I wasn’t so sure that we needed another street closure, especially on a Sunday when so many tourists rely on the Embarcadero to come downtown or to the piers to spend money in our City.

So I’ll admit I was surprised to find so many people participating in the second iteration of the Mayor’s “Sunday Streets” program when I went out yesterday to shoot this quick story. I wasn’t surprised, however, to find folks in their cars a bit peeved about the closure.

As I concluded in the piece, it’s a tough balance to meet the needs of all transportation modes in a shared City.

I’m happy that the City was able to pull this off without too many problems. I’ll be interested to see what happens next year — will they do it again? Will they extend the hours? Will they perhaps have better signage warning incoming visitors and regulars to avoid the Embarcadero?

One of Russ’ academia friends, economist Michael Munger, speaks at length on the program about the public transportation system quality in Santiago, Chile before and after nationalization of their bus network.

Prior to 2007 Santiago’s surface transit was made up of a patchwork of thousands of independent, private bus operators. Operators specialized in niches ranging from neighborhood local busses which stopped at every block in a town to luxury express busses providing direct to city center service.

Since nationalization circa February 2007 the masses have expressed widespread complaints about the poor quality of the system. Wikipedia’s article on Transantiago sums up these complaints well:

The major complaints are the lack of buses and their inconsistent frequencies, missing or poor infrastructure (such as segregated corridors, prepaid areas and bus stops), the network’s coverage, and the number of transfers needed for longer trips.

I agreed in spirit that market based solutions can offer better outcomes than public, centralized planning in some situations. But, we shouldn’t get rid of public transit and city planning.

• I do agree that in controlled situations, a market solution is better. San Francisco’s publicly owned and operated transit system is largely a failure, spurring reactions identical to those of Santiago’s newly nationalized bus system. Here, Munger and Roberts are spot on in their complaints of the stupidity of nationalizing a once private resource. (Remember, SF had a patchwork of completely privately owned transit lines until around the 1910′s. Everything I’ve read says these competing systems provided excellent service, especially given available technologies.)
• But, I do not share Munger and Roberts’ idyllic view that free markets are the holy grail of public transport policy. Two reasons:
  • Just look at our suburban car-based communities. These communities are real life experiments in market based, unplanned transport and city zoning policies. These communities are a dismal failure.
  • While bus systems can arguably run with no government intervention, most other high-capacity transit systems need exclusive, government granted corridor rights-of-way, whether that be below ground subways, above ground rail corridors, or even fantastical elevated monorails. Like utilities, physical constraints necessitate government involvement to some degree.

Like many EconTalk podcasts, even if you don’t agree with everything, the discussion points a great alternative spotlight on conventional public policy views.

My favorite viewpoint: the entire concept of central transportation planning is communist at its core — an odd anomaly in a nation proud of its free-market ideology. Why should transportation “planners” dictate the best transportation routes? Our publicly owned and operated Muni is blind to the most powerful natural “planner” in the world: market feedback.

This viewpoint strikes me especially hard in the context of the impending Transit Effectiveness and the Geary BRT projects in the planning faces. With the TEP, the City is spending millions of dollars and years of research to accomplish what free market forces could do everyday, instantly, for free.

Link to podcast page (direct mp3 link)

KALW’s Manager’s Report took place in the late morning, preempting an episode of a local call-in forum show.

Similar to Indiana University‘s arrangement with public radio station WFIU, the San Francisco Unified School District provides KALW with discounted real estate and other ancillary business support services such as telco, Internet access, payroll processing, basic utilities, etc. But, they must find revenue sources to pay for staff, production costs, and purchase programming from NPR and other sources.

I enjoy 91.7 KALW’s positioning as an ‘alternative’ public radio station — an antithesis to the standard NPR fare of 88.5 KQED.

Of course, as a public radio junky, I also enjoy KQED’s great standard NPR program offerings, but KALW provides a nice alternative view with a heavier focus on world news, especially BBC programs like World Have Your Say and the BBC World Service through the wee hours of the night. KALW is also my source on Sunday morning for unique radio programs like Working with Marty Nemko and Harry Shearer’s Le Show.

Keep up the good work, KALW!

MP3 direct link to KALW Manager’s Report

Is this a good idea? Yes, in spirit, but no in practice.

In practice, giving up the entire Embarcadero to pedestrian use at anytime is silly. The Embarcadero already has a beautiful and expansive pedestrian sidewalk on both sides. And, the bay side of the Embarcadero is unencumbered by vehicle cross traffic, making it a fully continuous pedestrian right of way from AT&T ballpark all the way up to Fisherman’s Wharf (and even beyond to the Marina).

Furthermore, the Embarcadero on weekends is a heavily used thoroughfare connecting downtown and the Fisherman’s Wharf to the three major interstates: 101, 280 and 80. Severing this connection on weekends would make it very difficult for visitors to come to our City. I’m all for congestion pricing to control use of personal vehicles, but giving up a prime vehicle thoroughfare for questionable pedestrian need is silly. Visitors bring essential revenue to the backbone of our City’s economy: tourism.

Instead, we should give up other City streets to pedestrian use — permanently.

The City’s ‘default’ practice is to pave with cement over all City territory between private real estate holdings, regardless of actual demand for that cement by personal vehicles. Embarcadero cement has an extremely high demand for vehicle use. But, out in the deep Sunset, Parkside and Richmond districts there is no need for vehicle thoroughfares at every avenue.

These cement roads are, in effect, parking lots. Vast acres of public land in which we live is dedicated to grey car storage. What if we could accommodate vehicle storage, the low demand for vehicle thoroughfares, AND add pedestrian friendly green space? I think we can.

Check out this typical Sunset street:

(24th Avenue between Kirkham and Lawton, San Francisco, CA from Google Street View)

Cement everywhere. Low traffic volume. The cement is mostly used for parking.

Here’s a better idea: we could convert every third avenue into a linear park. Yes, you lose parking for each third avenue’s park conversion, but you can gain it back by increasing parking density along the other two avenues by converting them into one way with perpendicular or slanted parking instead of existing parallel parking.

Here’s an overhead view of a slice of the existing 24th Avenue:

(24th Avenue, San Francisco, CA from Google Maps)

If 24th Avenue was converted to a linear park, 25th and 23rd Avenues would be converted to north and south bound one-way streets respectively. Parking density could be increased to account for lost street parking on 24th Avenue, like this:

Or, instead you could close off the 24th Avenue “linear park” to through traffic, but still allow parking and access to existing vehicle garages. You can cover the entire 24th Avenue with grass and trees, and pave a smaller space with “grassblocks“, concrete with over 50% of surface as holes for dirt to hold real grass, to allow for local access and limited on-street parking while maintaining a real grass surface.

Grassblock example:

Expanding on this, you could make the linear parks have beautiful bike corridors. Integrating dedicated bike corridors would provide much needed safe, sole-priority biking space.

Linear Park Overhead Example:

(Vehicles are stationary, through traffic would be prohibited and made annoying by bumpy grass concrete.)

This would be very applicable for other City neighborhoods. The Mission comes to mind first: the large area between Mission and Potrero, 16th and Cesar Chavez (Army) is especially starved for green space.

Imagine the effect this would have on quality of life! For many residents, you could step out your door right into a park. For the rest, you could go at most 1.5 blocks to find a large park.

Example of Three Sunset Avenue Arrangements:

(Click for larger version.)

Creating a usable transit system is just the first step. Next, we need to convert our streets back into the livable spaces they once were. We need to take our streets back from the personal vehicle and put them back into the hands of the people.

I imagine your response now, dear reader, “This guy is full of crap. Sure, we all would love a park right in front of our house, but this would never work.” NO! WRONG!

Too many people think this way. They see our City as a dead, unmovable structure. They see personal vehicle priority on our roadways as an absolute GIVEN, and not a CHOICE. The final product is to recreate paradise in our own City. It can be done, it just requires a bit of imagination and some balls to make it happen. These are our streets, let’s take them back.

PS: Related, here are some cool sites about “Parking Day”, converting parking spaces into parks for a day:

• OpenPlans.org
• City of Chicago

While sitting in the queue to pay the toll for the Bay Bridge Monday, I heard two great counterintuitive pieces on KQED.

The first was a thoughtful comparison between our quality of life now compared to the distant past. It is a true and important comparison and a nice reminder of how great our lives really are in modern times.

“A Very Rich Man” KQED Perspective:

• >MP3 Direct Link<
• Program Page

The second was a nice piece by NPR’s Morning Edition which sought to answer the question of why Americans have built up so much personal debt in the past 20 years. I liked this part: for some, debt it good. Debt is not always an evil thing.

In my case, I know that my income will be considerably higher in a few years than it is now. As exemplified by the example in the story, it would make little sense for me to save money now given my limited income.

“Why Do We Borrow So Much?” Morning Edition Story:

• Segment Page

I recently stumbled upon another great radio show: Radiolab.

Radiolab tries to explain things. Big things. Philosophy and science things.

Radiolab features a simple theme for each episode such as Love, Pop Music, or Deception. My initial frustration while listening was that they didn’t always get to the bottom of the theme. Why do we fall in love? How has pop music evolved? You won’t get an absolute answer. (Will we ever?)

But, that’s okay. Let go of the need for a perfect, direct explanation of the theme and embrace the unique experience of Radiolab and you’ll enjoy it just fine. Each episode features at least one nugget of unique radio that keeps me coming back for more.

And, the host’s name is Jad. How cool is that?

Links

• Program Website
• MP3 RSS Feed (Podcast)

A week ago the Chronicle reported on some promising preliminary recommendations based on findings from the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP).

These recommendations are great. In many ways they are in line with common sense: improve highly used lines using BRT, ditch under-used lines.

Aside from the frustrating fact that it took Muni 40 years to figure this out, let’s focus on the positive: at least someone realizes what to do next.

But, I have a hard time being excited about these proposals. I cannot hide my fear that Muni is barely capable of managing its own operations, let alone managing a system-wide overhaul. They just can’t do things right.

This is an agency that claims multiple times in press releases and at public information events that they can’t seem to hire enough bus drivers. Yet, they don’t post bus operators as an available job on their website. (I would know too — I’ve looked many times, pushed by a perverse desire to drive a bus in the City.)

This is an agency that spent nearly a billion dollars to replace a bus line (the 15) with a light rail system (T-Third) that offered barely any noticeable improvement in service quality, or, by many accounts, a decrease in service quality.

This is an agency that has virtually zero accountability over its ground-level workforce due to extremely onerous union negotiated contracts. They can’t even immediately fire operators after they’ve killed innocent pedestrians.

This is an agency that, to operate most efficiently and implement changes suggested by the TEP, needs absolute access priority over roadway design and right-of-way for its transit vehicles. So far, no evidence has been shown that Muni’s merger with DPT has provided this level of absolute priority. Nor have the actions of the Mayor nor the Board of Supervisors shown that they have the interest or even the ability to offer such priority for our dear Municipal Railway.

So, rock on TEP. Just don’t write checks you can’t cash.

Link

Wow, it looks like Nat Ford might actually know how to run a municipal transit agency.

Let’s hope the Board of Supervisors gets off his back and lets him do it right.

Link

On my ‘to write’ list is a manifesto of how to fix Muni. Lay out what’s wrong. Lay out what we need to do to fix it.

Dave Snyder of SPUR beat me to the punch. I met Dave last spring when I served under his leadership with a group of volunteers to pitch for approval from the Board of Supervisors to pass the 38-Geary BRT project into the next stage, environmental review.

This article is SPOT ON.

Link

I’ll admit right up front: I’m not sure what Congress actually does at their meetings in Washington. But, what I glean from an ear half-tuned to NPR is that it’s usually a discussion on legislation germane to American citizen’s lives and within the general jurisdiction of the legislative branch of our government.

So then why are our elected officials spending so much time on the allegations of steroid use of baseball players?

Last I checked, the Major League Baseball monopoly is a privately held corporation. Despite local decisions to support the construction of stadiums through significant public tax breaks and subsidies, MLB remains a large, arguably well-run, private corporation which often handles tough internal human resources issues such as substance abuse, as would any other large corporation with stringent performance contracts and important PR considerations.

So, I’ll return to my original question. Why are our elected officials spending so much time and effort on this issue?

As a lowly taxpayer and voter, I would rather our elected officials spend time and effort providing universal healthcare so that I can see the dentist without saving up for weeks on end or ending up in bankruptcy if, God forbid, I had cancer. Or, maybe they can work to reduce government spending so that the value of the dollars I earn doesn’t continue to endlessly nosedive. Or, maybe they can cut our losses in Iraq or tighten an unaccountable defense department that has a difficult time tracking its own purchases.

I guess all those public needs must wait until our elected public officials have fully dissected the internal HR substance abuse crisis of a privately held company. Gosh, how silly of me to even think this wasn’t mucho importante issue #1 for the American people.