Matthew Roth
Recent Posts
Eyes on the Street: Replacing the Rails on the J-Church Line
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Taking advantage of a long weekend, a capital construction crew of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni, spent three frenzied days working around the clock to replace aging J-Church tracks at the intersection of Church and 30th streets. The work on the intersection cost $1 million and was part of the […]
“Snipers for Vipers,” Armor-Piercing Rounds for Your Compensationmobile
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I mocked Max Muller of Max Motors last summer for offering free AK-47s with the purchase of a new vehicle from his Butler, Missouri, showroom. We noted the “Kalashnikovs for Clunkers” deal was the second annual offering of guns with new cars, after he offered Glocks or Gas in 2008. At the time I wrote […]
Promoting Health and Physical Activity Among Children on Walk to School Day
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With childhood obesity a growing national epidemic, it is surprising that more parents don’t walk to school with their kids or organize amongst neighbors to encourage physical activity as part of the daily routine. Though San Francisco has extensive public transit and is quite walkable, the current school assignment policy results in longer school commutes, […]
San Francisco, Oakland Move up National List of Bicycle Commuting Cities
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Despite a four-year bicycle injunction starting in 2006, San Francisco’s share of bicycle commuting has risen, lifting the city to 4th on the League of American Bicyclists’ (LAB) list of 70 largest American cities, while Oakland rose two spaces to 5th. The list is compiled each year from data collected by the Census Bureau as […]
California High Speed Rail Authority Gives Itself an Online Facelift
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As California’s high speed rail project continues to gain attention, both positive and negative, the makeup of visitors to the official website has been shifting, with an increasing number of general public who know very little about the project, according to the California High Speed Rail Authority (CAHSRA). In response to this trend and based […]
Mapping Your City with Pictures Taken by Others
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Data visualization is the rage right now, as city managers release ever more information through open source APIs and creative programmers tease out trends in colorful maps and images, beautifully depicting statistics that would otherwise be stuck in a dense spreadsheet only an actuary could love. Media foundations have been busy giving money to pioneering […]
CA Pedestrian Groups Gather For Conference on Improving Data and Advocacy
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Pedestrian advocates, public health professionals and transportation planners and engineers will gather in Berkeley from Sunday through Tuesday to discuss how to improve pedestrian trip and injury data collection, both to inform pedestrian safety campaigns and influence the targets for walkable communities under California’s SB 375. The conference, Pedestrians Count!, is being organized by California […]
National Fuel Efficiency Standards Could Require 62 MPG Within 15 Years
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The Obama administration got a lot of attention earlier this year when it raised fuel efficiency rules to an average 35 miles per gallon across the nation’s fleet of automobiles that will be produced between 2012 and 2016. Now the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), a division of […]
California’s Personal Vehicle Sharing Law Could Diminish Need to Own a Car
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As more teens wait to get their licenses and young adults drive fewer miles annually, advertisers have begun to point to advances in digital technology to explain the trend. Many younger adults use digital media to connect to their friends virtually, the argument goes, and technological innovations will likely reduce the incentive to own and […]
New Study Analyzes Traffic Around Former Central Freeway
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The Central Freeway sections damaged by the Loma Prieta Earthquake in 1989 have been replaced by such a distinctive Octavia Boulevard, for many San Franciscans the double-decked behemoth that used to dominate the neighborhood has become a distant memory. Most of the traffic the freeway carried, however, has not disappeared and now city planners are […]
What Do You Do When Bike Thieves Get Hip to the Game?
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My work routinely requires me to travel to San Francisco City Hall to cover hearings and I would estimate I’m there on average between one and two times a week. I almost always ride my bicycle and in the course of nearly two years writing for Streetsblog, I’ve never had a problem locking up on […]
Radical Cartography and Urban Racial Maps
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When is a map worth a thousand words? Bill Rankin, who maintains a website called Radical Cartography, has generated buzz with his racial and income maps of Chicago, which can test stereotypes Chicagoans have about the boundaries of their neighborhoods. Rankin notes, for instance, that the boundaries of neighborhoods are always drawn as stark lines […]