Part of the challenge facing regional planners, who wrote the 30-year Plan Bay Area, is that it is hard to predict future population growth. The current list of more than 200 potential priority development areas in the plan tracks established high-density zones closely, indicating that the Association of Bay Area Governments, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and other regional agencies want to fill in developments in areas that are already highly urbanized or near mass transit lines, instead of in undeveloped or underdeveloped suburban settings. This map helps readers of the Public Press’s summer edition special project, Growing Smarter: Planning for a Bay Area of 9 Million, understand these trends.
Category: Transportation
Posted inLabor, Transportation
Muni asks drivers to hold it in while new bathrooms get approvals
Bus operators looking for a toilet after hours sitting in the driver’s seat will have to hold it just a little longer. That’s because Muni’s plans to build seven new free-standing bathrooms needs to be approved not just by the transit agency, but also Public Works and the Arts Commission. All told, it’s going to take six months.
Posted inBay Area, Bay Area Smart Growth, Land use, Media, Transportation
Officials say planning for regional smart growth prevents ‘a world of hurt’
The leaders of Bay Area planning agencies are struggling to persuade local governments and community groups that joint planning will make the region more socially, economically and environmentally healthy. Dealing with sprawl, the focus of the summer print edition of the Public Press, was front and center on Friday’s edition of “Forum,” the daily public-affairs talk show on KQED Radio.
Posted inBay Area, Bay Area Smart Growth, Climate Change, Housing, Land use, Transportation
Cities resist regional plan to limit sprawl
A high-profile effort to focus new Bay Area housing into energy-efficient transit villages is seen as unworkable even as it makes its public debut this summer, say urban planners, because regional government lacks the authority to make cities build dense urban neighborhoods. The three-decade Plan Bay Area, unveiled in May, is the product of more than two years of research on the region’s demographics, economy, transportation and architecture. Proponents say “smart growth” could be the future of the Bay Area — if regional agencies had either the legal tools to enforce the grand vision or enough money to make it worthwhile for cities to participate.
Posted inEnvironment, Transportation
After a decade-plus of planning, San Francisco finally sets 2016 date for bus rapid transit
It took the United States eight years to get a man on the moon, but it’s going to take transit officials almost 12 years to get a new high-speed “bus rapid transit” system onto one of San Francisco’s busiest corridors. The Van Ness Avenue project, which in 2006 was projected to open at the end of this year — in time for the Muni centennial — has been pushed back four more years, largely because transit planners had underestimated the time needed to complete the environmental work and project planning.
Posted inCity Hall, Neighborhoods, News, Transportation
Express bus eyed for Caltrain to mid-Market run
Muni officials want to start an express bus route to speed workers from the downtown San Francisco Caltrain to a revitalized mid-Market jobs hub. The rush-hour service would cater to what the city anticipates will be a growing technology business cluster near the new headquarters of social media giant Twitter.
Posted inCommunity, Parks & Open Space, Transportation
24th St. BART plaza will expand
Remodeling 24th St. BART plaza will add 1,200 square feet to the plaza on the southwest corner, according to planners who met with the community last Wednesday. “These plazas are important public open spaces … they are gateways to the neighborhood for residents and myriad visitors,” said BART Board Vice President Tom Radulovich. “Everyone I talk to about them agrees they are not working now the way they should.”
Posted inCity Hall, News, Transportation
Drivers to pay for Sunday parking; low-income youth will ride Muni free
Drivers who plan to spend a day in the city on Sundays should remember to bring their change to pay the parking meter. San Francisco’s transportation agency approved its two-year budget Tuesday, which included making motorists pay at parking meters on Sundays, handing out free Fast Passes to low-income youth and funding for more maintenance on Muni.
Posted inCity Hall, Government & Politics, Transportation
Muni brings back first streetcar from 1912
Mayor Ed Lee, U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein and city officials joined to celebrate Muni’s centennial year by re-introducing the transit system’s first streetcar from 1912. Muni turns 100 on Dec. 28.
Posted inCity Hall, Economy & Business, Housing, Land use, Media, Technology, Transportation
San Francisco pitched as beacon of ‘collaborative consumption’
San Francisco’s current crop of leaders ran for office on a platform of deploying city resources to encourage private-sector job growth — which in this famously liberal city is seen as about as conservative as an elected official can get. But last week a task force convened by Mayor Ed Lee and four members of the Board of Supervisors opened an opportunity to expand the meaning of the pro-business moniker to a new crop of startup, do-gooder social enterprises that enable small-scale, peer-to-peer economic activity and resource sharing.