Transportation

Burning Man population cap set at 60,900, way more than ever

Sasha Cuttler
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Burning Man population cap set at 60,900, way more than ever

Burning Man is more popular than ever, judging by a demand for tickets that far exceeded supply this year, after selling out last year for the first time in its 26-year history — and now this year’s event will be far bigger than ever.

The Bureau of Land Management, which manages the Nevada desert where burners build Black Rock City every August, has set a population cap for Burning Man at 60,900, an increase of more than 10,000 over previous events.

For Black Rock City LLC, the San Francisco-based company that stages Burning Man, there was mixed news in BLM’s June 12 permit decision. BRC was denied the multi-year event permit it sought, but as it struggles to meet demand for this increasingly popular countercultural institution, BLM honored BRC’s late request for more people than the 58,000 it had sought for this year.

“After further discussions, there were requests for a bit more,” Cory Roegner, who oversees the event from BLM’s district office in Winnemucca, told us. Asked why BRC sought the population bump, he said, “The more people they can have, the better.”

BLM has been processing BRC’s lengthy environment assessment and its request for a five-year permit that would allow the event to grow steadily from 58,000 to 70,000 people in 2016. The cap for this year could have been set as low as 50,000, creating some drama around this announcement, but the agency instead issued a single-year permit with a population cap of 60,900.

BRC was placed on probation last fall after violating its 50,000-person cap by a few thousand people each on Sept. 2 and 3, and BLM rules limit groups on probation to a single-year permit. BRC has appealed the status to the Interior Board of Land Appeals, which has not yet acted on it or answered Guardian inquiries.

“Unless we do hear back from them, Black Rock City would be precluded from a multi-year permit,” Roegner told us.

He also said that if BRC violates the population cap for a second year in a row, it could be barred from holding future events, although the high population cap should mean that won’t be a big problem this year, clearing the way for Burning Man’s steady growth through at least 2016.

“Based on the evaluation [of this year’s event], we will consider a multi-year permit going to 2016,” Roegner told us.

BRC has already sold 57,000 tickets and will give away thousands more to art collectives, staff, and VIPs. But the cap is based on a daily population count and BRC board member Marian Goodell said the event never has all attendees there at once.

She said staying below the cap this year shouldn’t be a problem given that many of those who build the city and work on the major art pieces leave before the final weekend when the eponymous Man burns. “Usually at least 6,000 leave before we hit the peak. Sometimes more on dusty, wet, or cold years,” she told us.

It could have been a lot more difficult. BLM officials had told the Guardian in April that they were considering keeping last year’s population cap of 50,000, which could have presented BRC with a logistical nightmare and/or ticket-holder backlash in trying to stay under the cap.

“The issue between us and the BLM continues to be the population cap,” Burning Man founder Larry Harvey told the Guardian.

Harvey, Goodell, and others with BRC took a lobbying trip to Washington DC in late April trying to shore up political support for the event and its culture, arguing that it has become important for artistic and technical innovation and community building rather than just a big party.

Harvey told us he believes that Burning Man could grow to 100,000 participants, although he conceded that would need further study and creative solutions to key problems such as getting people to and from the isolated location accessed only by one highway lane in each direction.

“We think we could go to 100,000 if it was measured growth, carefully planned,” Harvey said.

On the transportation question, he said, “it’s a question of flow.” Right now, participants arriving or leaving on peak days often wait in lines that can take four hours or more.

“We’ve talked to engineers that have proposed solutions to that,” Harvey said of the transportation issue, although he wouldn’t discuss possible solutions except to say, “You could exit in a more phased fashion.”

Roegner said that was one of the big issues identified in the EA. “We are taking a closer look at a couple items this year, traffic being one,” he said. Another one is the use of decomposed granite, which is placed under flaming artworks to prevent burn scars on the playa, and making sure it is properly cleaned up each year.

BRC was facing a bit of a crisis in confidence after this year’s ticket debacle, when a new lottery-based ticket distribution system and higher than expected demand left up to two-thirds of burner veterans without tickets. The resulting furor caused BRC to abandon plans for a secondary sale and instead sell the final 10,000 tickets through established theme camps, art collectives, and volunteers groups.

“It’s pretty obvious that we’ll do something like that again because we don’t expect demand to go down,” Harvey said of that direct distribution of tickets, which was criticized in some burner circles as promoting favoritism and undermining the event’s stated principle of inclusivity.

Now that BRC has received a high population cap, it could conceivably sell more tickets to this year’s event, something Goodell said the board will consider, weighing that against the imperative of staying under the population cap this year. “The board needs to talk about what the ramifications of that are. There is a lot of demand out there,” Goodell told us.

Harvey emphasized that much of Burning Man’s growth is occurring off the playa — in cities and at regional events around the world. “All of this is by way of dealing with the capacity problem. I don’t know how much we can grow in the Black Rock Desert,” he said.

Another realm full of both possibilities and perils — depending on one’s perspective — is the ongoing development of The Burning Man Project, a nonprofit that BRC created last year to gradually take on new initiatives, followed by taking over staging of the event, and eventually (probably in five years) full control of Burning Man and its brand and trademarks.

“God knows, we have a lot of opportunities before us,” Harvey said, adding that BMP is now focused on fundraising. “It is the objective before we transfer the event to start transferring the regional events, and that will take more money and staff.”

After that, he sees unlimited potential to grow the culture, not just Black Rock City. “We’ve got to focus on the people. We’re becoming less event-centric,” he said. “We think of this as a cultural movement.”

Guardian City Editor Steven T. Jones is the author of The Tribes of Burning Man: How an Experimental City in the Desert is Shaping the New American Counterculture.

Bike advocates have made real progress, but there’s still a long way to go

Sasha Cuttler
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Bike advocates have made real progress, but there’s still a long way to go

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Leah Shahum mused on how far this influential advocacy group has come during its 20th Annual Golden Wheels Awards last night, noting that the first such award recognized the commercial landlord at 555 Montgomery Street for installing indoor bike parking.

“Back then, that would get you a Golden Wheel Award,” she said, noting that this year’s award to the Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco (BOMA) was for its support of legislation requiring all commercial buildings in San Francisco to provide indoor bike parking. “We’ve come a long way in 20 years, clearly.”

In addition to the majority of the Board of Supervisors who showed up to offer their support, Shahum ticked off a long list of other city and regional officials who ride bikes and understand their potential as an increasingly important transportation option during the era of peak oil, traffic gridlock, and public health problems.

“Regularly, we have these top leaders in the city who are biking because they love it, biking because they’ve always biked,” Shahum said, citing the Sunday Streets road closures and the school district going from discouraging cycling to facilitating it as signs of the pro-bike mindset that has taken hold of San Francisco.

The fact that SFBC recognized BOMA – a powerful downtown player that has progressed from seeing cyclists as enemies to embracing them as allies – was telling of the mainstream embrace of bikes.

“We get it, we’re learning,” Meade Boutwell, president of BOMA’s board, told the crowd as he accepted the award, going on to say that “less cars are good for all of us.”

It was a lovely if ungrammatical sentiment and a sign of just how far the business community has come in accepting the imperative of promoting alternatives to the automobile. But there’s still a bit of a disconnect in San Francisco about the role that bikes play in the world’s great pro-cycling cities, evidenced partly by Boutwell’s opening comment, “Under this polyester suit is lycra.”

Keynote speaker Gil Peñalosa – executive director of 8-80 Cities, a nonprofit that promotes creation of cycling infrastructure that is safe and inviting from those 8-80-years-old – mocked the MAMILs (Middle-Aged Men In Lycra) and the notion that people should be athletic or wear special equipment to be able to cycle in cities.

“We dress normally, we act normal, and so on,” Peñalosa said, later arguing that, “Cycling is for everybody.”

In Boutwell’s defense, much of mainstream San Francisco still has a hard time accepting cycling as a normal, safe option. When the San Francisco Chronicle covered Pealosa’s visit to Sunday Streets last weekend – our version of the car-free ciclovias that Peñalosa pioneered as a city official in Bogota, Columbia more than a decade ago – reporter Sam Whiting was jarred by the guest’s casual approach.

“They had come from overseas and were riding in jeans and without helmets, both rookie mistakes,” he wrote of Peñalosa and his wife (“Sunday Streets welcomes its source of inspiration,” 6/4).

But Peñalosa argues that the real mistake is when cities cater primarily to automobiles at the expense of the safety and livability of their neighborhoods, and treat cycling as a dangerous fringe activity. He argues that cities should be built primarily around pedestrians, “but very close to the pedestrians is the cyclists…I think that cycling is just a more efficient way of walking.”

Public transit is important and should be robust, he said, but it’s just not as efficient, user-friendly, economical, or environmentally beneficial as bikes. “We need to walk and bike as a part of everyday life and then we’ll be much healthier,” he said.

Peñalosa urged the crowd to be politically active and push the city to prioritize bikes over automobiles, noting that even in wealthy neighborhoods, only about a third of residents drive cars. And from a design perspective, he said city officials must choose between “Streets for cars or streets for people.”

Once we make the latter choice, Peñalosa laid out an agenda for achieving that goal, starting with slowing vehicle speeds to no more than 20 mph in residential areas.

He cited statistics showing that only about 5 percent of pedestrians hit by cars driving 20 mph will die, whereas the fatality rate shoots up to 80 percent when the vehicles are traveling 40 mph. And for streets in which cars are traveling faster than 20 mph, he said it’s imperative to have bike lanes that are separated from cars by physical barriers, rather than just lines painted on the street.

He noted that Seville, Spain drastically increased its cycling rate in just a few years by committing to building bike infrastructure, and that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel installed that city’s first physically separated bikeway within his first 30 days in office and has perhaps the US’s most ambitious program for installing new bikeways. “San Francisco should not be any less than Chicago,” he said.

In Cogenhagen, which already boasts some of the world’s highest rates of urban bicycle use, Peñalosa said the city has sought to capture more long-distance riders by building 200 miles of “cycle superhighways” – which includes two lanes in each direction to facilitate both fast and slow riders – all for the price it costs to build about a half-mile of subway.

The goal, he said, is to make cycling as “easy, fast, and convenient” as possible, and to apply the political pressure to make that a priority because “if you aren’t doing those things then someone else is and someone else is setting the agenda.”

Bikes and business, a new and evolving union in SF

Sasha Cuttler
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Building Owners and Managers Association of San Francisco (BOMA) is being honored by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition at next week’s annual Golden Wheel Awards, recognizing BOMA’s help earlier this year in passing a city law requiring commercial landlords to let workers bring their bikes indoors or another secure bike parking area.

It is a strange and noteworthy honor for BOMA, a downtown force that is usually at odds with SFBC and progressive political entities, including opposing an effort to pass similar bikes-in-buildings legislation a decade ago. But this time, BOMA was an early partner on legislation sponsored by progressive Sup. John Avalos, an indicator of just how much the politics surrounding urban cycling have changed in recent years, particularly in San Francisco.

In the city where Critical Mass was born 20 years ago this fall – since then exported to dozens of cities around the world, globalizing urban cyclists’ demand for the equal right to use roadways often built mainly for automobiles – the bicycle has moved from the preferred mode of rebels, children, and the poor into a mainstream transportation option recognized even by the suits in the corner offices.

“They’re responding to a market demand. They see lots of employees looking for bike access in their buildings,” San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive Director Lean Shahum said BOMA.

It was a point echoed by John Bozeman, BOMA’s government and public affairs manager and a regular cyclist. “Ten years ago, our members didn’t see it as something their tenants were asking of them,” Bozeman told us. “With the rise of young workers coming into our buildings, there was a greater demand for better bike access.”

But there are different ways of looking at this switch, which could undermine the progressive movement in San Francisco as SFBC increasingly adopts a more neoliberal approach of reliance on corporate support, rather than relying primarily on the political strength of their 12,000-plus members. For example, the Sunday Streets road closures that SFBC helped initiate are sponsored by a long list of corporations looking to improve their public image, including Bank of America (whose representative recently joined SFBC and city officials at a press conference announcing an expansion of the program), California Pacific Media Center, and Clear Channel, and in the past PG&E and Lennar.

“It reflects that bicycling sells real estate, and that’s a recent trend in hip, tech-focused cities,” says Jason Henderson, a San Francisco State University geography professor now finishing up a book on the politics of transportation, which explores these shifting dynamics.

The relationship with and dependence upon the business community could diminish SFBC’s willingness to champion bold reforms to our transportation system, such as congestion pricing charges for cars entering the city core during peak hours or demanding public transit mitigation fees of downtown corporations.

“On the other hand, it’s helping legitimize the bike as a legitimate form of transportation when the power elite accept it,” Henderson said.

Whatever the case, SFBC decision to honor BOMA with an award – which will be presented on the evening of June 5 during an event at the swank War Memorial Building – represents a new and evolving political dynamic for San Francisco.

“San Francisco has become a very different place in terms of embracing bicycling,” Shahum said. “There is a strong understanding that biking is good for the economy.”

New JFK bike lanes are bad for everyone

Sasha Cuttler
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154
New JFK bike lanes are bad for everyone

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.

“Charitable beer circus”? Is this a miracle?

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Come one, come all (unless you’re under 21) to Petaluma this Sat/20, and witness death-defying displays — with a twist. A screw-top twist, that is (sorry). Attendees of the Lagunitas Beer Circus can “ooh” and “aah” at aerialist acts, laugh at outrageously face-painted clowns, watch a lithesome figure breathe fire or swallow swords, and gape at the magnificence of exotic burlesque dancers, all the while drinking the fine beers and sweet ales of Lagunitas. It’ll be three rings of tastiness! And it’s charitable.

A $40 entry fee to the splendor of the Lagunitas Beer Circus benefits the Petaluma Music Festival and Music In Schools. Entertainment features acts from B.A.D. roller girls to the Vau de Vire Society and music from The Ferocious Few to the Sour Mash Hug Band (along with a marching band or two). Plus: cotton candy, paella, pizza, bangers, and barbecued oysters.

Yes, beer is in the event title, but even your sober driver (who’ll be necessary for lack of public transportation, and whose $25 reduced-price ticket you should spot because they’ve agreed to cart you all the way out to Petaluma), will have plenty to delight their eyes, ears, and taste buds. So step (or sway) right up, ladies, gentlemeen, and others. Check out our slideshow of acts above.

LAGUNITAS BEER FESTIVAL
Sat/20, 1pm-6pm, $40.
Lagunitas Brewing Company
1280 N. McDowell, Petaluma
(707) 769-4495.
www.lagunitas.com/beercircus

Challenging the duopoly

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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By Adam Morris

news@sfbg.com

On May 12, the Green Party held a presidential debate between Massachusetts physician and longtime progressive activist Jill Stein and comedian turned TV star turned macadamia nut farmer Roseanne Barr. The debate was moderated by Rose Aguilar, host of KALW’s Your Call, and took place at San Francisco’s historic Victoria Theater.

Outside the theater before the event, a battalion of senior-citizen canvassers collected signatures to petition Gov. Jerry Brown to take up single-payer health care. Inside, the audience steadily grew to about 100 people, nearly filling the Victoria, but still was a grim turnout for what was once the Valhalla of progressive politics in America.

The audience was primarily gray; notably absent were the 20- and 30-something Occupiers, indebted students, and underemployed ranks of America’s youth, a political class actively courted by the Green Party and its candidates.

Barr read her opening remarks straight from her laptop computer, in a hurried monotone that nevertheless reached a crescendo as she called for “an end to the system of slavery, war, and usury” in America, and pledged to “make getting food to the hungry our final cause.” Ending hunger resurfaced later in the debate, when Barr observed that the military could be used to distribute food. She also claimed that “there would be no global warming” if humans chose to get their protein from nuts rather than eating animals. This would only happen, she charged, by getting Monsanto “off the necks of small farmers.”

Cribbing lines by turn from JFK and Jesus (via Lincoln), Barr continued, “I beseech the debt creators to ask not what this country can do for them, but what they can do for this country,” and asked America to give the 1 percent a chance to be our partners and not our adversaries, “for a house divided against itself cannot stand.”

Stein’s opening statement indicted the Obama administration for adopting the policies of the Bush administration and called for a Green New Deal to reform transportation, health care, and environmental standards. Throughout the night, Stein repeatedly invoked the power of grassroots social movements witnessed across the globe, asking the audience to help her and the Greens “go viral” with their message of environmental and social reform.

Both candidates demanded vengeance on Wall Street, with Stein calling for a breakup of the banks and the establishment of public banks. Barr said that current laws allowed for the prosecuting of what she called “the biggest heist in history,” which is how she referred to the “transfer of wealth upward” of the last decade. “Everything filthy and disgusting originates right there on Wall Street,” she said, “and we want our money back.”

On the military, Stein vowed to “bring our dollars home to stop being the exploiter of the world,” and to turn the bomber factories into windmill factories for green jobs. Barr warned against the militarization of the police and the dangers of what she called the “prison-military-industrial complex,” which she said will be “holding a gun on your neighbor while your neighbor does free labor for a corporation.” Barr’s condemnation of the prison complex continued into the debate on legalization of marijuana, which Barr said would thrust the “tip of the spear into the beast” of the incarceration industry.

Stein echoed Barr’s support of legalization, leaning on her authority as a physician to proclaim that “marijuana is dangerous because it is illegal, not illegal because it is dangerous.” As a doctor, Stein also called for a real health care system involving bikeable cities and reform of the FDA to replace the current “sick-care” system favored by the major parties. Barr said that she too would “lift the curse on single payer universal health care.”

The candidates also came out strong in their support of labor reform, slamming NAFTA and suppression of workers’ rights. Stein called for “fair trade” over “free trade,” faulting the Obama administration for its recent free trade deal with a “union-destroying country” like Colombia. Barr choked up when she told the audience that she is able to “represent the people from whom I came,” quickly adding “and I’ll fight hard too—I’ve got balls bigger than anybody.” Women’s rights also drew fiery proclamations from the candidates, with Stein vowing to “resurrect the Equal Rights Amendment,” and Barr stating flatly that “patriarchy needs to go.”

The signature issue of the Green Party—the environment—was a minor if constantly underlying thread to the discussion, emerging as a topic only later in the debate. While Stein repeated Barr’s jabs at Monsanto and pledged to “deny the Keystone Pipeline on Day 1,” Barr grew solemn, acknowledging the possibility that it might be too late to save the environment from impending catastrophes. We would need to learn, she said, to create “a new system that is not money dependent.”

Both candidates broke debate protocol on time limits and turns of speech, but the atmosphere was collegial and supportive, with Barr chiming in “yeahs” to many of Stein’s remarks. Each woman repeatedly said she “agreed completely” with what the other said. “Our greatest weapon,” Barr said, is to “resist the fear they force-feed us,” linking her remarks to Stein’s claim that “the politics of fear has brought us everything we were afraid of.”

Stein railed against a mainstream press that has effectively sequestered discussion of political alternatives. “We do not have a functioning press,” she told the audience, “We have an o-press. We have a re-press.” She repeated her call for Greens to mobilize online to get the word out about alternative party movements. Barr said that she was being very careful not to bring any discredit to the Green Party. Though biting and at times sarcastic, Barr said she her campaign was “dead serious. And the message is dead serious too.”

20 percent by 2020

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20 percent by 2020

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?”

Sunday Streets coming to — and staying in — the Mission

Sasha Cuttler
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Sunday Streets – the once-controversial closure of streets to automobiles so they can be fully used by pedestrians, cyclists, and skaters, temporarily expanding the amount of open space in San Francisco – has become a popular monthly event and it rotates among neighborhoods around the city. And as the organizers prepare for this Sunday’s event in the Mission, where its biggest and best incarnations are held, city officials today announced an expansion of the program: the Mission will now host Sunday Streets on the first weekend of each month through the summer.

“Sunday Streets really comes to life and realizes its full potential when it’s in the Mission,” Ed Reiskin, executive director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, said this morning at a press conference on the steps of City Hall.

The business community initially resisted the idea when it was proposed five years ago by Mayor Gavin Newsom and its chief sponsor, the nonprofit Livable City, concerned that customers would have a hard time getting to stores. But just the opposite has proven true as the popular events fill the streets with thousands of people.

“When Sunday Streets started, I know there was a little apprehension, we even felt it in the Mission,” Sup. David Campos, who represents the Mission. “But the neighborhood has come together to embrace the project.”

Mayor Ed Lee called the expansion of Sunday Streets “a great pilot program for San Francisco” and said that it represents “our openness to learning to use our streets differently.”

San Francisco was the third city in the country to hold these street closures – known as cicolvias in Bogota, Columbia, which pioneered the concept – following Portland, Ore. (the first, and one that we covered) and New York City. This Sunday’s event runs from 11 am to 4 pm, mostly along Valencia and 24th streets.

Our Weekly Picks May 2-8, 2012

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WEDNESDAY 2

Loom of Ruin reading

Sam McPheeters has a way with language that has translated from lyrics to journalism and now: his first official solo novel, The Loom of Ruin. The former frontperson of a trilogy of punk and experimental acts (Born Against, Men’s Recovery Project, Wrangler Brutes) has long written columns for the likes of Vice, and put out his own fanzines. But his first published output came at age 12 — a local legends book assembled with a pal. Now he comes full circle, back to book publishing, though this time it’s a bit different. He’s rather grown, and writing exquisitely detailed dark Los Angeles fiction about the angriest man in the world. Far from grumpy himself — the facetious gent was once known to recite Patrick Henry’s famous speech — McPheeters brings his words to the Bay this week on a book tour, including a spoken word stop at the Secret Alley tonight at 7pm after Needles+Pens. (Emily Savage)

5-7pm, free

Needles+Pens

3253 16th St., SF

(415) 255-1534

www.needlesandpens.com

 

Thu/3, 7:30pm, free

1234Go Records

420 40 St., Oakl.

(510) 985-0325

www.1234gorecords.com

 

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros

If Alex Ebert were the best version of himself (a selfless hero akin to Superman or Jesus) he’d be Edward Sharpe. Ebert, Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zero’s crazy-haired front man/only guy I’ve seen successfully pull off the shirtless blazer look, dreamt up this alternate identity after getting over a serious drug addiction and shirking his reverence to the punkish concept of rebellion. On stage this ten-piece folky, psychedelic rock tribe looks like a ragtag flurry of ecstasy. There’s a lot going on when these guys perform, but somehow it’s always hard to take your eyes off Jade Castrinos, whose sultry voice and free form movements lull you into a blissful, calming trance. (Mia Sullivan)

With Aaron Embry

8pm, $32.50

Fox Theater

1807 Telegraph, Oakl.

(510) 302-2250

www.thefoxoakland.com

 

El Clásico: More Than a Game

Spain may have won the last World Cup, but as a new documentary by Kelly Candaele and students from Chico State University shows, there’s no love lost between passionate fans of the country’s two biggest club teams. When Real Madrid and FC Barcelona clash (in a game so monumental it is referred to as “El Clásico”), they bring to the field some of the world’s greatest players (Messi! Ronaldo!) — and decades of history that go way beyond fútbol and into weighty areas of national identity and politics. Even Barça fans still reeling from certain late-April results will enjoy this 55-minute exploration of one of Europe’s greatest sports rivalries. (Cheryl Eddy)

7pm, $5–$10

Mission Cultural Center

2868 Mission, SF

www.missionculturalcenter.org

 

THURSDAY 3

Electric Shepherd & OUTLAW

When Bay Area psychedelic rock groups Electric Shepherd & OUTLAW get together, their sound is something like the Doors meeting up with Jimi Hendrix on a tribalistic march and then starting to jam with a death metal version of Phish. If you carry deep-seated nostalgia for the epic rock shows you missed during the ’60s — or listen to the Velvet Underground’s Bootleg series on repeat — you should probably check these guys out. Expect luscious guitar riffs, sexy bass lines, compulsory dancing, and a wonderfully spaced out experience. (Sullivan)

With Blues for Carl Sagan, and Douglas

9pm, $6

Hemlock Tavern

1131 Polk, SF

(415) 923-0923

www.hemlocktavern.com

 

FRIDAY 4

Predator and The Thing

Though it may be hard to believe for those of us who grew up watching them, two classic sci-fi flicks from the 1980s have come upon major milestones anniversaries. To celebrate, Jesse Hawthorne Ficks’ Midnites For Maniacs series is hosting a night not to be missed, with a 25th anniversary screening of Predator and a 30th anniversary screening of John Carpenter’s The Thing. Featuring some of the best creature designs and special effects of the era thanks to visionaries Stan Winston and Rob Bottin, both films re-defined the genre, and have continued to stand the test of time. A Boy & His Dog (1975) also screens.(Sean McCourt)

7:30pm, $13

Castro Theatre

429 Castro St., SF

(415) 621-6120

www.midnitesformaniacs.com

 

JackHammer Disco with Tiga, Damian Lazarus, & Light Year

Let’s indulge in some squelchiness, shall we? Montreal-based Tiga and UK-born, Los Angeles resident Damian Lazarus share an affinity for acid-y, electro house. In the early 2000s, Lazarus played a prominent role at the UK label City Rockers, where he oversaw the release of Tiga & Zyntherius’ cover of Corey Hart’s “Sunglasses at Night.” Since gaining fame from that release, Tiga has been a busy producer and remixer, keeping a Euro-glam tone reminiscent of the synth-y works Giorgio Moroder pushed in the ’70s. Recent Lazarus works have a more stripped-down, minimal feel that sometimes wander into leftfield, like in his 2009 album Smoke the Monster Out. (Kevin Lee)

With Light Year 10pm, $15–<\d>$20 Public Works 161 Erie, SF (415) 932-0955 www.publicsf.com

 

FRIDAY 4

It’s Casual

Here in the Bay Area, we like to complain about public transportation. There are BART horror stories and Muni diaries tossed around like old war stories, used as social currency. But really, when you compare our rapid transit systems with the snarled mess of cars elsewhere in California, we come out on top. That’s why LA-based hardcore group It’s Casual got so much traction with an ode to its own local bus line, “The Red Line.” The song, and sentiment, struck a nerve: “The freeways/are not so nice.” The band itself is growly loud, with classic Southern California punk hooks. Tonight it opens for beloved shit-stirrers Early Man (note: the two bands will release a split seven-inch come May 22). Take the 22 Fillmore to the show and write a song about it. (Savage)

With Early Man, Shock Diamond, Satya Sena

9pm, $8

Thee Parkside

1600 17th St., SF

(415) 252-1330

www.theeparkside.com

 

SATURDAY 5

CreaturesCon

Seemingly rising from the grave like so many of the monsters and ghouls that it showcased over a 14-year run on local television, the beloved Bay Area show Creature Features is being resurrected once again to satiate fans’ undying thirst for the creepy, kooky, and campy. John Stanley, who hosted the KTVU program from 1979-’84, will be on hand for CreaturesCon One, a day of special screenings, Q&As, and more, along with archivist and documentary filmmaker Tom Wyrsch and Ernie Fosselius of Hardware Wars fame. For all you monster kids out there, this will be a nightmare, er, dream come true. (McCourt)

3-10pm, $10

Historic Bal Theater

14808 East 14th St., San Leandro

www.creaturescon.com

 

Father John Misty

I always wonder about the drummer. They’re usually the life of the party but, at the same time, are often concealed behind a wall of instruments, and you rarely hear them sing, or say, anything. Ex-Fleet Foxes drummer Joshua Tillman has said that drumming for his former superstar band began to bore him. So he exited, took up the moniker “Father John Misty,” and started creating lush, lyrically based Americana folk ballads laden with lucid imagery and social commentary. He played SXSW this year, made a surprise appearance at Café Du Nord in April, and his debut, Fear Fun, came out Tuesday. (Sullivan)

With Har Mar Superstar, Worth Taking

10pm, $12

Bottom of the Hill

1233 17th St., SF

(415) 621-4455

www.bottomofthehill.com

 

SUNDAY 6

Omar Sosa Afreecanos Quartet

Talk about versatility. Cuban pianist and composer Omar Sosa splits his time between Oakland and Spain and incorporates musical influences from just about everywhere in between. On last year’s Calma: Solo Piano &… Sosa displayed his introspective and meditative side with floating piano melodies flanked by the occasional electronic accent or sampled sound. Contrast the solo effort on Calma with Sosa’s performance as lead of the Afreecanos Quartet, where technical dynamism becomes the name of the game. At live shows, Sosa becomes a grinning whirlwind, playing classical piano on one hand and electronic piano on another, trading looks and body language with his fellow musicians, and fostering a joyful, collective, improvisational spirit. (Lee)

With Marque Gilmore, Childo Tomas and Peter Apfelbaum

1pm, free

Yerba Buena Gardens

760 Howard, SF

(415) 543-1718

www.ybgfestival.org


MONDAY 7

“La Bamba: Latinos in Vintage Rock, Pop, and Soul”

Local rock music historian and author Richie Unterberger, whose books include White Light/White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day by Day and Music USA: The Rough Guide, will once again share his extensive knowledge with music fans at his presentation “La Bamba: Latinos in Vintage Rock, Pop, and Soul.” Featuring film clips of performers such as Ritchie Valens, Santana, Linda Ronstadt, and Los Lobos, the evening promises to be a unique look at the contributions of Latinos in rock from the earliest days of the 1950s up through the ’80s. (McCourt)

6:30-8:30pm, free

SF Public Library, Mission Branch

300 Bartlett, SF

www.sfpl.org

 

TUESDAY 8

Steve Coll

Longtime journalist Steve Coll won a Pulitzer Prize and widespread acclaim for his 2004 account on the CIA and the agency’s history in Afghanistan leading up to 9/11. In his latest investigative effort, Private Empire: ExxonMobil and American Power, Coll explores the global influence of the Texas-based oil corporation. According to Coll, big-money donations and a sophisticated DC lobbying machine have allowed ExxonMobil to shift the debate on climate change. At the same time, the oil corporation continues to expand its foothold in developing countries. A two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, Coll currently serves as president of the New American Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank that maintains a significant presence in California. (Lee)

In conversation with Greg Dalton

6pm, $7–$20

Commonwealth Club

595 Market, SF

(415) 597-6700

www.commonwealthclub.org

 

The Guardian listings deadline is two weeks prior to our Wednesday publication date. To submit an item for consideration, please include the title of the event, a brief description of the event, date and time, venue name, street address (listing cross streets only isn’t sufficient), city, telephone number readers can call for more information, telephone number for media, and admission costs. Send information to Listings, the Guardian Building, 135 Mississippi St., SF, CA 94107; fax to (415) 487-2506; or e-mail (paste press release into e-mail body — no text attachments, please) to listings@sfbg.com. Digital photos may be submitted in jpeg format; the image must be at least 240 dpi and four inches by six inches in size. We regret we cannot accept listings over the phone.

Burning Man on probation after busting its population cap

Sasha Cuttler
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Burning Man on probation after busting its population cap

[UPDATED BELOW] Black Rock City LLC, the SF-based company that stages Burning Man in the Nevada desert, was placed on probation by the Bureau of Land Management after exceeding the 50,000-person population cap at last year’s event, jeopardizing its current efforts to get a five-year permit and adding a new pressure to an already difficult transition year.

“Probationary status limits the Bureau of Land Management to issuance of a one-year permit,” said Cory Roegner, who oversees the event from BLM’s Winnemucca office. His office put BRC on probation after it reported populations of 53,341 on Sept. 2 and 53,735 on Sept. 3, although BRC has appealed the ruling to the Interior Board of Land Appeals, which has not issued a ruling.

Representatives from that office and BRC have not yet returned Guardian calls for comment.

Roegner has been working on finalizing the Environmental Analysis of BRC’s proposal for a five-year permit that would allow the event to gradually increase from 58,000 to 70,000 participants. A draft report was released in March, and Roegner is now working on responses to the 40 comments that were received during the 30-day comment period, with the final report expected to be released the first week in June.

At that time, the BLM office would set the population limit for this year’s event and issue the permit. But if the BLM probation ruling isn’t overturned, that permit would be for just this year. And under BLM rules, if BRC violated its population cap again this year, it could be banned from holding events in the future.

“Population is a very important issue. That’s a big focus of the environmental analysis on which the permit is based,” he told us, referring to the 2006 study that placed the current 50,000 cap on population.

This places BRC in a precarious position given that it has already sold 57,000 tickets for this year’s event and will be giving away thousands more to staff, groups that have received art grants, and a host of other visitors and VIPs (last year, three members of the Board of Supervisors attended and Mayor Ed Lee is rumored to be mulling a trip this year).

Roegner and his boss at the BLM, Rolando Mendez, say it’s up to BRC to live by its permit. “Black Rock City LLC is free to sell as many tickets as they’re inclined to,” Mendez told us in February. “That’s a calculated business decision on their part, but I would expect Black Rock City LLC to live by the population cap that I set.”

In fact, despite the fact that tickets have already been sold, it’s possible that Burning Man won’t even get a permit this year, although that’s very unlikely and both BRC and BLM have said they have a good, cooperative working relationship. The environmental report studies alternatives that include no event, maintaining the current 50,000 population cap, and gradually increasing it to 70,000, with a 58,000 cap this year.

Roegner said the report (which you can read here in PDF form) and its comments identify traffic and transportation, air quality, and trash as key issues that could require additional mitigation measures, but he said it was still too early to determine exactly what that will mean for Burning Man and its participants.

Burning Man, which started on Baker Beach in 1986 and moved to the the Black Rock Desert in 1990, seems to be suffering from its own success. Last year, the event sold out for the first time and this year a new ticketing system proved problematic and sparked widespread criticism. But BRC officials have maintained that they’re addressing the problems and creating systems to ensure the long-term survival of the event and culture it has spawned.

4/46 UPDATE: BRC spokesperson Marian Goodell responded to our inquiries via text message, downplaying concerns over probation and the population issues. Initially, she wrote that probation “won’t effect 5-year permit process,” and when we noted that Roegner said it would limit BRC to a one-year permit, she wrote, “We are still continuing the 5-year permit process. The probation is under appeal.”

We asked how BRC plans to abide by this year’s population cap given that it has already sold or distributed more tickets than the number of people allowed by the permit, she wrote, “Easy. Usually at least 6,000 leave before we hit the peak. Sometimes more on dusty, wet or cold years.”

Yet Ron Cole, who lives on a ranch near the event site and made comments during the EA process, was critical of BRC for defying BLM controls and trying to substantially increase the size of Burning Man. “They should just give them a one-year permit and 50,000 cap,” he told us, citing the event’s impacts on air quality and limitations on getting people on and off the playa. He was dubious about BRC’s behavior this year: “You can sell tickets, bill credit cards, and you don’t even have a permit yet?”

The private bus problem

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The private bus problem

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.

Summer camp on wheels

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks
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Summer camp on wheels

emilysavage@sfbg.com

MUSIC While Rupa Marya of Rupa & the April Fishes and Gabe Dominguez of Shake Your Peace are crossing their fingers for cloudless, sunny days ahead during their joint week-long bicycle trek around the Bay Area, in some ways, they were brought together by a storm.

It was a storm both physical and figurative: the scattered downpours during their first encounter at the now-dispersed Occupy SF campsite at Justin Herman Plaza last November (11.11.11) during the Occupy Music Festival — where both bands played — and, the subsequent storm of ideas that lead to the bike tour agreement.

“So it was kind of like the perfect storm,” says Dominguez, sitting next to Marya in the Nervous Dog Coffee cafe on Mission Street in early April. “It was an auspicious day,” Marya later adds. “Oh my god, what a day.”

The fruit of that brainstorm, the Bay Rising Tour, will kick off tomorrow at Stanford University, with the ragtag bicycle caravan of around 15 core riders heading counterclockwise around the Bay, stopping in nine cities over 10 days, playing both conventional music venues and guerillas art spaces. The musicians on bikes piled high with gear will turn their final corner on to Divisadero to play the Independent April 28.

Marya and Dominguez had walked into the Nervous Dog that afternoon smiling, bubbling with expectations of the impending tour. The two are clearly platonically smitten with another other’s passion for social justice, global music, and good old-fashioned bike fun.

As Marya nibbles an empanada from the cafe, Dominguez continues their story. “We made the connection that both of our bands make multicultural dance rebel music, rock music for the ecotopian revolution. Bicycles, bioregionalism, now being the time — it all just coalesced.”

One key difference that’s soon to evaporate: Shake Your Peace has done many bike tours, but this will be Rupa & the April Fishes’ first (though they’ve done some trial runs in preparation).

Along with leading Shake Your Peace, and playing in Tiny Home with his girlfriend, Sonya Cotton, Dominguez is a co-founder of the yearly Bicycle Music Festival (since 2007) with Paul Freedman, who too plays a role in the Bay Rising Tour.

Freedman’s company is Rock the Bike, which built the pedal-powered audio system the groups will use in the open space and outdoor venues — San Jose Bike Party, Fremont Earth Day Grounds, Keller Beach Park.

Along with those mentioned, the tour will roll to A Place for Sustainable Living in Oakland for an Earth Day party (with food cooked by Marya’s urban farmer brother), a Beaver Liberation show in Martinez, and a Glen Cove ceremony by Ohlone Leaders in Vallejo.

Out on the road between venues, the caravan has three transportation strategies: people carrying their own instruments on bicycles, those packing larger instruments like guitars on Xtracycles — an Oakland company that sells an extension for the back of the bike — and lastly, a few riders on electric-hybrid bikes carrying six-to-eight foot trailers.

They also are encouraging other cyclists and Bay Area residents to come along for the day rides between shows — to help map out the flattest routes. There’s a real community effort feel to the plan.

“In the wake of where we find ourselves right now, economically, sociopolitically, we can’t wait for someone to hand us the reality we want. We have to build it, we have to create it. And that’s what’s so exciting about this way of touring,” Marya says.

She adds, “it’s not asking for permission, it’s just doing what you do as a musician, which is to mobilize yourselves…bring people on your journey, have a chance to interact with them in another way, which is so different than get on the tour bus, be isolated, be backstage. We’re going to create the stage, we’re going to create the experience.”

Both bands make the kind of music that invites interaction and discussion, so an interactive tour, flipping the tradition of a clear separation between artist and audience, seems the right direction.

Rupa & the April Fishes — now wrapping up their third studio album, Build — have long been fixtures on the global music scene, a Bossa nova bumping mix of Brazilian, Indian, Latin, and French influences, sung in three languages. While based out of San Francisco, they’re often out exploring the world, most recently Chiapas, Mexico; Amsterdam; and Athens, Greece.

Shake Your Peace started out in New York as folk trio, but now “Shake Your Peace 2.0” makes a style of music that Dominguez has dubbed “whup” — a melding of Afro-Latin beats with bluegrass instruments such as fiddle, and gospel harmonies.

“W-H-U-P, it’s a celebratory spirit with a philosophy, a political approach,” Dominguez explains excitedly. “We’re not just fighting for better wages, we’re fighting for life. It’s the spirit of your heart kicking. The scream when you come out of the womb. Life, yaow!”

He appears equally amped on the Bay Rising tour itself, adding again that others should join the rides with the bands — “they’re welcome to experience this rolling summer camp with us.” And they’ll both be Tweeting their locations along the way for the day rides.

As the effusive conversation in Nervous Dog comes to a close, Dominguez and Marya are still talking about the logistics of the trip, including where they’ll crash at night, and the importance of gathering tarps to cover all their gear, just in case of bad weather. 

BAY RISING TOUR

With Rupa & the April Fishes, Shake Your Peace

Thu/19-Sat/28

Various venues, Bay Area

www.theaprilfishes.com

 

Free Muni for kids makes sense

Andrew Lam
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EDITORIAL San Francisco is a transit-first city that has spent millions of dollars over the years trying to convince people to ride Muni. And yet, one of the best and most effective ways to get people out of their cars is facing surprising opposition.

Sup. David Campos has been pushing for months to get Muni to allow young people to ride free. It makes immediate sense: The school district, perpetually short on funds, is cutting back bus service (which is preferable to cutting back classroom instruction). For low-income families, the disappearance of a yellow school bus, which offered transportation free of charge, is a financial obstacle — and the last thing anyone needs is another obstacle to keep kids out from coming to school.

Reduced-fare youth passes are already available — but they aren’t easy to get. Parents need to show up in person, during the day, with a birth certificate, passport or other government ID; that’s hard for a lot of working parents. The school district ought to be able to sell the passes, but right now nobody has the resources to make that happen.

It’s possible to create a system to identify and offer free service to low-income families, but again, unless it’s done through the schools, where that data is already kept (for reduced-price lunches), we’re talking about creating a complicated bureaucracy that isn’t remotely necessary.

According to Campos, the cost of providing free service for all youth is only $8 million a year — and he’s identified regional transit funds to pay for much of it. Muni has a deep budget deficit already, and anything that costs more money has to be carefully evaluated, but there are so many ways to cover the price tag. (Why is Muni still paying the Police Department tens of millions of dollars to get cops on the buses when that’s part of the department’s job already?)

And this goes beyond Ethe very clear needs of low-income families. Getting young people onto the buses is an excellent way to convince the next generation of San Franciscans that it’s not necessary to own and operate a motor vehicle in the city. The message is already getting out — according to an April 5, 2012 study by the Frontier Group, the number of car miles driven by people between 16 and 34 dropped 23 percent between 2001 and 2009. That trend crosses class lines — in fact, among young people who earned more than $70,000 a year, public transit use rose 100 percent over the decade and biking by 122 percent.

In other words, it’s proving to be a massive challenge to get older people out of their cars, but the kids are already moving in that direction. With a little help and push, San Francisco could make giant strides in the next few years.

And a significant reduction in car use would more than pay for the cost of free Muni for youth. Every car off the road means less road maintenance, less air pollution — and perhaps more important, less congestion to slow down the buses. Faster buses means more riders and more fares (and less money spent paying drivers to sit in traffic).

So it’s a great idea that pays for itself and helps the environment. And yet some city officials (led by Sup. Scott Wiener) still resist. They should back off; the city should move to approve this plan immediately.

Editorial: Free Muni tickets for kids makes sense

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San Francisco is a transit-first city that has spent millions of dollars over the years trying to convince people to ride Muni. And yet, one of the best and most effective ways to get people out of their cars is facing surprising opposition.

Sup. David Campos has been pushing for months to get Muni to allow young people to ride free. It makes immediate sense: The school district, perpetually short on funds, is cutting back bus service (which is preferable to cutting back classroom instruction). For low-income families, the disappearance of a yellow school bus, which offered transportation free of charge, is a financial obstacle — and the last thing anyone needs is another obstacle to keep kids out from coming to school.

Reduced-fare youth passes are already available — but they aren’t easy to get. Parents need to show up in person, during the day, with a birth certificate, passport or other government ID; that’s hard for a lot of working parents. The school district ought to be able to sell the passes, but right now nobody has the resources to make that happen.

It’s possible to create a system to identify and offer free service to low-income families, but again, unless it’s done through the schools, where that data is already kept (for reduced-price lunches), we’re talking about creating a complicated bureaucracy that isn’t remotely necessary.

According to Campos, the cost of providing free service for all youth is only $8 million a year — and he’s identified regional transit funds to pay for much of it. Muni has a deep budget deficit already, and anything that costs more money has to be carefully evaluated, but there are so many ways to cover the price tag. (Why is Muni still paying the Police Department tens of millions of dollars to get cops on the buses when that’s part of the department’s job already?)

And this goes beyond the very clear needs of low-income families. Getting young people onto the buses is an excellent way to convince the next generation of San Franciscans that it’s not necessary to own and operate a motor vehicle in the city. The message is already getting out — according to an April 5, 2012 study by the Frontier Group, the number of car miles driven by people between 16 and 34 dropped 23 percent between 2001 and 2009. That trend crosses class lines — in fact, among young people who earned more than $70,000 a year, public transit use rose 100 percent over the decade and biking by 122 percent.

In other words, it’s proving to be a massive challenge to get older people out of their cars, but the kids are already moving in that direction. With a little help and push, San Francisco could make giant strides in the next few years.

And a significant reduction in car use would more than pay for the cost of free Muni for youth. Every car off the road means less road maintenance, less air pollution — and perhaps more important, less congestion to slow down the buses. Faster buses means more riders and more fares (and less money spent paying drivers to sit in traffic).

So it’s a great idea that pays for itself and helps the environment. And yet some city officials (led by Sup. Scott Wiener) still resist. They should back off. The city should move to approve this plan immediately.

 

Meister: The obvious solution to our social security problem

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By Dick Meister

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Guaranteeing America’s working people a decent retirement has become increasingly difficult with the decline of traditional pension plans and the glaring inadequacy of the 401 (k) savings accounts that have replaced them.

So what to do? The answer is obvious to the AFL-CIO, and should be to everyone else: Increase Social Security benefits.

As AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka notes, “Social Security is a phenomenally successful program that represents the very best in American values and has virtually no waste, no corruption and almost no overhead.”

The program does have one serious problem, however – “its benefits are too low.”

Trumka certainly has that right. The average Social Security payout for men is only about $16,000 a year, barely above the minimum wage. Payouts for women average only about $12,000 a year, barely above the poverty line.

Most of those drawing benefits earned much more during their working days. The retirement programs in most other industrialized countries pay retirees benefits in amounts far closer to what they made while working.

It’s for very good reason that the AFL-CIO has taken an official position calling for “an across the board increase in Social Security benefits,” including adjustments to account for retirees’ steadily escalating health care costs and, among other economic setbacks, “the loss of home equity experienced by millions of Americans in the Great Recession.”

Remedial action is clearly needed. As the AFL-CIO says, “Our retirement system is falling apart at the seams. Millions of Americans are afraid to retire because they know they can’t maintain their standard of living in retirement, and more and more seniors have to keep working well past the age when they should be retiring.”

Democratic Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa, who calls Social Security “the most successful program in history,” has introduced a bill – the Rebuild America Act – that includes changes in the program such as the AFL-CIO is advocating.

Harkin’s bill would increase benefits by about $60-$70 a month and guarantee that the trust fund from which benefits are drawn would remain solvent and able to pay out full benefits for at least another 40 years, in large part by removing the $110,100 cap on income subject to Social Security deductions.

Quite a contrast to what’s been discussed in Washington, where most of the talk about Social Security has been about Republican proposals to cut benefits. That has especially included increasing the retirement age and cutting back cost-of-living adjustments.

Harkin’s measure would not only revitalize the Social Security system. It also calls for modernizing transportation and energy infrastructures and education systems, increasing access to quality child care, expanding time-and-a-half overtime pay, raising the minimum wage, increasing the availability of paid sick leave, expanding union rights and increasing opportunities for disabled workers. The bill also would end tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas.

Increasing Social Security benefits remains a top priority with Harkin and other Democrats. As the AFL-CIO sees it, “the overwhelming majority of working Americans of every political persuasion in every part of the country ‘get’ the absolutely critical importance of adequate Social Security benefits, but our elites don’t seem to get it. Social security is the solution, not the problem.”

Dick Meister, former labor editor of the SF Chronicle and KQED-TV Newsroom, has covered labor and politics for more than a half-century. Contact him through his website, dickmeister.com, which includes more than 350 of his columns.

Why free Muni for youth makes sense

Zelda Bronstein
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62
Why free Muni for youth makes sense

Supervisor Scott Wiener has gone out of his way to dis the plan to let kids ride Muni for free. His oped in the Chron April 9 argued that the city just doesn’t have the money ($8 million):

We need to increase access to transportation for low-income youth, but a new and expensive obligation for Muni – at a time when Muni cannot pay for its basic operational needs and is expanding parking meters and increasing parking fines – is a bad idea.

But that misses the point — and People Organized to Win Employment Rights is mounting a petition campaign to get Wiener back on track.

The Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees Muni, failed to approve the plan the first time around, but the vote was tied with Commission Chair Tom Nolan absent, so it’s still possible to move it forward. And on April 17, Sup. David Campos, who proposed the plan, and his allies will try again.

Yes, Muni is (perpetually) broke, and yes, deficits and cuts mean declines in service. But Campos has identified money to pay for the program without damaging operating and maintenance funds. Oh, and the parking meters get dragged in again:

The understandable public perception is that Muni is expanding parking meters to Sundays, adding new meters, and raising ticket prices not to pay for improvements to the system but rather to fund free Muni for all youth, even those who don’t need the subsidy.

And the problem with that is … what? People with cars ought to subsidize transit riders — young, old and everything in between. It’s really not that expensive to park at a meter in San Francisco, and now that most of them take credit cards, you don’t have to carry $5 in quarters around with you. I drive a car myself, to ferry my kids around. I have no sympathy for people who pay to have a large motor vehicle in a transit-first city and don’t want to pay for the impacts.

(Besides, what are all those religious people complaining about — nobody pays to park for Sunday church anyway. They just park in the middle of the street.)

But put all of that aside for a minute and think about this: San Francisco spends all kinds of money, directly and indirectly, trying to convince people to ride Muni instead of driving. And one of the best ways to get new riders is to get kids started as transit users as soon as their parents decide they’re old enough to get on the bus.

For us, that was sixth grade, when we bought my son a clipper card and told him we weren’t leaving work early to pick him up (in the car) after school any more. I showed him how to find the Muni map on the web, showed him how to connect to NextBus on his phone, gave him a pat on the head (not really) and sent him off to explore the wonders of San Francisco public transit. It’s worked like a charm: He takes the bus to his martial arts class, takes the bus to Cards and Comics to buy Magic Cards, takes the bus to the mall and to visit friends … and now he knows more about the system than I do. He can navigate on his own anywhere in town — and he loves it. It’s freedom. Suburban kids have to wait until they’re 16 and can get a driver’s license to even begin to get that sense that they don’t need parents in tow to go where they want to go.

Most of the teenagers I know in this city don’t bother to learn to drive any more. They bike and they take the bus. That’s a wonderful thing — and San Francisco should do everything possible to encourage it.

And a great way to start is to invest a modest amount of money — less than one percent of Muni’s budget — in training kids that the way to travel is by bus and train. Make it easy; make it free. Hell, half the middle-school kids who ride Muni never pay the fare anyway; they go in the back door and pocket the money that their parents gave them for bus fare so they can buy something they aren’t supposed to have. It’s the way of the world.

This isn’t just a subsidy for kids who can’t afford Muni, although that’s a great thing and I’m all in favor. It’s an investment in the future, a cheap step toward a future day when turning 16 isn’t all about going to the DMV, and travel doesn’t mean car travel — and the streets of San Francisco are cleaner, safer, less crowded and better for all of us. Isn’t that worth the money?

Come on, Tom Nolan; you’re the swing vote. Make this happen.

 

 

Cyclists gain an unlikely defender against the backlash

Sasha Cuttler
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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.”

Was the cyclist who killed a pedestrian reckless?

Sasha Cuttler
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215
Was the cyclist who killed a pedestrian reckless?

San Francisco’s bicycling community is bracing for a backlash following the second recent case of a cyclist hitting and killing a pedestrian, particularly given a callous online posting by someone claiming to be the cyclist, whose 71-year-old victim this week died of injuries sustained a week ago at the intersection of Castro and Market streets.

The case was a hot topic at last night’s monthly Carfree Happy Hour, a gathering of cyclists, transportation professionals, and alternative transportation activists, many of whom had unearthed new information about a case they’re all grappling with. And the consensus opinion was that the cyclist seemed reckless and may deserve to face criminal charges.

Yet activists also sought to place this case in context, noting that an average of almost three pedestrians are hit by cars everyday in San Francisco, even though that rarely makes headlines. There were 220 pedestrians killed in San Francisco from 2000-2009, the vast majority hit by cars whose drivers rarely faced criminal charges. In fact, the same week that Sustchi Hui was killed there was another pedestrian killed by a motorist and another one by a Muni bus.

But that doesn’t lessen the importance of this latest bike-vs.-pedestrian fatality, which is sure to make news precisely because it’s so rare, and because it comes just weeks after 23-year-old Randolph Ang pled guilty to vehicular manslaughter for running a red light at Embarcadero and Folsom Street in July 2001, hitting a 68-year-old woman who later died from her head injury.

San Francisco Police Department won’t identify the cyclist in the latest incident unless he’s charged with a crime, and its investigation is still ongoing, said SFPD spokesperson Albie Esperanza. “It’s a tragic accident,” he told us, noting that the cyclist was cooperating with the investigation. Once the investigation is complete, the District Attorney’s Office will decide whether to bring criminal charges against the cyclist.

Someone who identified himself as Chris Bucchere posted a note on the Mission Cycling Google group on the afternoon of the incident, March 29, describing an accident that apparently took place at the same time and place. And the description that Bucchere gave of the accident is not likely to garner much public sympathy for him (We contacted Bucchere by e-mail and telephone, we’re waiting to hear back for him, and we can’t independently confirm the authenticity of the message or its contents).

“I wrecked on the way home today from the bi-weekly Headlands Raid today. Short story: I’m fine. The pedestrian I clobbered? Not so much,” the message began.

The post then goes on to describe the incident, which matches the details of other reported accounts of the fatal crash: “Around 8 am I was descending Divisidero Street southbound and about to cross Market Street. The light turned yellow as I was approaching the intersection, but I was already way too committed to stop. The light turned red as I was cruising through the middle of the intersection and then, almost instantly, the southern crosswalk on Market and Castro filled up with people coming from both directions. The intersection very long and the width of Castro Street at that point is very short, so, in a nutshell, blammo.”

Another member of the Carfree Happy Hour group who is a regular competitive cyclist said that Bucchere was a member of the website strava.com, which tracks minute-by-minute data of cyclists for training purposes. And this source said he was able to use the site to determine that Bucchere was traveling through the intersection – which is at the bottom of a steep hill – at approximately 35 mph at the time of the collision.

Bucchere’s message continued: “The quote/unquote ‘scene of the crime’ was that intersection right by the landmark Castro Theatre – it leads from a really busy MUNI station to that little plaza where The Naked Guy always hangs out. It was commuter hour and it was crowded as all getup. I couldn’t see a line through the crowd and I couldn’t stop, so I laid it down and just plowed through the crowded crosswalk in the least-populated place I could find.

“I don’t remember the next five minutes but when I came to, I was in a neck brace being loaded into an ambulance. I remember seeing a RIVER of blood on the asphalt, but it wasn’t mine. Apparently I hit a 71-year old male pedestrian and he ended up in the ICU with pretty serious head injuries. I really hope he ends up OK.

“They asked me a bunch of stupid easy questions that I couldn’t answer, so they kept me for a few hours for observation, gave me a tetanus shot and sent me on my way.

“Anyway, other than a stiff neck, a sore jaw/TMJ, a few bruises and some raspberries, I’m totally fine. I got discharged from the hospital during the lunch hour. The guy I hit was not as fortunate. I really hope he makes it.

“The cops took my bike. Hopefully they’ll give it back.

“In closing, I want to dedicate this story to my late helmet. She died in heroic fashion today as my head slammed into the tarmac. Like the Secret Service would do for a president, she took some serious pavement today, cracking through-and-through in five places and getting completely mauled by the ragged asphalt. May she die knowing that because she committed the ultimate sacrifice, her rider can live on and ride on. Can I get an amen?

“Amen.

“The moral of this little story is: WYFH”

Several members of the newsgroup took issue with the lesson Bucchere claims to have learned : WYFH, or “Wear Your Fucking Helmet.” One poster wrote, “I’m not sure that’s the moral of the story,” to which several others agreed. Another poster wrote: “What were you thinking ? As a 15 year sf resident and a 10 year cyclist and a pedestrian at that intersection every weekday .. I’m kind of embarrassed to wear my mc kit anywhere nearby now. I truly hope you’ve learned your lesson but I’d have to say this is not the end of the story for you, and yes you should get yourself a lawyer.”

Recent studies have shown that San Francisco is a dangerous city for pedestrians, but not as dangerous as many other cities on a per capita basis given our density and high pedestrian populations. A study released in January by the Alliance for Biking & Walking concludes San Francisco has the third highest biking and walking levels among major US cities, but ranks eighth in bicycle and pedestrian fatality rates.

A 2011 study by the group Transportation for America, “Dangerous by Design,” analyzed factors associated with pedestrian deaths – some of which seem to be at play in this case – and concluded, “Especially when combined with unsafe street and road design, vehicle speed presents a deadly threat to pedestrians.”

Guest opinion: Free Muni for all youth

Zelda Bronstein
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20
Guest opinion: Free Muni for all youth

On Tuesday, April 3, the Municipal Transportation Agency board faces a decision between providing free Muni passes for all San Francisco youth or providing free passes to only low-income youth. ComMunity advocates and Sup. David Campos have identified the funding. We are calling on the MTA board to take this opportunity to invest in a new generation of transit riders by establishing free Muni for ALL youth.

The movement to win free Muni passes for youth originated from cuts of between 40 percent and 100 percent to yellow school busses over the next two years.  As a society, we have responsibility to make sure youth can access free public education — and as a city we have a responsibility to get kids to school even as state funding is eliminated.

Right now 60 percent of all trips in San Francisco are taken by car, and for years we have not seen a huge change in transit mode share. If San Francisco wants to meet our climate objectives, we need to take steps now to encourage young people to get out of their cars.  In New York City, a program of free transit passes for youth has created generations of loyal transit riders. In order to truly become a transit-first city, we need to do the same here.

While the struggle to afford bus fare is obviously a larger challenge for very low-income families, due to the high cost of living in the city, there are many working-class and middle-income families who also struggle with the costs of transit for their children. The costs of housing, food, healthcare, and transit add up quickly for San Francisco families and have all contributed to a crisis of family flight out of San Francisco.

San Francisco currently has the smallest child population of any major U.S. city. While this is complex problem, requiring a huge investment in affordable housing and a strategy to bring more working-class jobs to the city, by establishing free Muni for all youth the city can take a very concrete step forward towards making the city more family friendly. Thousands of families would benefit from an extremely modest investment of $8.7 million a year.

The low-income youth and parents who have been at the forefront of this movement advocating for the free youth passes are nervous about their own ability to access a low-income-only pass because of the bureaucratic challenges they experience trying to apply to other government programs. The Muni Lifeline pass for low-income adults is very hard to access, requiring applicants to wait for hours during a weekday at the Human Service Agency headquarters.

The Federal Free School Lunch Program requires parents to provide documentation of income level. Using a means test would be difficult and costly to administer and could exclude some low-income young people — especially those from undocumented families and the children of parents who work in the informal economy. San Francisco should not create paperwork barriers that will prevent our young people from getting to school.

The documentation required now to get youth clipper cards prevents many families from getting them. Immigrant families who do not have copies of all their birth certificates are prevented from getting youth passes when they encounter difficulties getting birth records from their native countries.

With all of those factors, it just makes sense to make Muni free for all youth.

Jane Martin is an organizer with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER).

SFMTA seeks more parking meter revenue to balance its budget

Sasha Cuttler
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49
SFMTA seeks more parking meter revenue to balance its budget

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.”

Does electrifying Caltrain really help high-speed rail?

Sasha Cuttler
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Does electrifying Caltrain really help high-speed rail?

Mayor Ed Lee and other regional political and transportation officials are celebrating this week’s agreement to take bond money approved by state voters for the California High-Speed Rail Project and apply it to electrifying the Caltrain’s tracks up the peninsula, which has long been a goal for that troubled transit agency. Electrification will lower operating costs, reduce noise, and be better for the environment.

“Electrifying Caltrain as an early investment and extending Caltrain into the heart of downtown San Francisco at the new Transbay Transit Center are essential for the success of high speed rail and the future economic growth of our region,” Lee said in a prepared statement released yesterday.

Yet his office didn’t respond to questions about how the new agreement – which will apply $700 million in high-speed rail bond money from Prop. 1A to the $1.5 million electrification project, arguing it lays the foundation for high-speed trains to come later – will help the Transbay Terminal. That project needs to come up with the more than $2 billion for the 1.2-mile tunnel from the current Caltrain station at 4th and King streets to bring the trains downtown. The mayor’s press release argued only that it would “provide the momentum upon which to build the Downtown Extension to the Transbay Transit Center.”

Transbay Terminal Joint Powers Authority spokesperson Adam Alberti called the latest agreement “a big deal for transportation” and told us, “The MOU agrees that the early investment of Prop 1A funds should be placed on the electrification of Caltrain.” Even though it doesn’t give money directly to Transbay Terminal, Alberti said it advances a project in which that station is the designated terminus and it frees up future transportation funding for the needed tunnel.

But Quentin Kopp, who launched the high-speed rail project as a state legislator in the ’90s and until recently served on the project’s board, said this latest agreement doesn’t help Transbay Terminal (which he has derided as little more than a real-estate deal) and it represents a violation of Prop. 1A and other high-speed rail provisions.

“Here’s a pot of money and everybody wants to steal from it,” said Kopp, who has criticized recent changes in the high-speed rail plan, such as San Francisco-bound passengers having to transfer to Caltrain in San Jose rather than coming directly into San Francisco and how Caltrain’s tracks limit how many trains can run per hour, hurting the overall project’s financials. “It’s hardly the project that was envisioned.”

As we reported in January, the high-speed rail project has been working to overcome doubts and attacks by fiscally conservative politicians here, in Sacramento, and in Washington DC. And this latest agreement helps overcomes Caltrain’s deep fiscal problems and the opposition of many peninsula politicians and neighborhood groups to creating a larger and more robust high-speed rail line up the peninsula.

5 PM UPDATE: Lee Press Secretary Christine Falvey just responded to my inquiry and said, “The region is pursuing funding the $1.5 billion Downtown Extension through a combination of additional sources, including New Starts, and we expect to announce additional good news on this front soon.” It’s unclear why there is a discrepancy between Alberti’s figures and Falvey’s. Lee has pledged to make a priority of ensuring the train extension to Transbay Terminal gets built.

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