A Privilege, Not a Right

Drop a flower pot off a high-up windowsill and kill someone, you might face criminal charges. Slam into a pedestrian in the middle of a crosswalk and what happens, exactly?

WalkBikeCT has a spot-on analysis of modern American transportation pathology. Despite words to the contrary (words, I might add, that every would-be young driver is supposed to learn and take to heart) we treat driving as a god-given right in this country, and especially here in California. And as long as we keep thinking that way we can expect atrocities like these to keep happening.

Portland has a Vulnerable Users Law that puts responsibility on the operators of more dangerous vehicles for the safety of more vulnerable road users. Bikes have to look out for the safety of pedestrians and cars have more responsibility to look after bicyclists. San Francisco needs a law like this. Otherwise we will continue to tacitly discourage walking and biking because of what is essentially bullying by motorists - the threat of physical harm if we don't give up our lunch money right of way.

And we need to enforce laws already on the books protecting that right of way. DPT needs to actually respond to calls about cars parked on the sidewalk. The police need to ticket drivers who fail to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk. And in the unfortunate instances where vulnerable roadway user is hurt or killed by a vehicle, appropriate criminal charges need to be filed. It's against the law to kill people. Why doesn't law enforcement act like it?

How Much is Your State Spending on Highways?

Check out this Google doc showing the impact of the Federal stimulus package state-by-state:

The sources are listed below each state.

For my particular area of interest, I pulled out the two figures related to infrastructure spending spending: highways and bridges, and total infrastructure spending. Below are the numbers along with the percentage of each state's "Infrastructure Investments (Highways, Transit, etc.)" allotted to "Highways and Bridges."

State	Highways and Bridges	Infrastructure Investments (Highways, Transit, etc.)	Percent of Infrastructure Alloted to Highways
DC	124,531,869	403,294,018	30.88%
NEW YORK	1,354,887,198	3,604,281,816	37.59%
MASSACHUSETTS	506,364,328	1,057,817,030	47.87%
NEW JERSEY	777,808,665	1,582,367,363	49.15%
ILLINOIS	1001675645	1897016099	52.80%
HAWAII	129,434,787	229,192,014	56.47%
MARYLAND	478,655,397	810,954,639	59.02%
CALIFORNIA	279,6972,002	4,695,000,384	59.57%
WASHINGTON	529,547,455	887,650,903	59.66%
CONNECTICUT	391,353,941	601,032,043	65.11%
PENNSYLVANIA	1,254,266,677	1,925,200,441	65.15%
NEW HAMPSHIRE	137,525,889	209,441,009	65.66%
OHIO	1,036,086,707	1,575,509,341	65.76%
MINNESOTA	477,633,398	705,660,596	67.69%
OREGON	349,351,566	515,441,583	67.78%
ALASKA	238,322,406	348,362,118	68.41%
UTAH	221,325,277	323,489,446	68.42%
MICHIGAN	875,167,353	1,276,940,176	68.54%
WEST VIRGINIA	243,473,459	355,047,758	68.57%
WISCONSIN	563,779,408	813,424,893	69.31%
COLORADO	412,851,201	589,298,325	70.06%
MAINE	138,664,985	197,296,913	70.28%
FLORIDA	1,461,783,079	2,051,376,755	71.26%
NEVADA	217,735,801	302,577,848	71.96%
MISSOURI	688,319,889	954,333,066	72.13%
RHODE ISLAND	154,292,484	213,558,633	72.25%
VIRGINIA	745,536,628	1,022,735,526	72.90%
DELAWARE	120,854,048	163,522,616	73.91%
IOWA	353,045,333	471,010,693	74.95%
INDIANA	746,339,493	985,465,899	75.73%
TEXAS	2,420,703,384	3,136,554,563	77.18%
LOUISIANA	470,649,161	609,584,818	77.21%
GEORGIA	1,045,902,643	1,343,576,793	77.84%
KENTUCKY	457,309,594	585,461,514	78.11%
NORTH CAROLINA	802,258,586	1,018,359,423	78.78%
KANSAS	317,232,125	402,218,266	78.87%
ARIZONA	586,554,097	743,017,915	78.94%
TENNESSEE	613,113,563	776,511,050	78.96%
VERMONT	129,533,151	163,774,203	79.09%
NEBRASKA	230,260,742	285,220,368	80.73%
IDAHO	216,573,325	264,548,247	81.87%
MISSISSIPPI	353,025,359	430,877,808	81.93%
SOUTH CAROLINA	479,859,162	582,063,166	82.44%
NEW MEXICO	281,158,912	339,738,916	82.76%
NORTH DAKOTA	194,497,761	235,016,201	82.76%
SOUTH DAKOTA	198,688,944	239,131,584	83.09%
ALABAMA	559,665,637	673,498,909	83.10%
WYOMING	199,236,775	237,600,880	83.85%
OKLAHOMA	464,228,443	552,681,549	84.00%
ARKANSAS	370,302,961	437,754,636	84.59%
MONTANA	277,452,620	322,487,955	86.04%

How does your state rank?

Note that this isn't a direct comparison between highways and public transit, but it does illustrate the relative priorities of each state.

Utah St Sidewalk Parking

Clearly it's street-sweeping day:
To report sidewalk parking in SF, call DPT at (415) 553-1200
Hit 1 for English
4 for "more options"
3 for "sidewalk parking"

You'll need to catch the address in front of which the car is parked. It's stupid and unnecessary, but DPT won't send someone out unless you give them the exact address. Local activist Carleigh notes that this is a blatant violation of ADA laws, so maybe mention that if you're given a hard time.

Also, it's worth going back a few days later to everyblock.com, which lists police reports by location, to check on how your report was resolved. And if you like, take a picture and upload it to Flickr with "pedestrianist" as a tag. I'll post it here along with any resolution or notes in the comment section.

If Traffic is Bad, And Freeways Cause Urban Traffic...

Why don't we remove the freeways?

Yesterday I pointed out a great article in Scientific American documenting the plain, simple reality that removing freeways improves traffic flow in urban areas. That article leads with the example of an elevated freeway in Seoul, Korea that was removed, and the improvement in traffic flow that resulted.

Reading up a little more, I found an excellent website devoted to real-world examples of urban freeways that have been nixed. The Preservation Institute of Berkeley, CA tells the whole story of the Cheonggye Freeway. From river to freeway and back again in less than half a century, the Cheonggye is a remarkable case, but freeway removal in cities around the world are strikingly similar.

Here in SF we have two good cases where freeways were closed and the sky remained firmly up. The Embarcadero and Central Freeways were removed after much hair-pulling and hand wringing, and replaced with surface streets that have proven to be wildly successful.


View Larger Map

Here's a little map of the scars across San Francisco caused by elevated freeways. Blue represents extant freeway, green represents those removed.

These monstrosities cut off neighborhoods and blight the area for blocks around. This map doesn't even highlight those traffic sewers that some of our city streets have been turned into in a vain effort to whisk people on and off these concrete octopuses. Streets like Alemany Blvd, San Jose Ave and Division St.

If we can see that these misguided structures cause tangible problems, and we know that removing them improves traffic flow while eliminating those problems, then why the hell don't we tear them all down?

NextMuni Mashup FTW

My entire Muni-riding life has been for this moment. A new NextMuni/Google Maps mashup will show and tell you which bus on whichever lines are close is coming first.

With information comes better transit choices! How badly I now wish I had a cell phone capable of pulling this up on a chilly night.

I'm Not 100% Sure This Isn't Science Fiction

Streetsblog LA has this post featuring what I can only assume is technology from the future that fell through a black hole and landed in Japan.



Wow! This gigantic bike vending machine/locker can apparently store up to 144 bikes underground, then give you access to yours within 10 seconds! I can see new high rises adding these to their basements for a relatively minor cost, as they're excavating the foundation anyway.

I'd also love to see BART stations incorporate something like this into new development on their parking lots, such as at Ashby and MacArthur stations.

Visit Streetsblog LA to see a diagram of the whole contraption.

Reality: Freeways Cause Traffic

The old-fashioned street grid is the best way to circulate auto, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic.

This makes sense to anyone who spends time in both grid-network areas as well as freeway/artery areas, and has begun to be accepted by more forward-thinking planners.

Now from no less reputable a source than Scientific American comes this article showing experimental and empirical evidence directly supporting this idea as well.

But in the 21st century, economic and environmental problems are bringing new scrutiny to the idea that limiting spaces for cars may move more people more efficiently.

As documented in Seoul, Boston and Montgomery, Alabama, the idea is that [gasp] wide arterial roads induce demand, which causes gridlock. Removing those expressways causes traffic to move more smoothly than it did before.

In the Boston example, Gastner’s team found that six possible road closures, including parts of Charles and Main streets, would reduce the delay under the selfish-driving scenario.

The article also documents positive results from conversion of divided rights of way to the "shared street" concept, or woonerf. In a woonerf, all modes of transportation are allowed on any part of the road, and traffic signals and lane markers are absent.

The idea is that the absence of traffic regulation forces drivers to take more responsibility for their actions. “The more uncomfortable the driver feels, the more he is forced to make eye contact on the street with pedestrians, other drivers and to intuitively go slower,” explains Chris Conway, a city engineer with Montgomery, Ala.

And finally, author Linda Baker gives props to SF for our parking maximums:

In San Francisco, for example, developers must restrict parking to a maximum of 7 percent of a building’s square footage, a negligible amount. Although downtown employment has increased, traffic congestion is actually declining, [Patrick] Seigard says. With fewer free spaces to park, drivers seem to be switching modes, relying more on mass transit, cycling and just plain walking.

Imagine that.

Excellent Feature on LOS Reform

LOS stands for Level Of Service. It's a metric that transportation and environmental planners use to evaluate the impact of new construction under CEQA (the California Environmental Quality Act). But it's a bad one, and LOS reform has become a buzzword among local transportation equity activists. I first heard about it from the SF Bay Guardian's Stephen T. Jones, and it's been gaining visibility as the transit advocacy community has diversified and become more robust in the Bay Area.

Well, Streetsblog has a great three-part feature post summarizing the history of this 'tool,' its faults, and options for abolishing it in the future. Check it out:

Paradise LOSt (Part I): How Long Will the City Keep Us Stuck in Our Cars?
Paradise LOSt (Part II): Turning Automobility on Its Head
Paradise LOSt (Part III): California’s Revolutionary Plan to Overhaul Transportation Analysis

OMG Transit Porn!

Say hello to Miss January 2009: Bombardier’s new PRIMOVE Catenary-Free Technology. Look! Her induction coils are showing!

This innovation uses the magnetic field of an underground power line to send power to an electric streetcar. Seriously, wireless streetcars! Maybe this is destined to fit a rare niche in places where overhead wires can't be excused, but even if so it means more places where good rail transit can be added. Which is great.

Streesblog SF wonders if we'll ever see new technology like this with a Muni worm on the side, but I'm optimistic. If for no other reason, our Breda cars won't last forever and something will have to replace them. Assuming no change in the status quo, however, whatever that is will very likely have most of the same drawbacks as the current rolling stock. The JKLMN (Jack Lemmon?) lines all run through the Market Street Tunnel, which has high boarding platforms, and then later on surface streets with curb-height stops. That means Muni needs cars that can do that screechy stair-lowering thing to run on thos lines. That's custom, and custom is expensive.

The T-Third, however, will eventually run through its own tunnel below 4th and Stockton Streets. It could have been built to run modern low-floor trains, but instead it was built with high platforms on the street. I (and people who are smarter and cooler than I) think this was a mistake, but what's done is done.

But I'm a dreamer, and I think we will lay down new rail someday. When we do, I hope all technology options are considered. There's a benefit of flexibility to having all of your LRVs be able to run on any of your track, but there can be costs for that flexibility. On the other hand, it might make sense to build new rail lines down Geary, Van Ness, 19th Ave or what have you with technology that makes sense for those lines, even if it can never run through the Market Street Tunnel. With the growing transit advocacy community here in the Bay Area, I think there's a good chance that might just happen.

</polyanna>

Brilliant Idea to Memorialize Fallen Pedestrians and Improve Safety Through Visibility

Streetsblog LA tips us off to the work of activists in Portugal who, frustrated by the number of deaths-by-car, have come up with a brilliant way to leave a memorial to the victims, raise awareness of the issue and improve crosswalk visibility on Lisbon streets:


Spray paint on the street is likely all too impermanent, but I love this idea and would be happy to see it spread to San Francisco and other cities! Perhaps in conjunction with memorial signs like these.