2004 SPUR Activities

 

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This article first appeared in the April, 2004 SPUR Newsletter.

2004 was another big year for SPUR. As always, we had successes and we had failures—and we had some multi-year efforts for which it is too soon to tell. Glancing through this year’s Annual Report, which highlights most of our major activities, gives a sense of the breadth of SPUR’s work. Our job as the city’s good-government, good-planning organization is to be comprehensive in our work, and aware of the interrelationships between issues. The reason we are able to get so much done with such a small staff is, of course, that it is you—our members—who do the work. SPUR is a membership-based organization not just in name, but in practice. Thank you for investing in SPUR and in San Francisco. Whether you gave your time or your money or both, we are grateful that you have helped SPUR make San Francisco and the Bay Area a better place.

Community Planning

Better Neighborhoods. The real name for this City program is “Better Neighborhoods 2002” and work has been underway since 1999. The original idea was to undertake comprehensive rezoning and public infrastructure planning for three neighborhoods: Market/Octavia, the Central Waterfront, and Balboa Park. We have attended literally every workshop held for every plan area, fought for continued funding year after year, and tried to help bring these plans to completion. As of this writing, environmental reviews and other supplemental studies on the plans have been funded and we look toward late 2005 or early 2006 for plan adoption.

City College Master Plan. We did a major review of the proposed master plan for City College, which includes numerous new buildings funded out of the 2001 $195 million general obligation bond. We urged them to adopt green building standards like the City of San Francisco has, to bring the campus outwards to “face” the neighborhood, to look for places to develop housing on the campus, and to be much more aggressive about their transportation-demand-management plan. Some of these concepts were adopted, although not as strongly as we would have liked.
Cultural Institutions. SPUR has been an active supporter of the major cultural institutions in Golden Gate park—the de Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences. Both institutions made significant progress in 2004. The new de Young Museum is essentially completed and art is being installed for its October 15 opening. The old California Academy of Sciences is largely demolished and a wonderful temporary facility is open at 4th and Howard Streets. The north pod of the underground parking garage, in front of the de Young, is largely complete, and the south pod in front of the Academy is but lacking its roof. Landmarking of the historic pollarded sycamore Concourse bowl is proceeding. Lawsuits over the garage continue.

Mid-Market. 2004 saw real progress on the Mid-Market Redevelopment Plan. SPUR has had a representative on the official Project Area Committee for the last 10 years, and we have advocated for a workable plan that will encourage incremental, rather than wholesale, change— adding housing and cultural spaces while taking advantage of the investment in BART and Muni. The last remaining issues have been hammered out, resulting in final language for the Redevelopment Plan and Planning Code. (Although it is a redevelopment area, the Planning Code will govern what gets built, which is a progressive move.) Our work in 2004 set the stage for adoption of the Redevelopment Plan in 2005 by the Redevelopment Agency and the Board of Supervisors.

Planning Department and Department of Building Inspection Reform. SPUR and the San Francisco Chapter of the American Institute of Architects developed a major report, Planning the City’s Future, to present a comprehensive reform agenda for two of the City’s most troubled departments. Presented to elected officials in the beginning of 2004 and published in April 2004, the report made detailed recommendations about governance, workload, funding, and interdepartmental coordination. We worked throughout the year on implementation, meeting with major success on the budget. Carrying out these reforms will take years, but we remain very committed to seeing them through. Last month Interim Planning Director Dean Macris presented at SPUR, and is acting to implement many of our recommendations.

Project Review Committee. We started a new committee this year, with the charge of reviewing individual projects of citywide significance. (Usually, but not always, a “project” is a building. This is in contrast to “plans,” which are reviewed by the Urban Policies Committee.) The committee reviews projects for land use, public-realm interface, building design, and environmental effects according to written criteria, and gives detailed critical feedback to project sponsors (developers). In 2004, the committee reviewed six projects, including a senior living and health center at 3575 Geary, a mixed-use residential development at the Daggett Triangle near Showplace Square (north of the Potrero Hill neighborhood), a high-rise residential project at One Rincon Hill, the proposed conversion to residential use of the Public Health Services Hospital in the Presidio, a proposed mixed-use residential project at the UC Extension site in the Market/Octavia neighborhood, and a mixed-use residential and neighborhood-serving retail project on the site of the former Coca-Cola bottling plant in the Bayview.

Public Benefits Zoning. One of the great failures of the City’s Better Neighborhoods process is that, in spite of how expensive the planning exercises have been, the promise of delivering real plans for the improvement of parks, streets, transit, and community facilities—the public realm, in short—has not been realized. With a few important exceptions, the rezoning of private land is much more complete in these plans than the public improvements that were supposed to go along with the rezoning. To solve this problem, we have been meeting with a group of people who are usually on opposite sides of the “development wars” to develop a better planning process for future neighborhood planning efforts. The current euphemism for developer exactions, “public benefits zoning,” is the name given to this effort. On a separate track we are also working on legislation to set exactions on projects that go forward as a result of site-specific rezoning, outside of a full neighborhood rezoning. As always, the goal is to generate funds for the public realm without raising exactions so high that development is stopped, while providing a level of certainty for all sides.

Rincon Hill. One of the most active planning areas in the city in 2004 was Rincon Hill. The long-incubated neighborhood plan actually managed to move forward. SPUR provided detailed comments on the plan at every step—and we are generally extremely happy with the results. Rincon Hill will be developed into a neighborhood of soaring high-rise housing towers, widely spaced, with well-designed streets and sidewalks. When the Planning Department got bogged down in the perennial question—how much can the City charge developers in fees and exactions—we raised money to hire Sedway Group, an independent economic consulting firm, to do an unbiased economic study to help pin down the number (the study is available at www.spur.org). This stands out as one of the most productive neighborhood planning efforts of the year.

Seismic Safety. In the August 2004 newsletter we published a report entitled “San Francisco at Risk” that highlighted the City’s failure to prepare for future earthquakes. A cornerstone of this failure was the termination of the Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS) project, which was a collaborative effort by private citizens and the City to assess the city’s most-vulnerable building types, and recommend code changes to mitigate injury and property damage. The majority of volunteer participants on the CAPSS Citizen’s Advisory Committee were SPUR members. SPUR called on the City to resurrect the CAPSS project, and we continue to pursue efforts with City leaders to ensure that this vital project is brought to fruition.

Waterfront. SPUR initiated two study groups to begin projects that will help the Port. One is looking at the Port’s finances, the other is looking at possible long-term land use changes for the area between Mission Creek and Islais Creek. Both study groups will continue to work throughout 2005.

Economy

Bioscience Task Force. SPUR has been an active participant in the City’s Bioscience Task Force, which recently issued a report on land use and zoning recommendations that are designed to encourage the location of small-scale, start-up firms in San Francisco as well as address important health and safety, job training, and economic development policies.

Biomedical Development. In its ongoing effort to improve the economic future of San Francisco, SPUR is the nonprofit affiliate of the Biomedical Development Company (BDC), an organization devoted to commercializing life science technologies. Through its close relationship with the University of California San Francisco and affiliated institutions, and the recently created California Institute for Quantitative Biomedical Research (QB3), the BDC screens, evaluates, and finances research until these technologies have reached a stage at which they may be more profitably sublicensed to private industry or form the basis of new, venture capital–backed companies.

Business Location and Tax Policy. We published a major study on the relationship between taxes and business-location decisions in the February 2004 newsletter. It explained what factors are most important to companies in deciding where to locate jobs and tried to answer the question, “what type of business tax is best?” from an economic perspective. It also compared San Francisco’s business tax costs to national and Bay Area cities. While there is no clear answer about the best tax structure—it depends largely on one’s values and one’s guesses about the way the world will change in the future—we succeeded in informing the debate about the City’s tax structure with some solid analysis of the likely economic consequences of our actions.

Center for Economic Development. One of the vehicles SPUR uses to impact job creation and development in San Francisco is the Center for Economic Development (CED). Housed at the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, partners are SPUR, the Chamber, and the Committee on Jobs. The Center actively seeks to attract companies to San Francisco, both through prospecting and following leads. In 2004, the CED was instrumental in attracting or retaining many major new businesses, representing over a thousand jobs. They included BFAI, The Body Shop, Cathay Pacific, Cotelligent, Design Within Reach, The German-American Chamber of Commerce, Gymboree, H&M, INdTV, Invest in Germany, Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF), Olivia, Primitive Logic, Riverdeep, Sackett Design, Terracotta, Vitae Architecture, Yoga Journal magazine, and Zinio Systems.

Economic Analysis Measure. When voters are presented with ballot measures during elections, they see those measures in their final form. What they often do not see are the negotiations, discussions, and give-and-takes that happen behind the scenes in crafting the language of these measures. Last November, voters passed Proposition I, which created an Office of Economic Analysis to plan for economic development and analyze the economic impacts of legislation. SPUR worked closely with Supervisor Alioto-Pier and others to help shape the legislation. We brought our knowledge of City government and economic issues to the table, working to make sure the measure would be as effective as possible in practice.

Taxes and the City Budget. For the past several years, City government has faced massive budget deficits. In 2004, SPUR again took an active role in studying the problem and proposing solutions, attempting to balance fiscal realities against the need for public services. After studying the situation, we concluded that the only practical and balanced solution to the City’s chronic budget woes was a combination of increased revenues and reduced spending. We served on the City’s Revenue Advisory Panel, which explored potential increases in taxes and fees and their effects on the economy and budget. We supported Propositions J and K, which would have increased the sales and business taxes (and which ultimately did not pass). Although each tax increase had its problems, we viewed them as critical to preserving City services that are needed more than ever during a slow economy.

Union Square Business Improvement District. Working with a group of concerned property owners and merchants, SPUR worked from 1995 to 1999 to establish the Union Square Business Improvement District (BID), a benefit assessment district intended to improve the neighborhood around Union Square. Now in its seventh year of operation, SPUR’s support continues with a SPUR seat on the BID Board of Directors. The district includes maintenance of the public rights of way, public safety including uniformed Community Services Ambassadors, and community relations including centralized information services, assistance to tourists, and liaison to City agencies. In 2004, the BID conducted a charrette to rethink the area around Hallidie Plaza.

Environmental Sustainability

Citizen Planning Institutes. In partnership with the Neighborhood Parks Council, we held our second Citizen Planning Institute on Waterfront Planning, “On the Southern Waterfront: A Unified Vision for San Francisco’s Southeastern Bay Trail.” This widely attended workshop looked at best practices for waterfront open space, trail, and recreation planning specifically geared to San Francisco’s southeast waterfront. Continuing work is expected to result in the next piece of the Bay Trail, which, when completed, will encircle San Francisco and San Pablo Bays with a continuous 400-mile network of bicycling and hiking trails.

Community Choice Aggregation. We followed closely the proposal to have the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC) become the default energy provider to residents of San Francisco. The final decision about whether or not to go into this line of business has not yet been made by the City, but we tried to offer counsel about how to make the program succeed if indeed it is to go forward.

Community and Economic Development. To promote green technologies and their potential for economic development and environmental stewardship, the Sustainable Economic and Community Development Subcommittee investigated the creation of a green industries sector in San Francisco. It looked at rapidly growing green-technology companies nationwide for ways to promote similar companies here, and met with the Mayor’s Office to discuss what the City is doing for green economic development, including the local Apollo Initiative, which integrates green industries with economic development and jobs.

Green Buildings. We continued our work to clear out barriers in the Building Code to designing green—meaning resource efficient, high performance—buildings in San Francisco. One of the big victories in 2004 was the creation of a much-simplified process for obtaining a permit to add solar panels on rooftops in San Francisco. We also supported the successful expansion of the City’s green building ordinance, which applies to buildings constructed by City government. At our urging, the Building Department also changed its rules to permit onsite stormwater management, which can help reduce burdens on sewer infrastructure.

Green Infrastructure. The SFPUC will spend several billion dollars rebuilding the city’s sewers over the next 30 years. Right now, the agency is preparing a long-term strategy for wastewater and stormwater management to address specific system deficiencies, community impacts, and environmental-justice issues. This is an opportunity that comes approximately once a century, to rethink the organization of such a fundamental infrastructure system. SPUR has been developing a proposal that will bring the city’s wastewater treatment approach into the modern era by increasing the surface permeability of the city’s watersheds to encourage rainwater infiltration into the ground, rather than pumping all the rainwater (mixed with sewage) to the BayView’s water treatment plant. By working with, rather than against, the underlying hydrological processes, we can make a much more energy efficient system, reduce combined sewer overflows, and capture rainwater for productive ecological purposes, while also beautifying the city. Stay tuned as this project evolves.

Hetch Hetchy. With the lifting of the rate freeze, the SFPUC has finally been able to begin work on a massive Capital Improvement Plan to rebuild the water supply system for San Francisco after decades of neglect. Although this infrastructure project is largely hidden from view (at least within the city limits), it is obviously critical to ensuring that our water supply lines remain intact. We have been active in encouraging the SFPUC to move forward with the project, while also serving as a watchdog to make sure the project is carried out responsibly. This will continue to be a priority of SPUR’s for years to come.

Lake Merced. As members of the Lake Merced Task Force, several SPUR representatives have worked diligently for several years to restore and enhance the lake’s most beneficial uses—as a habitat and fishery, and for recreation. Their efforts have paid off with the lake being at its highest level in twenty years, Daly City providing recycled water to adjacent golf courses, and the SFPUC integrating the lake into its water-resource plans.

Sustainable Development Committee. One of SPUR’s most dynamic committees, it served as the clearinghouse for dozens of important urban environmental issues in addition to those already mentioned in this report—including outdoor lighting, resolving the conflict between the undergrounding of utility wires and planting trees, developing a green building policy for the Redevelopment Agency, and organizing noontime forums on environmental topics throughout the year.

Good Government

Capital Planning and Budgeting. The physical infrastructure built and owned by City government—including streets, parks, libraries, hospitals, fire stations, and historic landmarks—affects the quality of life, economy, environment, and beauty of San Francisco. But for years, these capital investments have been allowed to deteriorate for lack of funding, and the City has failed to adequately plan for how best to manage the new investments that will define the physical structure of the city for future generations. Last year, SPUR conducted research and arrived at policy recommendations that will help the City do a better job planning and budgeting to ensure the City’s infrastructure will be well taken care of, and that new capital investments will be based on a thoughtful system of data collection, prioritization, and public input. To top it off, we believe our proposals will save the City money at the same time. We have already begun working behind the scenes with government officials and community organizations to implement our ideas.

Fixing the City’s Contracting Process. Governments at all levels across the country are increasingly contracting with businesses and nonprofit organizations to do a portion of the work needed to provide services to the public. While the debate over how much or how little to contract out goes on, there is one thing all people can agree on: if and when we do choose to contract work out, we need to do so using a fair, efficient, transparent, and ethical process. In response to years’ worth of horror stories about the problems with the City’s contracting process, SPUR interviewed contractors and City officials, reviewed documents, and researched other cities’ practices. We came up with a set of proposals aimed at minimizing waste and ensuring a fair awarding process for all businesses and organizations competing for public contracts, so the public can get the most for every dollar it pays to contractors.

Reforming the Department of Human Resources. City government has over 25,000 employees, many of whom are SPUR members. For years, we have heard their frustrations with the way City government works: a slow hiring process, no access to training or career development, unfair systems for promotions and compensation, and lack of opportunity and recognition for employees who work harder, among other problems. City government is ultimately no more than the people who work for it—and it can only reach its potential if it is an attractive, rewarding place to work. Last year, SPUR convened a group of experts to study where our human resources systems went wrong. We interviewed people involved in the process and studied successful innovations in other cities. The results are a set of recommendations that we will release this spring, focused on reshaping the Department of Human Resources to create a better work environment for our public servants, and in doing so a more effective government.

Fire Department. We served on the advisory panel for the City controller’s review of the Fire Department. The review identified many proposals, both large and small, that would bring down costs in the department. Few of them have been implemented.

Voter Guide. San Francisco’s predisposition toward “direct democracy” means many important policy issues are decided at the ballot box. Voters are asked each election to decide on a dozen or more complex issues—but they need to be informed to do so effectively. Like we do each year, SPUR produced its voter guide that analyzed each of the 16 measures on the local ballot, discussed the pros and cons, and recommended a position. Volunteers and staff spend hundreds of hours producing each voter guide, and whether or not you agree with our recommendations, we make a sincere effort to provide clear, unbiased information about the issues.

What Didn’t Happen. Strange as it may sound, some of our most important accomplishments in 2004 are things that didn’t happen. While we always prefer to be working proactively in favor of positive ideas, our role as a good government watchdog means we must also be there to stop the bad ones in their tracks. 2004 had its share of bad ideas (we’ll let them rest in peace rather than recount them here), but as always SPUR was involved behind the scenes to block legislative proposals that could have done a lot of harm had they been enacted.

Housing

Condominiums and Land Trusts. In November of 2004, SPUR released a landmark report on home ownership. In Increasing Homeownership Through Condominium Conversion we analyzed two different proposals for increasing the share of units in San Francisco that are owned: first, a measure to allow tenants to purchase units from their landlords at slightly below market rates, while taxing away a portion of the value to be spent on affordable housing; and second, a measure to allow rent-controlled units to convert to community land trusts, which provide a form of limited equity ownership. Our proposal calls for running a pilot project to test out both systems.

Housing Above Retail. We published a SPUR report in May that proposed a set of zoning changes that would encourage the creation of housing above retail, the traditional pattern of city building that was replaced by the automobile era’s single-use development pattern. As part of this report, we outlined a structure for new, mixed-use design guidelines that could help new projects fit in better with the existing urban fabric.

Housing Action Coalition (HAC). The little group that SPUR helped birth back in 1999 has now grown to nearly 50 organizations, representing over 50,000 residents of San Francisco, with its very own staff of 1.5. A constant presence at the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors, in 2004 the HAC successfully secured approval of over 1,000 new units of housing and helped secure expansion of the Better Neighborhoods Program in the City budget. While not quite meeting the two-thirds necessary to win, the HAC was a major force behind the Prop A Housing Bond campaign that secured 64 percent of the vote in November. The HAC has been key in shaping attitudes around high-rise living, and thanks in part to the HAC’s advocacy throughout 2004, the city will soon be building its first truly high-rise, residential neighborhood: Rincon Hill. The Coalition has stuck together through many challenging development battles by staying focused on its mission: advocating for well-designed, well-located housing that meets the needs of present and future generations of San Franciscans.

Housing Element of the General Plan. Three years late, the Planning Commission adopted an updated Housing Element of the General Plan. After having been bogged down in the debate between pro- and anti-housing forces for so many years, the final plan reached the approval stage by removing controversial language and leaving the major disagreements untouched, to be dealt with in other iterations.

Housing Legislation. We continued to slog ahead with our package of housing legislation—making it easier to add secondary (“in-law” units), reducing parking requirements in high-transit locations, establishing guidelines for when and how the Board of Supervisors will overturn Planning Department decisions regarding environmental review, and a few other ideas. There were few major breakthroughs in 2004, just quiet coalition building.

Housing Bond. Proposition A, the affordable housing bond, lost at the November ballot. We worked hard to develop the measure throughout the spring and summer, and we played a supporting role in the campaign itself—but to no avail. Although the measure gained a heartbreakingly close 64 percent of the vote, a landslide by any normal measure of democracy, it did not manage to meet California’s two-thirds requirement for this kind of tax.

Senior Housing. As a result of a 2003 Citizen Planning Institute, “The Longevity Revolution,” we formed a task force to study ways to make it easier to build senior housing in San Francisco, by eliminating code confusion and roadblocks. Watch for recommendations in 2005.

Regional Planning

Bay Bridge. SPUR was active throughout the 1990s as debates raged on the proposed designs of the Bay Bridge, with seats on both the official Caltrans-sponsored committee and on a coalition of design-focused community groups. Thus we were dismayed that the governor ignored his own Transportation Department in deciding to switch designs part-way through construction. SPUR has advised that a proper decision can only be reached by starting with the criteria—not the final design—as the Governor has done. We have also supported increasing the bridge’s tolls if necessary to keep the bridge retrofit on track and fund other capacity improvements in this corridor.

High Speed Rail. SPUR provided comments on the High Speed Rail Authority’s draft Program Environmental Impact Report. The proposal to link L.A. and San Francisco via a Central Valley rail corridor has not yet gone before the voters for funding. SPUR has been largely supportive, although we remain concerned about the potential of the project to induce sprawl in the Central Valley if land use planning in Valley communities is not handled correctly.

Regional Transportation Plan. We supported efforts to improve the latest version of the region’s 30-year transportation funding plan, administered by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC). For the first time, MTC is likely to include land use criteria as part of their decision-making screen for deciding how to invest scarce regional dollars—meaning that transit corridors receiving regional funding for transit expansion will have to provide significant housing near stations and hubs. The plan was not perfect, but overall we think it’s the best yet.

Transportation and Land Use Coalition (TALC). SPUR is proud to be part of this coalition that advocates for progressive transportation policy at the regional level. TALC helped to lead the effort to develop and pass Regional Measure 2, a bridge toll increase that funds public transit, which SPUR supported and was passed by 56 percent of the voters in March 2004. Funding included $150 million for the Caltrain extension to a new Transbay Terminal, and funding to help complete the Third Street Light Rail. TALC was involved with a variety of transportation sales taxes around the region, including a successful effort in Contra Costa County to get $100 million to promote transit-oriented development and $90 million to for a safe Transportation for Children program. TALC is also leading the coalition effort to have MTC make a stronger link between transportation funding and land use.

ABAG/MTC. SPUR’s State and Regional Affairs Committee, after observing the Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG) and the MTC through 2002 and 2003, continued its scrutiny of this complicated joust between two sets of locally elected officials and two staffs through 2004. Under continued pressure from State Senator Tom Torlakson, and even a Schwarzenegger signature, in 2004 there was actually an outcome with the formation of an MTC/ABAG Joint Policy Committee (JPC), which thereafter was joined by the Air Quality Board. The new JPC, with a strong executive director who comes from the highly successful Vancouver, B.C. region, is now a significant troika committed to advancing Smart Growth at the regional level, which is exactly the level where the principles will stand or fall. Shelly Poticha, former director of the Center for Transit Oriented Development, is leading the JPC Smart Growth/Transit-Oriented Development study, and is seeking to condition MTC approval of transportation grants on adherence to accepted transit-oriented development standards. The JPC is working under the original bill (Torlakson’s SB 849) emanating from a legislative process whose initiation was supported by SPUR. That law mandates that MTC and ABAG assess the level of coordination and collaboration that can be attained by the two regional agencies, and they are now involved in making that determination.

San Diego Trip. The SPUR Board went on a study trip to San Diego, and brought back a number of helpful ideas. We learned about downtown redevelopment, the city’s use of business improvement districts, economic development policy, and the special challenges that come with being a bi-national metropolitan region. But for many of us, the greatest contrasts with the Bay Area were in the system of regional governance and planning, where the San Diego Association of Governments’ (SANDAG’s) consolidated authority is at the opposite end of the continuum from the Bay Area’s fragmentation.

Transportation

Bicycle Planning Reform. We evaluated the current draft Bicycle Plan Update and its failure to propose a citywide network for improved routes for bicycle travel. We also presented some ideas for planning reform in a meeting with members of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and the MTA Commission.

Bus Rapid Transit on Geary. The single most important way for Muni to attract riders away from the automobile is to reduce trip time. This happens by consolidating service onto core routes and eliminating all sources of delay on those routes. Planners at Muni saw an opportunity to make a little progress toward this vision by improving the transit-only lanes and bus stop spacing as part of an already-funded street resurfacing project on Geary. It turned into a sad fight between Tenderloin activists who did not want space between bus stops increased and transit advocates who wanted Muni to enact a piece of its rapid transit plan. SPUR was actively on the side of Muni. The result: a compromise that made a bit of progress.

Doyle Drive. After 14 years of advocacy, SPUR had a major success on a replacement design for the road through the Presidio National Park that runs from the Golden Gate Bridge to Marina Blvd. and Richardson Ave. near the Palace of Fine Arts. The existing road is now classified as the most dangerous elevated structure in California. SPUR promoted the concept of landscape architect Michael Painter, which proved to be far more beautiful, have fewer impacts on national park resources, and be less expensive than earlier designs. As a result, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, which has done an outstanding job raising money for the project, is recommending that the SPUR/Painter Presidio Parkway take the place of all four earlier alternatives. SPUR is now working with the San Francisco County Transportation Authority and Ove Arup & Partners to ensure that the project’s configuration is for a moderate-speed roadway that moves traffic smoothly through the national park, and not a freeway design.

Downtown Parking. We worked throughout the year on the problem of how to continue to allow downtown to grow (currently with housing, rather than offices) while still allowing the street network to function. The question is, how can we avoid absolute gridlock, while still adding a lot of people? In January of 2005 we published the results in Parking and Livability in Downtown San Francisco, a report that calls for active management of the supply of parking to ensure that downtown continues to work.

Reorganization of the MTA. In September 2004 we published a report, Multimodal Planning at the MTA, which proposed a sweeping reorganization of the city’s transportation agency. Our goal was to complete the work of Prop E’s Muni reform by finally creating a truly multimodal agency, one that can improve service for buses, bikes, cars, and pedestrians. The MTA is still struggling to step up to its new role in being responsible for the entire transportation and pedestrian space network in the city. We are happy to report that the MTA has undertaken a reorganization along the lines we recommended and that the new MTA director of planning will address SPUR this month (see p.15).

Transbay Terminal (and Surrounding Neighborhood). SPUR continued its advocacy for a new regional transit terminal that will be the centerpiece of a new Transbay Terminal neighborhood. The focus this year has been on a neighborhood design of mixed commercial and office uses with thousands of new homes in townhouses and high-rise towers. Most streets will have more space for pedestrians, trees, and public activities. This fine-grained design will allow many residents to live, work, and play with far less reliance on cars. The plan is well along in the official adoption process.

Transit Impact Development Fee. One of the major victories of 2004 was the enactment of an expanded transit impact development fee. Since the June 2001 SPUR report Planning for Growth: A Proposal to Expand San Francisco’s Transit Impact Development Fee, we have been working with the City to devise a fee that would apply to all new nonresidential development citywide (not just downtown), and revise the nexus argument to give Muni more flexibility in its use of the funding. The only question was setting the level of the fee correctly—enough to provide adequate funds to Muni without discouraging development. After a lot of give and take, a sound measure was passed. It will bring Muni an estimated $310 million over the next 20 years, or about $15.5 million per year.