often.  But given how common it is, why isn't it so common to see one in the act of breaking?  Or to be on one when it breaks?  Do they only break at odd hours, or when station agents go to turn them on first thing in the morning?

Has this happened to you?

An escalator can never break--it can only become stairs. You would never see an "Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order" sign, just "Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience. We apologize for the fact that you can still get up there."  -Mitch Hedberg, RIP