Matthew Roth
Recent Posts
DPW Agrees to Delay Pedestrian Median Fence on Potrero Ave
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DPW says the Potrero median fence will resemble this one on Van Ness In a closed meeting of agency staff this morning, the DPW agreed to delay the construction of a median fence on Potrero Avenue between 25th Street and Cesar Chavez until they conduct further community outreach in conjunction with Supervisor David Campos’ office. […]
Street Closure Committee Approves First Two Sunday Streets Routes
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Mayor Newsom overcame a significant hurdle today for his Sunday Streets program as the first two proposed routes received unanimous approval at a meeting of the Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT), a committee made up of MTA, DPW, SFPD, SFFD, and others with business on our city’s streets. Wade Crowfoot, the Mayor’s […]
Walk Score Updates Transit Travel Map for Bay Area
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As we reported a couple weeks ago, Walk Score was developing a new transit twist to their website, which is now in beta here. The transit shed map seen above utilizes Google Transit Feed Specification schedule data from the MTA, Caltrain, and BART to produce the travel information (hint: zoom in to pinpoint your location […]
Mission Neighbors Upset Over Proposed Pedestrian Fence
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A group of skaters stopped on the Potrero Avenue median half-way between 26th and Cesar Chavez Some community members in the Mission are upset that the MTA has proposed building a fence along a median on Potrero Avenue between Cesar Chavez and 25th Street to prevent jaywalking. Owing to the success of the recently […]
The Rise of the Longtail Bicycle
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Xtracycle founder Ross Evans is only tangentially running a business in Oakland. Inventor, entrepreneur, bicycle tinkerer, activist, and international transportation development consultant, Evans has a mission to transform mobility around the world with his longtail bicycle design, all the while creating communities and culture that are less reliant on the car. And what’s more refreshing, […]
Do We Have to Wait for the Next Mayor for a Car-free Market Street?
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Mona Caron’s interpretation of a 21st Century Market Street How hard is it to fix the most important street in San Francisco, one that is vital to transit, that is the spine of the bicycle network, and that could be the crowning jewel of the city, a Champs d’Elysee or a newly pedestrianized Broadway? Without […]
The Future Design of SF’s Bike Racks May Start on Treasure Island
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One of the racks from NYC’s design competition and a green traffic-separated bike lane on Broadway. The SFBC and the Department of Public Health (DPH) recently announced a bicycle rack design competition as part of a $100,000 community-based planning grant from Caltrans for the Treasure Island redevelopment plan. SFBC project manager Neal Patel explained the […]
The Art of Air Traffic Over America
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Although this is only tangentially related to our coverage of transit and livable streets in the Bay Area (Oakland Airport Connector is as good as I can get), artist Aaron Koblin has created a remarkable series of visuals and animation that show the flight patterns of U.S. airplanes over a twenty-four hour period. As beautiful […]
Did the Chronicle Forget SF Has a Transit-First Policy?
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33 Stanyan making the turn at Market and Clayton Though Chronicle Watch can at times be interesting, today’s post is misleading, even oxymoronic. The headline "Muni Buses Delay Traffic at Intersection" implies cars are more important, though San Francisco’s Transit First policy mandates the MTA and other agencies prioritize the movement of buses, light rail […]
Love Your Lane: Kirkham Street to the Sea
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Riding down Kirkham at 33rd Ave with a view of the ocean Kirkham Street is one of the Big 56 bike lane projects that hasn’t raised many eyebrows. Unlike the looming battle over 2nd Street or 5th Street, the Kirkham lane will be on a relatively quiet residential street that runs east-west from Ocean Beach […]
The Nearly Extinct Bipedus Norteamericanus Makes a Comeback
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Anthropologists and transit advocates have long bemoaned the rise of The Sacred Rac, its subsequent worship by the majority of the people of the Asu tribe, and the attendant demise of bipedus norteamericanus, or the common pedestrian. But new evidence appears every day that the once-endangered pedestrian may be seeing a resurgence in urban habitats […]