So Walk!

On the way home from Walk SF's Russian Hill walk, I stopped into a hardware store on Fourth Street.  The woman who checked me out seemed concerned by whether the small paper bag she handed me was easy enough to handle.  "It's okay," I said, "I'm only going a few stops on Muni."  That didn't seem to convince her, so I added, "I'm pretty tough."

"So walk!" She said.  "It's only a few stops."

Color me moded.  And my jacket was zipped up so she couldn't even see the I [walk] SF t-shirt I was wearing.  So I'm walking home.  It's only a couple of stops.

I Just Keep On Rollin…

It's been linked in the blogroll in the side bar for some time now, but if you haven't yet checked out Bus Driver Stories, take a moment to see what you're missing.  Today's story resonates with me as someone who used to take the 9-San Bruno regularly:

The 9 San Bruno is one of those lines that picks up a lot of people at all times of the day. I remember I was doing a schedule on the 9 and it was like 11:30 am and I had a standing load. I mean PACKED. Like where did everyone come from?

Read the rest of the story...

Is a Slight Improvement Much of a Victory?

Streetsblog reported yesterday that the SFMTA Board unanimously approved the plans for a redesigned Western half of Cesar Chavez Street.  The redesign was prompted by a PUC sewer replacement project that will tear up the street anyway, presenting an opportunity to rebuild a more liveable - and above all a more safe - street than the one we currently enjoy.  But the multi-million dollar design for the new street falls short as I've written before.

To be sure, the redesign is an improvement over the status quo.  It removed one lane of vehicle traffic and replaces it with a median and left-turn lanes.  A small amount of the freed-up space will go toward new bike lanes.  But while this has been framed as a major improvement for bicyclists and pedestrians throughout the process and even now, I remain unconvinced. And apparently so do many of the bicyclists and pedestrians who read Streetsblog, judging from the comments section:

Only in California can a government official call $6,000,000 for 0.9 miles of painted bike lanes and sidewalk bulbs “cost-efficient.”  -SteveS

The doorage will be brutal.  -Brian

It’s an improvement, but it’s just plain wrong to only do that kind of bike lane. There’s really no excuse for it. It should be buffered. I don’t see why you’d have to remove anything, just reorganize it. And even if you do have to remove something, so be it. Remove one of the six lanes in the picture above dedicated to motor vehicles, which really have no place in almost any part of our city, anyway.  -Stuart Chuang Matthews

But the only street users that seem to have gained in any real significant way from the redesign are drivers in the left lane who will have some nice plants to look at when they’re stopped at red lights (the green space is not accessible to pedestrians, who can only look at it from across 33′ of vehicles) and drivers who use on-street parking who will now have a much nicer parking lane.  -SteveS

What do ‘underground sewer pipes’ have to do with the median? Is that what we’re saying — that the raised median, which prevents biking and speeds automobile traffic, has to be 14′-wide because there are ‘underground sewer pipes’ that can only be accommodated with a 14′-wide median?  -Peter Smith

I agree that this plan is already outdated, and it’s discouraging to think if it’s implemented, this is what we’ll be stuck with for the next 20 years. (Yes, it’s better than what’s there now, but what’s there now is truly awful.)  -taomom

There simply is no reason for us to accept second-rate solutions anymore.

Thanks should be due, in no small part, to Streetsblog SF and all the great work they’ve done in raising these issues and providing these forums.

Keep it up, everyone. We’ll probably lose this battle for Cesar Chavez, at least this portion of it, but I’m encouraged that soon we will begin winning the war, fought in similar battles all over the City and the Bay.  -Jake Wegmann

The overall theme of the comments tacks closely to my own thoughts, that this is an incremental improvement to an awful street, but a missed opportunity to improve conditions for the most vulnerable street users.  I'm surprised, given the strength of that reaction in the comments above as well as comments on other articles about the redesign, that these thoughts have received very little coverage.  While I look forward to any improvement on C. Chav, I can't help but see this as an advocacy failure.  Pedestrian advocates need to get louder and more bold in our efforts to create real pedestrian improvements.  If we don't, then more streets will be given the green lipstick treatment of planted medians and a few bulb-outs, while pedestrians squeeze past each other on the same narrow sidewalks and abuelitas take refuge on tiny islands of concrete between rushing traffic.

Clipslink

It always felt like a Translink card reader trapped in a Clipper reader's body.

Sunday Streets 2011 Events Lineup Announced

Like earthquakes and breakups, we find out about this via Facebook:

3/20 Embarcadero
4/10 Great Highway
5/8 Mission
6/12: Bayview
7/10: Great Highway
8/14: Civic Center/Tenderloin
9/11: Western Addition
10/?; Mission

The specific routes aren't up on their website just yet, but we can probably expect them to be just about the same as last year, albeit in a different order to spread out the risk of inclement weather.

Top Ten of 2010

Before the first week of 2010 is over I thought it'd be fun to look at the most popular posts of 2010:

#10 Toward a Robust Rapid Transit Network: The H-Potrero Van Ness
Everything old is new again.  Muni originally ran the H-line streetcar from the Panama-Pacific Exposition grounds in the Marina out to the edge of the mudflats at Potrero and 25th.  With the vast majority of new development in the city slated for the "Eastern neighborhoods" of the Mission, Potrero Hill, and Bayview-Hunters Point, I think Muni should look at reestablishing that cross-town corridor as part of an expanded high-capacity, rapid transit network.

#9 No Parking

If it looks like a driveway, and the property owners defend it like a driveway, and DPT tows cars parked in it like a driveway it must be ... a vacant office.

#8 Reconnecting the Grid in Potrero Hill
Developers announced that their plans to rebuild the Potrero Terrace-Annex public housing complex included reestablishing the grid through the property.  Technically posted in December of 2009, this post still received a huge number of views last year.

#7 The Oakland Streetcar Plan
Stanford student Daniel Jacobson's Oakland Streetcar proposal has blown up in local political and transit advocacy circles, and it's also gotten tons of national and international attention.

#6 Hello BART
Oh, The Simpsons.  Even after 20+ years that show can be very punny!

#5 Where the Riders Are
This one's a tiny bit embarrassing.  After crunching a set of ridership data from BART, I published this map of how many riders are on every stretch of BART track.  Then the BART rep who sent me the data wrote me back and said the set contained an error (damn Excel) and I should use a new set of more accurate data.  I promised to re-crunch and re-publish, but got sidetracked.

My new year's resolution: to follow up on this!

#4 Doors are Closing
...Please stand clear of the doors.

#3 Welcoming Division Back to San Francisco
Remember when they tore down the Central Freeway?  Remember how they stopped at Market Street and the North Mission and SoMa still have to suffer under its sooty turquoise oppression?  Caltrans should definitely tear that sucker down, but we can't stop there.  The street underneath is ugly even if you ignore the elevated structure.  Here's my idea for how to fix that.

#2 Google Demolishes the Central Freeway
Google Street View's 3-D building models create an eerily familiar computer-generated San Francisco.  But there's no 3-D model for the Central Freeway, which gives is a surprising peek at a world without that eyesore.

Happy Holidays!

It's been an eventful year for walkers in SF.  Some great moments and some frustrating, some exciting new projects and some aggravating heel-dragging by the windshield set.

Here's to more and greater success in the new year, and a more walkable city for years to come.

A festive agent booth at the Castro Muni Station

Bus Stop Derby

This is definitely worth a repost, since I haven't heard much at all about it!  Yahoo! has added a bunch of touch screen games to the ad space in some of the new bus shelters that have been going in.  Hurry to find one near you before they come down on January 26th!

Almost makes up for the bait and switch over solar panels in the new shelters.

Check out more at busstopderby.com

Soon Enough

But that's not soon enough!















You mean we have to wait until April?!

Powell Street Sidewalk Widening

This.  Looks. AWESOME

Powell street is so thick with pedestrians, this space is badly needed.  Hopefully, bringing the level of the new space up to sidewalk height will lead to it being more well-used than the brief trial the city ran a year ago.

Streetsblog reports that the project will be finished and open in April.