Archive for the ‘Parking’ Category
Open Thread and Early May News Roundup
I have been too busy lately to post regularly, but there is still plenty going on in the world of Bay Area planning and transit. My guess, and hope, is that people will still want to discuss the news, even though I am unable to pull enough time together to prepare full posts on these topics. Others may want to initiate topics, rather than simply respond to prompts in blog posts. Many websites fill in this niche by setting up open threads. I haven’t tried that yet, because I was not really sure if there would be enough interest, or if there was a critical mass of people commenting and checking in. I am also testing the waters with removing comment moderation, despite ongoing problems with managing spam comments. So this is an experiment with open threads. If it looks to be well-used, it could be made into a regular feature. Please feel free to leave any feedback on the open threads if you feel so inclined.
The last post discussed the SFCTA report on Geary BRT, so here is a roundup of other recent news:
SFMTA Budget is up for debate: To close a $128.9 million shortfall, the SFMTA Board adopted a budget that raised the adult and paratransit individual fares to $2 and adult fast passes to $60 on January 1, 2010. The budget also raises some parking fees, but it eliminates several lines altogether and institutes considerable service cuts on many other lines. As promised, Board President David Chiu will introduce a motion (PDF) at today’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting to veto the MTA-adopted budget. If you’d like to attend, the meeting is in the Board chamber, 2nd floor of SF City Hall, at 1:30 pm.
Update: At the Budget and Finance Committee, the vote was 4-1 (Carmen Chu dissenting) against the MTA’s budget, and Chiu has the seven votes needed to overturn the budget at the full Board.
New parking lot in Oakland defeated: Last night, I learned via Twitter that the Oakland City Council rejected the Redevelopment Agency’s proposal for a temporary surface parking lot on Telegraph Avenue in Downtown Oakland, next to the Fox Theater. The City Council requested that staff investigate the possibility of art installations instead, which would be a considerable improvement over a parking lot. Whatever use is ultimately installed will be temporary, to be dismantled in 2011 when construction will begin on the second phase of Forest City’s Uptown project.
Caltrain to declare a fiscal emergency: Despite ridership gains in 2008 and already having raised fares 25 cents on January 1, Caltrain is scrambling to close its budget shortfall, in light of the lost STA funds; it plans to declare a fiscal emergency in order to exempt service cuts from environmental review.
In Uptown Grows … A Parking Lot?
When Westfield Centre opened in Downtown San Francisco in September 2006, no new parking structure was built to accommodate the approximately 25 million people that were expected to visit the mall each year. Instead, the basement level food court was physically connected to the concourse mezzanine of Powell Street Station, to emphasize that transit was the most natural travel mode to access the mall; and nearby parking garages, such as Fifth and Mission, have proven sufficient to absorb additional motorists. Oakland’s Uptown District boasts a similarly extensive list of transit options that reach both locally and regionally. So why does the Revelopment Agency, along with Oakland City Councilmembers Brunner, Kernighan, and Reid, support, of all things, a new surface parking lot next to the recently-opened Fox Theater? Especially when there is already ample (in fact, probably excessive) parking in the surrounding area, and when the proposed parking lot will not even prove lucrative during the span of time it takes for Forest City to ready itself for construction of the mixed-use development that will eventually occupy this vacant parcel? Given plans to develop the site in the year 2011 with about 220 housing units and 20,000 square feet of retail, it does not really make sense to spend money to construct and maintain a use that will only have to be dismantled in a couple years, especially if people grow attached to that particular use. The provision of any additional open space ought to be coordinated in conjunction with the planned development, and there is open space nearby in any case, built as a component of the first phase of Forest City’s Uptown project. But that does not justify resorting to a parking lot — even one billed as “temporary” — whose presence will disrupt the pedestrian experience and damage an urban fabric that is in the process of being made whole. Uptown has become increasingly vibrant in recent months, so perhaps the City Council has already forgotten the blighting effect of the vacant lots that existed in years prior. Our humble advice to planners, councilmembers, supervisors, and the like? When in doubt, turn to Ms. Jacobs. She remarked: ” … parking lots … are powerful and insistent instruments of city destruction.” Any Oaklanders reading this post who happen to feel perturbed by this flash of 1950s-era suburban planning transported to the East Bay’s urban core are encouraged to write to their Councilmember, or to speak against the parking lot proposal at this week’s City Council meeting.
Board of Supervisors Hears Appeal of 299 Valencia
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| 299 Valencia, present and future; courtesy of www.299valenciastreet.com. |
San Francisco is a transit-first city — officially, at least, according to its Charter — which means that actions taken by the city government, where they are related to transportation issues at all, should promote and prioritize public transit above driving. Given this background assumption, one might think that the Planning Commission would be disinclined to approve the inclusion of extra parking (beyond the stipulated limits) in development projects that it reviews. But the opposite is often the case, which forces citizens to step up to the plate and speak to the benefits of structuring planning decisions around people rather than automobiles. This particular defect of the Planning Commission is one that we have discussed here before, in the context of Folsom Street. The latest episode in the parking battle saga was fought yesterday over seven parking spaces at 299 Valencia, a 36-unit mixed use project slated for a surface parking lot at 14th and Valencia Streets. The five-story project provides four BMR units and about 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. The project is located on the very edge of the Market/Octavia Plan area, on land zoned NCT-3, and the site carries a maximum parking ratio of 0.5, or one parking stall per two units. 18 residential parking stalls would be allowed as of right, but the proposal contained 27 residential parking stalls so that the units would be more marketable to high-end buyers. The additional parking requires a conditional use (CU) authorization. In November 2008, the Planning Commission did unanimously grant a CU, on the condition that two of the 27 stalls be changed to car share spots, leaving 25 residential stalls. This falls within the 0.75 ratio permitted under the CU scenario. The Hayes Valley Neighborhood Association (HVNA), which was a key player during Market/Octavia planning, has been a voice for limiting parking and promoting walkable neighborhoods. HVNA filed an appeal (joined by a number of individuals and local organizations, including the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Livable City) shortly after the CU was granted, and the appeal was finally heard by the new Board of Supervisors and its new President, David Chiu. In the end, the Board failed to collect the eight votes necessary to disapprove the Planning Commission’s conditional use (the vote was 7-4, with Supervisor Maxwell aligning with the six members of the progressive alliance).
Park(ing) Day 2008
This past Friday, September 19, was Park(ing) Day, that day each year when parking spots are turned into miniature parks. Park(ing) Day is a nice reminder of the value of public spaces, and of how nice it can be to reclaim even small chunks of pavement from automobiles and return them to pedestrians, if only for a few hours. It also serves as a nice prelude to World Carfree Day, which falls every year on this day, September 22.
This year on Park(ing) Day, flowers bloomed from a parking meter in front of San Francisco City Hall:
And here are two other park(ing) spots — near Union Square, and across the street from the main branch of the public library:
For more: check out Flickr for lots of great photos of park(ing) spots in San Francisco. Streetsblog also put together its usual excellent coverage of Park(ing) Day in New York City.
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 ground level retail, with spacious 19-foot ceilings for the retail storefronts. (I did not bother to add the renderings to this post, but if you are interested, you can check out this PDF, which has design details.) The two projects combined intend to pursue a LEED Gold rating, and the project website is eager to point out the many green benefits of the buildings. The graphics on the project website emphasize the plethora of nearby transit options, including pictures of a Breda LRV, a BART train, and an F-Market historic streetcar. There are also pictures of people looking quite happy while walking and biking. But let’s just cut to the chase. If this project is really so green and transit-friendly, why must the proposal include slightly more than 1:1 parking, with 470 parking spots for 466 units — encouraging future residents to drive and thus ignore all of the pictured transit options?
Thumbs Up For Market-Octavia and 55 Laguna
A busy week prevented me from posting about this earlier, but better late than never: as you may have already read in the Chronicle, there have been favorable updates at the Board of Supervisors concerning the Market & Octavia Plan, which I addressed in a post a couple weeks ago. Supervisors Mirkarimi and McGoldrick had articulated competing visions for the contentious issues of affordable housing, parking, and density in the Market & Octavia plan area: more details are provided in that linked post. But the two proposals have since coalesced into a single compromise plan. Thankfully, Mirkarimi’s stricter parking requirements survived, helping to ensure that the Market & Octavia Plan maintains livability at its heart; the compromise also adopted Mirkarimi’s affordable housing funding plan, which set forth a tiered impact fee (of $0, $4, or $8 per square foot, depending on the location of the development) and the opportunity for developers to contribute to the citywide affordable housing fund in lieu of TDR fees. However, the compromise incorporates McGoldrick’s density cap, which will apply not just to Duboce Triangle, but to all blocks zoned as Residential Transit-Oriented (RTO), which includes most of the residential blocks deeper in the plan area, off of Market Street. These amendments were passed at first hearing at the Board last Tuesday, finally drawing some consensus on this comprehensive plan that has been highly contested in recent months.
Market-Octavia: Building a Vibrant Hub
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| Courtesy Stanley Saitowitz / Natoma Architects, Inc. |
For several years, the City of San Francisco has worked to develop the Market & Octavia Neighborhood Plan, studying neighborhoods centered on the pivotal intersection of Market and Octavia, bookended by Church Street on the west and Van Ness Avenue on the east. The plan was one part of the Better Neighborhoods 2002 effort — a sadly ironic name, because a mere 365 days is nowhere near sufficient to start and finish such a large-scale planning process, particularly in San Francisco. In some areas covered by the Market-Octavia plan, one has the impression of being in an unclassifiable neighborhood that is nonetheless quite close to favorite, well-established locales. The plan encompasses an area historically known as “the Hub”, so named for the Muni turnaround located there, and the neighborhoods contained within the plan area continue to evolve and come into their own, coining names like Deco Ghetto to reflect both an emerging identity and broader acknowledgment of that identity. Other parts of the plan area, including Hayes Valley, already enjoy established commercial districts but have been given a new chance to blossom since the retreat of the Central Freeway to the south side of Market Street.
It is also in this area that the slanted South of Market street grid curves and reorients into an arrangement that reflects the cardinal directions, adjusting to form the Mission/Castro grid. This is a departure from the pattern firmly established all the way from the Ferry Building, resulting in a suspension of the security resting in the predictable pattern of downtown streets. But some clever planning could take advantage of this insecurity and transform it into a distinctly urban sort of excitement, in which even the unsuspecting pedestrian would be smoothly guided by intuitively navigable streets designed for humans, rather than for the sole function of moving automobiles efficiently.
Market-Octavia is exactly the plan that aims to knit these disconnected neighborhoods together into a more unified and walkable set of districts that San Francisco could rightly be proud to call its own. The plan reflects thoughtful cooperation between community members and city planners. This vision was not forcefully hoisted upon neighborhood residents; rather, the goal was to achieve a consensus. It simultaneously blends a respect for the eminently livable residential scale of San Francisco’s most beloved neighborhoods, while advocating for a forward-thinking vision of elegant density graced by moving examples of contemporary design, like the Octavia Gateway pictured above — a building that provides a splendid answer to the problem posed by the narrow, awkward parcel of land on which it would sit, at the northeast corner of Market and Octavia.
The Final Push for “Yes on A, No on H”
UPDATE (November 6, 2007): Early absentee ballot results show that yes/no votes for Prop A are essentially tied, with “yes” votes in the very slight lead. In the meantime, “no” votes for Prop H have a substantial edge so far, roughly 58% no to 42% yes. This is an encouraging start at least on the Prop H end, but we’ll have more on this later, since election results won’t be finalized until near Thanksgiving.
—Original Post—
The “Yes on A, No on H” campaign for “Transit, not Traffic” is making a final effort in these last few days leading up to the election. Prop A will jumpstart the process to reform some of the fundamental difficulties underlying Muni’s resistance to improvement in recent years. Prop H, on the other hand, will only move us closer to becoming “Los Angeles del Norte”: a haven for congestion, downtown parking garages, and more pollution. I’ve already written about Prop A and Prop H several times before. Regular readers already know my position, but any new readers are encouraged to click through those links for greater detail.
All readers are strongly encouraged to volunteer this weekend for the final push to reach San Francisco voters about the message underlying the “Yes on A, No on H” campaign. This is a low turnout election year, so if we all step in and contribute just a few hours of our time — well, a dozen people here, a dozen people there, and before you know it, we’ll have reached a substantial number of people. Prop H is misleadingly cast to appeal to your average San Francisco driver, but I have a hunch that many San Franciscans would be horrified at the some of the changes Prop H could enact, if only someone would tell them. This is our last chance to do precisely that.
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!
Vote For Transit, Not Traffic
San Francisco voters this election are faced with a key choice that will have very significant effects on the city’s future. On the one hand, voters will be asked to consider Proposition A, which would reform Muni and address many issues that are fundamental to operational difficulties that Muni has faced in the past decade. On the other hand, they will also be asked to consider Proposition H, which would require, among other things, that a substantial amount of new parking be added to the city.
Proposition H, pet project of billionaire and heavy Republican-contributor Don Fisher, is a confusing, purposely misleading, 60-odd page mess of a document that singlehandedly undermines and reverses the city’s transit-first policy, which has been a fundamental keystone in city planning for years now. Supporters like to cast Prop H as being a very reasonable measure, arguing that San Francisco needs more parking. It has gone by names such as “Parking for Neighborhoods” and “Regulating Parking Spaces”, but these names hide some of the most dangerous and atrocious loopholes of this proposition. Despite the name “Parking for Neighborhoods”, Prop H would require a massive increase in downtown parking and would actually decrease public street parking in the neighborhoods.
