Matthew Roth
Recent Posts
Absenteeism and Maintence Concerns Could Spell Trouble for Muni
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Photo: Octoferret In an annual performance review of San Francisco’s Muni transit service presented at the final MTA Board Meeting of 2009 yesterday, several troubling indicators cast a shadow on the agency’s efforts to improve its reputation and service performance. Bonnie Nelson of Nelson Nygaard reported that unscheduled absenteeism among MTA operators reached 14.4 percent […]
Will San Francisco Review Its Uneasy Relationship With Pedicabs?
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Among the many users of San Francisco’s streets, pedicabs occupy a space somewhere between a bicycle and a motorized taxi cab, though their movements are restricted far beyond other modes, in part because pedicab owners don’t have the budget to lobby city leaders and don’t have an obvious constituency to advocate on their behalf. This […]
“The Highway to Play a Vital Role in the Progress of Civilization”
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Disney’s Magic Highway USA is one of the more extraordinary examples of the myopic devotion to automobility and its infrastructure I’ve ever seen. It’s probably also required viewing at the Reason Foundation and among Senator James Inhofe’s staff in Washington DC. "As in the past, the highway will continue to play a vital role in […]
Eyes on the Street: Market Gets New Paint for Calm The Safety Zone
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Photos: Dennis Lee Though we’re taking the rest of the week off for the holiday, we thought you’d be excited to see these photos, which represent the first pavement treatments for the new Calm the Safety Zone projects on Market Street, meant to improve pedestrian safety by re-enforcing the separations between motorists and pedestrians. As […]
SF Transbay District Plan Offers Lofty Vision for Growth and Livable Streets
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Elevated Transbay Park. Images: Planning Department The recently released Transbay Transit District Draft Plan is the culmination of two years of detailed work by the many city agencies and consultants that had a hand in it, and its objectives for creating a vibrant, walkable public realm and its goals to promote transit and reduce automobile […]
New Draft San Francisco Transbay Development Plan Unveiled Today
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Conceptual rendering of the San Francisco skyline with Transbay towers. Image: SF Planning Department The San Francisco Planning Department will release the Draft Plan for the new Transbay Terminal and development project after the Planning Commission meeting tonight at 5:30 p.m. According to Planning’s Joshua Switzky, the plan will be presented to the commission but […]
New Study Quantifies High Personal Costs of Building CA Cities for Cars
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Click to enlarge: Annual household transportation costs in the Bay Area. California residents living in sprawling suburban developments could save billions of dollars every year if they lived in denser, urban zones and along transit corridors, according to a study released today by smart growth and transit advocates TransForm. Analyzing four metropolitan areas–Southern California, the […]
San Francisco Starts Building Green Streets For Stormwater Management
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Without question, Portland’s Greenstreets program is the benchmark for American cities seeking to manage storm water and runoff from the street level before it enters the sanitation system pipes. Now, San Francisco is on its way to constructing its first on-street stormwater facilities in two places in the Bayview and Visitation Valley, pilots that should […]
MTA Parking Meter Study Outreach Moves Slowly, Despite Budget Woes
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The MTA parking meter extension study, and the recommendations to extend meters past 6 pm on weekdays and all day Sundays, which Mayor Gavin Newsom strongly opposes, is being circulated to business groups and community stakeholders throughout the city, though the pace of setting up meetings is underwhelming and MTA staff have no schedule for […]
Eyes on the Street: No Parking, San Francisco
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Created with flickr slideshow. One of the most ubiquitous admonitions in the urban landscape is the No Parking sign. Many are your garden-variety plastic number, for sale at the hardware store, hardly creative. All over San Francisco, however, folks have taken matters into their own hands and crafted some excellent variations. Whenever I’ve got my […]
Portland’s Greenstreets Program a Sterling Best Practice Model
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A typical greenstreet facility in Portland, Oregon. This one compines a stormwater treatment facility with a bulbout to reduce pedestrian crossing distances. Photos: Portland BES. When Streetsblog San Francisco took part in the Congress for the New Urbanism’s Project for Transportation Reform in Portland last week, city planners and transportation engineers treated participants to numerous […]
SF Transportation Authority Launches iPhone App to Track Cyclists
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The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA), the city’s congestion management agency responsible for modeling transportation and development patterns, has released its new bicycle route data application, Cycle Tracks, for iPhones and GPS-enabled iTunes players at the iTunes store. Like similar applications that give information such as speed and distance traveled, users of the TA […]