Urbification: Taking the sub out of Calif. suburbs

Bikes taking more than their fair share of Bay Area transit

2008-08-19T10:35:00.000-07:00

I found this one of the most cogent observations about Bay Area bikes-on-transit that I've ever read:

"Bicyclists are over-represented among Bay Area transit users
_because transit is presently so sparse_. While they will always
be important users, it is silly to view all transit decisions
through the lens of bicycle usage, as though these users will
always be as over-represented as they are now. They won't be. They
will decline, percentage-wise... assuming well-planned transit projects move forward."

DVD review: Still We Ride

2008-06-09T10:36:00.000-07:00

Recently I was able to view Still We Ride, a DVD containing as its core a documentary produced in 2005 but now available for rental on Netflix. It documents the crackdown on New York Critical Mass that began at the 2004 Republican Convention and continues to a certain extent to this day. The 2004 footage of New York cops removing parked bicycles from sidewalks with power saws cleaving through U-locks, claiming the bikes were abandoned while their owners stood by helplessly, was a chilling chronicle of out-of-control police power. I'm not that enamored of Critical Mass, though, and take issue with Chris Carlson's statement that the July 1997 ride was "fun"; I saw lots of bad behavior by motorists and bicyclists alike, and haven't gone on a CM ride since.

The Still We Ride DVD also contains a video short on congestion pricing produced in 2007 that equates such schemes with your worst black-helicopter kind of paranoia, even ending with the streets cleared of cars and bikes so that George Bush and his friends can rule the streets on Segways. It's too bad to see some of New York's bicycling advocates lean so far into anarchism that they refuse to see how much sense congestion pricing makes. That kind of paranoia couldn't have helped the recent failed effort to commence congestion pricing in Manhattan.

Peak oil late-night comedy bit

2008-05-18T21:32:00.000-07:00

Who says peak oil can't be funny?

Oh. Wait a minute. It isn't funny.

The shortest route for cars may be down your street

2008-02-01T10:18:00.000-08:00

Nicholas Carr: "Dashboard maps are having some unintended consequences. In many cases, the shortest route between two points turns out to run through once-quiet neighborhoods and formerly out-of-the-way hamlets...a research group in the Netherlands last month issued a report documenting the phenomenon and the resulting risk of accidents. It went so far as to say that satnav systems can turn drivers into child killers"

The Battle for Britain's Roads

2008-01-24T10:37:00.000-08:00

Via Streetsblog, here's an excellent documentary from the BBC:

A phrase that struck me at the 56-minute mark: "Share and let live."

UPDATE: Google Video appears to have taken this down. Maybe the BBC will make it available. If you see it there, drop me a line and I'll update this post.

The ultimate speed bump

2007-11-22T21:47:00.001-08:00

There are some streets in Berkeley that could use one of these.

A bicycle boulevard balancing act

2007-11-15T16:57:00.000-08:00

The World Edition commissioned me to write a transportation article, and I chose the issue closest to me: how a rise in motor vehicle traffic could imperil the Hillegass bicycle boulevard in Berkeley.

Martian observation

2007-10-01T11:45:00.000-07:00

James Kuntzler: "A casual observer from Mars would have to conclude that President Bush perfectly represents a nation that shows such a thoroughgoing incapacity for thought, and such an aversion to the truth about its own behavior. A people so hopelessly unwilling to get its act together deserves to suffer."

Take the Walk Score test

2007-07-18T23:07:00.000-07:00

How does your neighborhood rate? Find out here.

Donald Shoup on the high cost of free parking

2007-06-14T09:45:00.000-07:00

Streetfilms.org posted a six-minute interview with Donald Shoup, author of The High Cost of Free Parking.

Bike-commuting bans don't stop her

2007-04-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

L.J. Williamson: "My son’s school has a written rule that students in grades K-4 may not ride their bicycles to school. My son and I cheerfully ignore this restriction."

Message to John Doerr: Reign in Carl Guardino

2007-03-14T09:35:00.000-07:00

At this week's mega-expensive TED conference in Monterey, uber-venture capitalist John Doerr is getting all choked up about environmental issues. "I don't think we're going to make it," he says, all verklempt in front an audience including his 15-year-old daughter.

John, we've never met, though we have many mutual acquaintences. But let me give you some advice, from one father-of-a-daughter to another: The most important thing you could do for the environment is to reign in Carl Guardino, now a commissioner on the California Transportation Commission, where it looks like he intends to ram through the incredibly cost-inefficient and wasteful BART to San Jose extension. According to some talk I heard at a recent meeting, Carl intends to come lecture the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) in a month or two, no doubt to get the rest of the Bay Area to help foot the bill for this boondoggle. Nothing hurts the environment, however, like a terribly wasteful public transit extension. It sucks up all available dollars that could be spent, say, preserving local bus service, upgrading Amtrak service to San Jose, or adding regional bus service, any of which would add far more new riders per dollar than BART to San Jose ever could.

The financial train wreck that is the BART-SFO extension is all the evidence you'll need, John, that Carl's extension needs to be scaled back. And you're just the guy who can ask him to do it.

Berkeley's disappearing open space?

2007-02-28T12:00:00.000-08:00

According to the editor of the Berkeley Daily Planet, Berkeley's open space is disappearing:

"Livable Berkeley seem to think that covering every square inch of the scant remaining open space in Berkeley, green or paved, with new construction will make more people want to live here and fewer people want to move to new subdivisions in former cornfields"

But when you look around, the kind of open space targeted by groups like Livable Berkeley are mostly parking lots. That's open space?

Otherwise, no one's advocating digging up public parkland, or other public property. The Planet objects to people building on their own private property when it creates a denser Berkeley, but by no stretch of the imagination is a suburban private property "open space."

In terms of visuals, the biggest change in the past 15 years was when Oakland and Berkeley homeowners rebuilt on the hillside site of the 1991 fire. No one's complained about that rebuilding even though visually it removes a huge portion of Berkeley's "open space" (never mind it's private property.)

Rarely does the Planet note that the biggest cause of increasing congestion in Berkeley in coming years will be construction of new parking garages at UC Berkeley in the center of town, and expansion of the Caldecott Tunnel at the southern end of town.

Congestion tax, anyone?

The parking fix

2007-02-12T08:54:00.000-08:00

Good Wall Street Journal story lamenting the end of "what may be one of the last great urban bargains," metered parking. Of course, what makes it great is that market forces are finally coming to bear on such parking. (Unfortunately, this story is behind a pay firewall. Look in your local library for the Feb. 3-4, 2007 issue and turn to page P1.)

Four stories vs. five

2006-10-04T18:34:00.000-07:00

David Mundstock, quoted by Will Harper in the East Bay Express: "You can't have a political philosophy based on four stories versus five stories." And yet, maybe, that's what the Berkeley mayor's race comes down to this year.

Street sweeping reminder service

2006-07-11T12:18:00.000-07:00

One thing that makes the increasingly urbified California city more civil is effective street-sweeeping. Two years ago, I suggested to family and friends that someone ought to start a service to automatically remind car owners to move their cars on appointed street-sweeping days. Now, that service exists, and it can remind you via email or via messages to your mobile phone. Here's an article about the service from the East Bay Daily News, June 15, 2006, which is not archived online:

Parking ticket woes inspire new Web site
Street-cleaning reminders for free

By Jamie Morrow
Daily News Staff Writer

Tired of street-sweeping parking tickets? So are two UC Berkeley undergrads.

Andrew Siemion, 25, and Suneet Upadhyay, 20, have created MyMotorMaid.com, a Web site that offers free e-mail and text message reminders of street-sweeping days so residents can avoid tickets.

"I had about $600 in parking tickets when I conjured up the idea of MyMotorMaid," Siemion said. "I was like, 'Man, this sucks.' I thought it sure would be great if there was some way I could remember street-sweeping days."

For some reason, Siemion said, every third Friday of the month just wasn't easy to remember.

"If I have anything else going on in my life, I won't remember," Siemion said.

After the idea, implementation was easy for the two astrophysics majors.

"We're both technical people, and we knew we could do it, so we thought we should," Upadhyay said.

Since many Berkeley students don't have cars, he thinks it will serve the city's residential community the most.

The service is free to users and doesn't host ads, Upadhyay said. And now that the basic programming is done, the site can serve many other cities besides Berkeley and the five other cities for which it's currently set. The site also includes links to the cities' street-sweeping schedules in case you don't know when to set your reminder.

Siemion sees Oakland and San Jose as the natural next cities to add, though interested residents from any city can e-mail them at maid@mymotormaid.com to request to be added.

"We intend to host it indefinitely," Upadhyay said. "It doesn't take that much work."

The city is happy to lose the money if it means cleaner streets, said Susie Monary-Wilson, manager of the city agency that collects parking fees.

"I think it's a great service," Monary-Wilson said. "Our goal is to really not have the cars there. It's really frustrating for the street-sweepers."

While he originally conceived the idea as a money saver, Siemion said that after resarching street-sweeping, he realized how good it was for the city and the environment.

"It makes me happy to know (the Web site) can also have a positive environmental impact," Siemion said.

Another kind of NIMBY

2006-07-06T22:05:00.000-07:00

I hope nothing like this ever occurs in the Bay Area. Maybe Prop. 13 makes it impossible.

Kid obesity steals headlines as Nat'l. Public Health Week begins

2006-04-03T13:38:00.000-07:00

So, do you think the SF Chronicle is covering National Public Health Week as it starts today? This year's theme is "Designing Healthy Communities, Raising Healthy Kids."

Nope. Instead, it's talking about obese children no longer fitting into their car seats.

Technorati tag: National Public Health Week

Clever auto-ad subversion

2006-03-31T10:35:00.000-08:00

It's great to see some critics of Driving Everywhere (in the biggest SUV possible) get some digs in, cleverly. (Here's how they did it.)

Start negotiating

2006-02-01T06:51:00.000-08:00

Mr. President, the problem isn't the U.S. addiction to oil. It's the addiction to a Driving Everywhere way of life:

In 1992 President George Bush snr signed the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change with the proviso that the American way of life was "non-negotiable".

Warning to motorists: You're about to hit a pedestrian

2006-01-30T16:18:00.000-08:00

Could this be the future: radio-tagging all pedestrians and cars to alert motorists when they're about to collide with a pedestrian? Motorists will still be able to say "I didn't see him," though.

2005-11-29T16:33:00.000-08:00

Last month's BusinessWeek story, "Living Too Large in Exurbia," is the canary in California's coal mine -- and America's, too. (link to story for subscribers):

"The American Dream of a better life away from the city is hardly over. But it could be in for a few tough knocks."

2005-09-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Here's a brilliant idea: A photoblog dedicated to showing motorists who park where they shouldn't. For instance, putting a large vehicle in a compact space. Or a vehicle of any size in two spaces. Start such a blog in your town!

2005-09-08T23:37:00.000-07:00

Motorists are outraged about new "smart" parking meters that zero out any remaining time when a car pulls out of a spot. But I'm delighted! If such practice reduces the current practice of driving around to look for a meter with remaining time, think of the gasoline saved and air pollution reduction!

2005-08-31T14:01:00.000-07:00

The city of San Jose is discovering it needs to let businesses build up, not out. Housing will follow suit. Now the only question is, will the city be able to provide the needed mass transit, instead of mandating more parking spaces?