On September 23, 2010, the State Air Resources Board (ARB) assigned greenhouse gas reduction targets to California’s regional metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs), moving Senate Bill 375 forward into its implementation phase and setting in motion the first regional planning cycle required under the legislation. ARB adopted final targets that express each metropolitan region’s goal as … Continue reading
I usually follow websites and blogs through RSS and Twitter rather than Facebook, and so never really thought to create a Facebook page for this blog. But friends have since persuaded me that it would be worthwhile to set up Facebook as well, in order to better reach readers who use Facebook but not those … Continue reading
On February 19, 2011, BART officially opened the 44th station in its system: The West Dublin/Pleasanton station, a $106 million project that bridges the long 10-mile gap between the Dublin/Pleasanton terminus and Castro Valley. Like Dublin/Pleasanton, its sibling station 1.5 miles to the east, West Dublin/Pleasanton was built in the median of Interstate 580. Pedestrian … Continue reading
This week, the Oakland Planning Commission will consider a peculiar concoction brewed up by Planning Department staff called temporary conditional use permits (TCUPs). As explained by the staff report (41 MB PDF), the purpose of the proposed TCUP program is to help property owners maintain the economic viability of their vacant parcels, by allowing them … Continue reading
As various neighborhoods in San Francisco have been rezoned in recent years to encourage density while maintaining livability, plans like Market/Octavia and Eastern Neighborhoods have called for minimum off-street parking requirements to be eliminated and instead replaced with parking maximums. This week the San Francisco Planning Commission will consider an ordinance that seeks to do … Continue reading
This Wednesday, December 15, 2010, the Department of Public Works (DPW) will hold a hearing (PDF) to gather public comment on two parklets — extensions of the sidewalk built in parking spots to make space for outdoor seating — that have been proposed in San Francisco. One parklet would be installed on Post Street between Jones and Leavenworth, in front … Continue reading
Ever since voters passed Proposition 13 in 1978, California has been playing a game of cat and mouse. Government would enact a charge, and someone would claim it was unconstitutional. Courts, realizing that in spite of Prop 13 the government still needs money to function, would read Prop 13 narrowly, allowing new categories of government charges to pass through with a … Continue reading
If there is a silver lining to be found in the protracted Oakland Airport Connector debate and other BART drama that has ensued over the past couple of years, it’s that BART’s Board of Directors and the agency generally have been subject to an extra measure of public scrutiny. There’s a related silver lining: candidates emerging to challenge lackluster incumbent directors. And … Continue reading
At its meeting yesterday, the State Air Resources Board (ARB) had a full agenda. For one, it approved an important regulation requiring that one-third of electricity sold by utilities in California be derived from renewable sources by the year 2020. But for the purpose of this blog, we will only discuss the Board’s other major … Continue reading
The Bay Area’s first high-occupancy toll (HOT) lane, or “express lane,” opens today on southbound Interstate 680 over the Sunol Grade, between Highways 84 and 237 — a 14-mile stretch of freeway that includes 11 miles in Alameda County and 3 miles in Santa Clara County. Carpools and high-occupancy vehicles on this segment of freeway … Continue reading