“Supervisor Avalos Moves to Regulate Private Shuttle Stops
San Francisco, CA – Today San Francisco Supervisor John Avalos requested that the City Attorney draft legislation to create a permit process to regulate shuttle stops for private employer shuttles in San Francisco.
The number of private shuttles on San Francisco streets has increased dramatically in recent years. The San Francisco Transportation Authority reports that there are approximately 36,000 one-way trips per day taken on private shuttles. These shuttles stop at over 200 different locations in the City. There are currently no regulations governing the locations of these shuttle stops. The majority of these stops are using Muni curb zones, which is currently illegal and impacts Muni service.
“I appreciate how private shuttles help reduce congestion and greenhouse gas emissions,” Supervisor Avalos said, “but their rapid growth makes it clear that we need sensible City policy to prevent this from growing into an unregulated Wild West era of shuttles competing with Muni for curb space.”
As a member of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s Mobile Source Committee, Supervisor Avalos recognizes that private shuttles are becoming an important part of the City’s transportation and environmental policies.
Despite their benefits, private shuttles present challenges that the City must manage. In addition to delaying Muni service, these shuttles increase the wear and tear on City streets and impact neighborhood’s quality of life. As chair of the Public Safety Committee Supervisor Avalos says, “I recognize the need to address the safety hazards posed by large, double-decker shuttle buses navigating narrow and hilly City streets.” Less direct impacts, such as the dramatic increase in housing costs near shuttle stops, also warrant study.
Supervisor Avalos is encouraged by the work of the Transportation Authority’s San Francisco Integrated Transportation Demand Management (TDM) Partnership Project in coordination with the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA), the Planning Department, the Department of the Environment, and the shuttle operators. He looks forward to working with all of these groups to develop a comprehensive City policy to foster additional growth in private shuttles while minimizing their adverse impacts.”
Now here’s how we handled things a half decade back, or at least here’s how Supervisor Bevan Dufty handled the NIMBYs of Noe Valley back in 2007. (I think he was holding a photo of a Google Bus but I never saw the photo any closer.)
No no, I can see how Bill Clinton benefits and I can see how the people running BAAQMD benefit and I can see how troubled PG&E or Chevron (or whomever the sponsors turn out to be) would benefit, but is this really such a no-brainer good idea?
(And isn’t former president Bill Clinton still on double secret probation for his relatively recent behavior?)
I guess they have the money now and they’re working on figuring out who’s going to run the thing.
Appears as if the SFMTA has given up on a giant Parisian Velib-style program with 5000 bikes strewn all over town – they’re starting small. Regardless, some of this free advice still applies.
The deets:
“…the pilot service area will be centered in San Francisco’s employment- and transit-rich Downtown/SOMA corridor between the Financial District, Market Street and the Transbay and Caltrain terminals. This area is notably flat, has the densest bikeway network coverage in San Francisco and enjoys the highest levels of cycling, yet those who commute by transit from cities to the east and south encounter difficulties bringing a bicycle with them on BART or Caltrain.”
“Heath Maddox, senior planner for the Livable Streets Subdivision of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), says the defining characteristics of the service they’ve outlined in an RFP draft is that the bike system be solar-powered with no need for external AC power and no requirement for excavation that would turn the installation process into a construction project.”
Remember, sharing is caring.
All the deets:
“The map of the pilot service area presents northeast San Francisco. The highlighted area in the map is the bicycle sharing pilot service area bound by South Van Ness Avenue and the Ferry Terminal along Market Street. To the north, the service area boundary includes the Federal Building at Turk Street, Union Square at Post Street, the Broadway and Columbus Avenue intersection, and The Embarcadero at Sansome Street. To the south, the highlighted service area includes the Embarcadero to Mission Bay, Townsend Street and Concourse Exhibition Center.”
Bike sharing is coming to San Francisco! A regional pilot program led by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) in partnership with the SFMTA will bring approximately 50bike share stations and 500 bikes to San Francisco’s downtown core beginning in spring 2012. The SFMTA is working with a regional team to implement this pilot along the Caltrain corridor in San Francisco, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City and San Jose and shown in this Regional Bike Sharing System map. The project is funded through a combination of local, regional and federal grants with major funding coming from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Innovative Bay Area Climate Initiatives Grant Program (BACI).
What is bike sharing?
Similar to car sharing, bicycle sharing is a term used to describe a membership-based system of short-term bicycle rental. Members can check a bicycle out from a network of automated bicycle stations, ride to their destination, and return the bicycle to a different station. Bicycle sharing is enjoying a global explosion in growth with the development of purpose-built bicycles and stations that employ high tech features like smartcards, solar power, and wireless internet and GPS technologies.
Who is involved with launching the San Francisco bike sharing system?
The BAAQMD is the overall regional project lead, coordinating the planning and implementation efforts of the local partners: the City and County of San Francisco, the Cities of San Jose, Mountain View and Palo Alto in Santa Clara County and the City of Redwood City in San Mateo County. The SFMTA is leading the project in San Francisco, and we are working in cooperation with our City and County partners, including the Planning Department, Department of Public Works, San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and the Port of San Francisco. The regional partners will be selecting a contractor in fall 2011 to install, operate, and manage the system.
Where will bike sharing be located in San Francisco?
As the San Francisco Bicycle Sharing Pilot Service Area map (PDF) presents, in San Francisco, the pilot service area will be centered in San Francisco’s employment- and transit-rich Downtown/SOMA corridor between the Financial District, Market Street and the Transbay and Caltrain terminals. This area is notably flat, has the densest bikeway network coverage in San Francisco and enjoys the highest levels of cycling, yet those who commute by transit from cities to the east and south encounter difficulties bringing a bicycle with them on BART or Caltrain. Much of San Francisco’s densely urbanized northeastern quadrant is similarly well-suited to bicycle sharing.
When will bike sharing launch in San Francisco?
The regional partners will be selecting a vendor to install, operate, and manage the bike sharing system in 2011 with the goal of a system launch in Spring/Summer 2012!
Further Information
If you have any questions, comments or feedback about bike sharing, contact the SFMTA at sustainable.streets@sfmta.com.
Now, the military, well, it might be a while afore the U.S. Navy gets aboard the whole shore-side power movement. Like, when the USS Bunker Hill visited not too long ago, power for the vessel came 100% from an internal Westinghouse geared steam turbine. Chugga chugga chugga on through the night, powering some of the 250 X-Boxes on board. Oh well.
Click to expand
Anyway, all the deets of today’s news:
MAYOR NEWSOM AND THE PORT OF SAN FRANCISCO INAUGURATE CRUISE SHIP USING SHORESIDE POWER - San Francisco is first California city where cruise ships can plug in for clean power
San Francisco, CA— Mayor Gavin Newsom and the Port of San Francisco today joined Princess Cruises and state and federal agency partners to officially inaugurate shoreside power at Pier 27, allowing Island Princess to shut down her engines and receive clean power from the City’s electrical grid. The Port of San Francisco became the first California port, and one of only a handful of ports in the world, to provide shoreside electrical power for cruise ships while at berth.
“Once again we are demonstrating that doing right by the environment doesn’t come at the expense of jobs and economic growth,” said Mayor Newsom. “With shoreside power, we can welcome a growing number of cruise ships and the tourist dollars they bring to San Francisco while protecting the Bay and our local air quality.”
Shoreside power results in zero air emissions while a ship is connected in port. This new system is not only the first in the state, but just the fourth in the world. The other cruise ports with shoreside power are Juneau (Alaska), Seattle (Washington), and Vancouver (Canada). The ports of Los Angeles and San Diego also plan to implement this system.
Island Princess is operated by Princess Cruises, who developed the shore power technology in Juneau in 2001. It expanded to Seattle in 2005 and Vancouver in 2009. Currently nine of the line’s ships are outfitted to plug into a shoreside power source.
Put them all together and you get ABAGMTCBAAQMDBCDC! (Or OneBayArea.org, take your pick.)
All the deets:
Region Celebrates Earth Day With Launch of ‘One Bay Area’ Collaborative Effort at ABAG General Assembly and Summit
Regional Agencies and Local Governments Join Together to Chart Course to Meet Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets
OAKLAND, Calif., April 22 — Four Bay Area regional agencies today are launching a major outreach initiative, One Bay Area, at a regional assembly bringing together 350 Bay Area city and county elected officials, regional leaders and community stakeholders at the Oakland Marriott City Center. The regional agency partners — the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD) and the Bay Conservation and Development Commission (BCDC) — are coming together in a joint General Assembly and summit to mark the beginning of development of the SB 375 Sustainable Communities Strategy for the Bay Area. SB 375 refers to landmark legislation (authored by Daryl Steinberg and passed by the California Legislature in 2008) requiring regions in California to develop strategies for combating climate change and promoting sustainable communities.
“One Bay Area” harnesses the resources of regional agencies, local governments, county congestion management agencies, local planning and public works directors, city and county managers, public transit agencies, community members and stakeholder groups. These agencies must work together to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced by cars and light trucks in the region over the next 10-25 years. These efforts will be showcased on a new website launched today, located at www.OneBayArea.org.
“One Bay Area underscores the simple and fragile fact that there is only one Bay Area to pass on to our children and grandchildren,” said Scott Haggerty, chair of MTC and Alameda County supervisor, who will be one of the speakers at the Summit.
Can the BAAQMD pull this off and have a new law operational by July 1, 2008? Signs point to NO. But they’ll give it a shot anyway.
Of course you yourself are a greenhouse gas emitter because you expell carbon dioxide with every move you make, every breath you take. What if you were charged at the same rate as proposed – how much would you get charged (or taxed, it’s all the same) per year?
