San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom Photo: Gawker

Mayor Gavin Newsom has been quietly pressuring MTA Chief Nat Ford to delay or prevent proposals to extend parking meter hours on weeknights and Sundays, despite a looming mid-year MTA budget deficit and studies that show it's good policy, Streetsblog has learned. ...

"The Mayor thinks it's the wrong time to make these moves," said Nathan Ballard, Newsom's communications director. "Right now, with the economy where it is, the burden on ordinary people for city services is already stretched to the max, and so he hasn't seen anything that convinces him otherwise. He's open to arguments, but he's still where he was."

The "we can't change policy in a bad economy" argument is familiar to Capitol Hill transportation watchers, who saw the Obama administration use the recession to rule out a gas tax hike or per-mile vehicle fee earlier this year.

But in Newsom's case, as Matt and Bryan point out, San Francisco is lagging behind its fellow major cities when it comes to charging for parking. In Los Angeles, where voters will soon be looking at Newsom's credentials, meters remain on until 2 a.m. New York City keeps meters on until midnight, and Washington D.C.'s stay on until 10 p.m.

And with the city transit authority facing possible fare hikes or service cuts in the wake of a budget deficit, it's tough to see how not extending parking meter hours doesn't hit non-car-owning voters where it hurts.

A rendering of the Transbay Transit Center with a 5.4 acre park on its roof.

Pointing to the renderings on a projection screen behind him, with a 5.4 acre park atop the terminal, 2600 units of housing (with a pledge of 35% affordable homes), the construction of the tallest building in the West, and a terminal expected to serve 100,000 daily riders, Mayor Newsom added: "Eat your heart out, New York City."

If the city manages to find the $2 billion necessary to complete the project, San Francisco's transit hub would be finished in 2014, 101 years after Cornelius Vanderbilt opened the doors to New York's Grand Central Terminal.

The Transbay Transit Center, a public-private partnership headed by the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA), will replace the existing Transbay Terminal with a multi-modal transportation hub that would serve nine transportation systems in the same complex, including the potential California High Speed Rail route through San Francisco.  

Mayor Newsom and several other speakers stressed the economic significance of a large-scale construction project as the overall economy sours and the city makes budget cuts.  

Nathaniel Ford, Sr., Chairman of the TJPA and head of MUNI, argued that "without projects like this, we will not be able to provide mobility for the growing population of California, and bring together the fractured public transportation system in San Francisco."  

Mayor Gavin Newsom, former Mayor Willie Brown, and board members of the Transbay Joint Powers Authority

Though the project design is impressive, funding remains a daunting obstacle. As outlined in the excellent feature story by Steve Jones in the San Francisco Bay Guardian yesterday, the TJPA has not found the money to pay for the entire project and may be relying on state funding that won't materialize, especially with California's ballooning budget deficit.

While the TJPA has suggested that it hopes the Transbay Transit Center will catch the eye of President-elect Barack Obama's team, as it expedites construction projects for the fiscal stimulus package early next year, it will be only one of many transit projects competing with the road and bridge lobby, which is already circling the wagons nationally and in California.

"It's exciting to see the first shovel in the soil for the new terminal and there are still real concerns about how we raise the additional $2 billion or so for the project," said Dave Snyder, transportation policy director for San Francisco Planning and Urban Research. "But this is a perfect public works project for the new century."

Below are the various renderings of the proposed terminal as presented by Mayor Newsom and the TJPA at the groundbreaking:

The Natoma Street facade

The center light column from below...

... and above.

The view from Mission Square

Photo: Matthew Roth

Two-and-a-half years after a judge issued an injunction preventing the city from adding any new bicycle infrastructure to its streets, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) and the San Francisco Planning Department have released a 1353-page Draft Environmental Impact Report (DEIR) on the San Francisco Bicycle Plan. 

At a cost of more than $1 million, the city has attempted to demonstrate in excruciating detail what would seem to be obvious: better bicycle amenities contribute to increased cycling and an improved environment.

Despite the significant time and money required to produce the tome, Mayor Gavin Newsom struck an optimistic note, citing the proposed addition of 34 miles of bicycle lanes to San Francisco streets — a 75 percent increase over the existing 45 miles of lanes. 

“We’ve accomplished a great deal together, but much work remains to be done to improve the safety and convenience of bicycling,” said Newsom. “I will continue to push for a better bicycling environment as part of my deep commitment to improving the health of our environment, our residents and our city.”

A public hearing on the DEIR has been scheduled for January 8. The deadline for comments is January 13. 

While Rob Anderson, the plaintiff in the lawsuit that sparked the injunction, will surely continue his befuddlingly successful crusade (a couple of choice jeremiads from his blog: cyclists as a special interest wielding inordinate political power, and biking as a frivolous mode of transportation akin to skateboarding), the city assumes the DEIR will be sufficient to lift the injunction. 

“The Planning Department is confident that the DEIR fully satisfies the issues cited in the superior court's injunction and will enable timely implementation of bicycle improvements that will enhance transportation alternatives in San Francisco,” said Planning Director John Rahaim.

What this means practically is a different matter. According to Andy Thornley, program director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC), even if the DEIR is certified by spring and the Bicycle Plan goes before the MTA board shortly thereafter, the 60 projects outlined for immediate implementation likely won't begin until the summer of 2009. 

“The Draft EIR is a very expensive bow-tie that we’re going to attach to the Bike Plan itself.  While it is a big deal, it shouldn't be the only focus. The city needs to build out the Bike Plan as soon as possible."

The injunction held that the previous version of the Bicycle Plan had not received sufficient review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The Bicycle Plan DEIR identifies some potentially significant impacts as defined by CEQA affecting traffic congestion, transit operating delays, and loading activities for some project options, particularly along portions of Second Street, Fifth Street, Cesar Chavez Street, Portola Avenue and Masonic Avenue.

Though the city took considerable heat over the summer for revealing at a Board of Supervisors hearing that it had fallen behind its own schedule for releasing the DEIR, the Planning Department delivered on its promise to release it by Thanksgiving. Both advocates and critics of the Bicycle Plan will have plenty to sift through over the long weekend (and likely through the new year).

Given the timeline of up to five years for completion of the 60 near-term projects in the Bicycle Plan, it is unclear whether Newsom, a likely candidate for governor in 2010, will realize significant bicycle improvements during his last term as mayor.

Photo: San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

We will continue our long term planning to create a citywide bicycle network, uniting the current patchwork of bike lanes into a unified, comprehensive system. It is also time to take steps to reach our goal of making 10% of all commute trips in the City bicycle trips within the next 3 and a half years.

While making MUNI faster and bike riding safer we aim to get people out of their cars and get them healthier so we must commit to reducing emissions from our public transportation fleet. With new hybrid buses coming on line, we can now say by this time next year, we will have the greenest public transportation fleet in the nation.

I think we can all agree that the more people who get out of their cars and use alternative transit the better this city is going to be for everyone.

Can I vote for this guy next Tuesday?

I suppose not. But at least we have Councilmember Gale Brewer. Working with Transportation Alternatives Brewer has put forward a piece of legislation called Introduction 199, "The Traffic Relief Bill" (PDF file), that would compel DOT to set specific modal targets like Newsom's 10 percent bicycling goal. In other words, rather than measuring the health and functionality of New York City's surface streets by "Level of Service," and other meaningless (and sometimes even destructive) yardsticks, the City would say, "We aim to shift X percent of daily trips out of cars and on to buses, bikes and foot." Then DOT would measure its success based on these far more meaningful goals.

Park(ing) Day San Francisco

New York City Streets Renaissance Filmmaker Clarence Eckerson happened to be in San Francisco on Thursday during International Park(ing) Day. Organized by an art collective called Rebar Group, the idea behind Park(ing) is to reclaim curbside automobile parking spaces by temporarily transforming them into grassy parkland complete with benches, tables, chairs, trees, sandy beaches, and eclectic art installations. One park(ing) spot even offered a self-serve lemonade stand.

In San Francisco over two dozen parking spots were "liberated" including Mayor Gavin Newsome's space in front of City Hall. A number of other cities around the U.S. also participated in Park(ing) day, including New York City where a curbside space on 8th Avenue near 30th Street was, for a few hours, used for something other than automobile storage.

If you have links to Park(ing) events in other cities, please send them along.