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- August 1, 2012
Status Report: Bus Rapid Transit Around the Bay
By Tony Vi
Oakland and San Leandro have voted to approve a 9.5-mile bus rapid transit (BRT) line in the East Bay. The $150 to $175 million project will include dedicated center lanes for rapid buses on International Boulevard between downtown Oakland and San Leandro. Although the project will only have dedicated lanes for two blocks in San Leandro and excludes a direct rapid connection to Berkeley, the project is now closer to final approval from AC Transit’s board of directors. With this approval, AC Transit can begin preliminary engineering and design work, with construction to begin in 2014 and service to start in 2016.
BRT projects are in the works around the Bay Area, but progress has been intermittent. After a delay, San Francisco recently approved a preferred design for Van Ness BRT and has conceptual designs for Geary BRT. The Van Ness project is expected to open in 2017, and the Geary project in 2019.
Meanwhile, the South Bay's plan to implement BRT on El Camino Real hit a hurdle when the Sunnyvale City Council voted not to study dedicated lanes for the project’s environmental impact report. The cities of Palo Alto, Mountain View and Los Altos have not yet decided on a preferred street configuration, but Mountain View and Los Altos have indicated a preference for buses to mix with cars and trucks in the far right lane, next to curb parking. This has prompted Vally Transportation Authority staff to recommend continuing the project with dedicated transit lanes only in Santa Clara, as the revised project would still provide benefits of faster travel and increased ridership with lower operational and construction costs.
Status of Bus Rapid Transit Projects in the Bay Area
Sources: AC Transit, SFCTA’s Van Ness and Geary pages, Valley Rapid, VTA
The mash-up of dedicated, curb-side and mixed-flow lanes for BRT lines is indicative of the difficulty in gaining consensus on a transit corridor that spans multiple neighborhoods and cities. However, dedicated median bus lanes are the standard for BRT, as they minimize conflicts with other vehicles and increases reliability, thereby increasing transit speeds and saving transit agencies money. While we recognize the need to consider local conditions and concerns, we hope cities will keep in mind the regional benefits of providing a rapid transit corridor. BRT with dedicated lanes could form the backbone of a regional bus network that would connect and complement existing and future transit and land use investments.
Tags: transportation - July 26, 2012
$195 Million Parks Bond Goes to November 2012 Ballot
Following extensive community outreach and planning — and months of negotiations over specific projects — the San Francisco Board of Supervisors has placed the $195 million 2012 Neighborhood Parks Bond on the November ballot. That's nearly $200 million that will help repair and upgrade facilities throughout San Francisco. The bond follows others in 2000 and 2008 to maintain and rebuild a parks system that makes up 12 percent of land in the city.
So what do we get for $195 million? Quite a bit:
· $99 million for neighborhood park improvements;
· $34.5 million for waterfront open spaces;
· $21 million for regional parks;
· $15.5 million to repair failing playgrounds across the city; and
· $12 million for a Community Opportunity Fund that leverages private funds for community-based park projects.You can learn more about the details of the proposed bond on the Recreation and Parks Department’s website.
Following our 2011 Seeking Green report on new revenues for the Recreation and Parks Department (RPD), SPUR has been actively engaged in the bond planning process. This means more than picking which pools to repair and which wind-worn ballfields should get new sprinklers. We also learned a lot about how the department is working to improve project delivery. That can mean anything from how long it takes to design a project to how long it takes to conduct community outreach to how the city solicits bids for specific projects. Most importantly, perhaps, is how all of these pieces fit together to determine what these projects will ultimately cost San Francisco taxpayers.
It’s obvious to many that our parks need regular maintenance and funding to keep them clean and accessible. What might not be as obvious is just how much money — and how many people — it actually takes to keep up our parks. This is why we undertook the Seeking Green report to examine the needs of RPD. What we found is that RPD faces similar challenges to Muni: There is a pronounced difference between funding capital improvements and funding ongoing operations. Operations have simply not been a funding priority of our elected officials, and as a result RPD has been driven to pursue additional funding in the form of concessions and services.
There have been many questions — both in public discussions and in our own parks revenue task force — about the ongoing operating challenges facing the department and the city. It does not makes sense to spend money improving buildings or restoring parks if we can’t afford to open those buildings or operate those parks. There needs to be a sustained commitment to operations to support any capital program.
The challenge is a common one: voter-approved bond programs can only address capital needs; it is the mayor and Board of Supervisors who allocate annual operating funds. And while the two types of funding would be best considered together — for example, improving the efficiency of sprinkler systems can improve water efficiency and lower operating costs — that is unfortunately not how it works. The same is true for Muni: There are different pots of money available for building train tracks versus operating those trains on a daily basis.
The bottom line is that this parks bond must be considered as only one component of a very complex funding equation. As we recommended in Seeking Green, it is imperative that the department seek dedicated funding for operations to maintain the improvements completed through this bond program. In fact, our hope has been that the operating deficit would be addressed first. The city’s first biannual budget, signed by the mayor this week, inches this conversation forward with additional funding to meet RPD operating needs. But we hope the real conversation — a sustained commitment of the city’s general fund — will follow soon.
Tags: good government - July 26, 2012
Housing Trust Fund Heads to Voters in November
By Sarah Karlinsky, Deputy DirectorAfter many months of work by SPUR and other housing advocates, the Housing Trust Fund, has made its way through San Francisco’s legislative process and been placed on the November ballot. We were very involved in crafting this measure, which would provide a permanent source of funding for affordable housing, encourage the creation of moderate-income housing and stimulate the production of market-rate housing.
This measure is a very big deal for San Francisco, especially now that the State of California has eliminated its redevelopment agencies. Roughly half of all redevelopment funds in San Francisco went to support affordable housing. Without redevelopment, San Francisco’s capacity to produce affordable housing is severely reduced.
Without a redevelopment agency, funding for affordable housing in San Francisco will plummet. Image courtesy the Mayor’s Office of Housing
The Housing Trust Fund is a general fund set-aside, meaning it would dedicate a portion of San Francisco’s discretionary budget to affordable housing uses. The 30-year fund would receive $20 million in its first year and increasing amounts thereafter, up to $50 million annually. After that, the yearly set-aside would be capped. Over 30 years, the Housing Trust Fund would generate more than $1.2 billion for affordable housing.
Unlike other set-asides, the Housing Trust Fund is largely funded by money that was previously devoted to affordable housing purposes before the state eliminated redevelopment. Under redevelopment, bonds for affordable housing were issued against future gains in property taxes that would result from redevelopment projects, a process known as tax increment financing. As that bond debt is retired, instead of going to a local redevelopment agency, tax increment monies will now flow into San Francisco’s general fund. The Housing Trust Fund recaptures that flow of tax increment that had historically gone to housing, plus roughly 25 percent of the portion that previously went to developing new infrastructure.
San Francisco is unique because it is both a city and a county. Because the tax increment funding not taken by the State of California now flows to the counties, most other cities will not be able to set aside their tax increment money the way San Francisco can.
What will the Housing Trust Fund be used for? The primary purpose of the fund will be to help build new affordable housing. The city typically funds permanently affordable housing for “very low income” and “extremely low income” households (50 percent and 30 percent of Area Median Income, i.e., $51,000 for a family of four and $31,000 for a family of four, respectively). Most of San Francisco’s affordable housing developments have been funded with city money, and the Housing Trust Fund will continue that tradition.
Funded through redevelopment, the Drs. Julian and Raye Richardson Apartments provides 120 units of supportive housing for very low-income formerly homeless residents. Image by Bruce Damonte, courtesy David Baker + Partners Architects
The Housing Trust Fund will also provide down-payment assistance to “moderate-income” families (i.e., a four-person household earning roughly $80,000 to $120,000 per year) and help them stay in their homes by providing foreclosure prevention assistance and funding for upgrades.
Finally, the Housing Trust Fund will help encourage the development of new moderate-income housing. Under San Francisco’s inclusionary housing ordinance, developers of new housing must build a certain percentage of their units as moderate-income housing. Those units can be built within the project itself (called “on-site” housing), or developers also have the option of building the units elsewhere or paying an in-lieu fee. The Housing Trust Fund reduces the on-site inclusionary requirement by 20 percent for most projects, thereby making it more attractive to developers to build the units on site. Additionally, the Housing Trust Fund caps existing affordable housing fees (except for areas benefiting from new upzonings, where new affordable housing fees could be added), making it easier for developers to plan around the existing fee structure.
Many of the groups that have worked on this measure are now turning their efforts toward the campaign to get it passed at the ballot in November. If you are interested in getting involved, please contact SPUR Community Planning Policy Director Tomiquia Moss at tmoss@spur.org or Deputy Director Sarah Karlinsky at skarlinsky@spur.org
Tags: community planning, housing - July 25, 2012
From Doyle Drive to Presidio Parkway: How a Landscape Architect Reinvented a Road
By Michael Alexander*
On the last weekend of April, as thousands watched, 40 giant pneumatic hammers pounded much of San Francisco’s Doyle Drive into recycled concrete and rebar. The following Monday morning, cars streamed across an elegant new viaduct over the Presidio’s Cavalry Valley and cruised through a new tunnel cut into the bluff between the San Francisco National Cemetery and the historic batteries that once guarded the Golden Gate from invasion.
After 22 years, a vision SPUR fought hard for was finally underway: the transformation of Doyle Drive from a clunky and dangerous artifact into a graceful entryway to the city. When the $1.1 billion project is completed in 2015, cars and traffic noise will no longer dominate many key landscapes of the Presidio national park.
The new tunnel separates traffic from the San Francisco National Cemetery. Photo by Michael Alexander
Getting big infrastructure projects built is hard enough, let alone when the project and its setting are fundamentally incompatible. As former vice-chair of the Doyle Drive Task Force and chair of SPUR’s Doyle Drive Committee, I had an intimate view of the planning process, the lessons SPUR learned about the priorities and beliefs of different agencies and organizations, and the need for SPUR to stay committed for the long haul.
Beginnings
1989 was not San Francisco’s best year. The Loma Prieta earthquake not only closed the Embarcadero Freeway but compromised the structural integrity of Doyle Drive, the roadway through the Presidio connecting the Golden Gate Bridge to the city street grid. In addition, the Army had announced that it would be marching out of the Presidio, its post at the headlands of the Golden Gate, leaving 1,400 spectacular acres, hundreds of historic buildings and millions of dollars of deferred maintenance to the National Park Service.
While these disruptions created stunning opportunities, the political, economic, organizational and design challenges were daunting. Doyle Drive was especially complicated. Constructed by the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District in 1937, its design was compromised by Army demands that it not hinder military activities or provide public access to the post. From the bridge’s toll plaza it sprawled across the Golden Gate headlands, then narrowed to span the pretty Cavalry Valley and its beloved Pet Cemetery on a tall, bulky viaduct and noisily ran across a bluff a hundred feet from the front rank of headstones in the Presidio Cemetery. Its eastern portion was an ugly viaduct atop more than a hundred closely spaced piers, which allowed military trucks passing underneath to carry supplies between Crissy Field’s warehouses and the Presidio’s Main Post. Its six narrow lanes had no center barrier and no shoulders.
The old Doyle Drive viaducts used to block views of the Palace of Fine Arts as they traversed Crissy Field. Photo by Michael Alexander
Overlapping jurisdictions complicated things further. Doyle Drive was owned by the Golden Gate Bridge and Highway District and operated and maintained by Caltrans — on a right-of-way through a park run by the National Park Service and later by the Presidio Trust. To top it off, the road landed in the city’s Marina District, on Richardson Avenue and Marina Boulevard — whose residents militantly wanted traffic near their homes shifted to other families’ street.San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors was the first to step into this jurisdictional morass and political quagmire, creating the Doyle Drive Task Force in the early 1990s to provide recommendations. Task force representatives of agencies, neighborhoods and community organizations like SPUR and the Sierra Club spent fruitless months mostly protecting their turfs as Caltrans presented a list of 26 (!) conceptual designs that sang to nobody.
The fundamental problem for most was that all the offerings were variations on the straightforward freeway built to modern standards: eight lanes, each 12 feet wide, plus shoulders, center barrier and massive off ramps — all of which would double the width of the existing road. Considering that this 1.6-mile road would connect the Golden Gate Bridge’s six narrow lanes primarily to Lombard Street’s six narrow lanes and Marina Boulevard’s four lanes, a freeway through a national park struck most as excessive. It could have been 20 lanes wide, and traffic would still be constricted at the necks.
But the highway engineers insisted, seldom mentioning but always aware that any variation from the standard highway manual could expose Caltrans to legal damages from accident claims. To be fair, they were also trying to respond to often-conflicting environmental, historic preservation and not-in-front-of-my-house demands.
The Breakthrough
Then, at the end of another meeting of re-re-restated positions (I recall once, in frustration, undiplomatically banging my forehead on the table), a local landscape architect and SPUR member, Michael Painter, asked to speak. But first he unrolled and taped to the wall a colored plan, nearly 20 feet long, of a very different concept. Here was a road that, at two critical points in the park, simply disappeared.
Alongside the cemetery, the road ran in a cut-and-cover tunnel with a landscaped top, so that people could once again walk to the historic battery bluffs. Traffic noise would no longer intrude on those visiting the resting places of the fallen. In front of the Main Post’s bluff edge, the road ran at grade but was covered by a 1,000-foot-long landscaped cap that reconnected Crissy Field with the rest of the park, allowing people to walk or bike over the hidden highway. From there to the park’s eastern end, a low viaduct would allow for expanding Crissy Field’s tidal lagoon and joining it to Tennessee Hollow Creek. A new turnoff would provide direct public access to the park.
For more than a year, task force representatives had proclaimed what we didn’t want. After 20 minutes, we finally knew what we did want, and it was Michael Painter’s plan — a roadway that had no choice but to traverse a national park yet was appropriate to its setting. I drafted the recommendations, and San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors adopted them.
The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA), a small agency headed by José-Luis Moscovich, led the city’s interests. Moscovich had been involved with Caltrans’ plans from the beginning. One of his first tasks when he took the job was to go with SPUR to Caltrans’ offices in Oakland, where the state agency presented its 26 options. He left realizing that the multiple stakeholders would never be able to agree to any of them.
Caltrans, however, was not giving up. Its consultants, Parsons Brinkerhoff — a major international planning, engineering and program management firm — gradually narrowed the 26 designs to four. All had major problems meeting the conflicting demands of agencies, groups within agencies and stakeholders.
And the Painter plan? Caltrans and PB dismissed it as infeasible and too expensive.
I believe there was a subtext here. For infrastructure projects like roads, landscape architects are at the bottom of the professional pile. A common attitude is, We’ll build it, then give you a little money to pretty it up. The focus is on objects, while landscape architects focus on spaces. But it’s not as though Painter didn’t have street cred — literally. He was the designer of San Francisco’s Great Highway, with its protective planted dunes and flanking pedestrian and bicycle trails.
SPUR and Arup to the Rescue
SPUR disagreed with the experts’ conclusions, but the opinions of urbanists and planners on SPUR’s Presidio Task Force carried little weight with road builders and engineers. So we turned to one of our member firms, Arup. This firm of designers, planners and engineers is favored by many of the world’s leading architects and has worked on challenging road designs in sensitive areas across the globe. SPUR asked Arup to express its opinion of the feasibility and cost of Painter’s design.
Arup’s judgment: fewer impacts on the national park, better design and less costly.
This could not be ignored. Moscovich and the SFCTA insured that the Doyle Drive Draft Environmental Impact Statement would include the Painter plan along with the four PB alternatives and the required no-build alternative (which described what the next earthquake was likely to do to Doyle Drive, and to traffic throughout the Bay Area).
A major problem with rebuilding Doyle Drive was that traffic had to continue to flow. Close Doyle, and you might as well close the Golden Gate Bridge. The usual solution is to transfer traffic to a parallel temporary road, demolish the existing road, build the new one, transfer traffic to the new road, remove the temporary structure and restore the damaged surroundings.
At the Presidio, there often wasn’t enough width to allow this, although most of the plans called for it. Painter — whose style is to constantly, even obsessively, refine his designs — developed a novel alternative: build half the width of the new road, transfer traffic to it, then demolish the old road and build the other half of the new road in the footprint of the old. This would save hundreds of millions of dollars and years of work. It proved feasible for the narrowest, most critical parts of the project.
In the end, the Painter plan proved so superior that the four Caltrans/PB alternatives were dropped. Each would have cost about $3 billion. Today the new Presidio Parkway is on schedule and on budget at $1.1 billion.
A rendering of the old Doyle Drive shows how the road bisected the Presidio. Image courtesy Presidio Parkway
A rendering of the new Presido Parkway shows how the design will reconnect the Presido and Crissy Field. Image courtesy Presidio Parkway
Winners and LosersI’d judge that SPUR got about 85 percent of what it wanted in, and out of, the project. We got the right design, and we got it into construction before an earthquake claimed the existing road. The national park will be quieter, more beautiful and much easier to get around. At six lanes, the overall road width will be 25 percent less wide than what traffic engineers originally demanded. We even got all but one lane in each direction narrowed to 11 feet. (The standard is 12 feet, which gives drivers more room to maneuver — and also encourages speeding.) Visitors, residents and Presidio workers will be able to enter the national park without driving through residential neighborhoods. The Painter concept saved taxpayers a couple of billion dollars.
At a few critical points, SPUR helped José-Luis Moscovich and his staff get millions in critical funding, but most credit for financing the project goes to the SFCTA’s effective work at all levels of government.
Lost in these plans, however, is the Palace of Fine Arts, at the Presidio Parkway’s eastern end. The great shed currently housing the Exploratorium will need a new tenant when the museum moves to its new home on the northern waterfront. But the city has ignored every opportunity to make the building attractive to others. The back of the building, facing the Presidio, features a seedy parking lot with one of the most spectacular views of the Golden Gate. For historic reasons, the lot is owned by the Presidio Trust, though managed by the city. Michael Painter produced numerous designs, and SPUR spent years trying to make this key site more attractive, but neither the city nor the federal agency could be bothered.
The biggest losers in this saga were some homeowners on Richardson Avenue and Lyon Street. SPUR offered them a design that would take Palace of Fine Arts traffic off of their street. Had they supported it, we might well have transformed the entire dowdy east entry to the Presidio, as well as the Palace grounds. But the homeowners were so focused on trying to shift Doyle Drive traffic from their street to Marina Boulevard (a fight they lost), that they passed on an opportunity that would have added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the value of their homes.
Lessons Learned
Question received wisdom. Traffic engineers shot down many of SPUR’s and Painter’s novel ideas as dangerous because they weren’t what drivers expected to experience. While it’s undeniable that drivers are creatures of habit, they can still adapt. Near the end of the negotiations, SPUR asked to see the literature on driver expectations. At a subsequent meeting, we asked again. A senior engineer quietly confessed, “There isn’t any.” So much for the scientific basis of policy.
Question traffic models. Computer modeling errs on the side of more, not less. Because the models encourage overbuilding, which attracts more traffic, they are often self-fulfilling. But because they carry the aura of certainty, you need professionals to challenge their results.
Public consultation easily goes off the rails. Fear of change can raise the most bizarre and unexpected concerns. The noisiest and most persistent community members often dominate the debates, escalating reasonable concerns into impossible-to-satisfy demands. Successfully taking a community’s real temperature is a skill, usually not taught, that planners must learn to master.
As traffic moves on Doyle Drive, the new road is built alongside. Photo by Michael Alexander
What’s in a name?
Doyle Drive has been jackhammered into history. Caltrans, sensing a minefield about naming rights, has provisionally called the new road the Presidio Parkway. Like the old road, it should be named for the man whose vision made it possible. I propose the Painter Presidio Parkway.
Watch a fly-over video of how the new parkway will transform the Presidio >>* Michael Alexander is an urbanist and co-chair of SPUR’s Advisory Council. He was a SPUR Board Member for two decades. He now lives in Vancouver B.C., where he helps implement innovative ideas from San Francisco.
Tags: community planning - July 17, 2012
Historic Vote Kicks off the Real Journey for High-Speed Rail
By Stuart Cohen, Executive Director, TransFormAn epic battle over the California high-speed rail project ended with a nail-biter on July 6, when the state senate got exactly the 21 votes needed to move ahead with funding the first segment of the project. The California Assembly had already passed the bill authorizing $2.6 billion in state bonds for the first segment, and Governor Brown’s signature is assured. [Update: Governor Brown signed the bill on July 18.] “Californians have always embraced bold visions and delivered public projects that chart the way for the rest of the nation,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “Today’s vote continues that tradition.”
Media reports have made out the construction of high-speed rail as either a panacea for all of our woes or the beginning of Armageddon. But the final outcome is still to be written — not just whether high-speed rail is fully built and achieves projected ridership but whether it fulfills its potential to shape future growth, transform transportation in California and rebuild cities as the centers of our economy.
This project has incredible potential, but many issues will shape its viability over the next two years.
After Years of Ups and Downs, Strengthened Project Gets on Track
The California High-Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) was created in 1996 but has been chronically understaffed and much maligned. Ballot initiatives for initial funding of the LA/Anaheim to San Francisco segment were taken off the ballot in 2004 and 2006.
Environmental advocates helped influence and improve the project design — adding everything from a commitment to pursue zero energy to strong land use guidelines and protection of sensitive land — and it received significant support from statewide groups when it finally appeared on the ballot in 2008. Voters approved Proposition 1A in November 2008, authorizing nearly $10 billion in state bond funds toward the project.
But as the project was further designed, costs spiraled to $98 billion — more than double what had been projected when Prop 1A passed. Its dedicated tracks also required excessive infrastructure through several downtowns, and community opposition grew.
Yet Governor Brown made the project one of his top priorities and appointed new leadership to buoy the struggling project. In April, Dan Richard, the CHSRA’s new chair, helped usher in a revised 2012 Business Plan. The new plan reduced community impacts by sharing tracks with existing rail services in the urban areas (known as the “blended approach”). Along with other changes, it brought the projected cost down to $68 billion.
Most importantly, the project is now designed to serve as the backbone of a statewide rail network rather than as an isolated system. It supports early upgrades to Caltrain and Metrolink, as well as lines now used by Amtrak and Altamont Commuter Express (ACE), allowing these systems to go faster and attract more riders. With an additional $2 billion of funding for these projects included in the bill that passed July 6, millions of Californians will benefit from these first investments by 2018. These upgrades will also serve to ready those corridors for high-speed rail.
TransForm’s June 2012 report Moving Ahead with High Speed Rail explains the revised business plan and why these changes allowed TransForm to come out in support of this project. (Read a four-page summary of the report.)
If all goes well, construction will begin in 2013. The bill’s $2.6 billion in state funds will match more than $3 billion in federal funds for the section of track from Madera to Bakersfield. The CHSRA plans for a unified Northern California service that will allow Amtrak, ACE and other operators to use the first segment before high-speed service begins.
Project's Real Challenges Will Come in the Next Two Years
The July 6 vote was monumental, but it will pale in comparison to the task of actually completing the system: Picture an inexperienced climber struggling to scale El Capitan, getting 300 feet up and then realizing there is 2,700 feet to go. That is almost exactly where we are in this process.
The most daunting challenge of all will be identifying the rest of the funding. At least $56 billion more is needed to complete the project over the next 20 years. But every journey starts with a first step. Right now this project needs to build this first segment on budget and on time (especially on time, to meet federal stimulus deadlines of Sept 30, 2017) and show that it is being well managed.
The CHSRA recently hired Jeff Morales, a former Caltrans director who most recently had been leading the planning for high-speed rail as a consultant. This was an excellent choice and restored the confidence of stakeholders and legislators, but he can’t do it alone. In fact the funding bill requires that he fill several top-level positions by October 2012 or risk further delays. The culture, competency and sensitivity of the CHSRA will be under intense scrutiny, especially as it begins construction that will impact cities and farms in the Central Valley.
Changes to Environmental Review May Come Up Again
With the federal deadline to spend funds by September 2017, the Brown Administration floated the idea of three modifications to the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) to reduce delays to the project from litigation. The administration wanted these provisions tied to the funding bill, but with a strong reaction from the environmental community — including a letter from the Sierra Club categorically opposed to any CEQA changes — the concept was swept under the rug so that the funding could be debated on its own.
Many believe similar proposals will be back soon. TransForm, along with some of the largest environmental groups, has expressed openness to some very basic modifications, including allowing the CHSRA to make a change in one segment, such as along the Caltrain line, without having to redo the analysis for the entire project. This stance acknowledges that high-speed rail is an environmentally preferable alternative to increased highway and airport capacity, and that having to constantly reevaluate whether it is a superior alternative at the program scale just doesn’t make sense. It is, however, absolutely critical to require that impacts and mitigations are identified at the project (i.e., local) level. TransForm and other groups are united against the weakening of CEQA at the project level. (For more information see page 35 of Transform’s report.)
Additional Funding Sources Will Be Challenging
It won’t be long before the CHSRA is searching for the next source of funds. The second phase of the project is the segment from Bakersfield to the Los Angeles Basin, with a cost of $25 billion. The revised business plan anticipates $20 billion from federal sources, but none of that federal funding is likely to materialize unless the House of Representatives changes hands this fall and Democrats hold the White House and Senate.
If federal funds don’t materialize, the Brown Administration has proposed using revenues from the auction of permits in the Assembly Bill 32 greenhouse gas cap-and-trade program as a backstop. These revenues will be modest through 2015, but at that time transportation fuels will come under the cap, which means revenues could rise to $7 billion or more annually. There will be a host of legal and political hurdles to get any of these funds, let alone $20 billion. The most basic is to prove that the project would actually reduce greenhouse gasses cost effectively, a question that will be tackled by the CHSRA within a year. Many of these hurdles are explained in a report by the Legislative Analyst’s office.
Even if it is legally viable, funding for high-speed rail would compete with dozens of other proposed uses, including a widely circulated proposal from TransForm and Housing California to put at least 30 percent of the funding toward local transit, bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure, as well as affordable homes near transit.
SPUR has some additional recommendations for funding high-speed rail that include increasing the price of automobile travel.
We Need Smart Land Use to Support a Successful Project
Ultimately, high-speed rail can’t just be a transportation project. The development of a high-speed train linking California's major cities to each other must help retain existing downtowns as the primary economic centers of California. But unfortunately, good land use does not automatically follow new transit.
The CHSRA has already made what is arguably the most critical land use decision by focusing new stations primarily in downtowns at existing transit hubs. Although it can cost more to go through city centers in areas like the Central Valley, the CHSRA made a policy decision to avoid locating stations in greenfields.
But that is not enough. TransForm helped the CHSRA develop strong, smart land use guidelines in 2007, and the authority now has a funding program to support community-based planning near future stations. This will be especially critical in the Central Valley, and the timing is perfectly aligned with regional-scale planning for the state-mandated Sustainable Communities Strategies that are just getting underway there and will be adopted in December 2013.
The CHSRA must keep committing funds to station-area planning, but there must also be a concerted effort to coordinate other state grants to maximize potential benefits and avoid displacement of residents and businesses by high-speed trains. There are significant potential benefits if we get the land use right in the Central Valley; for a preview see page 25 of TransForm’s report.
Impacted and Disadvantaged Communities Must Be Engaged
The construction of high-speed rail will directly displace some residents and businesses. While the CHSRA is required to compensate landowners for the value of their property, that does not mean their lives will not be dramatically disrupted. The authority has identified a host of potential mitigation measures but, as pointed out by groups like California Rural Legal Assistance Inc., the most important ones are only “suggested or considered.”
Deep engagement of disadvantaged communities needs to start immediately, and the CHSRA should prioritize policies that go beyond compensation: for example, ensuring that low-income residents who are displaced by the construction of this project are financially able to remain in their community. TransForm has proposed that the CHSRA immediately establish an Environment and Environmental Justice Advisory Committee, whose chair would make direct reports to the full CHSRA board, to confront this and other key issues in a transparent, constructive process.
Even with Challenges, High-Speed Rail Is an Opportunity We Must Take On
With California projected to grow to 50 million people over the coming decades, we absolutely need new transportation capacity. The question is, What types of capacity will we invest in? Done right, building high-speed rail in California can reinforce cities as the hubs of our economies, significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve air quality, get commuters off congested roads and cost much less than highway and airport expansion. Yet the CHSRA must truly confront all of these issues — and excel at finding solutions — if this project is to ever get built.
High-speed rail is an incredible opportunity and challenge for California to take on, but an essential one. Over the coming months TransForm, along with SPUR and other allies, will be engaged in making sure that high-speed rail gets done — and done right.
Read TransForm's report Moving Ahead With High Speed Rail >>
Read SPUR's recommendations for funding high-speed rail >>
Read about high-speed rail's potential impact on Hollywood and Silicon Valley >>
- July 9, 2012
Silicon Valley Lands One of Four New U.S. Patent Offices
By Leah Toeniskoetter, SPUR San Jose DirectorWord of a big win for Silicon Valley came July 2 from the U.S. Commerce Department. For the first time in its history, the United States Patent and Trademark Office will open four offices outside of Virginia, and the western region office will be located in Silicon Valley. California produces one quarter of the approximately 500,000 patents filed annually in the United States. The volume of filings has created a year-long backlog, which encouraged President Obama to direct that four new offices be opened by 2014. The selected locations were chosen from 600 applicants and were required to demonstrate the ability to conduct outreach to the patent applicant community, the ability to recruit top talent at the Patent and Trade Office, the ability to retain top talent, the potential economic impact of the office on the selected communities and geographic diversity of selected offices.
The Silicon Valley Leadership Group, the City of San Jose and San Jose State University led a major effort to locate this office in Silicon Valley, and we applaud their success. Though early reports mentioned San Jose, as of this date a specific city in Silicon Valley has not been finalized. SPUR strongly supports downtown San Jose as the right location. The city’s access to intellectual capital and major universities with strong engineering programs, its multiple public transportation systems and its airport make San Jose a worthy selection. The three other U.S. cities that will receive patent offices are Detroit, Dallas and Denver.
We believe there could be some significant clustering benefits around this patent office, similar to the California Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Mission Bay in San Francisco but on a much larger scale. We hope the commerce department will get the details right as this moves forward — in particular locating the patent office in downtown San Jose, where it could function as an anchor for legal and professional services in a central, transit-rich location.
Tags: economic development - July 9, 2012
Reinvesting in the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market
by Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager
Update: On July 17, the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the expansion proposal and new lease for the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market.
The San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market, the city’s hub for fresh produce, is looking to modernize and expand. And, this month, the SF Board of Supervisors will be considering a proposal to allow it to do just that.
The market is a critical piece of the region’s food system infrastructure. Its loading docks, warehouses and offices allow more than 25 wholesalers and distributors to link farmers from the region — and from around the world — with grocery stores, restaurants and other food retailers. The market infrastructure, however, is getting old. Most of the warehouses were built in the early 1960s, and its earlier generation of technology and design are limiting the growth of many market tenants and making it more difficult to comply with evolving food safety regulations.
In response, the market is proposing a comprehensive upgrade and expansion of its facilities on city-owned land. The resolution before the Board of Supervisors would allow the market to construct a new building at 901 Rankin and either rebuild or remodel its existing buildings. Importantly, the legislation would also give the market long-term security with a 60-year ground lease. The modernization and the long-term lease are both crucial to the success of the market; without those changes, many of its tenant businesses have indicated that they will leave, taking more than 600 jobs and $720,000 of annual tax dollar revenue out of the city. With the expansion, however, the market projects that its tenants’ total employment will expand to 1,000 people and that the revenue to the city will increase by 44 percent, to at least $1.04 million annually.
The proposal presents San Francisco the chance to support the modernization of its wholesale food infrastructure at less cost than that of other major cities. State agencies in Pennsylvania provided millions in loans and more than $100 million in grants to build the new Philadelphia Wholesale Produce Market. New York City invested a total of $110 million for the redevelopment of its Fulton Fish Market and Hunts Point Produce Market. In contrast, the proposal before San Francisco's supervisors does not involve any capital funding from the city.
Cities around the country are working to develop “food hubs,” organizations that actively manage the distribution and marketing of local and regional food products. In San Francsico, we already have one. SPUR supports the market’s proposal to expand and modernize so that it can continue supporting the vibrant food industry for which the city and region are so well know.
Read SPUR’s letter in support of the San Francisco Wholesale Produce Market’s expansion >>
- July 5, 2012
Changes to Great Highway Will Improve Ocean Beach Access
By Benjamin Grant, Public Realm and Urban Design Program Manager
Some important improvements that SPUR recommended in the Ocean Beach Master Plan will happen right away, thanks to quick work by the San Francisco Department of Public Works (DPW) and the Recreation and Park Commission. This winter DPW will construct a planted median in the center of the Great Highway from Lincoln Way to Balboa Street as part of a previously scheduled project to repave the roadway. DPW acting director Mohammed Nuru, who sits on the Ocean Beach Master Plan Steering Committee, noticed that the long-range vision for Ocean Beach included street medians among its many suggested improvements. Rather than delay the repaving project while the long-term roadway proposals are analyzed, Nuru suggested that a median could be integrated into the current effort, provided it didn't change the configuration of the road, which would trigger a complex review process.
The project will install landscaped medians where today they exist only in paint. It will improve pedestrian safety and access to the beach by providing shorter crossings and pedestrian refuges, as well as clarifying rights of way on large swaths of currently unmarked pavement. It will also improve the aesthetics of the highway, as well as its environmental performance, by providing much-needed greenery and increasing permeable surfaces for stormwater infiltration in what is now a large, undifferentiated slab of asphalt. A selection of rugged native plants suitable for the beachfront’s challenging climate is under development.
The only concern that emerged about the project was ensuring that the Great Highway could continue to accommodate major events such as the Nike Marathon and Bay to Breakers races. A review of the proposal with Recreation and Parks Department event managers allayed those fears. The project went before the Recreation and Parks Commission Capital Committee in early June and the full Commission on June 21. Installation is set to begin as part of the larger repaving project this winter.
Read the staff report on the project >>
- June 26, 2012
San Jose Passes New Incentives for More Active Streets Downtown
By Leah Toeniskoetter, SPUR San Jose Director
Many downtown areas have policies in place that restrict ground-floor storefronts for walk-in businesses such as retail, restaurants and entertainment. The idea is to encourage people to continue exploring (and hopefully shopping) on foot. But in an economic downturn, when retail stores may remain vacant for years, dark storefronts can create dead spaces of their own, further challenging the success of surviving retail tenants. With ground-floor retail vacancy rates hovering between 15 and 20 percent for several years in a row, San Jose has adopted a temporary policy change allowing non-retail uses such as banks and business support services to occupy certain ground floor spaces without a special use permit — an investment of time and money that the city says has deterred several companies from locating downtown. The city also argues that ground-floor space occupied during part of the day is better than ground-floor space vacant all day. In addition, co-working spaces like NextSpace, which are not considered retail uses but do generate a lot of foot traffic throughout the day, are showing us that new forms of business uses can activate the street and should be encouraged to locate where they can enhance the vibrancy of pedestrian areas.
The temporary policy change allows for the elimination of the special use permit requirement for businesses of less than 20,000 square feet on non-corner street frontages that have one of the following uses: business support, financial institutions, financial services, office, business and administrative, day care centers and radio and television studios.
The upside to this action is the opportunity to fill vacant storefronts in the short term. The potential downside is that, once the economy turns around, “non-active” business uses may remain in locations meant for retail. Additionally, there is the potential to drive up rental rates on the ground floor, as business users can currently pay higher rent than a local retailer. For these reasons, the city, together with the San Jose Downtown Association, will track both vacancy and rental rates going forward and review the impact of this change in two years.
Going for height in the rental market
While the city is still feeling the impact of the economic downturn on the commercial side, San Jose, like many cities around the bay, has seen its residential rental market take off. According to a recent Marcus & Millichap Research Services report, San Jose’s rental vacancy is expected to be the lowest of the three major bay cities at 2.7 percent by year’s end (compared to 3 percent in San Francisco and 3.2 percent in Oakland). That said, obtaining financing to build high-rise residential continues to be a challenge in San Jose, especially on the tail end of very slow sales in the newest residential towers downtown. In order to take advantage of this demand for rental units, and also encourage higher residential density in the downtown, the San Jose City Council recently passed a number of temporary incentives to encourage high-rise developments. The following incentives apply to the first 1,000 units of new residential high-rise development of 12 stories or higher that break ground in the Downtown Growth Area by the end of 2013:
1) An expedited, 120-day review process of entitlements for any proposed high-rise development (this applies to high-rise development anywhere in the city)
2) The elimination of a city requirement to install an expensive breathing air replenishment system in high-rise buildings
3) The continuation of a 50 percent reduction in park fees for high-rise residential constructed in the downtown
4) A 50 percent reduction in construction taxes (this is also applicable to any commercial building constructed in the downtown, regardless of height)
5) Deferral of fees owed until the Certificate of Occupancy is issued
6) Waiver of minimum parking requirements with a long-term commitment from the developer to offer free participation in the VTA’s EcoPass program, as well as car-sharing services and enhanced bike parking facilities
Taken together, these two recent actions demonstrate the city’s desire to chip away at a slow commercial market while taking advantage of a strong rental residential market in the downtown. While it is true that the fee reductions will impact the funding parks and transportation improvements, if there’s no development in the near term, these departments won’t receive any funds at all.
Tags: economic development - June 20, 2012
The Sunol AgPark: Farming City-Owned Land Outside SF
by Eli Zigas, Food Systems and Urban Agriculture Program Manager
Thirty miles east of San Francisco, four farm businesses are growing food for market amidst the hills of Sunol. Though the rows of tomatoes, strawberries, kale, and other crops are typical of the region the land use arrangement at the site, known as the Sunol AgPark, is anything but typical. That’s because the park is on public land owned by the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (PUC) directly adjacent to the Sunol Water Temple. In 2006, the PUC began an innovative land stewardship partnership and lease with the non-profit organization Sustainable Agriculture and Education (SAGE), who, in turn, subleases the 18 acres to local farmers.
In other words, for-profit farmers are cultivating publicly owned land managed by a nonprofit. It’s an arrangement that works for the PUC, SAGE and the farmers. From the PUC’s perspective, farming is compatible with this site, as it is with many others they own between San Francisco and Hetch Hetchy. By permitting agriculture next to the Water Temple, they reduce their maintenance costs and are able to provide a community benefit, not only to the farmers and their customers, but also to the thousands of visitors and schoolchildren that the PUC and SAGE bring to the site each year for educational tours. For the farmers, the AgPark provides protected land with existing agricultural infrastructure, proximity to urban markets and technical assistance — at rates comparable to farmland with similar amenities available on the private market. And for SAGE, the AgPark increases awareness of the value of local food systems and the importance of preserving agricultural land around cities while covering a portion of its own operating costs.
The AgPark began with a nine-year lease, and it is a model that, if successful, has the potential to be replicated throughout the Bay Area and beyond. The Public Utilities Commission alone owns 84,000 acres outside the city of San Francisco. Other water agencies, utilities and public land stewards in the Bay Area also control thousands of acres of land. Much of the PUC’s land is managed to preserve water quality or otherwise support the function of the water, sewer and power systems they operate. But, recognizing that much of the land could have a secondary use beyond its primary utility function, such as organic farms in a protected watershed area, the PUC adopted a new framework for considering secondary land uses in March.
The Sunol AgPark is a pilot project that, in addition to its educational mission, is helping explore the viability of agriculture as a secondary use on publicly-= owned land. The potential for expanding the model is tantalizing. Time will tell whether it continues to work for the public utilities, nonprofit land managers and the farmers.
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