Category: Transportation

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SFMTA Gives Updates on Subway, JFK, Transit Lanes

By Benjamin Schneider : sfweekly – excerpt

Major changes are headed for California, Lombard, and Park Presidio, while car-free JFK and the Great Highway are slated for extensive study.

How was your 4/20? Hopefully, you didn’t spend it the way the SFMTA Board of Directors did, in a meeting that stretched nearly to the 8-hour mark.

Of course, some things do require a great deal of planning, and this past Tuesday, the SFMTA staff provided the board with updates on transit service, presented plans for new transit-only lanes and “high occupancy vehicle” lanes on some of the city’s busiest streets, and provided a glimpse of their future plans…

Car-Free Streets

In recent weeks, there’s been a whole lot of drama surrounding the question of whether to keep JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park car-free in perpetuity. Supervisor Shamann Walton has described the car-free stretch of road as “recreational redlining,” making the park inaccessible to his Bayview-Hunters Point constituents arriving at the park by car. The De Young Museum has also been lobbying to bring cars back to JFK, arguing that it prevents visitors from accessing the museum. The nearby Academy of Sciences has been more equivocal, saying they support a “thoughtful planning process” before a decision is made on a permanent closure to cars.(more)

Not sure how much the people in San Francisco are willing to put up with, but it looks like SFMTA and SFCTA are going to continue to push drivers out of town, as they are doing all they can to close the streets to cars. Not sure how much longer the majority of the city voters will continue to support the financial demands of the those entities either, but, there is a plan to protest the closure of the Great Highway May 1 at noon. Corner of Lincoln and Great Highway.

If you can, and you care about the way the SFMTA and SFCTA have been managing the streets, you should show up with a personal sign that describes your case for re-opening the Great Highway and the many other streets that have been closed.
Petitions: https://www.discoveryink.net/wp/petitions/
Protests: https://www.discoveryink.net/wp/actions/

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Proposal for streets to produce solar power

Today, solar panels are capable of supporting the weight of a car or truck weighing 250,000 lbs..  The panels can charge cars while driving and can keep roads free of snow in colder climates.  At a time when San Francisco’s  traffic is less than usual, this could be an ideal time to install some Solar Roadways as a pilot project.
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Golden Gate Park’s main drag has been closed to cars during the pandemic. The fight over its future is heating up

By Heather Knight : sfchronicle – excerpt

San Francisco’s leaders love arguing vociferously over pretty minor issues, but 54 years of fighting over how often cars should be restricted from one stretch of one road in one park must be some kind of record.

John F. Kennedy Drive in Golden Gate Park first went car-free — the eastern stretch of it, anyway — on Sundays in 1967. Supporters have wanted the closure expanded ever since and did get some Saturdays added to the mix, but they have repeatedly run into arguments from museum officials and others that a full closure would prevent people in cars from reaching their destinations.

Finally, the city closed JFK Drive to cars every day during the pandemic, a silver lining in a miserable year. In a city coping with dozens of traffic deaths annually and in a world facing a major climate crisis, keeping it that way permanently seems like a very tiny, very needed solution…
But the fight has taken a surprising and heated turn with Supervisors Shamann Walton and Ahsha Safaí recently tweeting simultaneously that they want JFK Drive to reopen to vehicles now that the pandemic is subsiding. They argued that people of color can’t access the park because of the closure, and Walton, in an ensuing editorial, called car-free JFK Drive elitist, segregationist and an example of “recreational redlining.”…(more)
There are hundreds of miles of bike paths and pedestrians paths in the park where cars do not drive. The roads are for the cars. The park is a family place for groups to visit and cars are the way most groups travel, especially now, when hate crimes are prevalent.
People who do not drive should not design streets for cars. Their “calming efforts” are creating angry drivers and angry drivers are not safe drivers. They angry and confused. If there is an uptick in accidents, that is an indication that the pilot projects are flawed.
My personal rant for the week: When SFMTA gets around to figuring out how to run a Muni system that does not involve bunching 5 Muni 22’s along a 3rd street lightrail served street, we may expect them to start figuring out how to return service that they removed to serve the Chase Center.
Log in and comment or write a letter to the editor if you feel strongly about this. Or, call or comment on one of the many “live” meetings that will not doubt be reviewing this for a while. Not keeping up the Cancalendar lately, but, links to some of the meeting agendas are here: https://cancalendar.wordpress.com/agendas/
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Transit advocates grill nominee Manny Yekutiel on his vision for the SFMTA

by Clara-Sophia Daly : missionlocal – excerpt

‘Class should not be a barrier to getting around the city.’

Manny Yekutiel, Mayor London Breed’s nominee to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) Board, spent close to two hours Thursday evening telling community members and advocacy groups that his priority would be equity — in both access to transportation and within the agency.

“You have to get your own house in order, before you can tell others to get their house in order,” he said, seemingly alluding to the lawsuit Black employees filed Wednesday against the city, and acknowledging that “there is a problem with racial discrimination within SFMTA.”…

“I want to make it easier for small business owners who are disproportionately represented by people of color and immigrants, and see a better relationship with SFMTA and small business owners,” he said…

He hopes to continue to support small businesses on the SFMTA board, especially on Mission Street, where he said that the red transit-only lanes have made it challenging for some businesses. “It is possible we could take another look at forced right turns and think about how we can encourage more business on Mission Street, or think about eliminating or reducing certain registration fees for business owners.” … (more)

Manny offers a refreshing change of view on transportation as seen through the eyes of a small businessman and he is not afraid to speak out. If the board does not eat him alive, he may be able to bring some new ideas to the SFMTA. They certainly need some.

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State Legislature Continues Its Assault On Local Zoning Decisions

By Edward Ring : californiaglobe – excerpt

YIMBYs support legislation that mandates high density

With the introduction of the latest housing density mandate, AB 725 in the California state legislature, the battle between state control and local control in California intensifies. At the same time, the pandemic crisis and its economic consequences add additional complexity to an already complex issue.

The debate over California’s housing policies offers an unusual combination: vehement disagreement between two bitterly opposed groups, yet within both groups are factions holding thoroughly divergent political ideologies.

This probably should come as no surprise. California’s housing crisis, and the policies that created it, incorporate big, challenging issues: income inequality, how to treat the homeless, environmental protection, public finance. Libertarians and leftists, along with Republicans and Democrats, are lining up on both sides of the debate, confounding easy categorization…

Some of the bills that Livable California have opposed must be seen to be believed. AB 3173 (still active) provides incentives for developers to build 80 square foot “micro-units” – at least that’s a bit larger than the 70 square feet that the American Correctional Association recommends as the minimum size for a prison cell! SB 902 automatically up-zones single family areas to six units or more per parcel. AB 1279 designates “opportunity areas” where housing could be up-zoned to high rises accommodating as many as 120 units per half-acre….

The uncomfortable truth is that years of neglected infrastructure, defacto rationing, and urban containment legislation have already taken away much of the local control that would have allowed Californians to expand their cities and towns, and keep housing affordable.

Livable California, a genuine grassroots movement, has the potential to reverse this trend. If successful, they may eventually alter the policy driven economic conditions that prohibit lasting solutions.  The YIMBY movement, on the other hand, funded by billionaires, will never solve California’s housing crisis, because they aren’t questioning the doctrine of densification. But so what? Their donors will see their real estate portfolio investments soar into bubbleland, as they virtue signal all the way to the bank…(more)

COVID-19 has turned the tide against density in a way no one could have imagined. The media has taken a new view of the negative impacts of density that many have warned about as we see, first hand, how dangerous urban lifestyles can be. No where has the virus spread more rapidly than in large urban centers with major public transit networks that force close contact with anonymous strangers and long commutes. Transit directors know they cannot continue this way and it is time for the all city officials to get the same message that cities have to change if they are to survive.