Transbay Blog

Mary Avenue Bridge; courtesy of LERA.

So many freeways and expressways crisscross the auto-oriented sprawl of Silicon Valley, and they contribute to a physical environment that is inhospitable, forming actual and pyschological barriers to those who attempt to get around on foot or a bicycle. But pedestrians and bicyclists alike will be able to enjoy bridges that will provide additional routes of access over otherwise-impenetrable walls of freeway. Two new bridges at Borregas Avenue in Sunnyvale, crossing over both Highway 237 and Highway 101, have finally opened, and they will allow an anticipated 2,000 daily bicyclists and pedestrians to cross over the freeway instead of traveling a couple miles out of their way to the nearest through street. The spans will also ease access to Sunnyvale Baylands Park and the nearby Borregas VTA light rail station. Then, on April 30, a more visually impressive bike-ped crossing over Interstate 280 will also open, connecting the two separated halves of Mary Avenue, between Sunnyvale and Cupertino near the Highway 85 interchange. The Mary Avenue bridge will be the first example in California of a cable stayed bridge crossing over a freeway. Still further bike-ped improvements are due later this summer in Mountain View, Santa Clara, and San Jose. The Borregas corridor and Mary Avenue bridges are just two components of VTA’s rather extensive 25-year Bicycle Expenditure Plan, which represents a considerable investment in livable streets improvements scattered throughout Santa Clara County. Yours truly may prefer walking and transit over bicycling, but we nonetheless look forward to the day when San Francisco’s Bicycle Plan will have completed its wandering journey through environmental review — so that new bicycle infrastructure in San Francisco can catch up to these improvements in the South Bay.

September 30 at midnight is the deadline for the Governor to sign bills into law, and in light of the record-late budget, legislation has been stacking up. Amidst all the signed and vetoed bills, I am happy to report that SB 375 and AB 1358, two important pieces of “livability legislation” that we have been following, have both been signed into law. SB 375, the landmark bill that unites transportation, housing, and land use planning with CEQA reform, is an important step towards incentivizing the growth of transit-oriented neighborhoods as part of a multi-pronged effort to achieve AB 32’s greenhouse gas emission mandates. The other bill is AB 1358, the Complete Streets Act, which will require local governments to account for all users of the street (including pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, and the disabled) when updating the circulation elements of their General Plans. When governments then turn to execute the updated directives in their General Plans, we can hope to see calmer, more walkable streets emerge all over the state of California. The combination of both bills point toward a brighter future — turning our back on the unchecked proliferation of residential subdivisions and strip malls, while embracing the growth of dense, compact, walkable neighborhoods. Now, if only we could manage to stop raiding the public transit fund every year.

Finally — the Complete Streets Act (AB 1358), first introduced in February 2007 and then later held in the Senate Appropriations Committee, has been reintroduced and will go before the full California State Senate next week (week of August 4, 2008). The bill was authored by San Francisco Assemblymember and presumptive 3rd District Senator Mark Leno, and its passage will be an important step toward reducing the automotive bias of streets, so that streets throughout California will be safer and more welcoming to all users. AB 1358 defines street users as “motorists, pedestrians, bicyclists, children, persons with disabilities, seniors, movers of commercial goods, and users of public transportation.” In particular, AB 1358 requires that the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR) set forth guidelines for streets that safely accommodate the movement of all users — this is similar to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Routine Accommodations, but would apply statewide — and it authorizes OPR to consult air quality management districts and transportation planners. In turn, when cities and counties revise the circulation element of their General Plans, they would do so in accordance with the updated OPR guidelines. Passage of AB 1358 will help California fulfill AB 32’s mandates for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, which General Plan updates must now take into account — and it will lead to the creation of more livable streets throughout California.

An idyllic complete street; courtesy AARP.

If you live in California, contact your State Senator to express support for this bill, and pass the word onto others so that they can do the same. Mailed or faxed messages are preferred instead of telephone or email if possible, but communicate the message however you can before next week. Let’s get this bill through the Senate, onto the Governor’s desk, and signed into law. You can write a personalized message, or you could just adapt this template, conveniently provided by the California Bicycle Coalition:

Honorable [your State Senator's full name]
State Capitol, Room [your State Senator's room number]
Sacramento, CA 95814
Fax: [your State Senator's fax number, if sent via fax]

Senate Floor Alert
Re: Support AB 1358 (Leno)

I join the California Bicycle Coalition in urging you to vote YES for AB 1358, the Complete Streets Act, because it will require cities and counties to design roadways that make bicycling and walking safer, more feasible modes of transportation. As non-motorized transportation modes, bicycling and walking can help solve a variety of the problems California faces: traffic congestion, poor air quality, the threats from climate change, and worsening public health. It is imperative that roadway design enables motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians to travel safely. AB 1358 will result in roads that serve all users, not just motorists, as is now too often the case.

Thank you for supporting this landmark legislation to help make California cities more livable.

Sincerely,
[signature, followed by your printed full name and address]

Whatever you might happen to think about San Francisco’s District 6 Supervisor Chris Daly, we should at least thank him for reigniting the conversation about closing off Market Street to cars, specifically the over two mile stretch between The Embarcadero and Octavia Boulevard in Hayes Valley. This comes fast on the heels of plans to close off car access to several miles of The Embarcadero for two weekends later this summer (one of which is Labor Day), plans that have prompted protests by angry Fisherman’s Wharf merchants. Yes, the discussion of car-free Market Street does resurface from time to time, and “Da Mayor” Willie Brown’s former proposal of such a policy was unsuccessful — but it is nonetheless encouraging to see that the conversation continues. Merchants, of course, will always raise hell protesting any proposal that involves limiting vehicular access to their stores, but anyone in San Francisco who is in the know and who drives a car (or is that an oxymoron?) already tries to avoid Market Street, except to cross it. We should be careful when applying the usual merchant complaints (usually raised in the context of neighborhood commercial districts) to a discussion of Market Street, which is a special case that deserves a special conversation — and which is a natural location to experiment with the creation of livable urban spaces. Market Street is not a place to “score a parking spot,” and essentially any location from the Ferry Building to the Castro District is a short stroll from a subway station, to say nothing of the plethora of bus stops lining the street from end to end.

Market Street, as it once was: car-free.

The Bay Area gets no more transit-rich than Market Street. Besides frequent local and regional underground rail service, the surface of San Francisco’s main boulevard features a lively and hectic mix of historic streetcars, bus lines converging from neighborhoods all across the City, and bus stops both on the curbs and island platforms — complete with constant pedestrian flow and people jumping across the so-called “safety zone,” which is the lane that separates bus boarding islands from the sidewalk. In some sense, Market Street has not changed all that much from what it must have been like in the early 20th century. The automobile has replaced horse and carriage, and there is only one pair of surface streetcar tracks used by the F-Market & Wharves line, instead of the two pairs we once had (the other pair was rebuilt below ground). Rather than being inundated by streetcars, as in the image at right, the Market Street of today is inundated largely by buses, punctuated by the occasional splash of color from an F-Market historic streetcar. But what has not changed is that fundamentally, Market Street is still best suited to pedestrians and transit riders; dense transit and pedestrian traffic, combined with highly restricted automobile turns, make Market Street a taxing experience for drivers. But really, San Francisco’s main boulevard could be made a more successful place for everyone, no matter what their mode of transportation is. Current conditions are not especially friendly for cyclists, though that would certainly improve if only we could free up pavement now used by automobiles. Market Street is transit-rich, but congestion prevents transit from being truly functional, at least at peak travel times. And although pedestrians enjoy generously wide sidewalks, auto-pedestrian collisions, most of which occur in the unaptly-named “safety zone,” suggest that we must go further to maximize pedestrian safety.

Read the rest of this entry »

Bike to Work Day on Thursday May 15. Yours truly owns neither a bicycle nor a car — and thus is strictly a pedestrian and transit rider — but of course wholeheartedly supports non-automotive transportation in all forms. So even if I will not be hopping on a bicycle for Bike to Work Day tomorrow, Thursday May 15, I would encourage you to do so. Bike to work, school, errands, or wherever your heart takes you. Bikers planning to use BART may be interested in BART’s “Energizer Stations” with refreshments (check BART’s Bicycle Rules if you are not already familiar with them). Other Energizer Stations are scattered throughout the Bay Area. Also, people with bikes in hand on the Alameda/Oakland and Alameda Harbor Bay ferries will enjoy free ferry service all day Thursday, on all runs. P.S. Please refrain from biking on the sidewalk; pedestrians in your immediate vicinity will be grateful!

London is on the move. London, a city that is famous around the world for the bold steps it has taken to curb congestion and encourage use of alternative transportation, continues to prove its worth as a global model for mobility policy, as it strives for a goal to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 60% by the year 2025. San Francisco is finally starting to investigate some of the good ideas that have been put into action in London, most notably congestion pricing, but also cameras mounted on buses to ticket drivers who make illegal use of bus-only lanes. But in the meantime, London moves full steam ahead with plans to invest $1 billion in a bicycle plan that would make 6,000 bicycles available at rental stations located throughout the central city, roughly every couple of blocks. This plan is a smaller version of the Vélib’, launched this past summer in Paris; other cities throughout Europe have adopted similar rental programs. But if that weren’t enough, London’s mayor Ken Livingstone has also announced that gas guzzlers entering central London will be faced with a new congestion fee, to the tune of £25 each time the vehicle enters the congestion zone; in comparison, the fee for average cars is £8. About 150,000 vehicles enter central London’s congestion zone on a daily basis; of those, about 20% would be subject to the increased fee. Livingstone estimates that with the fee, there will be a 30% decline in the number of these gas guzzlers driving around central London; as such, the fee is supported by over 2/3 of Londoners. The extra revenue collected from the increased congestion fee would be applied to help fund the new bicycle plan.
[Guardian]