Blog: April, 2011
Which Transportation Projects Will We Give up on to Help Reduce Emissions?
Tomorrow, April 27, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) will vote on a final Committed Funds and Projects Policy for Plan Bay Area. This policy mouthful is an important step in defining which regional transportation projects will receive funding and which ones must undergo more thorough analysis. The vote will determine how many transportation projects will be scrutinized for their impact on greenhouse gases, driving, economic growth and other factors. Affected projects in could include highway widening, the Oakland Airport Connector and BART to San Jose.
The issue before the MTC: deciding which projects are so far along that they shouldn’t be analyzed yet again under new criteria. The projects that are not further analyzed are considered “committed” and will be automatically included in the next Regional Transportation Plan. These committed projects will be included in all scenarios projecting the Bay Area’s future growth.
What’s different this year: the next Regional Transportation Plan will be the first one finalized since the passage of Senate Bill 375. That means this plan is supposed to help meet our region’s goal of reducing greenhouse gases from driving by 15 percent per capita. That’s harder to achieve if we don’t evaluate whether or not our investments encourage people to drive.
Wednesday’s vote will set a final policy for how to count a project as committed. In the last Regional Transportation Plan — done in 2009 — 70 projects were designated as committed. This year, if the MTC adopts the recommendation of its Planning Committee, only 14 projects will be considered committed and not analyzed further. Even though the committee made this recommendation in a 5-3 vote, the full Commission has the final say and can select a different approach, which means this is still a very live and important issue.
There are several major options up for consideration. Option 1 (36 projects committed) says projects are committed after they certify their Environmental Impact Report. Option 2 (14 projects committed) says a project is committed only after construction has started. In general, transit advocates like our friends at TransForm favor the later date (i.e., Option 2).
SPUR has endorsed a slightly different — and we think more nuanced — approach to this policy debate. We argued that using just the Environmental Impact Report (EIR) cutoff is inappropriate because many EIRs are old and project cost often skyrocket after they are approved. As the MTC notes in its analysis, after the environmental phase, transit projects typically rise 50 percent in cost and highway projects rise 30 percent.
In a letter to the MTC, we proposed that a project be considered committed if it is either:
1. already under construction or
2. has a certified EIR less than 5 years old and the estimated project costs have not grown by more than 5 percent per year since EIR certification.
We didn’t support Option 2 because it would cast too much uncertainty over projects that have spent many years in preparation and are nearly under construction. This is important to project stakeholders — especially agencies who might otherwise not take on the risk of conducting an EIR without certainty in a project’s funding potential.
If MTC commissioners tomorrow reject the Planning Committee’s recommendation, we hope they will adopt the SPUR proposal. Our approach leaves fewer projects in uncertain status but retains some objective standards to re-evaluate out-of-date and over-budget projects.
Weekly Snapshot: Reining in "Sprawleigh" North Carolina
In the past decade, the population of Raleigh, North Carolina, has grown faster than almost any major metropolitan area, earning it the less-than-desirable nickname "Sprawleigh." In response to its reputation for bad urban sprawl, city officials have begun extensive rezoning efforts for Raleigh's 2030 Comprehensive Plan. The plan would introduce new codes designed to increase density by appealing to younger populations who want to live close to where they work, as well as older populations who would benefit from pedestrian-centered neighborhoods.
Read Full Story at TIME
More from the week in urbanism:
A Prescription for a Healthier Nation
Clark Manus, president of the AIA, argues that the built environment plays a large role in shaping public health, and if architects and planners focus on creating healthier spaces, design can provide a "prescription for the nation's health."
Read Full Story at Architect Magazine
The Rush to Build Walkable Urban Grocery Stores
Cities are seeing a revolution in grocery store development as large supermarkets try to fill a niche in the urban market by using design techniques and new ideas to attract pedestrians rather than drivers.
Read Full Story at UrbanLand
Dutch Superbus
In contrast to the Onion's recent spoof mocking high-speed rail with a "high-speed bus" proposal, Dutch physicist Wubbo Ockels has designed a prototype for a real superbus that is capable of traveling 150 mph on highways.
Read Full Story at Antiplanner
Good Government Awards: How Capital Planning Manages SF's Investment Priorities
SPUR Tours: Discovering District 8 With Supervisor Scott Weiner
SF Supervisor Scott Wiener led a tour of District 8 on April 14.All too often what’s great about living in a city can become a blur: just shops and people and buses and sidewalks we quickly pass while rushing off to our next thing to do. Thursday's District 8 walking tour with San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener gave 20 SPUR and community members a welcome chance to slow down and look deeply at a small piece of our city.
Supervisor Wiener talks about the success of merchants on 18th Street.
Walking west on 18th Street, taking us from the district boundary to the heart of the Castro, Wiener focused on change. He pointed out the booming success of merchants on 18th and Gurerro and the upcoming 70th anniversary of Cliff’s Hardware on Castro Street.
Balancing history and the successes of the district, Wiener listed various projects he would like to see shape the future of the district, such as adding "bulb out" curb extensions to the corners of 18th and Dolores streets and widening the sidewalks of Castro Street. He also spoke about the challenges facing the “trouble child” J-Church Muni line and the difficulties of balancing the diversity of uses for spaces like Dolores Park.
Overall, Wiener gave us an opportunity to see the neighborhood from his perspective as a supervisor: a point of intersection between competing interests and melding neighborhoods with both a history and a hopeful future.
Park Circa: Can an iPhone App Facilitate More Compact Living?
According to the SFMTA, 30 percent of traffic in San Francisco is simply drivers looking for parking. That’s not just a huge waste of time — it’s also a carbon-emissions nightmare. But new digital tools are helping city dwellers engage with the automobile in smarter and more efficient ways. Last week San Francisco launched extended hours on some SFPark smart parking meters, which aim to use real-time data to reduce the difficulty of finding public parking spaces. And earlier this year, two entrepreneurs launched Park Circa, a smart phone app that makes better use of another urban resource: privately owned parking spots.
Park Circa establishes relationships between car drivers and parking-spot owners, allowing SF residents to charge a minimal fee to park in their driveway or other private space whenever they’re not occupying it. Drivers use the app to select the neighborhood they intend to visit, look at the available spots and make a reservation for a specific space.
Chadwick Meyer, Park Circa's co-founder and CEO, says the most significant challenge facing those looking for parking is not a lack of space but the inability to communicate and coordinate about existing spaces. Armed with the right set of applications on a smart phone, we can eliminate these barriers. “We now have a way to communicate with strangers on a mass scale,” he says. As new technology disseminates information that was previously locked away, virtual communication can shape our physical environment — a fascinating innovation for approaching the challenges of the city.
What would the long-term effects of a successful parking-communications network look like? Meyer admits the most perplexing question he faced in developing the app was whether easier parking would cause people to drive more, essentially ersasing the app's traffic-reduction benefits. But Park Circa stands to have a larger impact as part of the “sharing economy” pioneered by car sharing and co-working. Sharing our limited urban resources isn't just cheap and convenient — it can also help the city retain a more compact urban form. If the Park Circa network succeeds, drivers wouldn’t have to depend as heavily on pay-parking lots and garages, and that could shrink the amount of real estate now devoted to parking. In theory, those parking lots would make ideal targets for future infill development and more effective land use in our cities.
Saltworks Debate: the Pros and Cons of Bayfront Development
The plan would remediate the site, a former salt-harvesting operation, as a combination of housing, schools, parks, ball fields and restored wetlands. Calthorpe argued that the development would place affordable housing near existing jobs and integrate with transit, making it among the most environmentally sound options for the Bay Area — a region, he pointed out, that has been exporting housing to outlying areas for years.
Lewis agreed that we need to increase housing in dense urban/suburban areas and look to transit-oriented design to do so. But he argued that the Saltworks project is the wrong plan for the wrong location. He said the site should be restored to wetlands, pointing out that it lies in the path of sea-level rise — on land that state and federal agencies have called an important biological resource.
Explore our Debates Worth Having series:
Video: The Future of Redevelopment
Upcoming event: Congestion Pricing in SF?
Behind the Scenes at SFO's New Terminal 2
Technology
- Free wi-fi will be available throughout the terminal.
- Flat-panel screens display arrival/departure information, a "visual paging" system, and informative notes, such as nearby pet-waste facilities and medic stations.
Design
- According to project manager Ray Quesada, the space has been designed to create a "club" like atmosphere. Travelers familiar with Virgin America's cabins will immediately recognize the design concept. Note the Arne Jacobsen Egg Chairs.
- The check-in area was designed to feel like a boutique hotel, with stylish faux-wood paneling and a variety of contemporary furniture.
- Plenty of light, large windows and high ceilings. The ceilings were built as tall as possible without interfering with the sight lines of the control tower.
- The HVAC system is built into the walls, as opposed to the ceiling, to reduce the distance the ventilated air must travel.
- Significant re-use of materials from the previous structure.
- T2's sustainability efforts are slated for a LEED Gold rating.
Art
- Air Over Under by Seattle-based architect Norie Sato: two large pieces on the exterior of the building near the curbside drop-off area.Their surfaces appear pixelated when standing nearby, but bird wing and plane wing images appear from a distance.
- Butterfly Wall by San Francisco artist Charles Sowers: A interactive kinetic sculpture operated by hand cranks and electronic motors.
- Every Beating Second by Janet Echelman: a sculpture of twine and braided fibers. While it was not yet installed at the time of our tour, a mechanized air flow system has been designed to add movement to the piece.
- Topograph by Kendall Buster: an elevated sculpture near the check-in counters made of steel tubing and cloth and inspired by topographical maps. 
To get your own look at the new terminal, make your way to SFO between 12 and 5 p.m. tomorrow, April 9, for T2's grand opening celebration.
Weekly Snapshot: Rethinking Minnesota's Zombie Skyways
MinnPost.com photo by Steve BergSkyways -- enclosed, elevated sidewalks -- have protected pedestrians from the brutal weather in Minneapolis and St. Paul for decades. But these 1970s relics have also been accused of killing pedestrian activity on city streets. To start a public conversation about alternatives, Architecture Minnesota magazine held a video competition and screened the hilarious results at a lively public event. The six finalists included a rap comparing Twin Cities pedestrians to hamsters and a haunting clip of zombie pedestrians piling up in a dead-end skyway to nowhere.
Read full story at MinnPost
More from the week in urbanism:
How Mountain View Revived Its Downtown
Bruce Liedstrand, the former city manager and redevelopment director for Mountain View, CA, explains how the city revitalized its core and changed its image from sleepy dormitory community to lively, vibrant downtown.
Read full story at New Urban Network
Places That Work: Holland's Sidewalks
The small town of Holland, Michigan, created a network of heated sidewalks by diverting stored waste heat from a local powerplant to underground pipes, allowing pedestrian activity to flourish regardless of weather.
Read full story at Metropolis
How Venice Works
A video exploring how the complex and ancient city of Venice functions. Residents must navigate 124 islands, 183 canals and 438 bridges -- and city government must maintain and defend them all from encroaching water.
Read full story at Open Culture
Saving Caltrain: SPUR paper discusses long-term solutions
After threats to reduce service by nearly half, Caltrain officials brokered a deal on April 5 to scale back their drastic proposed cuts. Through a patchwork of solutions — including a 25-cent fare hike and elimination of some trains and stations — Caltrain will preserve most of its current level of service. But this short-term solution doesn’t address Caltrain’s deeper management and funding problems. It’s the only Bay Area transit system without a dedicated source of revenue, and the only one managed by a coalition of three different counties.
A lot is riding on the outcome of Caltrain’s fate. The Association of Bay Area Governments projects that in 25 years, there will be nearly 700,000 additional jobs and 350,000 additional households in the three counties Caltrain serves. And Caltrain is essential to the region’s strategy in complying with SB 375, California’s landmark carbon-reduction mandate. Saving this critical system will require new strategies for funding and governance, and this short-term fix buys us time to develop it. This week, SPUR published a discussion paper on possible strategies for Caltrain’s long-term future.
Tax exemption will keep Twitter in SF
The Board of Supervisors approved the Mid-Market payroll tax exemption on April 5. SPUR supported this measure and called on city supervisors to back it. We think an incentive for companies to create jobs in struggling Mid-Market is an idea with strong policy merits. But we don’t think this measure goes far enough.
The exemption will keep Twitter from leaving San Francisco, but what about all the up-and-coming firms that we don’t yet know about? The good news is that the conversation has expanded to encompass strategic thinking on how to retain the wider tech community. SPUR hopes the city will move quickly to restructure the tax code to remove this disincentive to hiring, replacing the payroll tax with either a gross receipts tax or, better yet, a tax on behavior we want to discourage, like pollution. If we make it possible for fast-growing companies to stay, we may find a way to put people to work and fund public services at the same time.
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