Posts Tagged ‘SFMTA’
Thursday, March 18th, 2010
Here’s the scene this morning at the official ceremony kicking off all the Divisadero Streetscape Improvements and the Cafe Mojo Parklet at 639 Divisadero betwixt Hayes and Grove.
BIKE NOPA has all the deets for the new parklet in front of popular Mojo Bicycle Cafe, where you are beseeched to “ride in – hang out – get your fix – ride on.”
Of course District 5 Supervisor Ross Mirkarimiwas there* – he was working the crowd and expressing his appreciation for improved bicycle and pedestrian safety on the Divisadero Corridor. He also pointed out the success of the nearby Divisadero Farmer’s Market, which is no longer seasonal. It’s open every Sunday from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM year-round these days.
Mayor Gavin Newsom addressing a large crowd on the tiny parklet:
Click to expand
And all the while, the honking yellow Hummer of Main Contractor Synergy Project Management was discretely parked across the street, as discretely as possible given that it’s a honking yellow Hummer:
I’m on the record as not being a big fan of all the changes, but oh well.
SocketSite has more info about Divis and Curbed SF has all the history, as you’d expect.
Brand new median trees and old-school streetlamps for as far as the eye can see:
These days, it’s Mojo a gogo. A fixie bike mounted outdoors as art:
Welcome to the New Divisidero.
*Wearing the same drip-dry suit he was wearing at the recent opening of the Hamilton Recreation Center and Pool.
All the deets, after the jump
(more…)
Tags: 19th avenue, 2009, 2010, 24th street, 639, American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, architecture, ARRA, Balboa Street, Berenio Lumber, bicycle, bike, Bison Innovative Products, board of supervisors, bulb out, cafe, cafe mojo, cars, ceremony, Cesar Chavez, cycklists, cyclists, debut, department of public works, director, district 5, district five, divisadero, Divisadero Great Streets Project, Divisadero Streetscape Improvement Project, dpw, Ed Reiskin, Feeney, Flora Grubb Nurseries, gavin newsom, geary, great streets, grove, hayes, hummer, Improvement, inc, kick off, kickoff, lamps, Leland Avenue, lights, Lower Polk Street, management, median, mojo, Mojo Bicycle Cafe, Muni, OEWD, Office of Economic and Workforce, park, parking, parklet, PAVEMENT TO PARKS, paving, program, project, refuge, repaved, repaving, Rg, RG-Architecture, ross mirkarimi, San Bruno Avenue, San Francisco, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, sewer, SFMTA, SFPUC, sidewalks, space, stimulus, street, streetlamps, streetlights, streetscape, Studio Upwell, Supervisor, synergy, Synergy Contractors, synergy project management, TLC, traffic, Transportation for Livable Communities, trees, valencia, van ness, Waller, wide, widen, widening
Posted in streets | 3 Comments »
Wednesday, March 17th, 2010
Things were worse back in aught-seven, back when drivers waiting to fill up at the always-cheap ARCO station on Fell Street in the EaPA would queue up in the bike lane. But it’s no picnic these days neither, as you can see in this shot from a few days ago:
Well, comes now award-winning Michael Helquist of BIKE NOPA to learn us about planned changes:
“‘We have a design hashed out to take out parking on the south side of Fell Street,’ James Shahamiri, MTA Assistant Traffic Engineer, told BIKE NOPA. The new design would designate the former parking spaces as a curbside queue for motorists awaiting entry to the gas station.”
(IMO, that’s a painfully obvious solution that any other town in ‘Merica would have implemented years ago when the issue first cropped up. But oh well.)
So, you see them cars parked on the left side? You know, the Porsche 944 (or 968?), the Saturn S-Series, and the Honda CR-V cute-ute SUV? They’re parked in spaces that could soon be the ARCO queue.
What’s that, NIMBY? Over your dead body you say? O.K., well, I think this cake is already baked, but maybe you’ll be able to hear more about all the deets at this meeting:
Thursday, March 18th
7:00 pm, visit with neighbors
7:30 pm, meeting begins
9:00 pm , meeting ends
Change is Good, huh?
Tags: 1775, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 76, arco, area, Assistant, association, automobiles, autos, bicycle, bike, BIKE NOPA, block, blocking, BP, cars, cyclists, divisadero, divisidero, EaPA, east of panhandle, engineer, fell, fulton, gas, gasloline, golden gate park, intersection, James Shahamiri, jannah, lane, Line, meeting, metropolitan transportation agency, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, michael helquist, mta, Muni, neighborhood, nimby, NOPA, nopna, north of panhandle, oak, panhandle, parking, queue, San Francisco, SF, sfist, SFMTA, Station, street, traffic, union, vehicles, wait, Waiting
Posted in bikes, cars | 8 Comments »
Tuesday, February 16th, 2010
Well the shovel-ready stimulus project on the Div Co (Divisidero Corridor) is nearing completion. Do you see the trees in the widened median and the old-tyme streetlight tops that go from the NoPA to the EaPA? Those are the bulk of the “improvements” that you’re going to notice.
I guess the perfectly fine old aluminum street lights became obsolete or something. And yes, that thing in the median does look like a tombstone. Chestnut Street, here we come:
Click to expand
Now here’s the beef – what they should have done is just taken out the medians entirely to allow for wider lanes. The problem is that they widened the medians and narrowed the traffic lanes to accommodate trees and shrubbery and nonfunctional whatnot.
Now do you see this cyclist? He’s passing by a truck that’s legally parked on the new Divisidero. Do you think that the slow lane he’s on is wide enough? Of course, arguably, it wasn’t wide enough before but now it’s worse. Why? Aesthetics, that’s why. The drivers in the fast lane need to be near median trees, apparently, they need to commune with nature at 25 per.
Oh, I hear you, “just take the lane,” right? Sometimes I do, effectively. And then sometimes I roll onto the newly-widened sidewalk for half a block or so, late at night when I can see that nobody’s using it. It’s a balance of hacking off the nonexistent peds versus the extant drivers.
(Maybe I’ll get a ticket from the busy SFPD someday, maybe. If I ever do, I’d then consider using Fillmore and McAllister as a substitute.)
Now, if you wanted real stimulus and actual improvements, here’s what you’d do. You’d have the workers take out the medians (the old narrow median was unnecessary as well) and move the light standards to the sidewalks, if that wouldn’t break the bank. Then you’d do a nice repaving, better than the job that’s being done now*, anyway. Then you’d take the rest of the money and give it in cash to the workers – tell them they need to spend $500 per day on whatever they want for themselves and that they need to bring back receipts as proof at the end of each “work” day. That’d be some local stimulus right there. The workers would be happier, and I would as well.
I realize that we’re talking in terms of, on average, just inches of width-surrendered-per-lane, just inches sacrificed on the Altar of Aesthetics. And I realize that Octavia Boulevard is a far bigger public policy failure.
Anyway, enjoy your so-called “improved” Divisadero, San Francisco.
*Are they done with that, by the way? Take a look at the macadam near the bulbouts at Divis and McAllister if you want – is that a job well done? I mean, is that quick fix a permanent fix with all the remaining grade changes? I mean, they’re going to end up being forced to do the job properly, right? [UPDATE: Turns out that they weren't finished just yet, good on you Synergy.]
Tags: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, area, ARRA, bicycles, bikes, cyclists, department of public works, divisadero, divisidero, dpw, EaPA, east of panhandle, great, Kris Opbroek, lanes, lights, Mayor's, median, mta, Municipal Transportation Agency, NOPA, north of panhandle, Office of Economic & Workforce Development, phase ii, project, Project Manager, San Francisco, SFMTA, sidewalks, streets, streetscape, TLC, Transportation for Livable Communities, western addition, widen
Posted in bikes | 2 Comments »
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010
Today’s groundbreaking for our new subway was quite the affair. The Central T will open for business sometime in 20xx – that’s pretty much an inevitability now.
Of course back in the day, we had naysayers. But they’ve given up. After all:
“‘This is not going to become the Big Dig.”
All right, I’ll bite. This is not going to become the Big Dig because….? Because why? That remains unstated, unarticulated.
The scene this morning, under a SoMA freeway:
via anglisa
So, yes, of course Boston’s disastrous Central Artery/Tunnel Project isn’t San Francisco’s Central Subway Project. But will there be massive overruns? Sure, I mean they’re pretty much baked into the cake, right? Interested parties would love to see cost overruns – that’s the primary reason why these things happen.
Will San Francisco be better off with this subway than without? Probably.
Will San Franciscans use it? Sure.
All right, thanks for our new subway, America. We’ll get more use out of it than people up north got out of the Everitt Memorial Highway. (Your federal tax dollars paid for that one too. Oh well.)
Let’s Hope It All Works Out.
All the deets, after the jump
(more…)
Tags: 'This is not going to become the Big Dig, 2016, 2018, 4th, big dig, Big Dig West, boston, Central Artery, Central Artery/Tunnel Project, central subway, central t, chinatown, mta, Muni, project, SFMTA, soma, street, t, third, Tunnel Project
Posted in transit | 1 Comment »
Saturday, February 6th, 2010
Yesterday’s announcement of a sinkhole affecting N-Judah service in the Sunset District didn’t sound like any big deal at first:
“Feb 5, 2010 to Feb 7, 2010 - SF Muni N-Judah Line Delay: On Saturday, February 6, SF Muni reports delays on the inbound N-Judah Line at Judah and 29th Avenue due to a street closure involving a sinkhole near the inbound tracks. N trains are turning back at Judah and 19th Avenue and bus shuttles are being provided until further notice.”
And, in fact, the actual sinkhole location itself looks unremarkable, excepting for all the signs all around it.
But check it – appears as if work crews might be spending the next two weeks onsite at 29th and Judah:
”WE WILL TOW,” says MUNI. No doubt.
People riding the N Judah buses this AM seemed relatively unaffected* by the loss of the trolleys, but that probably won’t be the case on Monday if the tracks aren’t usable.
Or, maybe, the City’s taciturn work crews will be able to get a quick fix in this weekend and then work on a better job over the next week or so? Perhaps there’s an ongoing issue there anyway and this whole deal is a big nothingburger with a side order of nada?
MUNI probably has a pretty good idea on what will occur but they aren’t officially saying anything yet.
Only Time Will Tell.
Le mise-en-scene ce matin:
An avid radio fan, call-sign Star Scream (srsly, perhaps ironically), hepped me to when the supervisors would show up this AM, and lo, he was spot-on. (Radio – it’s like the Internet but without pictures.)
Note the cracks nearby the purported sinkhole…
…and then compare them with these nearby bits (could we call them railroad ties?) that appear to be waiting to go:
Good luck, MUNI!
[UPDATE: If you believe what Next MUNI is saying, then the trolleys will be rolling across the sinkhole spot by this afternoon, February 7th.]
*So people trying to get to MUNI’s Town Hall Meeting today (maybe it’s still going on) should be able to make it. MUNI likes these kinds of meetings because they disunite riders (because of infighting over the preservation of service on particular lines) and they unite the disparate elements of MUNI. (Is the state of California really “taking away” money from MUNI or just not giving as much money to MUNI?) Regardless, if enough people hammer on the importance of one particular line, that can make a difference…
Tags: 19th, 2010, 29th, ave, avenue, bridge, crews, department, dpw, feb, February, judah, meeting, mta, Muni, n, n judah, public works, SFMTA, shuttle, sink hole, sinkhole, street, town hall
Posted in transit | No Comments »
Friday, February 5th, 2010
Remember back in the day, back when Clear Channel “promised” that they would provide a Velib-style bicycle sharing program for San Francisco? Let’s dig up a press release crowing all about that from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA). Ah yes, from the “Transit Shelter Advertising and Maintenance Agreement” with Clear Channel Outdoor, Inc.:
“The agreement also requires Clear Channel to provide a Bicycle-Sharing Program, at the SFMTA’s request, details of which will be negotiated in an amendment to the Agreement.”
Details! Oh noes. Well Clear Channel looked at the details of running a bike share program and decided that they didn’t want to do it. Of course, they were not “required” to do Jack despite what the SFMTA thought. Isn’t that funny?
Now let’s imagine that you’re in charge of San Francisco’s bike-share program. What should you do? Let’s start with the good stuff and then worry about the details, the gritty nitty.
But first, let’s check in with Jessica Alba in Paris on a Velib. She’s in your corner:
All right, let’s go:
1. Junkets, junkets, junkets!
Try to get in as many “fact-finding missions” as possible early on. You’re the CEO, right? So, first thing you do is jet off to France, or D.C. or Montreal, bidness-class. Start a blog to post vacation photos of you on a Velib and complain about how you have to spend so much time away from your kids. Enjoy yourself, it’s going to go downhill from here.
2. Make the program as small as possible.
This is key. The bigger the program, the more headaches you’ll have. If you listen to people who tell you that you need to have a “critical mass” to be sustainable, you’ll have 5000 bikes on the streets – that means 5000 things to fret over every day. The Feds might give you millions to get started, but they’re not going to give you millions every year. As far as you’re concerned, a bike share program is a bike share program.
3. Think of a catchy name for your program.
I don’t know, BikeConnect (if Alex Tourk would license the name)? How about City BikeShare, CalBike, BikeCal, SFBike, BikeSF, FoggyBike, or Frisco a Go Go? I’m at a loss…
And now, decisions to be made:
1. Which bikes to use?
In the Parisian program, the heavy bikes come from Hungary and they cost $1000 per. This is both good and bad, because you want to have the bikes well-built in order to survive the rigors of heavy use, but you don’t want to lose too much money every time one dissappears. I think it’d be impossible to charge $1000 to a San Francscan when the bike s/he just checked out got lifted by a thief, so you’re going to lose big bucks on theft. On the other hand, if you go the cheap route and use inexpensive mountain-type bikes, they’ll get stripped for parts with a quickness. You want bike thieves to think these are custom-made with no reuseable parts. Bixi bikes are cheaper (I hope) – perhaps they’d be a good starting point?
2. How much to charge users who don’t return bikes?
The Parisian government now subsidizes share program operator JC Decaux’s losses to the tune of millions of dollars per year. This is despite the fact that this company makes a mint from the 1600 advertising spaces given to them to pay for the program. If you are “too nice” to customers and only charge $50 for a bike they don’t return, then the customers won’t really care if their rental goes missing. On the other hand, if you try to charge the full replacement value, your customers won’t stand for it.
3. What about vandalism?
What about it – the little monsters are going to mess you up. They’re going to make it their business to make you want to go out of business. How will you react to the taggers who will paint over whatever they can? Now, program operators don’t have to deal with this issue in La Rochelle or Lyon, but in Paris, that’s a different story. Well guess what? We’re going to be just like Paris, having bikes with broken keels and lost keels. Deal with it. How about getting the City to cover all vandalism costs? That would help.
4. What about helmets?
You know, France has different attitudes about certain things. For example, they’ve got 58 nuclear panner plants and they’re building more, and they have a huge nuclear waste dump in Champagne, of all places. So, when you talk to the French about helmets for non-Tour-de-France-bike-riders, they don’t like it. Could San Francisco somehow rent out a smelly used helmet along with the bike? Doubtful. Could customers carry their own helmets? Sure, some of them would, but carrying around a helmet goes against the very nature of the whole program, which is designed to appeal to the general non-bike-riding public. In France, they tolerate deaths due to share program customers not having helmets. Will San Francisco?
5. What about hills?
Now let’s say your customer wants to go from a bike station at the top of Nob Hill down to Embarcadero Station – that’s a straight shot down California, it would take about five minutes, easy peasy. But who’s going to pay for the right to pedal a heavy bike back up to the top of Nob Hill? Should you give people who turn bikes in at the Nob Hill station more time? Certainly. Should you go ahead and just make that a free ride? Should you give these hardy souls a credit for future trips? Should you just pay jobless people to ride bikes uphill? Should you load up a truck and have an employee redistributing bikes all day long? Should you just not have a Nob Hill station? Don’t know.
There are no easy solutions for you. You’ll be made sport of in the pages of SFist and SFGate, San Francisco’s online newspaper. It’ll be endless. The Velib program works in Paris because of all that sweet, sweet street advertising money from all those signs. You won’t have access to that kind of dough, not in San Francisco.
Oh well, that’s why you’ll get paid the big bucks.
Good luck, Chuck.
After the jump, all the places you should junket to, before the cash runs out.
(more…)
Tags: bicycle, bicycles, bike, bikes, bixi, CEO, clear channel, clearchannel, cyclists, france, Gavin, JC Decaux, liberte, lyon, Mayor, montreal, mta, Newsom, paris, pilot, program, San Francisco, SFMTA, share, sharing, vandalism, vandals, Velib
Posted in bikes | No Comments »
Thursday, February 4th, 2010
The Richmond District Blog now has Richmond District T-shirts for you to wear. Hurray! Check it out.
But what if this area were to have an icon – what could possibly symbolize District One? Now, the nearby Sunset District has its marijuana grow houses and brothels, of course, but what’s similarly unique to the Richmond?
My vote is for the big old NeoPlan AN 460 articulated bus – you know, the one used by the #38 Geary line:
Of course these artic bendy buses are all over town but I associate them with the Richmond District most of all.
Tags: an 460, an460, blog, bus, california, district, geary, mta, Muni, neoplan, richmond, richmond district, San Francisco, SFMTA
Posted in advertising, fashion | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010
Well they’re finally up, some of them anyway – they’re the fruitless trees of the newly-widened medians of Divisidero Street.
Boy, don’t these new leaveless trees and the the widened median make this body shop sooooo much more livable?
Of course the concomitant lane width reductions weren’t discussed at the time decisions were being made and, I would argue, were actually hidden by the powers that be. Oh well.
In this case, greening the median meant widening it. Does this benefit car drivers, bus drivers or cyclists? No, not at all. So why did we do it? The slow lanes now, in particular, are very narrow considering that big buses (from MUNI but also private employers) are supposed to use them.
Do you see where it says Divisidero Street Streetscape Renewal? What’s being renewed here? Well, let’s take a look at back in the day.
How about 1947? What do you see here? Do you see streetcars and wide lanes and plenty of room for cars and bikes to co-exist? Do you think the pedestrians of ‘47 bumped their noggins into each other all the time? I don’t. What don’t you see? A big old median filled with trees and streetlights – that’s what you don’t see. The street lights and trees are off to the side where they belong, not in the middle of the damn street taking up all the space.
How did our fore mothers and fathers survive with reliable steetcars and wide lanes on Divis? How did they get by, how did they live without a giant median and decimated (and soon to get worse) modern bus service?
The World Wonders.
Plenty of room for the median, not enough room for the #24 Divisidero – your stimulus dollars at work:
Oh well.
Tags: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, ARRA, department of public works, divisadero, divisidero, dpw, great, Kris Opbroek, Mayor's, median, mta, Municipal Transportation Agency, Office of Economic & Workforce Development, Project Manager, San Francisco, SFMTA, streets, TLC, Transportation for Livable Communities, widen
Posted in streets, transit | 4 Comments »
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010
You know that beige color (it’s not paint but I don’t know what it is, actually) that was just put down on Market Street? Well, it’s coming off fast.
From this…
…to this:
Sic transit gloria Market
Tags: 4th, 5th, accident, andy thornley, beige, bicycle coalition, bicycle coallition, bikes, bus, fawn, geary, green sfbc, Greenway, inbound, market, mta, off, old navy, paint, pedestrians, peeling, Program Director, Ride Awa, Ride Away Greenway, Ride Away/Greenway, safety, safety zone, San Francisco, san francisco bicycle coalition, sfcta, SFMTA, street, textured, Trail, west, zone
Posted in bikes | No Comments »
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010
Market Street Railway President President Rick Laubscher has some thoughts this morning about MUNI’s proposal to raise the cash fare for the F-Market historic streetcar line.
Will the F-Line turn into another fiasco like we just had with the $7 CultureBus 74X? And how will MUNI leader Nat Ford manage to get by making an annual salary that’s merely $308,000 more per year than our Governor’s?
We should get some answers today at City Hall. Stay tuned.
Here are Rick’s Eight Points:
1. The F-line is a core Muni service and should be treated as such.
2. Muni should collect the fares it’s already charging.
3. The F-line is cost-effective at its current fares.
4. Staff’s revenue assumptions from the fare increase are dubious
5. Different fares at the same Muni stops will slow down operations.
6. “Let ‘em buy a Fast Pass” is not an acceptable response.
7. Exceptionally high fares on the F-line hurt the city’s economic vitality.
8. Muni wants to penalize a line that “people want.”
And here’s Rick missive to MUNI riders:
$5 for an F-line Ride? An Open Letter to Nat Ford January 19, 2010 by Rick Laubscher, Market Street Railway
On behalf of Market Street Railway, I have sent the email excerpted below to SFMTA Executive Director/CEO Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr. All are welcome to borrow and elaborate on any of these arguments in your own communications with decision-makers on this matter.
Remember, the SFMTA Board gives initial considerations to its staff’s 2010 budget recommendations, including the proposal to raise F-line fares from $2 to $5, Tuesday, January 19 at 2 p.m., Room 400, City Hall.
You can reach Mr. Ford at 415-701-4720 or by email here. You can register your opinion with the SFMTA Board members by emailing this address. You can also reach Mayor Newsom at 415-554-6141 or by email here. Your opinion counts.
Read the whole thing, after the jump.
Tags: 2, 2010, 5, budget, bus, City Hall, civic center, cultureBus, CultureBus II, F, f market, fare, historic, increase, Line, market, market street railway, mta, Muni, nat ford, proposal, SFMTA, streetcar, trolley
Posted in transit | No Comments »
