Archive for the ‘Carfree Lifestyle’ Category
E-Extravaganza at Sunday Streets
I missed the first Sunday Streets waterfront street closure over Labor Day weekend, so attending yesterday’s carfree festivities was a top priority. It seemed to be a grand success, as everyone enjoyed the fresh air and the great weather. There is a great sense of freedom that comes from being able to cross the street at any point, without having to run for your life to avoid automobiles. Here are a couple shots of carfree streets from outside the Ferry Building:
My main priority for Sunday Streets was the E-Embarcadero; I spent most of the afternoon riding and taking pictures of historic streetcars running demonstration service on waterfront tracks between Fisherman’s Wharf and the Caltrain Station. It was a great day for railfans:
September 2008 Carfree Lineup
What’s better than closing off streets to cars for one Sunday? Why, closing off streets to cars for two Sundays! This Sunday, September 14, from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, we will get the second half of the Sunday Streets events in San Francisco. See this earlier post or the official Sunday Streets website for more details about the route between Chinatown and the Bayview. Muni will operate demonstration E-Embarcadero historic streetcar service once more between Fisherman’s Wharf and Caltrain — but this time, service will run even later, until 4:00 pm, to serve the South Beach + Mission Bay + Rincon Hill Block Party. E-Embarcadero service will be free on Sunday; there will also be free Sunday Streets service on the F-Market streetcars and on the K/T Muni Metro line. Then, next Friday, September 19 is one of my favorite events of the year: the annual Park(ing) Day, in which parking spots are claimed and replaced for one day with parks. (I posted about last year’s Park(ing) Day from a miniature park set up near San Francisco City Hall. Meanwhile, Streetsblog provided excellent coverage of Park(ing) Day in New York City last year, and is already counting down to this year’s festivities.) And finally, Monday, September 22 is World Carfree Day. But, as the World Carfree Network reminds us, why limit ourselves to just one day each year?
Sunday Streets and More, This Labor Day Weekend
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| Courtesy Sunday Streets SF. |
Talk about an action-packed Labor Day weekend here in the Bay Area: BART plans to run longer trains to accommodate all the events happening on both sides of the Bay, including Slow Food and Ha(i)rrison Street in San Francisco; in the East Bay, there is the annual three-day Art & Soul festival in downtown Oakland, the Cal football kickoff against Michigan State at Memorial Stadium, and the A’s and the Twins at the Oakland Coliseum. You can ride SamTrans, Caltrain, or BART to enjoy art and wine in Millbrae; VTA or Caltrain will take you to downtown San Jose, where there is more art, but seemingly no wine. A number of Labor Day events are also planned for folks north of the Golden Gate. Last, but certainly not least: the first of the Sunday Streets (our homegrown Ciclovía) is at last upon us this Labor Day weekend. This Sunday, August 31, from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm, over four miles of streets in San Francisco will be closed to vehicular access: mostly along the waterfront and the Embarcadero, between 3rd and Oakdale in the Bayview and Portsmouth Square in Chinatown. In addition to the freedom of unencumbered walking and biking, activities focused on exercise and health will line the entire route of street closures — driving home the point that a transit-oriented, carfree lifestyle is not only about reducing traffic congestion and improving air quality; with built-in physical activity, it’s just an all-around healthier way to live. Don’t miss the demo E-Embarcadero historic streetcar service between Fisherman’s Wharf and the Caltrain Station. Muni service will be free between 8:00 am and 2:00 pm on the F-Market & Wharves and the KT-Ingleside/Third Street lines. It should be a fun weekend, with a great weather forecast in store.
Link Love for Transit Lifestyle Blogs
Link love for transit lifestyle blogs. Because this blog gives a lot of press time to future transit expansion and its role in building a better Bay Area, one topic which does not get as much coverage here is transit in the here-and-now — perhaps you might call these transit lifestyle issues. Luckily, other devoted transit riders in the Bay Area are filling out the discussion and adding more voices to the conversation. Daily adventures on the Muniserable Railway have given rise to a new blog, Muni Manners. This site, written by two authors who identify themselves only as the “SF Muni Ladies,” is dedicated to teaching lessons in transit etiquette with the hope of making the daily grind a bit better for all of us. Although officially dedicated to Muni, the lessons the Ladies have posted so far are good advice for riders of any transit system, particularly in crowded settings. Muni Manners joins other blogs from around the Bay that give a lot of press time to transit lifestyle issues, including oldies but goodies: 295bus, Living in the O, and BART Musings. Another new site riders and readers alike may want to check out is the Transit Bay Area Classifieds, which appears to be a bit like Craigslist, but is focused on connecting transit riders to each other. And last, but certainly not least, here is a link from last week that you absolutely must check out if you have not seen it yet: Greg Dewar from the N-Judah Chronicles has posted an excellent Star Wars Muni spoof that draws hilarious parallels between Muni politics and Imperial Domination. As a diehard Star Wars fan who has committed to memory roughly the entire combined script of Episodes IV, V, and VI, I could not resist putting in a plug for this awesome link. Anyway, posting here has been on the slow side recently, but hopefully these links will satiate your appetite until I can get things rolling again. (UPDATE: LucasFilms is being difficult and has asked that the spoof be removed- see the comments. Apologies to anyone who missed it.)
The True Cost of Driving
A post at The Capricious Commuter, a blog that Erik Nelson writes for Inside Bay Area, discusses how although we seem to keep good track of how much it costs to build, improve, and subsidize transit, the mathematics that covers those equivalent costs for automobiles, roads, and parking is far less clearly tabulated. The result is that we arrive at misleading conclusions, including a figure which claims that roughly two-thirds of transportation revenue for the Bay Area is applied to public transit, even though transit share among commuters is a mere 10% across the whole region. That statistic is revealing in one sense; the ostensibly progressive Bay Area is generally supportive of funding transit improvements, perhaps because it shows an environmental awareness to do so — but few are willing to actually change their lifestyle in a way that demonstrates true commitment. The fact that most people in the Bay Area live in suburbs, rather than a dense urban environment that is naturally supportive of transit, only helps to solidify the often incorrect assumption across the region that “transit is not an option.”
However, the statistic is also revealing in a different way. Several costs are required to buy into an auto-centric transportation system — the cost of the vehicle, gasoline, insurance, and upkeep — and in some sense, those private costs can be bundled together and thought of as “driving fare.” Although the two-thirds figure includes the private costs riders must pay for transit fare, it ignores the “driving fare.” After taking into account “driving fare”, Erik adjusts the calculation to find that a mere 8.5% of money in the Bay Area is applied to transit. Even this figure ignores quantifiable costs (like those associated with parking garages), and other costs which are much harder to quantify — the stress associated with long driving commutes, and the health and environmental effects of pollution from cars. More generally, though, the tendency to keep careful tab of transit costs but to neglect to mention crucial auto-related costs indicates the extent to which American society is willing to overlook the fact that maintaining an auto-centric transportation system has hidden costs that may be insufficiently weighed when making policy decisions.
Yes on A, No on H: “Transit, Not Traffic” Around the Internet
Discussion on the “Yes on A, No on H” campaign for Transit, not Traffic, continues around the Internet, and so I’ll continue to post links to some of these sites, for interested readers who might not have run into them:
- The Bikescape blog has a posted a podcast about the Transit, Not Traffic campaign, featuring Dave Snyder (of SPUR and Livable City), Susan King of the Green Party, and Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi. The podcast is listed under the October 21, 2007 post.
- John Diaz has an article in the Chronicle describing Prop H as “the most dangerous measure” on the ballot this November. This article also describes the recent scandal in which Prop H supporters mailed out brochures, thus breaching their compromise with Peskin to not advertise against Prop A in favor of Prop H.
A reader comment written in response to the Diaz piece is a reminder of how much work we still need to do (even in “transit-first” San Francisco) to bring about a paradigm shift away from cars and towards public transit. The comment, written by SFgate user “gcotter”, reads:
People MUST have parking where they live. This is not optional. Unless they can park their car safely at home they will not be able to leave their car at home and take public transit to work. People have the right to own and park their own cars at home. We can make public transit a more attractive option through pricing but we shouldn’t think that limiting parking will limit car ownership. [...] We CAN have both Cars and Transit if we’re smart about it!
Celebrate World Carfree Day
Every year on September 22, cities across the world celebrate World Carfree Day, which, amidst the hustle-bustle that characterizes modern traffic congestion, serves as a cogent reminder that cities are made for people, not automobiles. This year’s holiday promises to be especially large, as the Chinese government is putting out a big effort to make plans in roughly 100 cities, and supposedly even the government officials there will be riding transit tomorrow. (Ahem, Gavin Newsom, are you reading this?) Definitely go out and celebrate World Carfree Day tomorrow by leaving your car at home, but even better, make it a habit to leave your car at home. Or, better yet, get rid of the car altogether!
If one is used to driving a car, there is no doubt that switching over to a carfree lifestyle could feel like a major change, but I claim that the vast majority of those changes are positive ones. When a driver considers momentarily whether to take transit or to drive to some location, the mental calculation that usually occurs compares transit fare to gasoline costs, and in some cases, the driver is led to believe that having a car is cheaper. The problem with such a calculation is that it ignores the wear and tear that occurs to the vehicle every time it is driven, and the costs of maintenance required to fix that wear and tear. It also ignores the cost of vehicle itself, insurance costs, and parking. When comparing the total costs of owning and operating a vehicle to the total costs of leading a carfree lifestyle by walking/biking/taking transit, the carfree lifestyle emerges as the clear winner.
