If you have been reading this website for awhile, you might remember that a few years ago I used to maintain a fairly active Flickr account used in conjunction with the blog, uploading renderings and construction progress photos.  That Flickr account has been sitting dormant for the past few years, but the time has come to revive it.  My hope is to update it regularly, and while some photos will be connected to articles here, others will be posted there independently.  Click here to see the photostream, and for easy future access, a Flickr link has been added to the sidebar.

Since last summer I have dropped by the Transbay site to photograph various stages in the demolition of the old Terminal.  On the Flickr account, I have now uploaded a couple hundred Transbay-related photos, including one set of photos for the East Loop and temporary terminal, and another set of photos for the demolition of the main building.  The full Transbay Terminal collection includes photos from the final operating days of the Terminal and the groundbreaking ceremony, which were posted here last year in the form of slideshows.  There is also a set for the recently-opened West Dublin/Pleasanton BART station.  Finally, I posted urbanist-oriented photos from two recent visits to New York.

There should be more substantive content here next week, but in the meantime, I hope you enjoy these photo sets.

350 Mission Street. Courtesy of GLL Development and Mangement, Inc.

350 Mission Street is a 375-foot proposed office tower to be built at the corner of Mission and Fremont Streets in downtown San Francisco.  The site, which currently has a low-rise building occupied by Heald College, is catty-corner to the large construction site that will become the Transbay Transit Center.

Current building at 350 Mission project site.

350 Mission is a solid infill project in the growing canyon of high-rises along Mission Street.  It’s clearly a better use of space than current conditions, but as far as shaping the city skyline is concerned, it’s not a game-changer.  The tower will be dwarfed even by existing neighbors at 50 Fremont and the Millennium — not to mention a future neighbor, the Transbay tower, which will be the city’s tallest.  Given the project’s proximity to the Transit Center and its prime location, it’s hard not to be disappointed with the building height, particularly after the initial mention of an 850-foot tower.  But for an office building, the small project site (about 19,000 square feet) is a real constraint, and adding another elevator bank in a taller building would have reduced the amount of space that could be leased.

Besides, just because a tower is relatively short does not mean it is doomed to lack interesting design and sustainability features.  I will reserve judgment on the moving benches until actually seeing them, but if the constructed building looks like the renderings, it will be a worthy addition to this intersection in spite of its height. The tower’s interaction with the street at ground level is also promising, including eatery space and a lobby opening onto the corner of Mission and Fremont, accentuated by ampitheater-style seating.  The first floor of offices, located above the ground floor and mezzanine, is designed to be about 50 feet above grade, and the lobby’s spacious indoor gathering area will be a nice complement to the public space that will be built across the intersection at the Transit Center.

The owners of 50 Beale Street appealed the Planning Commission’s approval of 350 Mission on CEQA grounds, but the appeal really raised design issues that were framed in terms of CEQA catchphrases.  50 Beale is a 24-story office building located adjacent to the proposed tower and is probably quite sorry to lose its views to the west over the low-rise building that now occupies the 350 Mission site.  To create a CEQA argument, 50 Beale objected to the mechanical element at 350 Mission, which would extend to only about twelve feet from the 50 Beale building.  Even though tower separation was the real sticking point, the mechanical element served as a target on which to pin particular physical impacts like noise and air quality.  50 Beale also argued that the EIR should have analyzed a taller code-compliant alternative.  That’s right: It’s another round of “you should have picked my favorite alternative.”  But CEQA does not demand that an EIR analyze everyone’s favorite alternatives — only that it examine a reasonable range of alternatives that lessen a proposed project’s impacts.  More to the point, there is nothing especially magical about a code-compliant alternative in the abstract, unless not complying with the code exacerbates or introduces additional physical impacts that could be lessened or avoided by complying.  The non-compliant aspects of 350 Mission (bulk and setback) were not the source of the tower’s significant impacts.  The EIR actually did analyze a code-compliant alternative and determined that complying with the code would not lessen these already less-than-significant impacts.  This is not all that unexpected given the project’s nature and physical setting, and it makes this a less compelling alternative from a CEQA perspective.

The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to certify the EIR, so the tower will move forward.

Originally introduced by Supervisor Daly, this ordinance is now sponsored by his successor in District 6, Supervisor Kim.  The zoning districts under consideration range considerably in character and include residential and industrial pockets.  The districts are colored various shades of yellow and orange in the maps below.  Between 4th and 8th Streets, there are several residential enclaves (RED) that are built on an intimate scale, largely lining the side streets that parse the South of Market superblocks. The SLR (service/light industrial/residential) and RSD (residential/services) districts currently feature a mix of housing and other uses but can accommodate infill housing:

South of Market zoning. Courtesy of SF Planning Department.

Moving toward The Embarcadero, service/light industrial (SLI) and service/secondary office (SSO) districts fill in the area between Harrison Street and Mission Bay.  They are characterized by commercial, light industrial, manufacturing and certain office uses:

South of Market zoning. Courtesy of SF Planning Department.

Residential developments in these South of Market mixed use districts are generally now required to provide one parking spot per dwelling unit, with square footage based requirements for other uses.  The legislation proposes to replace these old controls with new ones that more closely mirror those that apply to adjacent blocks under the Eastern Neighborhoods plan.  Minimum off-street residential parking requirements would be eliminated, and a maximum of 0.75 off-street parking spaces per dwelling unit would be put in place.  For office uses, the legislation proposes to import the C-3 (downtown) office parking cap: 7 percent of gross floor area.  Parking requirements for M-1 (light industrial) and C-M (heavy commercial) districts would be similarly revised.

The ordinance also proposes to amend parking controls for two important blocks in Mission Bay that are not under the purview of redevelopment: Block 8701, which is currently occupied by the Caltrain depot, and Block 8719, the Seawall Lot 337 development site.  For both Mission Bay blocks, the legislation proposes to adopt the more lenient Ocean Avenue NCT residential parking standard (a maximum of one spot per dwelling unit), along with the C-3 parking cap for office space.

Mission Bay zoning. Courtesy of SF Planning Department.

Finally, the ordinance includes an important amendment to how parking would be priced in these zoning districts.  Section 155(g) of the Planning Code requires that downtown parking garages establish a particular fee structure designed to encourage turnover and discourage commuting by automobile (it includes an exception for hotel and residential parking garages).  This fee structure currently applies only to C-3 districts, but the legislation proposes to extend it to several other zoning districts in Mission Bay and South of Market.

Although considerable growth is anticipated for these mixed use districts, it is worth mentioning that the legislation will likely not be the final word on the matter despite its compatibility with the principle of concentrating growth in this area.  Growth may be on the way: But in part because the nature of that growth has not yet been well-defined, other planning efforts — including for SWL 337, the railyards, and Western SoMa — will likely replace this legislation in the future.  In addition, the 4th Street/Central Subway corridor is slated for higher density, and a plan for that corridor would address the SLI districts lining both sides of 4th Street north of the Caltrain depot.  Until these efforts come to fruition, however, the ordinance offers a good opportunity to clean up South of Market parking controls, while implementing sound principles that in any case ought to be incorporated in some form into those future plans.

Top: 3rd St. and Mission St., site of the new bus stop, courtesy of Google. Bottom: map courtesy of SFMTA, via SF Appeal.

Yesterday, the Appeal published a weekend Muni update mentioning a permanent bus stop relocation that will go into effect starting this weekend.  The update is ostensibly sourced from the SFMTA, although the agency’s official transit updates page lacks any mention of this particular item.  The bus stop at issue — served by the 8X, 30, and 45 routes bound for Chinatown — is the 3rd/Market stop, located on 3rd just south of Market, between Stevenson and Jessie.  Although the bus stop is heavily used — it’s about as busy as an average BART station — stop relocation and associated traffic changes were slipped into the consent calendar of an MTA meeting about one year ago, where it was given only cursory consideration by the MTA Board.

The MTA plans to make the following changes.  The bus stop will be moved south of its current location, to the north corner of 3rd and Mission streets; and the lanes of 3rd between Market and Mission will be restriped.  A new right-turn lane will be established on 3rd just south of Market, marking where motorists should turn eastbound onto Market.  The transit-only zone north of the relocated bus stop will be eliminated — so buses departing from the new 3rd/Mission stop would have to merge into the next lane over.  That lane will be widened, giving buses more room to maneuver when 3rd Street angles northward toward Kearny.

The rationale for this new layout is to minimize collisions between cars and buses on 3rd, just south of the intersection with Market Street.  The redesign also benefits motorists to the extent it improves the flow of traffic on 3rd, but there are impacts to transit riders.  There is of course the issue of removing a necessary, albeit unenforced, transit-only lane on this heavily trafficked thoroughfare.  But there is also the issue of shifting the bus stop south, which takes what is currently a very useful bus stop and makes it less useful.

Third/Market is a major transfer point, as many riders either disembark at this stop to transfer to one of the many Market Street lines, or they board here to transfer to a Chinatown line.  MTA data indicates the relative popularity of 3rd/Market and adjacent stops:

The new 3rd/Mission stop would likely be busier than 3rd/Howard, and some riders will surely find the new 3rd/Mission stop to be more convenient.  All the same, the relocated stop lacks the same wealth of immediate transfer opportunities that are available at Market Street, and it seems strange on its face to move a stop that riders clearly find tremendously convenient, based on the data.

The Kearny/Geary stop is also very convenient to those transfer opportunities, and it basically functions as a second Market Street stop.  Riders boarding the Chinatown buses have naturally distributed themselves between the 3rd/Market and Kearny/Geary bus stops — and even with that redundancy, both stops can become quite crowded.  However, once the 3rd/Market stop is relocated, Kearny/Geary will be the only stop on the Chinatown line immediately convenient to Market Street.  The data shows that about 10,000 riders board or disembark at these stops each day.  That’s serious passenger volume for just one bus stop — and while it’s true that not every single 3rd/Market rider will elect to switch to the Kearny/Geary stop, many or most likely will.  Removing the two-stop redundancy could lead to further overcrowding and extended dwell at the Kearny/Geary stop, particularly at peak travel times.

If the issue really is primarily about safety and minimizing collisions between cars and buses at the intersection, then isn’t the better solution here not to create a wider mixed-flow lane, but to (1) maintain and actually enforce the transit-only lane, for a change, and (2) restrict right turns?  Perhaps the primary objective of the SFCTA’s Better Market Street plan is to remove at least some cars from inner Market, thereby improving the performance of surface transit.  Just how is that objective furthered by adding a dedicated right-turn lane on 3rd?  In fact, is it not an express goal of the Better Market Street plan to make this very route — 3rd Street to Kearny — a straight cross-through street, by prohibiting right turns from 3rd onto Market?  So why should we now invite motorists to make that very turn?

SFMTA, allow me to introduce you to the SFCTA.  You may want to get acquainted — or at least each acknowledge that the other exists.

News media writeups: KTVU, ABC, CBS, Examiner, and SF Gate blog posts here and here.

In the early morning hours of August 7, a relatively small but devoted group of transit advocates gathered at First and Mission to participate in the historic final closure of the Transbay Terminal.  We were joined by many others — including AC Transit Director Chris Peeples, TJPA Executive Director Maria Ayerdi-Kaplan, as well as photographers and terminal transition staff who were documenting the event.  An old GM coach, Muni #3287, was parked in the front driveway and attracted attention at the Terminal’s entryway.  Meanwhile, on the bus deck, the stars of the night were the buses assembled for AC Transit’s last three departures (on the F, NL, and O lines) after midnight.

A smaller group of us had the privilege of riding the final transit trip ever to depart from the Terminal, in its more than seventy years of history as a transit hub.  The O line to Alameda was scheduled to depart at 12:15, but didn’t actually make its way toward the Bay Bridge until shortly after 12:20.  We can cut it some slack, though — the delay provided a good opportunity to crack open a bottle of champagne, which made a few rounds through the bus.

Here are some photos to recognize the first major milestone in the construction of the new Transit Center.  (I’m no photographer, least of all at nighttime, so please pardon the glare from lights.)  This short slideshow includes photos of AC Transit and Muni buses at the Terminal, as well as the final bus ride on the O line.  There is also one photo of the lucky operator who got to drive that bus.

The day has finally arrived.  The Transbay Terminal — in operation since January 15, 1939, first as a rail hub, and then as a bus station since 1959 — will close permanently tonight, in preparation for its upcoming demolition. The Terminal will close shortly after midnight, following a few final AC Transit runs.  After several decades of transit service, the very last run from the Terminal will be the O line, scheduled for 12:15 a.m.  For the next seven or so years, the extensive suite of regional and Muni bus operations that have served Transbay will be relocated to tighter quarters at the Temporary Terminal, which is located in the block bounded by Howard, Main, Folsom, and Beale streets.  If you haven’t already done so, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the new layout of bus stops.

You could call the Transbay Terminal dirty, dingy, dismal, dreary, decaying, decrepit, dilapidated — and you’d be right, as this utilitarian Timothy Pflueger structure has not aged gracefully, nor has it been maintained properly.  Still, it’s a part of the Bay Area’s history, and the Terminal, with its elevated loops hovering above downtown, remain the most visible reminder of a day in the not-too-distant past when rail operated on the lower deck of the Bay Bridge. But rail has been banished from the Bay Bridge since 1958, and a more appropriate structure to replace the Transbay Terminal is overdue.  It will be exciting to see a new multimodal transit hub rise on this site over the next several years.  Eventually, the Transbay Transit Center and the nearby high-rise neighborhood will transform what is now a littered, shadowed corner of downtown into a vibrant focal point, while providing downtown San Francisco with new, well-designed public spaces.

I had been hoping to post some new relevant content here on the blog before the August 7 closure date.  But this summer has been especially hectic for me — hence the long lapses in posting — and the opportunity slipped by.  All in due course; for now, I leave you with this photo slideshow of the Transbay Terminal and its immediate surroundings.

Install photovoltaic capacity to generate “green” hydrogen: Install multiple PV modules at its Central Maintenance Facility in Hayward. Combined with AC Transit’s already-installed solar capacity, this solar installation will produce the renewable electricity equivalent to what will be required to produce 180 kg/day of “green” hydrogen.

Separately, the FTA also announced that the Central Subway has received a $9.9 million grant, which will the SFMTA will apply toward carrying out further design of the T-Third Street light rail extension from 4th & King, through South of Market to Chinatown. The federal government will ultimately supply roughly $950 million toward this project (about 60% of  the $1.57 billion that is now believed will be the total cost). To date, the Central Subway has received $66 million of federal New Starts funding.

Finally, no hard cash, but some good news, for the Transbay Transit Center. The most recent dispute between the TJPA and the CHSRA about where high-speed rail should terminate in San Francisco may have jeopardized our chance to secure a $400 million high-speed rail discretionary grant to build to the Transbay subway station box, but that is not the only piece of federal funding that the TJPA has sought. Since long before the stimulus plan, the TJPA planned to pursue a Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA) loan as one of many sources of money for the transit center. (The TIFIA loan is the same funding mechanism that BART will use so that it can build everyone’s favorite transit project, the Oakland Airport Connector. This recent post on the OAC is an illustrative cross-reference for those who delight in the minutiae of TIFIA.) Anyway, in October 2008, the TJPA applied for a $171 million TIFIA loan, which would cover a little over 14% of the capital costs for the first phase of this two-phase, $4.2 billion project. And just last week, the Credit Council unanimously recommended approval of the $171 million TIFIA loan. The Secretary of Transportation will produce a term sheet and loan agreement, which the TJPA Board is expected to approve this November.

So what’s the beef now? Rather than employ the downtown extension alignment and station location previously adopted by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority, the CHSRA would instead like to override the TJPA’s previous efforts and study alternative locations for the San Francisco terminus in its project-level EIR/EIS for the San Francisco-San Jose segment. In particular, the CHSRA has set its sight on another terminal to accommodate its exaggerated capacity requirements — the Beale Street terminal, situated parallel to Beale Street, and stretching roughly from Mission Street to Harrison Street. But this is an alternative that was resurrected from the dead. In the 1990s, a handful of potential Caltrain downtown extension alignments were considered. Most of those, including alignments leading to a Beale Street terminal, were rejected as undesirable or infeasible:

Rejected DTX alternative alignments. Courtesy of TJPA.

California has submitted project requests to the U.S. Department of Transportation, including a $400 million request that, if granted, would allow the Transbay Transit Center’s train box to be excavated sooner rather than later, using a “bottom up” construction approach. Transbay, by virtue of its completed environmental documents, is classified as a “ready-to-go” project, eligible for a Track 1 high-speed rail stimulus grant. In just a few weeks, the Federal Railroad Administration will announce the Track 1 projects that it has selected for grants.

On the surface, the CHSRA’s interest in the Beale Street alternative appears to reflect the simple desire to comply with a legal opinion it has obtained (endorsed by Gensler Architects), which stands for the proposition that Transbay will have too few platform tracks, and that the CHSRA is legally required to study the Beale Street alternative. But it does not seem coincidental that the agency’s temper — presumably largely fueled by, or embodied in, its ever-colorful former chairman, Quentin Kopp — flares up at the exact points in time when the TJPA competes with the CHSRA for access to new pots of funding that are being made available for high-speed rail. In November 2008, it was the Proposition 1A bond, and now, it’s the high-speed rail stimulus funding. Given that the FRA will announce its Track 1 selections in the next few weeks, it is perhaps the near-term implication of the legal opinion that explains why the CHSRA has resurrected the Beale Street terminal at this time.

Californians observing this process, as well as most government agencies, believe that the location of San Francisco’s rail terminal has been finalized. The DTX alignment adopted by the TJPA is, after all, long-standing, and it is supported by a Record of Decision from the Federal Transit Administration. But if the CHSRA can introduce a fog of uncertainty by evincing interest in (and carrying out subsequent environmental review of) the Beale Street terminal, then the Transbay Transit Center will lose its air of shovel-readiness and will no longer be a promising candidate for stimulus funds. What the FRA will see is that two key agencies, the TJPA and the CHSRA, cannot even agree on the answer to a simple question like where the shovels should begin digging. That strikes a chord of administrative dissonance, and it may leave the FRA with the impression that Transbay is not ready for prime time. Why, then, would the FRA dignify it with a handsome $400 million award? California’s HSR project has a high profile and is poised to become a national model. If Transbay were not awarded a grant, then surely, given the importance of California HSR, other components of California’s application falling more directly under the CHSRA’s purview would be in a better position to receive funding instead.

And for how much longer must we endure Quentin Kopp’s anti-Transbay/DTX agenda? California voters, when passing Proposition 1A in November 2008, explicitly authorized a high-speed rail line whose northern terminus is the Transbay Transit Center. A Beale Street terminal might be near Transbay; but the length of its platforms would lie orthogonal to the length of the bus station, and it would not strictly be located in Transbay, as called for by voters. The CHSRA’s essentially obstructionist reopening of alternatives also demonstrates an utter lack of respect for a years-long land use planning effort in San Francisco. The Planning Department’s work to date strives to guide the city through the complex process of transforming uniquely valuable, downtown-adjacent former freeway parcels into a living, breathing neighborhood. But that process has operated under the assumption that a significant rail and bus transit hub would eventually be built at Transbay.

Let’s allow decade-old rejected alternatives to rest in peace. San Franciscans, and a majority of Californians, have supported a high-speed train project terminating at Transbay. I do not want to sweep under the carpet, so to speak, the Transit Center’s design flaws. Those are real, albeit distinct from the CHSRA’s pet complaints; and they would ideally be vigorously addressed, rather than weakly justified. But the CHSRA’s last-minute resurrection of Beale Street does a disservice to the high-speed train project it purports to manage. If you happen to be interested in maximizing our chance of securing $400 million of ARRA federal stimulus funds for the Transbay train box — to construct the station from the bottom-up, and to extend commuter and high-speed rail service downtown, preferably within our lifetimes — then it wouldn’t hurt to mention that to the Governor’s office, which will soon send a letter about California’s high-speed rail priorities to Secretary Ray LaHood.

In several places, the Workplan pledges its support of current efforts to plan and build mixed-use transit-oriented development throughout the region — to encourage transit use, decrease congestion, curb emissions, shorten commutes, and to ensure that there is sufficient housing at all income levels, as allocated by ABAG; major projects like Mission Bay and Bay Meadows were specifically highlighted. The Workplan also briefly discusses NSPs as a tool to stabilize areas hit especially hard by foreclosures. Meanwhile, the transportation section does not really contain any surprises. MTC’s efforts on the stimulus (which we discussed previously) are included in the Workplan, along with various pedestrian/streetscape Transportation Enhancements projects, and some HOV projects; also included are transportation improvements that upgrade trade links, e.g. Port of Oakland and the Capitol Corridor. In anticipation of the $8 billion of discretionary competitive grants set aside for national high-speed rail projects, the proposal includes $3.4 billion worth of projects that fall under the heading of Caltrain/high-speed rail prep, including: positive train control (due by 2015), electrification (which, after years of endless delay, is now declared to be of “highest importance”), grade separation at San Bruno Station, $500 million for redesign and expansion of San Jose Diridon Station, and $400 million for the train box at the Transbay Transit Center.

TTC cross-section; courtesy of TJPA (larger version here).

In related news, this week the Transbay Joint Powers Authority board is expected to approve a resolution that will include the below-grade levels in the detailed Design Development of Phase 1 of the Transit Center. This resolution, which will override TJPA’s previous “top down” strategy, advances design and construction of the train box and the support columns onto the Transit Center’s timeline (although the finishes, like the platforms and track, will be deferred to Phase 2). One stated reason for moving the train box forward is everyone’s favorite reason these days: using construction projects as opportunities to stimulate job creation during an economic downturn. As usual, though, the rationale really boils down to time and money, neither of which are in abundant supply. Although shifting the train box in to Phase 1 would require the additional $400 million upfront, the train box would at least be eligible for ARRA stimulus high-speed rail grant money. And the shift is estimated to save $100 million over the course of construction, speed up the construction schedule, and reduce disruptive impacts by avoiding excavation under an at least partly completed bus terminal. Focusing on this one design alternative (instead of carrying both forward) will save about four months and $12 million. Building the train box in Phase 1 will ease and improve waterproofing. It will also permit mechanical rooms, transformers, and other necessities to be located below grade, on the concourse mezzanine level, which leaves more space above ground for retail and circulation.