SFMTA

Big waterfront projects prompt study of new transportation ideas

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The massive development projects being proposed along San Francisco’s central waterfront – from the proposed Warriors Arena at Pier 30 through the Giants’ housing/retail project at Pier 48 down to Forest City’s sprawling proposal around Pier 70 – will create huge challenges for the city’s already overtaxed transportation system.

Nobody is more aware of that issue than Warriors President Rick Welts as he seeks approval to build a 17,500-seat arena with just a smattering of parking spaces. “We’re investing a billion dollars in this property, and if people aren’t comfortable getting to it and leaving it, we have a problem,” Welts told a gathering of the California Music and Culture Association on Tuesday night, responding to a local resident who raised the concern. “We have to get that right, it’s at the top of our list.”

With Muni and BART already at capacity during peak hours, and thousands of new housing units being built in the coming years both along the waterfront and from nearby SoMa down through the Eastern Neighborhoods Plan area, city transportation planners are trying to get ahead of potential problems created by the development boom.

“We’re now taking a step back and looking at the long-term needs from the Exploratorium down to Pier 70,” says San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency planner Peter Albert, who is leading a comprehensive waterfront transportation study that will inform the environmental studies done for each of these projects. “What we get is an environmental review that is much smarter because we have all this advanced planning….EIRs are important, but they aren’t really planning.”

Albert is looking at everything from working with various transportation agencies to beef up bus, train, and ferry services to the area; using these projects to complete the ambitious but underfunded and long-stalled Blue-Greenway bicycle path along the waterfront; accelerating capital projects that are already in the SFMTA’s queue; and exploring a dozen or so new ideas.

“What’s also coming out of this are new ideas we’re coming up with, things we weren’t even thinking of that may make sense,” Albert told us, noting that he’ll be doing his first presentation of some of these ideas to the SFMTA Board of Directors on March 5.

They include extending new streetcar service along the Embarcadero to the Caltrain station at 4th and King or possibly all the way out to the Anchor Steam Brewing-anchored project at Pier 48 (which would probably involve construction of new streetcar turn-arounds); better integrating the Central Subway project into Mission Bay and the Embarcadero with new bus and rail connections around 20th and 3rd streets; and expansion of the Embarcadero BART station to increase its peak capacity.

Welts said BART will be an important connector to the new Warriors Arena, noting that the walking distance from Pier 30 to the Embarcadero station is actually about the same distance as the Coliseum BART station is from the entrance to the Warriors’ current arena. He said that he’s excited about Albert’s work and wants to cooperate with helping the city meet its transportation needs: “We have a lot of process to go through and we’re embracing that process.”

Funding the needed improvements will be a challenge, particularly because new development projects generally don’t pay for their full impacts to the transportation system, as SFMTA head Ed Reiskin and Sup. Scott Wiener have told the Guardian. On Monday, Wiener amended the Western SoMa Community Plan to increase how much developers would pay in transportation impact fees.

Albert said funding for the needed improvements to the area’s transportation system would come from a combination of mitigation fees from the developers, reprioritizing the SFMTA’s existing capital budget, and securing state and federal transportation grants by developing impactful projects that are shovel-ready, thanks to this advanced planning effort.

These three waterfront development projects alone could have huge impacts. The Warriors Arena would host more than 200 concerts and sporting events per year, drawing anywhere from a few thousand to more than 17,500 people. The Giants’ Pier 48 proposal involves 27 acres of new development, including retail, office, Anchor Brewing, and about 1,500 homes. And Forest City’s proposal for Pier 70 involves about 1,000 homes, 2.2 million square feet of office space, and 275,000 square feet of retail and light manufacturing.

Addressing the waterfront’s transportation challenges, Board of Supervisors President David Chiu told the Guardian, “It is possibly the most difficult and important question surrounding the Warriors project, and I’ve encouraged all parties to make sure they get it right.”

Two good questions for Mayor Lee

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UPDATED When Mayor Ed Lee appears before the Board of Supervisors this afternoon (Tues/12) for the voter-mandated monthly “Formal Policy Discussions” (aka Question Time), he will be asked a couple of good, relevant questions with no easy answers. This is exactly what voters and progressive supervisors intended, a serious policy discussion, rather than sterile, hollow ritual that our current crop of politicians have turned it into.

The first question is by Sup. Eric Mar, who asks, “The Municipal Transportation Agency recently released its Draft Bicycle Strategy, which lays out an aggressive plan to upgrade San Francisco’s bicycle facilities. It supports biking for everyone, including seniors, families, and persons with disabilities. However, I am hearing growing concerns both in my district and city-wide about the mismatch between verbal commitments to better bicycling and budget realities. Currently, bicycle projects account for just 0.46 percent of all MTA capital. This is not enough to get us to the goals laid out in the Bicycle Strategy. How will you fund the Bicycle Strategy to make San Francisco a national leader in bicycling safety and use?”

Great question! This report, which came out in December, has the modest, realistic goal of increasing the share of vehicle trips taken by bike from 3.5 percent last year up to 8-10 percent by 2018. That already seems to abandon the official city goal – heavily touted by Lee and Board President David Chiu – of 20 percent by 2020. But even this new plan isn’t fully funded, so the question is simply asking the mayor whether he will put his money where his mouth is.

The second question comes from Chiu, who is trying to find a way to mediate the very real and challenging dispute between the city’s renters and those trying to convert more apartments into condos. Understanding where Lee stands on the issue is important to solving this problem, and Chiu’s question seems to genuinely seek guidance from the chief executive.

He asks, “Mr. Mayor, the Board of Supervisors is considering legislation to allow existing owners of Tenancies in Common (TICs) to bypass the condominium conversion lottery and be converted after the payment of a fee. I recently asked supporters of the legislation and tenant advocates to engage in negotiations, which Supervisor Farrell and I are hosting.

“What is your position on this pending legislation? What protections would you support to prevent the loss of rent-controlled housing in our increasingly unaffordable city? How would you address the concern that if we allow the current generation of TIC owners to convert, we will replace then with a new generation of TIC owners and additional real estate investments that will lead us right back to an identical debate within a short time?”

Again, excellent questions that go right to heart of one of the central struggles facing this city: Who gets to live here? And given Lee’s role in relentlessly promoting taxpayer-subsidized economic development strategies that are gentrifying the city and fueling this clash, one could argue that he has a moral obligation to help find a solution to this problem, or at the very least to say where he stands so voters can judge him accordingly.

Mayor Lee received these questions last week, so he and his staff have had plenty of time to think about them and prepare real, substantive answers. Will we get real answers or just the normal political platitudes that kick the can down the road in dealing with these pressing problems? We’ll see. Tune in at 2 pm to SFGOVTV to watch yourself, or check back here later and I’ll tell you what Mayor Lee said.

4PM UPDATE: And the winner is…meaningless political platitudes, misleading data, and shameless fence-sitting.

“I can’t say that I have a magic solution to this issue that will make everyone happy,” was how Mayor Lee answered Chiu’s question about the condo lottery bypass legislation, after saying he understood the positions of TIC owners who want to convert to condos and tenant groups concerned about the loss of what he called “the precious few rent-controlled units.”

Lee said he hopes that the two sides can find a “consensus solution” to the problem, which seems to indicate that he does indeed believe in magic considering the diametrically opposed viewpoints of the two sides and the zero sum game this issue represents. Afterward, I told the mayor that he didn’t seem to take a position on the issue and asked him to elaborate on what should be done, and he maintained that, “I actually did take a position, even though it didn’t sound like it, because I actually believe they have good points on both sides.”

Yet when KCBS reporter Barbara Taylor tried to help discern what that position may be, asking whether we could at least say that Lee didn’t support the legislation in its current form, he wouldn’t even agree to that weak stance. No, his position was that both sides have good points, even though they’re opposing points, and he’s hoping for the best. Next question.

Lee didn’t provide a clear or responsive answer on the bike question either. He reiterated his support for cycling improvements and said, “SFMTA’s prime responsibility is to ensure the streets are safe for all San Franciscans, and that includes bicyclists.” And he tried to dispute Mar’s point about how less than a half of 1 percent of the agency’s capital budget goes to bicycling improvements.

“To look at the percentage might not tell the whole story,” Lee said, citing how the SFMTA and the Transbay Joint Powers Authority are now seeking about $40 million in state and federal grants for transportation projects that would include cycling infrastructure improvements.

And that might have seemed like a somewhat responsive answer to the casual listener who isn’t aware that the price tag for improvements identified in the SFMTA Bicycle Strategy total about $200 million, of which the agency has only identified about $30 million in available funding. So the question of “How will you fund the Bicycle Strategy?” remains unanswered.

Perhaps it was too much to expect straight answers from a politician.

Sunday metering begins in SF but few notice

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Yesterday, after years of heated conflicts over the issue, San Francisco officially began charging motorists to use metered parking spaces between noon and 6pm on Sundays – and nobody seemed to notice.

For the first few weeks, parking control officers with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency are going to be issuing warnings rather than expensive parking tickets. But as Streetsblog SF reported today, even that didn’t seem to be happen. Its street survey in the Haight and Mission districts found that most parkers didn’t pay, and they received no warnings that they were supposed to.

SFMTA spokespersons that didn’t respond to Streetsblog inquiries also haven’t responded to questions from the Guardian about what happened and how many warnings were issued (UPDATED BELOW).

Sunday metering is intended to create more parking turnover in busy commercial corridors and bolster the SFMTA’s budget, capturing more money for Muni. But for now, it seems that everyone involved is still trying to shake off their holiday hangovers and get up to speed.

UPDATE 5:45: SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose just returned our call to say parking control officers were indeed busy issuing warnings yesterday. “We issued about 4,000 warnings yesterday. That’s part of getting the word out,” he said. As far as Streetsblog’s observations, he said it could have been a fluke of timing or the fact that meters don’t indicate when someone pre-pays or pays by cell phone. “In the Haight, specifically, we issued about 600 warnings, and about 1,000 in the Mission,” he said. In addition to the direct warnings, the SFMTA has been publicizing the Sunday metering on billboards and Muni posters, through merchant groups, in the media, and on the meters themselves. 

Enforcement with actual tickets begins on Jan. 27.

On the cheap

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Event listings compiled by George McIntire. Submit items for the listings at listings@sfbg.com. For further information on how to submit items for the listings, see Picks.

WEDNESDAY 26

Kwanzaa Celebration Bay Area Discovery Museum, 557 McReynolds, Sausalito. www.baykidsmuseum.org. 9am-5pm, free. A traditional Kwanzaa altar will greet you upon arriving at the kids museum’s celebration of African American community, featuring two performance (at 11am and 1pm) by African Roots of Jazz.

7th Annual San Francisco Celebration City Hall Rotunda, 1 Dr. Carlton Goodlett, SF. www.kwanzaasanfrancisco.com. Noon, free. Head on over to City Hall to celebrate the umoja (unity) day of Kwanzaa, the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. Keynote speeches from the likes of Dr. Amos C. Brown, pastor of Third Baptist Church and district vice president of YMCA San Francisco Gina Fromm.

Soul Sessions Era Art Bar and Lounge, 19 Grand, Oakl. www.oaklandera.com. 9pm-1am, $5-10. Live performance from the Antique Naked Soul collective, painting by Bushmama & Smokie, and DJs spinning deep house, trap, hip-hop, and R&B.

Stay Gold Public Works, 161 Erie, SF. www.publicsf.com, (415) 932-0955. 10pm-1am, $3-5. It’s going to be a raucous holi-gay par-tay at Public Works tonight where DJ Pink Lightning will be throwing down the sick, bass-throbbing beats. Bring pastel lipstick and chandelier earrings.

THURSDAY 27

DIY Zine Making Workshop Rock Paper Scissors Collective, 2278 Telegraph, Oakl. www.rpscollective.org. 6-8pm, $1. This is your chance to become the next big media mogul. The good folks at the Rock Paper Scissors Collective are being gracious enough of to provide you with a workshop and your own materials to create your own zine, take them up on it.

FRIDAY 28

Dam-Funk 1015 Folsom, SF. www.1015.com. 10pm-3am, free with RSVP on website. No one in the world is as committed to the funk than super-funkateer Dam Funk. Get your boogie on as he shreds his keytar with his electro-synth jams. Be on the look out for the new album dropping in the spring of 2013.

Free Muni Day SF Muni stops. www.sfmta.com. All day, free. Take the L-line to the zoo or ride a cable car for the first time ever — today all Muni services are on the house to celebrate the agency’s 100th anniversary.

SATURDAY 29

Treasure Island Flea Market Great Lawn, Ave of the Palms, Treasure Island, SF. www.treasureislandflea.com. 10am-4pm, $3. Looking to pick up some Christmas or Chanukah presents? Then head over to the Island of Treasure for its monthly open-air flea market. Enjoy awesome views of the Bay Area while perusing goodies from local designers, collectors, and other makers.

SUNDAY 30

Instant Camera Photo Walk Photobooth SF, 1193 Valencia, SF. www.photoboothsf.com. 1-3pm, free. This event is for analog photographers only, so Instagrammers need not apply. Join the staff of the Mission’s Photobooth gallery for a photowalk down Valencia corridor. Be sure to bring a Polaroid/Land or Frankenstein instant camera along. No worries if you don’t have one, Photobooth will be happy to lend you one for the occasion.

SF Zoo Lights 1 Zoo, SF. www.sfzoo.com, (415) 753-8141. 4-8pm, $5. Stuck with the family all week? May we recommend taking them to the last night of the San Francisco Zoo Lights extravaganza? The zoo will be a bastion of animal-themed, family-friendly holiday fun complete with a splendid light show, 30-foot Christmas tree with animal decorations, and free rides on the carousel.

MONDAY 31

Holiday 3D Light Show Westfield SF Centre, 865 Market, SF. www.westfield.com/sanfrancisco. 5pm, free. Tonight’s your last chance to catch the holiday magic of the Illuminique Under the Dome show, which transforms the Westfield mall’s glass dome, built in 1908, into a surround-sound wonderland of scenes sure to get your little (and not-so-little) ones in an eggnog froth.

 

Left-right punch knocks out increased development fees for Muni

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A new and unusual coalition of nonprofit, religious, and corporate interests today killed a legislative effort to get more money for Muni through the Transit Impact Development Fee, which was going through its process of being reauthorized every five years and came to the Board of Supervisors today.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was hoping to get millions of dollars more per year from the fee to help cover the increasing costs of Muni service, so the city last year commissioned a study establishing a nexus between new development projects and their impact on the public transit system as a way to set the fees developers would pay.

Using that study, Sup. Scott Wiener sponsored legislation that increased the cost per square foot of development for some business types – mostly notably hospitals, big retail and entertainment complexes, and Cultural/Institution/Education facilities – and ended the categorical exemption for nonprofit organizations.

Those who could be impacted by the increased fees banded together into an organization calling itself NOTT (Non-profits Opposed to the Transit Tax), a group that included the city’s major health care providers, religious institutions, and influential nonprofits such as Council of Community Housing Organizations and Chinatown Community Development Center.

“We are gravely concerned that elements of the forthcoming Transportation Sustainability Program (TSP), especially elimination of the non-profit fee exemption, have been selectively imbedded in the TIDF update legislation. Elimination of the non-profit exemption has not been considered through a thorough and transparent process and is not good public policy,” SF Chamber of Commerce President Steve Falk wrote in Nov. 27 letter to supervisors on behalf of the organization.

In the face of opposition from both downtown and progressive groups, and hoping to get SFMTA more money for its next budget cycle, Wiener appealed for support to sustainable transportation activists, who had mixed feelings on the legislation for reasons ranging from its exemption of parking garages and development in Mission Bay to its inclusion of organizations serving low-income communities.

So Sup. Sean Elsbernd – who spoke on behalf of Catholic schools and churches – was able to amend the legislation back to the status quo on a 9-2 vote, with only Wiener and Sup. Carmen Chu opposed (Sup. Christina Olague, who co-sponsored the measure with Wiener, even failed to support it in the end).

While that ends this effort for now, it is really only the first round of efforts that are just getting underway to find more funding for Muni, which is underfunded and at capacity on many lines, and implement the TSP when it is unveiled next year.

Separated bikeways on Oak and Fell finally up for approval

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After three years of delays and broken promises, the fate of a dangerous but vital bike route in San Francisco will be decided on Oct. 16. Oak and Fell streets, one of the few major east-west byways in the city, carries tens of thousands of cars each day, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Right now, there is no bike lane on Oak, and the stripes on Fell are only two feet wide with no buffer, putting cyclists inches from heavy traffic.
But all that could change. If the transit agency gives it the green light, the perilous Oak-Fell corridor between Scott and Baker will gain needed concrete barriers and wider bike lanes, according to SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose and bike advocates.
“This has been a long push,” said Leah Shahum, president of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, a vocal advocate of the project.
If passed, separated bikeways, crosswalk enhancements, traffic signal timing changes, and parking mitigation measures would be installed by the end of 2012, Rose said, and construction of bulbouts and a concrete bikeway barrier would be put in by the summer of 2013.
The project has met repeated delays, despite Mayor Ed Lee’s promise that it would be done by the end of 2011.
A section of the major bike route “The Wiggle,” its the only game in town if you’re a cyclist who wants to cross the city from east to west. But not everyone favors the fix.
Blogger and anti-bike activist Rob Anderson, who sued San Francisco for not performing proper studies on bike lane projects in 2005, calls it a slap in the face to people who must drive to work.
“It shows no sympathy or understanding for working people in the neighborhood,” Anderson said. He bemoaned the loss of parking as particularly harmful to residents in the area, which would lose 35 parking spaces, according to SFMTA data. “It’s all about making cyclists comfortable.”
Shahum agrees with Anderson on that point, arguing that’s the best way to encourage more people to get on a bike. “Poll after poll, survey after survey say that the biggest deterrent to biking is safety,” Shahum said. Its not just about the accidents, it’s also about people perceptions.
If the bike lanes were more safe, more cyclists would ride them, Shahum said. This would pave the way towards San Francisco’s goal of increasing bike ridership to 20 percent of trips made in San Francisco by the year 2020, which is enshrined in legislation passed by the Board of Supervisors two years ago. Currently, about 3.5 percent of bike commutes in the city are by bicycle, a 71 percent increase from 2005, according to the city’s “2012 State of Cycling Report.”
One San Francisco politician says that the city wasn’t pedaling fast enough on the redesign. District 5 candidate Christina Olague sent a letter to the SFMTA two weeks ago urging the transit agency to pick up the pace and break ground by year’s end. That may have been a factor in SFBC’s subsequent decision to give Olague it’s top endorsement, with Julian Davis gets its number two spot.
Shahum said the SFBC plans to turn out its members on Oct. 16 to ensure passage of a project it has sought for years: “We can breathe when it’s over.”

The gloves are coming off in competitive D5

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Candidates in the District 5 supervisorial race – where one recent poll showed almost half of voters undecided about a field of imperfect candidates seeking to represent the city’s most progressive district – have been sharpening their attacks on one another, learning lessons about hardball politics, and fighting over key endorsements.

Christina Olague, the incumbent appointed by Mayor Ed Lee earlier this year, has been taking flak in recent debates from competitors who are highlighting the schism between her progressive history and her more conservative recent votes and alliances. That gulf was what caused Matt Gonzalez to pull his endorsement of Olague this summer and give it to Julian Davis.

London Breed has now suffered a similar setback when US Sen. Dianne Feinstein revoked her endorsement following colorful comments Breed made to the Fog City Journal, which were repeated in the San Francisco Chronicle, blasting her one-time political patron Willie Brown. Breed, whose politics have been to the right of the district, seemed to be trying to assert her independence and win over progressive voters who have different worldviews than her more conservative endorsers.

But she may have gone a bit too far when she told Fog City Journal’s Luke Thomas: “You think I give a fuck about a Willie Brown at the end of the day when it comes to my community and the shit that people like Rose Pak and Willie Brown continue to do and try to control things. They don’t fucking control me – you go ask them why wouldn’t you support London because she don’t do what the hell I tell her to do. I don’t do what no motherfucking body tells me to do.”

Shortly thereafter, Breed said she got a call from Feinstein’s people withdrawing the endorsement. “There were just some concerns about the kind of language I used in the article,” Breed told us.

Sources say Brown has been in payback mode ever since, urging Feinstein and others to stop supporting Breed and switch to Olague. Neither Brown nor Feinstein returned our calls. On the record, Breed was contrite when we spoke with her and reluctant to say anything bad about Brown or Feinstein, except to offer us the vague, “There are a lot of people who respect and like me, and they don’t like what they see happening.”

Breed went after Olague hard during a Sept. 18 debate sponsored by the Haight-Ashbury Neighborhood Council and other groups, blasting Olague for her ties to Brown, Lee, and Chinatown power broker Rose Pak, claiming Olague is too beholden to that crew and D5 needs a more independent supervisor.

Asked to respond to the attack during the debate, Olague said, “I won’t dignify that with a response.” But it seems clear to anyone watching the race that Olague has been getting lots of support from Lee, Pak, and Brown and the political consultants who do their bidding, David Ho and Enrique Pearce, which is one reason many progressives have been withholding their support.

The Breed campaign this week trumpeted its endorsement by three prominent progressive activists: Debra Walker, Roma Guy, and Alix Rosenthal. But it has been Davis that has captured the endorsements of the most progressive individuals and organizations, including a big one this week: the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, which gave Davis is sole endorsement even though he’s straight and Olague is from the LGBT community.

Davis also snagged the number one endorsement of the San Francisco Tenants Union, a big one for D5, as well as the sole endorsements of Gonzalez, former Democratic Party Chair Aaron Peskin, and Sup. John Avalos. Assembly member Tom Ammiano also endorsed the Davis campaign, adding that to Ammiano’s earlier endorsement of John Rizzo, the other solid progressive in the race. Rizzo also got the Sierra Club and the number one ranking by San Francisco Tomorrow.

But Olague is enjoying quite a bit of union support, including snagging the sole endorsement of the San Francisco Labor Council, whose members in the trades like her controversial vote on the 8 Washington project more than progressives or her competitors, who all opposed the deal. Olague was also endorsed by the United Educators of San Francisco and California Nurses Association.

The biggest union of city workers, SEIU Local 1021, gave its unranked endorsements to Davis, Olague, and Rizzo, as did Sup. David Campos. Sup. Jane Kim – who has also occasionally parted ways with progressives after Ho and Pearce ran her campaign against Walker – gave Olague an early endorsement, but late this week also extended an endorsement to Davis.

“As someone who has championed rank-choice voting, it is important for me that progressives are thoughtful about how we strategize for victory.  I have known Julian Davis a long time, and I believe that he would be a strong leader that fights for progressive values that District 5 cares about, including sustainable streets and livable neighborhoods,” Kim said in a statement given to the Davis campaign.

Another important endorsement in D5 is that of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, which carried a faint whiff of controversy this year. The group gave Olague its number one endorsement and Davis its number two, but some SFBC members have secretly complained to us that the fix was in and that Davis actually got more votes from SFBC members, which most people thought was how its endorsements are decided.

SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum told us she wouldn’t reveal who got the most member votes, but she did say that the SFBC Board of Directors actually decides the endorsements based on several factors. “The member vote is one of the factors the board took into consideration,” she said, listing a candidate’s record, relationship with SFBC, personal history, and other factors. “Nothing special was done in that vote, by any means.”

SFBC has been playing nice with Mayor Lee in the last couple years, despite his broken promise of getting the critical yet controversial Fell/Oak separated bike lanes approved by the SFMTA, which he first said would be done by the end of 2011, then by the end of 2012, but which lately seemed to be dragging into 2013.

At SFBC’s urging, Olague recently wrote a pair of letters to the SFMTA urging quicker action on the project, and it seems to have worked: Shahum said a vote on that project has now been scheduled for Oct. 16, and she’s hopeful that it might now be underway by the end of the year after all. As she said, “We’re thrilled.”

BTW, in case you’re curious, the Guardian’s endorsements come out on Oct. 3.

Local parking permits — and fees

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So the city’s going to take a look at the neighborhood parking program. Good. Here’s my first question: Why do the car owners get away so cheap?

It costs $64 a month to buy a Muni Fast Pass. It costs at least $300 a month to rent a garage. But if you’re in the neighborhood parking program, you get essentially a guaranteed parking space on a city street — public property — for $104 a YEAR, or about 28 cents a day.

That’s crazy.

I’m not for eliminating the neighborhood parking stickers; the program keeps out-of-town commuters from driving into SF and using residential areas as free parking lots. But let’s make the car owners — who, by the way, are still reaping the Schwarzenegger VLF windfall — pay their fair share. 

Double the fee and you get another $6.5 million. And the parking permits would still be the bargain of the decade.

And then maybe we can get God out of the parking system.

 

 

 

Morning Muni shutdown commemorates death of Kenneth Harding, Jr.

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More than 50 protesters disrupted Muni service for about an hour this morning before peacefully leaving to march down Market, in commemoration of the death of Kenneth Harding, Jr., on July 16, 2011.

After gathering at 14th and Market, the group marched to the intersection of Duboce and Church, where Muni trains headed outbound exit the tunnel. Soon, at least four outbound trains and two inbound trains were backed up.

Buses replaced their service.

Some passengers were angered, while most took literature from protesters on their way to catch another train. A few joined in the picket line. Drivers, meanwhile, were mostly nonchalant. “I’m just enjoying the show,” said one driver.

“They shoot us down, we shut it down,” protesters chanted. They also mentioned the names of Raheim Brown Jr., Derrick Gaines, Oscar Grant, and other young African American Bay Area men killed by police.

As a police line closed in, one protester shouted at cops, “you are all complicit!” The group left the intersection around 7:30 without much confrontation with police.

Denika Chatman, Harding’s mother, has been organizing a movement demanding that the police who shot him be charged with murder since his death.

Harding, 19, was stopped by police last year as part of a ticket check while exiting the T train at third and Palou. He ran, and police shot at him. He fell and bled for about thirty minutes, while police surrounded him, before he was taken to a hospital.

Police say Harding pulled a gun out as he ran and shot at them, and that the fatal bullet in his neck was his own. They say that, since the bullet that killed him was from a .380-caliber handgun and police carry .40 caliber guns, Harding shot himself. No gun was found on Harding, but police acquired a gun a week after the shooting that they believe Harding used.

Police have pointed to a video which they say shows a man picking up the gun at the scene, while Harding’s family members and supporters say the object is a cell phone.

By no accounts did police know Harding’s identity before shooting.

Officers Richard Hastings and Matthew Lopez have recieved medals of valor for their handling of the incident.

Dorian Maxwell, a whistleblower former Muni driver who refused to operate his bus and made noise about unsafe conditions on Muni, attended the protest as well. He said Labor Black and Brown, one of the organizations who planned the protest, supported him after he risked his job.

“Your life is in danger if you’re riding the Muni,” Maxwell told the crowd, pointing out what he identified as partially flat tires on a nearby 22 Fillmore.

“We wanted to combine the brutality of the police with the workers getting victimized,” said protest organizer Charles Du Bois.

Chatman has also connected her demonstrations to the movement for free Muni tickets for youth.

“I wanted to organize a Muni shutdown, and it just started growing from there,” Chatman said. It was in honor of Kenny, and to unite the community as well. Because a lot of them witness these horrible murders and I wanted to do something to give back to a community that has supported me since this happened.”

After marching down Market stopping traffic every few blocks, the group ended with a speak-out in front of SFMTA headquarters. There were no arrests. A vigil is planned for 5pm at Third and Palou, in Mendell Plaza, the spot when Harding died. Supporters call the plaza Kenny’s Plaza in Harding’s honor.

New JFK bike lanes are bad for everyone

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Golden Gate Park visitors have had a couple months to get used to the confusing new lane configurations on JFK Drive – with bike lanes along the edges of the road and a row of parked cars in the middle – and I have yet to hear from anyone who likes this design. Nice try, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, but this design isn’t working for any road users and should be scrapped.

The idea of using a row of parked cars to separate cyclists from motorists isn’t inherently bad, and it has worked well in some European cities. But the way this is designed, passengers exiting vehicles must cross the bike lane to get to the sidewalk, creating a conflict that isn’t good for either user. It was intended to create safer bikeways, but they actually feel more dangerous and uncertain now.

There are buffer zones where motorists aren’t supposed to park, but on busy days they do anyway, with little to fear from parking control officers who rarely venture into the park, often crowding into the bike lane. The design also accentuates the visual blight of automobiles in this beautiful park, with more lanes of cars dominating the viewscape in many spots.

And I’m not the only one who feels this way. After my cover story on urban cycling last week, I got a few notes critical of the new design, including an email from longtime local cyclist Thomas Kleinhenz, who wrote, “When the new Golden Gate Park bike lanes went in I scratched my head. Who dreamt this up. It helps no one. Cyclists now ride in a lane between the curb on the right and parked cars on the left. You have cyclists, roller-bladers, rental bikers, and children all stuck in the same lane with pedestrians trying to get to and from their cars.”

Kleinhenz cited state road design manuals discouraging this kind of design, claiming they may even be illegal. He continued, “When I’ve ridden it, I’ve had to dodge a child darting out from between the cars and a family of 5 who strolled across the bike lane confused about where to go. I’ve also been stuck behind Segways and rental bikers, forcing me and another rider to go out into the traffic lane just to top 5 mph. But of course the traffic lanes are now thinner to make room for the new bike lanes. So we’re left with one non-functional, unsafe lane and another mildly functional unsafe lane. Meanwhile cars have less room to maneuver, and people getting out of their parked cars are forced to try to avoid traffic on one side and cyclists on the other. While cyclists who don’t want to deal with the congestion in the bike lane now must be aware of having car doors opened into them in the now narrower traffic lane.”

His comments are typical of others that I’ve heard, including those from transportation engineers who are similarly baffled by the choices made here. The SFMTA deserves credit for trying something new, but I’ll give them even more credit if they just call this one a mistake and start over. And that is a possibility.

“We’re going to continue monitoring the JFK bikes lanes closely and we will consider potential adjustments to make them more intuitive and user-friendly,” SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told us, adding that the agency will analyze changes in traffic speed and volumes for both cyclists and motorists and parking volume, as well as surveying people’s perceptions of the project.

Hopefully some changes will be in the offing, but I think the project is an example of a bigger problem that I discussed in last week’s article, and that is political and civic leaders going with the easy bicycle infrastructure projects so they can claim lots of new mileage rather than the more politically difficult projects we actually need.

Last year on Bike to Work Day, newly minted Mayor Ed Lee announced two bike projects: the JFK lanes and new cycletracks on the dangerous few blocks on Fell and Oak streets to connect the Panhandle with the Wiggle, which has long been a high priority for cyclists as it completes a popular east-west bike corridor. Well, the former project got done and the latter got delayed when neighbors complained about the lost parking spots.

Now, because the SFMTA tried to accommodate motorists with too many new parking spots in Golden Gate Park – despite previous promises to decrease street parking in the park in exchange for building a massive underground parking lot – we’ve ended up with a messy design that only exacerbates conflicts between motorists, pedestrians, and cyclists. In their effort to please everyone, as is often the case, they have pleased nobody.

20 percent by 2020

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steve@sfbg.com

There’s no doubt that San Francisco is one of the best cities in the United States for bicyclists, a place where near universal support in City Hall has translated into regular cycling infrastructure improvements and pro-cyclist legislation, as a slew of activists and politicians will attest to on May 10 after dismounting from their Bike to Work Day morning rides.

But even the most bike-friendly U.S. cities — including Portland, Ore., Davis, Chicago, and New York City — are still on training wheels compared to our European counterparts, such as Amsterdam and Copenhagen, where around 30 percent of all vehicle trips are by bike. By comparison, even the best U.S. cities are still in the low single digits. [Correction: Davis, which stands alone among U.S. cities, is actually at about 15 percent bike mode share]

Board President David Chiu and other city officials proposed to aggressively address that gap two years ago after returning from a fact-finding trip to Europe that also included Ed Reiskin, executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), the agency charged with implementing city policies that favor transit riders, cyclists, and pedestrians over motorists.

Chiu sponsored legislation setting the goal of having 20 percent of all vehicle trips in San Francisco be by bike by the year 2020 and calling for the SFMTA to do a study on how to meet that goal. It was overwhelmingly approved by the Board of Supervisors and signed by Mayor Ed Lee, who has regularly cited it and proclaimed his support for what it now official city policy.

But the city will fail to meet that goal, probably by a significant amount, unless there is a radical change on our roadways.

The latest SFMTA traffic survey, released in February, showed that bikes represent about 3.5 percent of vehicle trips, a 71 percent increase in five years. While the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) lauded that gain as “impressive,” it would mean a 571 percent increase in the next seven years to meet the 2020 goal.

The SFMTA study on how to meet the goal is long overdue, with sources telling us its potentially controversial conclusions have it mired by internal concerns and divisions. SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told us in March that it was coming out in April, and now he won’t say when to expect it and he won’t even make its authors available to answer our questions.

“We want to make sure everything is addressed before the plan is finalized,” he told us, acknowledging that it’s been a difficult process. “The challenge of reaching the goal is ambitious.”

Chiu acknowledges that the goal he set probably won’t be met and expressed frustration with the SFMTA. “I’m disappointed that two years after we set that goal, there is still no plan,” he told us, adding that to make major gains “will take leadership at the top” and a greater funding commitment to this cost-effective transportation option: “We’re spending budget dust on something that we say is a priority for the city.”

Reiskin also seemed to acknowledge the difficulty in meeting the goal when we asked him about it and he told us, “To get to 20 percent would be a quantum leap, no question, but the good news is there’s strong momentum in the right direction.”

Yet on Bike to Work Day, it’s worth exploring why we’re failing to meet our goal and how we might achieve it. What would have to happen, and what would it look like, to have 20 percent of traffic be people on bikes?

 

 

CLOSING THE GAP

SFBC Executive Director Leah Shahum said that all the group’s studies show safety concerns are by far the biggest barrier to getting more people on bikes. Most people are simply scared to share space with automobiles, so SFBC’s top priority has been creating more bikes lanes, particularly lanes that are physically separated from traffic, known as cycletracks, like those on a portion of Market Street.

“We’ve seen it time and again, when you build, they will come,” Shahum said. “People want to feel safe. They want dedicated space on the roadways.”

SFBC’s Connecting the City proposal calls for the creation of four crosstown colored cycletracks totaling 100 miles. Other bike activists emphasize the importance of projects that close key gaps in the current bike network, such as the dangerous section along Oak and Fell streets that separates the Panhandle from the Wiggle, scary spots that deter people from cycling.

That safety concern — and the possibilities for making cycling a more attractive option to more people — extends to neighborhood streets that don’t have bike lanes, where Shahum said measures to slow down automobile traffic and increase motorist awareness of cyclists would help. “What we’re talking about is a calmer, safer, greener, neighborhood-focused street,” she said.

Bike advocates say the goal is to make cycling a safe and attractive option for those 8 to 80 years old, a goal that will require extensive new bike infrastructure — not just new bike lanes, but also more dedicated bike parking — as well as education programs for all road users.

“What I hope is on the drawing board is infrastructure that will make more people feel safe riding, particularly women,” SFMTA board member Cheryl Brinkman, a regular cyclist, told us.

Shahum also praised the Bay Area Rapid Transit District’s new Bike Plan, which seeks to double the percentage of passengers who bike to stations (from 4 percent now up to 8 percent in 10 years), saying Muni should also take steps to better accommodate cyclists. And she praised the city’s bike-sharing program that will debut in August, making 1,000 bikes available to visitors.

But to realize the really big gains San Francisco would need to hit 20 percent by 2020 would take more than just steadily increasing the mileage of bike lanes, says Jason Henderson, a San Francisco State University geography professor who is writing a book on transportation politics. It would take a systemic, fundamental shift, one either deliberately chosen or forced on the city by dire circumstances.

“If gasoline goes to $10 per gallon, sure, we’ll get to 20 percent just because of austerity,” Henderson said. But unless energy prices experience that kind of sudden shock, which would idle cars and overwhelm public transit, thus forcing people onto bikes, getting to 20 percent would take smart planning and political will. In fact, it will require the city to stop catering to drivers and accommodating cars.

Henderson noted that bicycle mode share is as high as 10 percent in some eastern neighborhoods, such as the Mission District, Lower Haight, and in some neighborhoods near Civic Center. “In this part of the city, Muni is crowded and young people get tired of Muni being such a slow option,” Henderson said. “If you live within a certain radius of downtown, it’s easier to bike.”

To build on that, he said the city needs to limit the number of parking spaces built in residential projects in the city core even more than it does now, as well as adding substantially more affordable units. “The most bikeable parts of the city have massive rent increases,” he said. “We have to make sure affordable housing is wrapped around downtown.”

Henderson said city leaders need to show more courage in converting car lanes and street parking spaces into bike lanes, creating bike corridors that parallel those focused on cars or transit, and exempting most bike projects from the detailed environment review that slow their implementation. At the same time, he said the city needs to drastically expand Muni’s capacity to give people more options and compensate for bike improvements that may make driving slower.

“If you want 20 percent bike mode share, you need 30 percent on transit,” he said, noting that public transit ridership in San Francisco is now about 17 percent, far less than in the great bike cities of Amsterdam and Copenhagen, which made a commitment to reducing reliance on the automobile starting in the 1970s. “It’s like a puzzle.”

 

 

BARRIERS AND BACKLASH

The kind of active urban planning that Henderson advocates would be anathema to many San Franciscans, particularly people like Rob Anderson, the blogger and activist who sued San Francisco over the lack of studies supporting its Bike Plan and created a four-year court injunction against bike projects that just ended two years ago.

“The only way you could get to 20 percent is creating gridlock in San Francisco. I don’t think it’s going to happen. City Hall is adopting a slogan as transportation policy,” he told us. “It’s a statement of pro-bike, anti-car principle, but it’s not a realistic transportation policy.”

Anderson considers bicycles to be dangerous toys that will never be used by more than a small minority of city residents, believing the majority will always rely on automobiles and there will be a huge political backlash if the city continues to take space from cars for bikes or open space.

Many city officials and cycling advocates say making big gains means convincing people like Anderson that bicycles are not just a viable transportation option, but an important one to facilitate given global warming, oil wars, public health issues, and traffic congestion that will only worsen as the population increases.

“We need to help all San Franciscans see cycling as a legitimate transportation option,” Chiu said. Or as Shahum put it, “It’s prioritizing space for biking, walking, and transit over driving.”

Shahum said the city’s political leaders seem to get it, but she doesn’t feel the same sense of urgency from the city’s planners.

“I feel like the bureaucracy needs to get on board. We have strong political support and the public support is growing,” Shahum said. “We’ve set ambitious, worthwhile, and I think achievable goals, yet nobody is holding the city accountable….It can’t just be a political platitude, it needs to be an actual plan with measureables and people held accountable.”

She cited studies showing that the most bike-friendly cities in the U.S. are spending between $8 million and $40 million a year on bike infrastructure and education programs, “but San Francisco is spending more like $2-3 million, which is peanuts…San Francisco has got to start putting its money where its mouth is to improve biking numbers.”

It’s cheap and easy to stripe new bike lanes. “It’s one of the best investments we can make in terms of mode share,” Reiskin said. That makes cycling advocates question the city’s true commitment to goals like the 2020 policy. “We will need more investment,” Chiu said, “but compared to other modes of transportation, it is far cheaper per mile.”

 

 

POLITICAL WILL

So why then has San Francisco slipped back into a slow pace for doing bike projects following a year of rapid improvements after the bike injunction was lifted? And why does the city set arbitrary goals that it doesn’t know how to meet? The answer seems to lie at the intersection of the political and the practical.

“We need a more detailed and comprehensive strategy that says this is where we need to be in five years and this is how we get there,” Sup. David Campos, who chairs the San Francisco Transportation Authority, told us. “I feel like the commitment is there, but it’s a question of what resources you have to devote to that goal.”

But it’s also a question of how those resources are being used, and whether political leaders are grabbing at low-hanging fruit rather than making the tough choices to complete the city’s bike network and weather criticisms like those offered by Anderson.

It often seems as if SFMTA is still prioritizing political projects or experimenting in ways that waste time and money. For example, the most visible improvement to the bike network in the last year, and the one most often cited by Mayor Lee, is the new cycletracks on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park. But they do little to make cycling more attractive and they may even exacerbate tensions between cyclists and drivers.

It was one of two major bike projects that Mayor Lee announced on Bike to Work Day last year, and it seemed to have more to do with politicians announcing more bike lane mileage that with actually improving the bike network.

The other project Lee announced, just a few blocks of bike lanes on Fell and Oak streets, really was a significant bike safety advance that SFBC has been seeking for several years. But Lee failed to live up to his pledge to install them by the end of 2011 after neighbors complained about the lost parking spots, and the project was pushed back to next year at the earliest.

“We’re talking about three blocks. It’s relatively small in scope but huge in impacts,” Shahum said of the project. “If the pace of change on these three blocks is replicated through the city, it’ll take hundreds of years to meet the [20 percent] goal.” But Lee Press Secretary Christine Falvey said: “The mayor is very much committed to the aggressive goals set to get to 20 percent by 2020 and the city is moving in the right direction. He has also always supported the Oak Fell project and we’re seeing progress.” Yes, but not the kind of progress the city would need to make to meet its own goal. “Chicago is really the leader right now,” Shahum said, noting Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s commitment to building 25 miles a year of new cycletracks and the city’s advocacy for getting more federal transportation money devoted to urban cycling improvements. “Where does San Francisco fit in this? Do we want to be at that level or not?”

The private bus problem

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If you’re used to riding to work on a crowded, lurching Muni bus that arrives late and costs too much, consider this: Some San Franciscans commute on 50-foot luxury coaches with cushioned seats, wifi, air conditioning and mini television screens. The state-of-the-art vehicles arrive on time — and the service is free.

The buses aren’t regulated by the city and pay nothing for the use of public streets. But these giant private beasts freely and without penalty stop in the Muni zones, clogging traffic, and sometimes preventing the city’s buses from loading and discharging passengers. They barely fit through narrow corridors in neighborhoods like Noe Valley and Glen Park.

City officials agree the fleets of private commuter buses have created a problem — but so far, they’ve done nothing about it.

And most people don’t realize that some of these luxury bus lines are, in effect, open to the public.

The buses primarily serve the city’s growing status as a Silicon Valley bedroom community, carrying commuters to and from the corporate campuses of places like Genentech and Google.

Private shuttle buses have been booming in San Francisco. Genentech has more than 6,000 employees registered in commute programs on 56 routes. Google’s Gbus service transports more than 3,500 daily riders on more than 25 routes, with about 300 scheduled departures. Then there’s Zynga, Gap, California College of Arts, Apple, Google, Yahoo!, and Academy of Art. And the University of California, San Francisco has its own fleet of 50 shuttles.

The good news is that the buses take cars off the road, giving tech workers a much less environmentally damaging way to get to work. Google’s transportation manager, Kevin Mathy, noted in the GoogleBlog that “The Google shuttles have the cleanest diesel engines ever built and run on 5 percent bio-diesel, so they’re partly powered by renewable resources that help reduce our carbon footprint.” He continued, “In fact, we’re the first and largest company with a corporate transportation fleet using engines that meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s 2010 emission standards.”

But nobody at City Hall has any idea how many total buses are running on the San Francisco streets.

Jesse Koehler, a planner at the city’s transportation authority, conducted a study on shuttles that identified a number of problems, most linked to a lack of local regulation.

Requested by then-Supervisor Bevan Dufty, the study, completed in 2011, found that, while shuttles play a valuable role in the overall San Francisco transportation system, there’s little policy guidance or management. In fact, there’s no local oversight, the study found: Shuttle operators are licensed by the state, but the California Public Utilities Commission is mostly concerned with the safety of the equipment and the licensing of the drivers. Local concerns aren’t under the agency’s purview.

And there are plenty of reasons for local concern. Under city law, only Muni buses are allowed to pull over and use the designated bus stops — but Koehler reported, “Shuttles are generally also using these Muni bus spots. Some cases prevent Muni buses from entering the Muni bus zone and having the passengers board late.”

The study notes that “the large majority (approximately 90 percent) of shuttle stops occur at Muni bus zones.” The shuttles take much longer to load and unload than Muni buses (because of their size and the lack of a rear door) and often force the public buses to wait, delaying routes, or to pick up and discharge passengers outside of the bus zone, creating a safety problem.

Shuttle carnage

Local residents surveyed had their own complaints. The study quotes critics saying that “the shuttles can be noisy, especially at night when there isn’t much other traffic or when they are the kind with diesel engines” and “large coach shuttles are noisy on small neighborhood streets.”

Muni routes are designed with the city’s neighborhoods in mind; you don’t see the extra-long articulated coaches that ply Mission Street and Geary Boulevard cramming themselves into the much-tighter and more residential streets of Potrero Hill, Noe Valley, Glen Park and the Castro. That’s not a concern for the giant corporate shuttles; they go where they want.

That can cause problems for pedestrians, bicyclists and drivers who aren’t used to seeing these long, tall buses, which at times take up both lanes, squeezing through turns with barely an inch to spare.

And while Muni drivers are far from perfect, the shuttle safety records are even more of a concern. In November of 2010, a UCSF shuttle bus struck and killed 65-year-old Nu Ha Dam as she was crossing Geary Street at Leavenworth Street. Not even a year later, another UCSF shuttle was involved in a collision, killing Dr. Kevin Allen Mack and injuring four other passengers. A witness confirmed that the shuttle ran a red light.

On February 14, a pedestrian crossing Eddy Street at Leavenworth in the Tenderloin was run over by a paratransit van. The victim was pinned under the shuttle for 20 minutes until he was finally rescued. The victim lived, but suffered several broken bones.

Carli Paine, transportation demand management project manager of the SFMTA, told us that shuttles are a growing component of the San Francisco transportation network and overall, support San Francisco’s greenhouse gas emission goals.

But, she noted, “Because they are relatively new, and a growing one at that, there is really a need to work together between the city and shuttle providers to make sure that our policy framework is supporting shuttles and also working to avoid conflict with shuttles and transit, pedestrians, and bikes.”

Paine noted: “What we’ve heard is that there are places where shuttles do have conflict with other uses and then there are places that work really well, so one of the things we want to find out in those areas where spaces are being shared successfully, is what’s happening.”

Elizabeth Fernandez, press officer at UCSF, said the city doesn’t have any specific rules regarding transit systems like UCSF’s. “With the proliferation of corporate services throughout the city, there are several studies that are ongoing,” she said. “These studies are an attempt to manage the growth of these kinds of shuttle services in regards to volume as well as routing, staging, and parking.”

Tony Kelly, a Potrero Hill community activist, said the root of the problem is the consistent cut in Muni service over the past 20 years. “Potrero Hill is going to double population in the next 15 years,” he said. “People and new housing units are doubling.

“When all the shuttles are in our bus stops, everyone is wondering why we can’t ride these things,” he said. “Why can’t they take it when there is so much unused capacity?”

Hitching a ride

Actually, I rode several UCSF shuttles around the city, and nobody ever asked for identification.

I was picked up at the Muni stop on Sutter St. at the UCSF Mt. Zion Campus (yes, the shuttle pulled — illegally — into the Muni stop to pick up passengers). Fernandez told me the school’s official policy states that “Riding UCSF shuttles is restricted for use by Campus faculty, staff, students, patients and patient family members, and formal guests.” But when I boarded, the driver made no attempt to verify if I was associated with UCSF. I did a full trip, passing through the UCSF Laurel Heights Campus, and then back to Mt Zion. There were no more than seven people on the shuttle, and about 20 seats available for riders. There are also handrails for standing if the bus ever gets too crowded.

I also hopped a Genebus at Glen Park BART and rode to company headquarters in South San Francisco. Again, nobody asked for ID; in fact, Genentech spokesperson Nadine O’Campo said the company is happy to let others who work in the area hitch a ride on the cush coaches.

For information on the Genenbus routes and schedules for the Millbrae bus line, go to www.caltrain.com and look under “schedules.” UCSF also provides shuttle schedules and route maps at www.campuslifeservices.ucsf.edu under transportation. For general information on shuttle providers that provide service from and to BART, visit www.transit.511.org and go to Transit Provider Info.

Riding on these shuttles is an entirely different experience than riding on the Muni. People are friendlier, the buses are clean, the seats were nicer, and the transportation is a lot faster.
A UCSF student on the shuttle, commutes using the BART from South San Francisco to 16th and Mission to take a shuttle to UCSF. She said it’s far better (and cheaper) than driving — and while Muni costs $2, the shuttles are free.

The downside of that, of course, is that some of the shuttles are bleeding off Muni patrons, and riders of other public systems, in effect stealing customers, and thus robbing the transit system of fares. They’re also another example of the privatization of what were once public services. Instead of working with the city and the region to improve transit for everyone, these tech firms have decided to create a private system of their own..

And that may be the most disturbing trend of all.

Cyclists gain an unlikely defender against the backlash

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After yesterday’s media pile-on – with the Examiner’s cover story and the Chronicle leading both its front page and Bay Area section with stories bashing bicyclists in the wake of a pedestrian death – it was refreshing to read today’s level-headed Examiner editorial “Rare pedestrian death exploited by bike foes.”

When I posted last week on the fatal cyclist-vs.-pedestrian collision (one of the first to report disturbing new details of the incident), I noted that the cycling community was braced for a backlash. And it came in the form of calls for police crackdowns, angry anti-cyclist diatribes, proposals for elaborate bike regulatory and re-education programs, and other opportunistic jabs.

The Examiner – which, under new ownership, has abandoned its nutty old right-wing stances – not only called out those critics as predictably lacking in perspective, but the editorial even took that next step of tying them to the pro-car reactionaries who get so lathered up about paying for street parking or losing any street turf they now control.

“There is an audience out there — mostly older, mostly cranky — that loves to marinate in the notion that drivers in The City are victimized by political correctness run amok,” the Examiner wrote. “This idea of two-wheeled liberalism is an attitude that is pandered to by the likes of curmudgeonly columnists at San Francisco newspapers.”

Yeah, git ’em, Ex 2.0! It’s amazing how the most privileged and entitled members of our society – such as rich white motorists – are so quick to play the victim card these days, a tactic popularized by Rush Limbaugh that has become the standard reaction to any perceived imposition on their comfort and convenience.

“Transportation policy and budget priorities are complex, especially in tough times. It is easy to sit back and paint in broad strokes about issues, but that does nothing to truly advance the conversations that need to be happening,” the Ex wrote (in sharp contrast to Chron’s reactionary, ridiculous editorial stance).

Mayor Ed Lee and SFMTA chief Ed Reiskin deserve credit for supporting the controversial proposal to put in new parking meters and begin charging on Sundays – an issue on which former Mayor Gavin Newsom pandered to the mob and showed a real lack of leadership – but that’s just the beginning of doing what needs to be done to create a 21st century transportation system.

The death of this pedestrian is a horrible accident that has reminded the cycling community of our responsibility to other road users, and it has prompted discussions and realizations that are probably overdue. We get it. But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that cars create more pressing and widespread problems – in terms of being deadly, costly, bad for the environment, and dominating public space – than do bikes. That’s not judgment, just perspective.

Or as the Examiner says, “Bicyclists can be rude — they certainly ride through red lights or on the sidewalk and are rarely punished, in part because on the scale of criminality, this is fairly minor. But the one thing they almost never do is kill someone. We shouldn’t let this incident distort our approach to traffic laws or add fuel to the apparently endless battle of the bike and the car.”

SFMTA seeks more parking meter revenue to balance its budget

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San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency staff and Director Ed Reiskin today unveiled a two-year budget proposal that avoids Muni fare increases or service cuts and directs more money to address the transit system’s deferred maintenance needs, but it relies on substantially increasing parking meter revenues in ways that have been tough sells before.

In addition, the budget proposal – which will be considered by the SFMTA Board of Directors on Tuesday – is seeking labor concessions to lop off another $7 million, which will still need to be negotiated with the militant Transport Workers Union Local 250A. That won’t be easy, but Reiskin made a good first move by recently canning 10 of the agency’s top-paid executives en route to saving $2 million per year just in management salaries.

But the parking meter proposals are likely to stir a hornet’s nest of angry motorists who have come to expect free street parking. Reiskin is proposing to eliminate the free parking on Sundays, making drivers pay for parking between noon and 6 pm. And he wants to add another 500 parking meters.

Both are good ideas for an agency that desperately needs the money, and it has done studies showing that businesses and motorists would benefit from the charges making parking spots more readily available. But each time the SFMTA has tried to implement these proposals – trying to do Sunday meter hours in 2009 and trying to add hundreds of new meters in the Mission and Potrero Hill earlier this year – the torches and pitchforks came out and agency officials sulked off to lick it wounds.

But Reiskin says this is what the city needs to do. An SFMTA press release labels the proposals “modernizing antiquated parking policies, and Reiskin says, “While we’ve made tough decisions in order to develop a responsible, balanced budget, we are doing everything we can to avoid fare increases and service cuts. These proposals reflect our commitment to the city’s Transit First policy and allows for improvement in all modes of transportation.”

SF allows bikes indoors, but its cycling goal is elusive

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When the Board of Supervisors this week voted 9-2 to require commercial building owners to allow employees to bring their bicycles indoors while they work, ordinance sponsor Sup. John Avalos hailed the legislation as an important step toward meeting the city goal of having 20 percent of all vehicle trips in the city be by bike by the year 2020.

“We are removing a barrier to people getting around the city by bicycle,” Avalos said at the March 6 hearing, noting that the measure addresses cyclists’ concern about bike theft and helps keep sidewalks uncluttered and racks and poles free for other cyclists to use.

While it’s true this may help make cycling a bit more attractive, San Francisco would have to take far bolder actions to get anywhere near meeting its 20 percent by 2020 goal, a target it set in 2010 with legislation sponsored by Board President David Chiu and one regularly touted in speeches by Mayor Ed Lee.

Just last month, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency released its latest bike count survey, which showed that about 3.5 percent of vehicle trips in the city are taken by bike, a 71 percent increase in the last five years, gains the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition lauded as “impressive.” Yet to reach the city’s goal would require a 571 percent increase in the next seven years – one that would seem unattainable at this pace.

“It’s a very ambitious but realistic goal,” SFBC director Leah Shahum told us, although she acknowledged it would require a drastic change in the city’s approach. “I’ve been impressed by how much Mayor Lee has touted the 20 percent by 2020 goal, but our city agencies need to step up their sense of urgency and commitment to meet that goal.”

The SFMTA is now finalizing a report on how to hit that 2020 target, which is scheduled for release next month. But agency spokesperson Paul Rose acknowledged the difficulty in meeting that goal: “It would take funding resources which at this point we don’t have.” He can’t yet say would it would take to meet the goal, which the report will outline, but he said, “We’re exploring what can be achieved with our available funding.”

Shahum said all studies by SFBC and other groups show concerns about safety is the biggest barrier to substantially increasing cycling in the city, and that most people need bike lanes – particularly paths physically separated from cars, known as cycle tracks – to feel safe. She praised the SFMTA for installing 20 miles of new bike lanes in the last two years, its fastest pace ever, “but that pace needs to double or triple to meet that goal.”

Instead, Mayor Lee has backed off a pledge he made last year to fast-track a short segment of bike lanes on dangerous sections of Oak and Fell streets that would connect two popular east-west bikeways: the Panhandle and the Wiggle. That project was delayed by a year for more meetings and work after motorists objected to the loss of street parking spots.

“We’re talking about three blocks. It’s relatively small in scope but huge in impacts,” Shahum said of the project. “If the pace of change on these three blocks is replicated through the city, it’ll take hundreds of years to meet the goal.”

In his run for mayor last year, Chiu regularly touted the 20 percent goal he set in 2010 after returning from a fact-finding trip to the Netherlands – where about 38 percent of vehicle trips are by bike – that he took with SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin, SFBC members, and officials from other cities. Chiu says that San Francisco might be further along than the SFMTA figures show, citing an SFBC poll showing that 5 percent of San Franciscans say they ride a bike daily and another 12 percent ride more than once a week.

“Whatever the current percentage is, we have a long way to go. We have to be bolder about specific projects and strategies,” Chiu told us. He said there is a growing recognition that promoting cycling is an important way to address traffic congestion and greenhouse gas reduction and that “segregated bikes lanes are the most efficient way to move the most people through areas of urban density.”

Chiu also said that San Francisco could be poised for rapid progress on the creation of new bikes lanes, citing early opposition to replacing parking spaces with parklets and the car-free Sunday Streets (which kicks off its new season this Sunday along the Embarcadero) events, with the business community and many neighborhood groups fearing that restrictions on motorists would hurt businesses.

“The experience has turned out to be exactly the opposite,” Chiu said, noting the explosion in demand for parklets and new Sunday Streets events in the last couple years, saying that a widening embrace of more cycle tracks and other biking infrastructure could be next.

Mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey told us, “The mayor is very much committed to the aggressive goals set to get to 20 percent by 2020 and the city is moving in the right direction. He has also always supported the Oak Fell project and we’re seeing progress. It will be complete in 2013 and he has been talking to the SFMTA about the project to keep up to date. San Francisco is on its way to becoming the most bicycle friendly city in the U.S. and in this era of limited public funding, the mayor is working with the SFMTA to explore what ways we can increase trips taken by bicycle with available funding and increased public awareness.”

She cited the Avalos legislation and the current installation of cycle tracks on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park as examples of the city’s commitment to “move us toward the goal of 20 percent,” but many in the cycling community consider these efforts to be low-hanging fruit – easy, cheap, and non-controversial improvements – that won’t get the city anywhere near its stated goal.

Bike activist Marc Salomon is critical of the incremental approaches taken by SFBC and the city, saying that to make significant progress the city needs to address enforcement and the culture on the roadways, protecting cyclists from aggressive or impatient motorists and recognizing that many traffic laws don’t make sense for cyclists.

“We need to change the culture of the cops to make sure every street is a safe street,” he said. Shahum said that’s an issue SFBC is trying to address: “We are talking to them about how police could better enforce dangerous behaviors.”

Yet any efforts to promote cycling will likely be met with a backlash by motorists who resent losing space to cyclists and the fact that many cyclists routinely run stop signs and lights. Sups. Sean Elsbernd and Carmen Chu voted against the Avalos legislation, with Chu objecting to city staff evaluating businesses that seek waivers based on limited space or other factors, calling it a waste of precious resources.

But Avalos noted that his ordinance – which will be up for final approval on its second reading this Tuesday – has no enforcement mechanisms and “overall, this is a cost effective way to promote bicycling in the city. The costs are minimal.”

He also thanked the conservative Building Owners and Managers Association for supporting the legislation. Shahum said BOMA strongly opposed similar legislation almost 10 years ago and its embrace of it now shows how attitudes toward cyclists have changed. “There are so many more people biking now and the business community recognizes the benefits of having more of their employees biking,” she said.

Even politically moderate supervisors have been supportive of promoting cycling, with Sup. Scott Wiener saying at this week’s hearing, “It’s very important to make it as easy as possible to bike, and bike theft is a big issue in this city as well.”

Pay to park

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The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency has hailed the success of its SFpark program — which uses high-tech meters and demand-variable pricing to manage on-street parking — noting that expired meter citations are down and meter revenue is up. The resulting 11 percent net increase in revenue  is all going to improve Muni. So transit improves, drivers get more spots and fewer tickets — everybody wins.

[CLARIFICATION (2/1): The new meters had an 11 percent net revenue increase compared to the old meters, but overall net revenues from citations and meters was still down by 3 percent.]

But the SFMTA has run into a hornet’s nest of opposition with its latest proposal to expand SFpark into the Northeast Mission District, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, and Mission Bay, largely because the plan involves placing meters on streets where parking is now free. And even those who don’t object to paying for parking say the SFMTA has bungled this process.

The problem isn’t just what critics say are arrogance and dubious outreach efforts by agency officials. It may be that the SFMTA pursued too many goals at once, mixing them in ways that muddled the message. Or it may just be that charging for parking will always anger drivers, no matter how it’s proposed.

The agency wants to discourage driving — particularly cruising for parking, hence SFpark’s “Circle Less, Live More” slogan — to speed up Muni and reduce traffic congestion. But that also means charging for street parking so cars won’t just sit in those spaces, and that involves a complicated balancing act in mixed use neighborhoods.

Residents, many employers, and commuters want all-day street parking, preferably free and easy. But most business owners want enough parking turnover so their customers can find a spot. City policies call for prioritizing residents’ needs, and the SFMTA needs money to fund and expand Muni service.

Meeting all of those needs isn’t easy. But over the last couple of months, the SFMTA’s effort to expand its successful and popular SFpark program have managed to turn thousands of residents angrily against that program, the agency, and the proposition that people shouldn’t expect free parking.

 

COMMUNITY OUTRAGE

Architect John Lum and artist-designer Miranda Caroligne didn’t know each other a couple months ago, but now they’re helping to lead a movement that is uniting neighborhood groups in the Mission, Dogpatch, and Potrero Hill against the parking meter proposals.

“You have an agency that is not listening at all to the community. That’s fascism!” declares Lum. He’s actually an amiable and soft-spoken young guy who employs 10 people at his architecture firm near 17th and Capp streets, but this issue really gets his blood boiling.

And Lum isn’t alone, as the Jan. 13 public meeting before an SFMTA hearing officer showed. Not only did everyone who streamed to the microphone voice opposition to the proposals, but they usually did so in angry and accusatory ways, saying it would destroy businesses, punish the poor, and result in conditions that are simply unworkable and intolerable. And they said the SFMTA simply doesn’t care.

“If you’re a PDR business,” Caroligne said, referring to the Production, Distribution, and Repair businesses whose last bastion is some of the targeted areas, “you’re never going to get people to work at a place that doesn’t have parking…This proposal will push them out.”

There are myriad ways that the plans are flawed, say their critics: Meters were proposed on some residential streets in initial plans, despite SFMTA policies to the contrary; traffic surveys had too small a sampling and weren’t realistic; residential permit districts would be replaced by meters, or meters would be placed where districts might work better; transit service on Potrero Hill is too bad to expect people to use it; live-work spaces were inappropriately treated like retail outlets; and meters near the 22nd Street Caltrain station could actually discourage the use of public transit.

“There’s not that much disagreement, but where there is, it’s really important,” said Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association. “I’m someone who supports parking management, and I’m frustrated that the MTA is so tone deaf with this. We’ve been through a lot of fake public outreach efforts and this is looking like one of those.”

Janet Carpinelli, president of the Dogpatch Neighborhood Association, said her members feel like the SFMTA is ramming this through without regard for the needs or input of that neighborhood.

“The real issue is it’s a very big inconvenience to the businesses and residents in this neighborhood and it’s not really helping anything. It’s just a revenue grab by the MTA,” she said.

Potrero Hill resident Jim Wilkins was so outraged by the proposal to install meters along Pennsylvania Street outside his home that he started an online petition against the proposals that has so far garnered about 1,300 signatures. “We’re forming an organization to resist these proposals,” he told us.

Lum was already a member of the 17th Street Coalition, which formed in 2010 to oppose the renewal of a liquor license at the local Gas’n’Shop, but more recently organized opposition to the meter proposal. It attracted Caroligne, and now they’ve formed a new group, Northeast Mission Neighbors, which held a joint organizing meeting with the Dogpatch and Potrero groups on Jan. 23. They’re all determined to delay and modify the SFMTA’s proposal, which had been scheduled for adoption by the SFMTA Board of Directors Feb. 7.

Lum said the proposed changes are tough to accept: “I don’t think this is about free parking, it’s about living and working in a community with certain things and now those things are changing.”

 

CHANGE IS HARD

The biggest target of critics’ ire is Jay Primus, who runs the SFpark program for the SFMTA. He maintains that he’s done extensive outreach and gathered community input that has shaped the plans. “These are still proposals and nothing has been approved yet,” he told us.

For example, Wilkins told us his campaign continued even after the meters in front of his house were eliminated from the proposal last month. Primus also noted the proposed meters allow for all-day parking at just 25 cents an hour in most places, so it isn’t really such an inconvenience or financial hardship. And Primus just announced that the Feb. 7 hearing is being pushed back by at least two weeks to heed more community input.

But most of the opposition to the proposals isn’t surprising, and Primus thinks it comes more from the idea of charging for street parking than with the specifics of the proposal.

“Parking is always an emotional and delicate issue in San Francisco, as it is in most cities,” Primus said, citing protests against charging for parking going back to when the first meters were installed in 1947. “This has happened at every block that has gotten meters.”

But now, there are even more benefits and ease of use with modern meters, which motorists can pay with a credit card or even remotely. Variable pricing is also used to ensure more parking based on demand, although it’s being kept at a very low rate in areas where businesses or residents still need all-day parking.

“If people are opposed to paying 25 cents per hour, the lowest rate in the city, then they are opposed to paying for parking,” Primus said. He said it’s a matter of equity among citizens: “There’s nothing equitable about providing parking for free and asking people to pay $4 for a round trip Muni ride.”

That’s a notion that is echoed by others who say it’s time for motorists to start paying their fair share.

“Everybody wants something for nothing. We all want that. Nobody wants to pay for parking, not even me,” Don Shoup, the UCLA professor who wrote the influential book The High Cost of Free Parking, told us. He later added, “That whining you hear is the sound of change.”

At a time when governments are hurting for revenue to provide basic services — among them, maintaining extensive roadway systems for motorists whose taxes don’t come anywhere near covering their societal impacts — he said it just doesn’t make sense to continue subsidizing the storage of automobiles.

“San Francisco has some of the most valuable land on earth. You have expensive housing for people and free parking for cars. It’s not surprising that San Francisco has homeless people and traffic congestion,” Shoup said. “There was never a city that is so liberal about other people’s affairs and so conservative about its own affairs.”

But Shoup did agree with critics that the real goal of managing parking isn’t to discourage driving, although he applauds the SFpark program for using its increased revenue on public transit, which he thinks makes sense from a social justice perspective.

Jason Henderson, a professor of geography at San Francisco State and author of an upcoming book on the politics of parking and mobility, goes even further than Shoup in saying that San Francisco should use its parking policies to discourage driving. But at the very least, Henderson said it is counterproductive to offer free parking.

“The city is giving away valuable real estate with all of this free and underpriced curbside parking at a time when the city’s transportation infrastructure is crumbling and essential city services for parks, after school programs, and libraries are constantly being cut. And here we have thousands of acres of real estate just being given away,” Henderson told us.

“If anything, it needs to be done citywide so that it’s judicious and level, so that merchants won’t say that people won’t come to their neighborhood because they can go to a different neighborhood where there’s free parking.”

Primus said there is a particularly strong need to manage parking around Mission Bay and the North Mission, where much of the city’s growth is occurring.

“In a way, the SFMTA is catching up with the growth of the city. These are some of the last remaining areas that are residential-commercial mixed use areas with no parking management,” Primus said.

Kelly agrees that time has come, but he doesn’t think the SFMTA has helped its case, particularly given the emotions surrounding the issue and the need to maintain public support for improved transit service.

“They’ve been spending all their waking hours in the last couple years pissing people off over parking meters, do you really think people will then support their revenue proposals?” Kelly questioned.

Lum and Caroligne both said the SFMTA should have been willing to make the fundamental argument to people that the days of free parking are coming to an end.

“That’s where a lot of the anger is coming from, you’re doing this for all these reasons that don’t make sense and treating us like children,” Caroligne said, although she also added, “I agree with you that there would still be some outrage, even if the outreach had been better.”

Residents slam proposal for more parking meters

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Nothing makes people more angry than when the city tries to take away their free street parking. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was reminded of that fact at a City Hall hearing this morning when residents and business owners unleashed a storm of angry criticism over a proposal to install new parking meters in Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Mission Bay, and parts of the Mission District.

The plans for this pilot program, which were released on Dec. 20, are intended to address the increased demand for parking in the “Mission Bay Parkshed” from development now underway in the area, as well as concerns about increased demand for street spaces once the parking lot at Folsom and 17th Street is converted into a park.

As with previous SFMTA proposals for extended parking meter hours – which were also met with angry criticism – the idea is to encourage increased use of transit and to free up more street parking space for business customers by discouraging local residents from taking up street parking spots for extended periods of time.

But even people who support that idea in concept say that the SFMTA plans are badly designed and don’t take into account the conditions on the ground, largely because they say planners did an abysmal job of outreach and gathering community input before creating the plans.

“I’m urging a cooling off period,” said Tony Kelly, president of the Potrero Boosters Neighborhood Association. He wants to see more active parking management of that neighborhood, but said planners need to better consult local residents. “We’ve earned that right in our neighborhood and you have not earned our trust.”

And that was among the more mild criticisms at this sometimes raucous hearing, where there were standing room only crowds in the main hearing room and an overflow room showing the hearing on television. Officials were accused of hostility to working families, incompetence, arrogance, and with trying to drive businesses out of town.

“Are you insane?” asked one commenter, while another asked, “How do you look at yourself in the mirror?” Several business owners said they would leave the city in the plans were implemented, and one said half of his employees were driven to tears over the proposals. “I don’t hear anyone asking for meters,” said one commenter. “I don’t hear anyone saying this is good.”

But there are those who say the city shouldn’t be expected to supply free parking to residents who choose to own cars, particularly given the SFMTA’s tight budget situation and the role that drivers searching for limited street parking spaces play in increasing traffic congestion in the city, thus slowing down Muni.

“On behalf of Livable City (and as a Mission District resident), I want to express our support for the expansion of SFpark meters into the Mission Bay, 12th and Folsom, and 17th and Folsom neighborhoods,” Livable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich wrote in a recent letter to the SFMTA. “Each of these areas is seeing intensified activity – new residents, new businesses, and new restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues – and each is badly in need of intelligent parking management. The expansion of metered spaces will provide the parking turnover that neighborhood-serving businesses need. SFpark metering and pricing will also reduce cruising for parking in these neighborhoods.”

But the opinions expressed at the hearing were almost uniformly critical, saying the plans actually call for meters on streets that are mostly residential and that they need more work. We’ll have more detailed analysis of the proposals and related issues in upcoming issues of the Guardian.

CCDC, the Central Subway, and media manipulation (?)

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I talked for some time yesterday with Gen Fujioka, an attorney at the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC), about an editorial he wrote criticizing a San Francisco Chronicle story revealing stunningly high payments to CCDC for subcontracting work on the Central Subway. (A better read, we must say, than Randy Shaw’s whining about how he’s a real journalist, he really really is, and it’s a grave injustice that someone denied him a press release.)

Fujioka claimed that the Chronicle had used fuzzy math, saying the per-hour breakdown of payments to the affordable housing nonprofit were lower in reality than the apalling $750 fee reported in the Chron. He said the management meetings listed in the purchase order actually took eight or nine hours per week to prepare for, which would bring the hourly payment closer to $102 an hour, which still strikes us as kind of steep.

Fujioka also took issue with the Chron’s report that CCDC received $25,000 for holding a single meeting.

We asked the city to send us the documents so we could have a look for ourselves. The $25,000 piece refers to two payments listed under “community relations / public outreach management” on the purchase order for CCDC’s subcontracting work with the Central Subway Partnership. CCDC, which is engaged in affordable housing work, will work with low-income tenants who will be uprooted and relocated as a result of Central Subway construction.

Essentially, the city paid CCDC $15,000 to “plan, coordinate, and implement Chinatown community briefings in cooperation with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA),” plus another $10,000 to “collect and analyze input from community briefings, provide written report of recommendations, implement and support staff and social media at 821 Howard.” Next to each of those items is listed “Quantity: 1.” This seems to explain why the Chron reported that the combined payments were $25,000 for one meeting — the first payment was apparently to plan and host the meeting, while the second seemed to be for processing information gleaned from it.

Fujioka stressed that the description referred to briefings, plural, and that the item “is not one meeting — it’s one of that set of activities. The quantity is not ‘1.’ It’s the category of work.”

Other items on the purchase order, which totaled $410,500, show that the affordable housing nonprofit received $8,000 per month to develop and staff a Central Subway Development liason to publicize the transit project and create informational workshops, $35,000 to develop and implement an outreach plan for Chinese-language media, $95,000 to work with the SFMTA to create a public process for coordinating the design of the Chinatown station and transit-oriented development, and $10,000 to “attend meetings for and provide support services to Chinatown Public Art Plan.”

Fujioka claimed the article was an example of the media being used by one mayoral campaign to attack another, and hinted in his editorial that there was some kind of coordinated media campaign against his nonprofit.

The Chron story spurred a press conference by mayoral candidate and Sen. Leland Yee on Monday, who said he was submitting a request for all correspondence between CCDC, Chinatown power broker Rose Pak, and the mayor’s office in light of this information to pin down all instances of waste and abuse relating to the Central Subway. (Of course, he might want to look beyond CCDC — while the nonprofit may have ties with Lee and Pak, you can be sure that Aecom, the general contractor which has already secured multiple city contracts worth millions of dollars, is doing alright for itself in the Central Subway deal too.) Sources from Yee’s campaign told the Guardian that the senator might hold another press conference if he doesn’t get all the information he asked for, but Lee spokesperson Tony Winnicker told me on Monday that the information would be released “within hours.”

Meanwhile, there’s another interesting tidbit buried in this whole flap. The Chron ran a photograph with its article showing a chalkboard at CCDC offices depicting a power map of the city, with Mayor Ed Lee’s name appearing at the top as interim mayor. The caption said the snapshot was taken before Lee was appointed — which would suggest that CCDC had prior knowledge that Lee would be tapped to serve as caretaker mayor. Yet Fujioka claimed the photo was really taken after Lee had already been installed, and said the drawing was simply “a power map of the city, with the new mayor.” There was no timestamp on the grainy photo, so it’s impossible to verify.

So who’s the mystery photographer? The Chron lists it as an anonymous source.

Someone from Herrera’s camp told me that she’d heard rumors the photo was submitted by a “mole from Leland’s camp.” However, a source in Yee’s camp blatantly rejected that idea, telling me he was certain that it didn’t come from anyone working on Yee’s campaign — and had confirmation from campaign manager Jim Stearns to that effect.

Fujioka didn’t name the source, but said he was pretty sure he knew who it was. “We have a pretty strong suspicion it was a visitor to our office who happened to be there on behalf of a developer who was trying to promote a project,” he said. “He actually is a supporter of one of the other candidates.”

On Guard!

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news@sfbg.com

 

CENTRAL SUBTERFUGE

While supporters of the controversial Central Subway project — from Mayor Ed Lee and his allies in Chinatown to almost the entire Board of Supervisors — dismiss the growing chorus of critics as everything from ill-informed to racist, they refuse to address the biggest concerns about the project.

In a nutshell, the main concerns center on serious design flaws (such as the lack of direct connections to either Muni or BART), the city’s responsibility for any cost overruns on this complex $1.6 billion project, its estimated $15.2 million increase to Muni’s already strained annual operating budget (a figure used by the Federal Transportation Administration, well over the local estimate of $1.7 million), and the city’s unwillingness to implement its own plans for improving north-south transit service on congested Stockton Street rather than relying solely on such an expensive option for serving Chinatown that doesn’t start until 2019.

Judge Quentin Kopp, a longtime former legislator, called this summer’s grand jury report, “Central Subway: Too Much Money for Too Little Benefit,” the best he’s ever read and one that should be heeded. He recently wrote a letter to top state officials urging them to reconsider the $488 million in state funding pledged to the project. As we reported last week, mayoral candidate Dennis Herrera is also challenging a project that he supported before its most recent cost overruns and design changes.

But supporters of the project pushed back hard on Sept. 14, using taunts and emotional rhetoric that avoided addressing the core criticisms. “Beneath the unfounded criticism about costs is actually a disagreement over values. The grand jury report relied upon by critics makes a only brief and superficial criticism about costs,” Norman Fong and Mike Casey wrote in an op-ed in last week’s Guardian.

Actually, the 56-page grand jury report goes into great detail about why it believes cost overruns are likely, citing the myriad risks from tunneling and SFMTA’s administrative shortcomings and history of mismanagement, including on this project’s less-complicated first phase, the T-Third line, which was 22 percent over budget and a year and half late in completion. Even with the contingencies built into the Central Subway budget, the report notes that a similar overrun would increase the local share of this project from $124 million to more than $150 million.

Mayor Lee purportedly addressed criticism of the project during the Question Time session in the Sept. 14 Board of Supervisors meeting, prompted by a loaded question from Sup. Sean Elsbernd offering Lee the “opportunity to move beyond the clichés and one-liners of political campaigns.”

But Lee’s answer was classically political, touting the estimated 30,000 jobs it would create, praising those who have pushed this project since the 1980s, offering optimistic ridership estimates (that exceed current FTA figures by about 9,000 daily riders), and ignoring concerns about whether the city can cover the ever-increasing capital and operating costs.

“Now is the time to support the Central Subway,” Lee said, flashing his trademark mustachioed grin.

We called the normally responsive Elsbernd, who prides himself on his fiscal responsibility, twice, to ask about financial concerns surrounding the project and he didn’t call back. During their mayoral endorsement interviews with the Guardian last week, we also asked Sups. John Avalos and David Chiu to address how they think the city will be able to afford this project, and neither had good answers about the most substantive issues (listen for yourself to the audio recordings on our Politics blog).

Once Congress gives final approval to $966 million in federal funding for this project sometime in the next couple months, the city will be formally committed to the Central Subway and all its costs. It’s too bad that, even during election season, all its supporters have to offer to address valid concerns are “clichés and one-liners.”(Steven T. Jones)

 

BLACK AGENDA

Mayoral candidates faced tougher questions than usual at a Sept. 15 forum hosted by the Harvey Matthews Bayview Hunters Point Democratic Club. Whereas debates hosted in the Castro and Mission Bay, for instance, featured questions on how candidates planned to clean up city streets, what they thought about AT&T’s plan to place utility boxes on city sidewalks, or how they’d promote a more business-friendly environment, residents brought a thornier set of concerns to the Bayview Opera House.

One question pointed to an alarming statistic based on U.S. Census data and cited by racial justice advocates, showing that residents of the predominantly African American Bayview Hunters Point have a life expectancy that’s 14 years lower, on average, than that of residents of the more well-to-do Russian Hill.

Someone else asked about improving mental health services for lower-income community members struggling with post-traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). High unemployment figured in as a key concern. And one member of the audience wanted to know how candidates planned to “improve the behavior of the police,” alluding to the mid-July officer-involved shooting that left 19-year-old Seattle resident Kenneth Harding dead, triggering community outrage.

Mayor Ed Lee attended the beginning of the forum but left early to attend an anniversary celebration for the Bayview Hunters Point Foundation; other participants included Terry Joan Baum, Jeff Adachi, Bevan Dufty, Dennis Herrera, David Chiu, Michela Alioto-Pier, and Joanna Rees.

Answers to Bayview residents’ sweeping concerns varied, yet many acknowledged that the southeastern neighborhood had been neglected and ill-served by city government for years.

“There is no economic justice here in Bayview Hunters Point,” Adachi said. “There never has been. That’s the reality.” He pointed to his record in the Pubic Defender’s Office on aggressively targeting police misconduct, and played up his pension reform measure, Prop. D, as a vehicle for freeing up public resources for critical services.

Dufty, who has repeatedly challenged mayoral contenders to incorporate a “black agenda” into their platforms, spoke of his vision for a mayor’s office with greater African American representation, and emphasized his commitment to improving contracting opportunities for minority-owned businesses.

Herrera, meanwhile, was singled out and asked to explain his support for gang injunctions, an issue that has drawn the ire of civil liberties groups. “I only support gang injunctions as a last resort,” he responded. “We shouldn’t have to use them. But … people should be able to walk around without being caught in a web of gang violence. I put additional restrictions on myself to go above and beyond what the law requires, to make sure that I am balancing safe streets with protecting civil liberties.”

Herrera asserted that gang violence had been reduced by 60 percent in areas where he’d imposed the controversial bans on contact between targeted individuals, and noted that the majority of those he’d sought injunctions against in Oakdale weren’t San Francisco residents.

Baum brought questions about a lack of services back to the overarching issue of the widening income and wealth gaps. “Right now, the money is being sucked upward as we speak,” she said. “We have to bring that money back down.”

She closed with her signature phrase: “Tax the rich. Duuuuh.” (Rebecca Bowe)

 

DUFTY REMEMBERS

The selection of Ed Lee as interim (or not-so-interim) mayor of San Francisco was one of those moments that left just about everyone dazed — how did a guy who wasn’t even in town, who had shown no interest in the job, who had never held elective office, suddenly wind up in Room 200?

Well, former Sup. Bevan Dufty, who was going to nominate Sheriff Mike Hennessey and switched to providing the crucial sixth vote for Lee at the last minute, told us the story during his mayoral endorsement interview last week.

Remember: Lee, as recently as a few days earlier, had told people he didn’t want to be mayor. “An hour before the meeting, Gavin (Newsom) called Michela (Alioto-Pier) and me into his office and said Ed Lee had changed his mind,” Dufty told us. He walked out of the Mayor’s Office uncommitted, he said, and even Newsom wasn’t sure where Dufty would go.

After two rounds of voting, with Dufty abstaining, there were five votes for Lee. So Dufty asked for a recess and went back to talk to Newsom — where he was told that the mayor thought the reason the progressives were supporting Hennessey was that the sheriff had agreed to get rid of about 20 mayoral staffers — including Chief of Staff Steve Kawa, “who had engineered Ed Lee running.”

So Kawa, with Newsom’s help, preserved his job and power base. “It’s all turnabout,” Dufty said. “I figure Mike Hennessey’s had a couple of beers and a couple of good times thinking about my vote. But that’s politics.” (Tim Redmond)

 

ALMOST FREE?

Friends and supporters of Shane Bauer and Josh Fattal were kept in a state of agonizing suspense over whether the two men, both 29, would be released from the Iranian prison where they’ve been held for more than two years following an ill-fated hiking trip in Iraqi Kurdistan.

On Sept. 13, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated publicly that Bauer and Fattal could be freed “in a couple of days.” The announcement brought hope for family and friends who, just weeks earlier, had absorbed the news that the men were sentenced to eight years in prison after an Iranian court found them guilty of committing espionage, a charge that the hikers, the United States government, religious leaders, and human rights advocates have characterized as completely baseless.

Reports followed that the Iranian judiciary would commute the hikers’ sentences and release them in exchange for bail payments totaling $1 million. But by Sept. 16, when supporters gathered in San Francisco in hopes that of an imminent announcement, they were instead greeted with new delays.

The constantly shifting accounts hinted at internal strife within the Iranian government, and contributed to the sense that Bauer and Fattal were trapped as pawns in a power struggle. By Sept. 19, their Iranian lawyer remained in limbo, awaiting the signature of a judge who was scheduled to return from vacation Sept. 20.

“Shane and Josh’s freedom means more to us than anything and it’s a huge relief to read that they are going to be released,” the hikers’ families said in a statement Sept. 13. “We’re grateful to everyone who has supported us and looking forward to our reunion with Shane and Josh. We hope to say more when they are finally back in our arms.” (Rebecca Bowe)

Carfree crowd praises SFMTA’s choice of Reiskin

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Today’s announcement of Ed Reiskin as the new executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is being warmly welcomed by bicyclists, transit riders, and other advocates for alternatives to the automobile – and not just because Reiskin doesn’t own a car and gets around by bike and Muni.

As the head of the Department of Public Works, Reiskin transformed the agency into one that facilitated the creation of more vibrant public spaces and safer, multi-use streets, overseeing some of the Newsom Administration’s most significant progressive accomplishments.

“He really began the process of turning DPW into a complete streets agency,” says Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City and an elected member of BART’s Board of Directors. He noted that Reiskin is widely respected by city staff, department heads, and a variety of community groups.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director Leah Shahum said she was “really pleased” with the choice – saying Reiskin has been “lights years ahead” of previous DPW administrators – and said it bodes well for an agency that faces some difficult challenges.

“I think Ed Reiskin has proven himself as a leader and someone who is really involved with San Francisco,” she said. “He will be the MTA director who most understands the real needs that San Franciscans have in terms of mobility.”

For example, she said Reiskin prioritized repaving and filling in potholes on streets that have bike lanes, where bad pavement can cause serious crashes or conflicts with drivers. “The fact is he understands that is a safety issue,” she said.

Radulovich offered two cautionary notes in his praise of the choice. The first was his hope that Reiskin will be allowed to take the bold action the MTA needs to reform Muni and create truly mulit-modal, safe streets, rather than being micromanaged and having the agency turned into a piggybank for other departments, as Mayor Newsom did with former MTA director Nat Ford.

“Is the mayor finally going to allow the MTA director to do what he needs to do to fix the agency?” Radulovich asked.

Secondly, he fears that DPW might backslide to the days before Reiskin took over, when the agency was removing public benches all over the city and making public spaces less inviting, rather than taking the lead on creating new, more inviting public spaces – from parklets to Sunday Streets – as Reiskin did.

“The worst case is you don’t gain anything at the MTA and you lose something at Public Works,” Radulovich said.

For his part, Mayor Ed Lee sounded a note of optimism that Reiskin will transform the agency. “I thank the SFMTA Board of Directors for their thoughtful, deliberative and unanimous support of Ed Reiskin as the new leader of the SFMTA,” Lee in a prepared statement. “Now is the time to focus on the future of the SFMTA and continue to make good on our promise to San Francisco transit riders and taxpayers by creating greater efficiency in our transit system, improving on-time performance, and honoring our City’s Transit First Policy.”

Mayor Lee meets with Bayview community leaders about officer-involved shooting

Mayor Ed Lee and officials from the San Francisco Police Department met with Bayview community leaders in City Hall July 19 to discuss the police investigation surrounding a July 16 officer-involved shooting that has prompted intense community anger and protests. While city officials indicated that the meeting was called to provide information and updates for the community, frustrated community members emerging from the City Hall conference room dismissed it as “more of a lecture,” saying city officials weren’t open to hearing broader community concerns that have intensified in the wake of this tragic event.

Reporters were not allowed in the room while the meeting was held because “it’s more of a community meeting,” according to mayoral communications staff member Francis Tsang. Attendees included Bayview community leaders Chris Jackson, Geoffrea Morris, Mike Brown, Charlie Walker, Ed Donaldson, and the Rev. Amos Brown. District 10 Sup. Malia Cohen also issued invitations to the meeting, which was scheduled at the same time as the full Board of Supervisors meeting, and sent a representative.


The shooting victim was Kenneth Harding Jr., 19, from Washington. Police say he fired one round at officers before police fired nine rounds, killing him. However, some witnesses initially reported that they did not see Harding fire a gun, and a firearm wasn’t immediately recovered from the scene. Police initially tried to detain Harding on the station platform of the Oakdale / Palou stop on the T-Third line on suspected fare evasion. After Harding was killed, it came to light that he had a criminal history and had been named as a person of interest in the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old pregnant woman from Washington. The incident, which occurred in broad daylight and was captured on film and witnessed by people who were out on the street, proved to be a traumatizing event for a low-income, predominantly African American community where tensions already run high between police and residents.

Lee indicated to the Guardian that the July 19 meeting had been called primarily to clear up misinformation. “There have been a lot of stories spreading about what did and didn’t occur, and we felt it was necessary to get the community updated as quickly as possible,” Lee said. “Any time there is a death in any community we’re very concerned … this one in particular has been represented in many different ways, and a lot of it has been very inflammatory in terms of what people have said occurred. We’ve heard points like there was no gun, when in fact now we’ve found a gun through police investigation. That there was no shot made at officers when … the officers have at least some evidence through the ShotSpotter program that there was an initial shot made by the suspect.”

Lee added that MUNI staff had reported people relaying “all kinds of stories” while riding the buses. “These are very hard, hard feelings,” he said. “So I felt it necessary that we confront this head on with community leaders. We met with some yesterday, we’re meeting with some today, [Police Chief Greg Suhr] is hosting a town-hall meeting in the Bayview tomorrow to yet again find every opportunity to fully explain what they have uncovered as the evidence, and to make sure people base their views on the facts.” A larger community meeting is scheduled for July 20 at 6 p.m. at the Bayview Opera House.

Meanwhile, Bayview community leaders Chris Jackson and Geoffrea Morris were not pleased when they emerged from the conference room. “The mayor left without hearing one public comment,” Morris said. “It was just a lecture. It wasn’t addressing the police, and how they deal with fare evasion, and harass people along the T train. It was not that. It was just, the mayor said his little thing, did not say goodbye, and ran out.”

Morris went on, “We don’t have grief counselors out there. We don’t have the police saying that they’ll stay off the T-Train platform until the investigation is done. We thought this meeting was going to be for them to go, ‘where do we go from here?’ And the thing that people are missing … whatever demon that boy had, that was a human life.” Concerns are still swirling about how long it took for an ambulance to arrive after the shooting, Morris said, and about how police arrived at the scene with high-powered weapons which they kept drawn even as Harding writhed in a pool of blood on the sidewalk.

Morris and Jackson said that during the meeting, officials showed a Channel 7 TV news broadcast clip and played an audio of gunshots being fired to demonstrate that the suspect had fired an initial shot before police opened fire. “We all have Internet, smart phones, and all the footage as well,” Morris said. “I was there on the site.”

Shortly after the meeting, the San Francisco Police Department issued a statement to announce that gunshot residue had been detected on Harding’s right hand during an investigation. “The presence of gunshot residue on Harding’s right hand supports statements from witnesses that Harding held the gun in his right hand as he fired at the police officers,” the press release stated. It went on to note that the presence of gunshot residue on an individual’s hand could indicate that the individual fired a gun, or was in close proximity to a gun when it was fired, or touched something that was coated with gunshot residue.

Morris and Jackson also voiced concerns that went beyond the details of this particular case. “The response really needs to be a policy shift,” Jackson said. “We need a better approach in terms of violence prevention. We cannot address this with more cops on the T line.”

Jackson, who ran for District 10 supervisor in 2010, also questioned why police officers had been tasked with fare evasion enforcement on the T-Third line in the first place. MUNI also employs fare inspectors, he pointed out, and the city has a specialized program, called the ambassadors program, which was created last year in the wake of violence along the T-Third line directed at members of the Asian community. “Where was the public conversation about putting cops on MUNI trains?” Jackson wanted to know. “Who came up with that idea?”

Asked about this, Lee told the Guardian that he had specifically requested a higher police presence in areas where higher levels of crime were anticipated – and the July 16 shooting occurred in just such an area.

“I actually asked the chief to pay more attention to areas that had a history of gun violence and shootings and other kinds of violence … and it just so happens that this particular area, Third and Palou, is a place where there’s a lot of violence,” Lee said. “So we had more uniformed officers on that specifically at not only my request, but with the understanding of the police chief, too. He’s trying to do his best to keep everybody safe. And that in the summer, with all of the evidence that we have about where the shootings are and where they’re occurring, we naturally focus on areas where we think there’s going to be more violence to have more presence. So circumstances occurred where an individual was stopped because of a fare evasion, and I believe police were there to begin to detain him, and ask him to provide some evidence of who he is and why he did what he did, and that turned out to be a chase. A chase is one thing, but a chase with an opening of a firearm is a completely different thing.”

Meanwhile, Bayview community residents who ride the T-Third line experienced delays in recent days because MUNI operations staff decided to stop running light rail trains into the Bayview, instead dropping people off partway through the route and then directing them to wait for shuttle buses.

On July 18, a little before dark, a T-Third driver stopped at the Marin Street stop and announced that all passengers would have to wait for a shuttle bus. When passengers demanded to know why, she responded, “They’re acting up on Third Street, and our bosses don’t want us in the middle of it.”

According to SFMTA spokesperson Kristen Holland, operations staff began receiving reports around 6:30 or 7 p.m. July 18 that “there were upwards of 50 people walking on the right-of-way for the trains. As a safety precaution, our operations folks deployed buses for that portion of the line. We were told that they started at the southern terminus, and were walking north.”

This Guardian reporter hopped onto a shuttle bus with a notebook in hand after hearing that people were “acting up,” but by the time the bus made its way into the heart of the Bayview, the streets were calm. A MUNI employee who asked not to be named said he’d heard that someone had kicked in a window on one of the T-Third cars, and that was why the trains weren’t going through.

Meanwhile, the unexpected transfer left passengers weary, since for many waiting for the shuttle marked a second or third transfer on public transportation to get home. “People’s kind of frustrated. You go a few blocks, and they say it’s the end of the line. You go a couple blocks and they tell you the same thing,” said Darwin Green.

Another passenger, a youth who was with a friend and seemed concerned about the unfamiliar route the shuttle bus was taking, said, “I think it’s bullshit that they’re issuing citations. And there’s no need to shoot somebody because they didn’t have change for the bus fare.”
 
Another passenger was also disgruntled about the delays. Asked what he thought about everything that had been going on in recent days, he said, “It seems like they spend an awful lot of money in wages chasing down $2 fares.”