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 [...]
The Safeway and 76 gas station, at the northeast corner of College and Claremont Avenues in Oakland, together occupy a site whose layout is entirely inappropriate for an urban setting, particularly for the intersection of two major avenues. The large parking lot, which fronts directly onto parts of both College and Claremont, is a (sub)urban [...]
This post will provide some information on the Democratic primary for the California legislature campaigns. The blurbs that follow are essentially endorsements, but I hesitate to use the word “endorsement” here, because to my mind, use of that word ought to be supported by a fuller discussion, drawing on a large range of issues. Because [...]
This post will lay out a guide for future bus rapid transit expansion in the East Bay; it is the companion to a San Francisco BRT post from a couple months ago. The map at right (click through for a full-sized map, hosted on Flickr) is a visual depiction of what a future rapid bus [...]
I recently had occasion to check out some of the new projects under construction in downtown Oakland, so this post will provide a pictorial update of the construction reported in this post from last October. This post will be mostly photos; for more context and details on the projects, please check out that earlier post.
First, [...]
6 February 2008 – 12:24 pm
Courtesy Flickr member in2jazz.
The Berkeley Daily Planet mentioned last week a problem point in the planning of the proposed East Bay bus rapid transit route, which would run from Berkeley to San Leandro via Telegraph Avenue, downtown Oakland, and East 14th Street. The issue concerns the new street replacing the expressway around Lake Merritt, which [...]
20 December 2007 – 10:00 am
If you haven’t gotten to it already, please check out the introductory post. Also, the San Francisco half of the map can be found in this post.
Unlike the San Francisco half of the map, which takes a stab at expanding both the BART and Muni Metro systems, the East Bay half of the map assumes [...]
28 November 2007 – 11:18 am
The Oakland Tribune reports today about a public scoping meeting that will take place at Oakland City Hall, tonight at the 6:00 pm Planning Commission meeting. The goal of the meeting is to receive public commentary about a project in planning, a new tower at 222 19th Street known as Emerald Views. Soaring to 457 [...]
25 October 2007 – 5:15 am
There are some exciting construction projects rising in downtown Oakland these days, since many of the projects that were initially proposed in response to Jerry Brown’s 10K downtown revitalization plan are finally emerging from the planning process and becoming a reality. This post will attempt to cover some of the more high profile downtown projects, [...]
27 September 2007 – 11:27 am
Oakland’s Broadway is analogous to Market Street in San Francisco, and the analogy is especially strong downtown. Both are major transit streets served by both subway rail and a confluence of surface bus lines, and both streets are the main spine of their respective downtowns. It seems natural for the energy of lower Broadway to [...]
