How 5 Megaprojects Could Add Up to One Easy Train Ride
By Ratna Amin, Transportation Policy Director, and Laura Tolkoff, San Jose Policy DirectorWith so many transportation agencies in the Bay Area, different entities often end up planning and building pieces of the same project. That’s happening right now on a grand scale: There are no less than five megaprojects taking place between San Jose and Oakland. If planned right they could add up to much more than the sum of their parts.
Putting the “Me” in Transit: Six Tools to Figure Out What Riders Want
By Arielle Fleisher, Transportation Policy Associate, and Ratna Amin, Transportation Policy DirectorWhat would it look like if we put people at the center of transit planning — if we designed a friendly system grounded in the needs, wants and preferences of all riders? Would transit be more useful? Would more people ride it? To help transportation planners understand riders as customers, SPUR recently hosted the third annual Transit + Design Workshop.
Making Bay Area Transit Affordable for Those Who Need It Most
By Arielle Fleisher, Transportation Policy AssociateFor most households in the Bay Area, transportation is the third-biggest monthly expense, behind housing and food. When transit is out of reach, its promise — access to other people, goods, jobs, education and opportunity — cannot be realized. How can we ensure that transit fares remain affordable for the region’s low-income residents?
Remaking Diridon: Principles to Plan and Grow By
By Laura Tolkoff, San Jose Policy Director, and Teresa Alvarado, San Jose DirectorOver the next decade, more than $10 billion of transportation investments will start to remake San Jose’s Diridon Station into the first high-speed rail station in the country and the busiest transportation hub west of the Mississippi. This historic opportunity has the potential to reshape the entire South Bay. SPUR proposes seven principles that should guide planning, land use and transportation decisions at Diridon.
HOME-SF: New Law Aims to Spark More Affordable Housing
By Kristy Wang, Community Planning Policy DirectorLast month, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee signed the HOME-SF program into law. The new law encourages housing developers to provide 30 percent of new units to low- and moderate-income households in exchange for permission to build bigger. The program will help to fill San Francisco’s growing need for housing, particularly for middle-income households that have not been well-served in the past.
Keep Building Oakland
By Robert Ogilvie, Oakland DirectorAs the pace of residential development picks up in downtown Oakland and the Broadway-Valdez area, it’s worth remembering that Oakland is much, much bigger than those two small neighborhoods and that very little is being built anywhere else. If we really want to alleviate the housing shortage, we need to build much more housing, in many more parts of the city.
Why Brisbane Baylands Matters to the Bay Area Housing Shortage
By Kristy Wang, Community Planning Policy DirectorThe Brisbane City Council will decide this summer whether to allow 4,400 housing units and 7 million square feet of commercial space within walking distance of an underutilized Caltrain station. Seems like the perfect place for homes, amenities and jobs, but so far the Brisbane Planning Commission has favored a low-density plan with no housing. Here’s why this matters — to all of us.
How Caltrain’s Business Plan Can Reinvent the Railroad
By Ratna Amin, SPUR Transportation Policy Director.Now that Caltrain’s electrification project has federal funding, leaders and the public can start designing the Caltrain of the future. Finishing the $2.25 billion modernization project will mark the beginning of a completely new era for the railroad. As Caltrain begins the process of developing a business plan, here are five important questions we think the business plan should tackle.
What’s Going Up in Downtown San Jose? Our Take on Three Trends
By Laura Tolkoff, San Jose Policy Director, and Joshua Brett, San Jose Policy InternThe number of proposed developments in downtown San Jose is up — but only one project broke ground in the last year. Blocks are filling in with new businesses — but beloved Camera 12 Cinemas has shut its doors. These mixed signals make it hard to predict what the market will do next, but we’ve seen three clear trends play out in recent months.
Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones: Four Years In
By Eli Zigas, Food and Agriculture Policy DirectorThe Urban Agriculture Incentive Zones Act is about to turn four years old, and the California Legislature is considering a 10-year extension to allow the program more time to develop and give other jurisdictions more time to start incentive programs.