Author Archives: Eric


On Walkability, Density, and Transit Villages

It’s official: according to the WalkScore.com rankings, San Francisco has been determined to be America’s most walkable city, as reported by the Chronicle. Our fair city’s score of 86 out of 100 just edged out New York’s 83, Boston’s 79, Chicago’s 76, and Philadelphia’s 74. The WalkScore algorithm does have some shortcomings (which the site [...]

Sidebar Addition: Current Gas Prices

Sidebar Addition: Current Gas Prices. Although rising fuel prices are forcing transit agencies to look yet again to fare hikes, I cannot help but to be pretty excited about the prospect of higher gas prices encouraging  a paradigm shift from driving to transit. With gas prices approaching $5 per gallon here in the Bay Area, [...]

Just Say No to Roads

Suppose you expect to have a generous chunk of cash at your disposal — to the tune of over 200 billion dollars — and suppose that you rule over a congestion-prone corner of the world where over 80% of trips are made in an automobile, and where transportation is responsible for a full 50% of [...]

Berkeley BRT Ballot Initiative City Council Update

Given the fact that the Berkeley City Council decided not to litigate against the anti-BRT voter initiative — choosing instead to “honor the initiative process” — it was clear that the initiative would indeed be added to the November ballot. That said, I thought I should probably add this update to clarify any potential confusion [...]

City of Berkeley v. Voters of Berkeley Averted

The last time we picked up the seemingly endless saga concerning the mere 1 to 1.5 miles of bus-only lanes proposed for the Berkeley leg of AC Transit’s BRT project along Telegraph Avenue, the Berkeley Daily Planet had propagated an outright lie, alleging that the San Leandro City Council had already “opted out” of its [...]

Excessive Parking Creeps Up Folsom Street

900 Folsom and 260 Fifth, two mixed-use projects that are currently up for consideration, would occupy adjacent parcels South of Market, at the corner of 5th and Folsom Streets, with the northern edge of the project just one-half block south of the new Intercontinental Hotel. Together, they promise 466 homes and 10,396 square feet of [...]

AB 3034 Passes Senate Transportation and Housing Committee

AB 3034 passes Senate Transportation and Housing Committee. Erik Nelson from the Oakland Tribune reported that the Cathleen Galgiani’s high speed rail bill AB 3034 was approved 8-4 in the Senate Transportation and Housing Committee; meanwhile, a few days ago, Debra Bowen assigned the prime-time position of Proposition 1 to the $9.95 billion HSR bond [...]

A SMART Pipe Dream

Please click here to read the previous post, which adds a bit of context and motivation for this post.
Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) will likely be going up for the ballot again this November. Most recently, in the November 2006 election, the Measure R quarter-cent sales tax for SMART failed — falling just short [...]

Missing Geary Misses the Point

Over a year ago, before this website was born, the conceptual proposals were released for Bay Area regional rail expansion projected for the next 50 years. Included among the plans is a second tube for the San Francisco-Oakland Transbay corridor, providing additional core capacity for a crucial regional link that is already a bottleneck point [...]

Pride Parade 2008 Service Updates

A lot of street closures for the SF Pride 2008 events means a lot of Muni service updates. It’s actually a bit of a mess, because in a few instances, the same line will be rerouted slightly differently at different times of day. Sunday, Muni will add more service to the subway from 8 am [...]