This draft report will be released at the upcoming community meeting

This meeting had several purposes, the first was the introduction of the new SFMTA ENTRIPS project manager, Erin Miller. Erin is an urban designer who was recently promoted to SFMTA’s new Sustainable Streets division and will be in charge of all the separate moving parts of the ENTRIPS project. She’ll be the main person responsible for ensuring that the community input is incorporated into the planning process through the remainder of the project schedule.

The bulk of our time was given to a presentation by the MTA team and discussion of the Future Conditions Report. This 135 page document details what the transportation scenario will be like in San Francisco in 2035 if no ‘ENTRIPS’ designated transportation improvements were built. It does include the Central Subway, all the planned new bike paths, and tons of public transit improvements. Yet none of these improvements were able to avert the disaster that will clog our streets if no additional improvements are made to accomodate the expected residential and job growth. This growth is made possible by the Eastern Neighborhood land use plans which ENTRIPS is the matching transportation planning effort. The need for the ENTRIPS improvements is made strikingly apparent in this Future Conditions Report. If no improvements are made, then in 2035 San Francisco will have unbearable congestion on our streets, a massively overloaded public transit system, and an unacceptable increase in pedestrian and bicycle accidents. To really understand the severity of the problem, you’ll need to attend the upcoming public presentation of the Future Conditions Report.

At the upcoming SFMTA hosted community wide ENTRIPS meeting, likely to be scheduled for January, the City’s team will present this report and have various breakout sessions to get community input on the different neighborhoods unique opportunities. The Community Task Force was able to give very important constructive critisim on what questions to ask people and how to best visually represent the workshop exercises. The upcoming meeting should be much more productive and informative due to the early feedback the Community Task Force was able to provide to the Agency’s team.

By vetting each step in their planning process with the Community Task Force, the SFMTA is able to ensure they are consistently making good decisions as their work progresses – essentially making their methodology transparent, not just the results of the analysis. ENTRIPS includes some very advanced transportation modeling and analytical methods, yet this quantitative data should also match up with the experiential data of the people who actually depend on the transportation network to have any qualitative meaning. The ENTRIPS Community Task Force has been performing this role for the last year and the SFMTA has been very receptive and open to their input. ENTRIPS is a better, smarter transportation improvements planning effort due to the openness of the SFMTA and all the weekday evenings that the Community Task Force has been willing to volunteer so far.

Stay tuned for updates on when the city schedules the broader community meeting.

Evaluation Framework

The evaluation framework is the funnel into which all the potential projects will be poured. This tool, if properly built, will give each of the potential projects a score for different criteria such as Environment, Health, Cost, or Access Improvement. We intended this meeting to be focused on turning the current evaluation framework into a usable tool, though our discussion ended up turning into a review of the project list. We decided that anyone who has ideas about refining the evaluation framework should email Timothy.Papandreou@sfmta.com while CCing peter@urbanecology.org by September 3rd. SFMTA will then take the first attempt at creating the usable version of the evaluation framework.

Three Project Tracks

In SFMTA’s powerpoint (embedded below), they described a project development workflow that tried to address many of our Task Force concerns about different scales of projects. The big potential pool of projects will get scored based on the evaluation framework. Before we compare the scored projects though, we would first group them into three different tracks:

1. Major Corridor Bundles – These groups of larger projects along high priority corridors will require a full EIR before they can be built.
2. Neighborhood Packages – These smaller projects grouped by geography can be fast tracked so that each neighborhood begins to see rapid improvements.
3. Other Eastern Neighborhood projects – This track, which would include all of the policy and programmatic projects, would be examined on their own.

Credit: Streetsblog.com

Tim elaborated some on the second track, explaining that he had just formed an inter-agency group focused on rapidly deploying pilot projects. They have the ability to do all the affordable projects quickly, without needing a full environmental review. The green bike lanes on Market St were used as an example.  The task force praised this idea as it would give each of the neighborhoods quick and tangible improvements to enjoy.

The Project List

We’ve been holding back on doing a detailed review of the project list because it is so thick and daunting. Today was the first time we made the list available to the Task Force. Our discussion was split between opinions of keeping the project list small so that we don’t spend too many resources on unfeasible projects or opening the list up so that we can do examine all the potential projects that have a place in a long term planning study. It is going to take each of us some time to look through the list and see if everything is there (or too much). The updated project list is available on our Documents page. We will discuss the list again in the future once we have a refined evaluation tool that we can filter the list with.

Next Steps

Please review the evaluation framework email in your thoughts to Timothy and Peter. We will call another meeting of the Task Force once we have a usable evaluation framework tool.

ENTRIPS Evaluation Framework Presentation

Transportation Modeling

SF-CHAMP

The city staff explained that computer modeling for transportation has been in use since the highways went up in the 50′s, though it wasn’t until this past decade that transit and bicycling have been added to models. San Francisco was one of the first cities to do so. Today the SFCTA uses a handmade regional transportation planning model called SF-CHAMP. A brochure explaining this model is available on our Documents page. This computer model pulls in many kinds of data from many sources, such as demographics from the Census or ridership counts from MUNI. They take all that data and are able to model how people travel to and from and around San Francisco.

They begin by calibrating the model against current conditions to ensure that they have a correct baseline. When the model is tuned up and  the technicians are happy with the accuracy, the planners at SFCTA begin to make a series of educated guesses about certain variables that each affect the model. These numerous assumptions,  from future gas prices to number of future bike lanes, change the outcome of the model and influence the decisions that the planners make. These assumptions are based on research and data, household surveys, and many other sources. Though debated and tweaked by transportation engineers, several of the Community Task Force members felt it important that the selection of these assumptions be made transparent.

Participatory Process

With the list of assumptions known, the community can then help the City choose the correct arrangement of assumptions and “turn the dials” to create a range of scenarios most reflective of collective vision.  This selection of scenarios will give community members some ownership of the process, which is vital when tinkering with something as important to people as their future transportation options. It was highlighted in this discussion that the community members involved in the EN TRIPS Task Force have a breadth of local knowledge and practical experience far beyond transportation planning which is extremely useful when making assumptions about the future. MTA staff assures us that the first goal of transportation planning is to “do no harm,” and letting people in on the modeling process reduces that risk. And it was acknowledged that allowing community members to assume some of this responsibility will also increase the political support at the end of the planning process when real transportation improvement projects are on the line. As a footnote to this, Urban Ecology’s role in the EN TRIPS process is as an advocate for a participatory planning process which is a fundamental aspect of all of UE’s work, and we have been attempting to have the community-engaged EN TRIPS process be a model for city agencies to follow. Vetting these internal modeling assumptions with the Community Task Force is part of achieving that goal.  The first model that the SFMTA/SFCTA team will create will be of current conditions plus growth projections with little or no transportation infrastructure into the future. What would the Eastern Neighborhoods look like in 2015 and 2035 with no improvements? A constant gridlock of limos and shuttles? The modeling scenarios will then be built by layering potential improvements, projects, and other assumptions on top.. It was agreed that a series of five+- scenarios would help provide a variety of potential future conditions to be analyzed in the modeling.

The Importance of Being Ambitious

The scale of these potential projects is important though. On the smallest scale we have a technical limit as the SF-CHAMP model can only take inputs of a certain discreet size. On the upper end, SFCTA plays the role of safeguarding the modeling process from being rendered useless because of infeasible ideas.  It was pointed out that the job of the Community Task Force will be to make sure the planners are being ambitious. The highway revolts of the 60′s seemed crazy back then, yet they succeeded.  The point was raised in the meeting that the land use plans that ENTRIPS is reacting to, namely the Eastern Neighborhoods Plans (and by extension the forward-looking Transbay Terminal planning, Rincon Hill and Market/Octavia plans), are very ambitious plans. We must be visionary and ambitious if we are to create the future city those land use plans aspire to.

The Community Task Force will reconvene with the MTA agencies team in early September to work on crafting the scenarios for the transportation modeling.

The larger lesson plan for their summer study includes preparing for some inevitable disaster that will stroke San Francisco next week. I got in before the earthquake/plague/comet arrived and was able to run some workshops with the youth.

I am not an expert on disaster planning but I did my best. I scared them all a little by explaining that the USGS predicts a two thirds chance of another huge earthquake hitting San Francisco by 2030, while passing around photos of the damage wrought by past quakes.

We also talked about the emergency response agencies from FEMA at the national level, CEMA at the state, and the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management. Some of the youth brought up Katrina and FEMA’s failure to rapidly help there. We decided that we can’t count on all these government agencies to be there when we need them most, especially not for the first 72 hours. The kids then listed out on the blackboard what they would include in a Disaster Kit. They brought this further than I had planned by discussing where in the house was the best place to store the kit.

After our Disaster Kit’s were packed, we broke into groups based around which neighborhood we lived in. I had printed out six maps of their neighborhoods. They got to play with the maps for a few minutes first, figuring out where they live, where they hangout. This is important anytime you use a map with anyone, because people have differing abilities of geographical legibility. These young disaster planning experts had to use the maps and their local knowledge to figure out where in their neighborhoods the following would be located:

• FEMA headquarters
• Medical Clinics
• Emergency Supplies storage
• Emergency Shelters
• second and third alternative transportation routes

The youth did a great job and had some fun. I closed by explaining the larger urban planning profession, the paths to becoming an urban planner, and talked about where and how to get internships in the field. Some of them where genuinely intrigued on what we did together and I hope to be involved more during their summer Upward Bound program.

SFMTA’s presentation echoed last months Issues presentation with the current state of the Eastern Neighborhoods transportation network. This time though it provided a list of potential answers to each of the problems. These were all listed out by mode – Transit, Pedestrian, Bicycle, Shuttle, Car Share, Taxis, Parking, Goods Movement, and Automobiles. We had separate conversations about each mode as they were presented. There were definitely specific pieces of feedback given for each mode of transportation and we and MTA both took good notes for all of those. For this summary though, I wanted to highlight four main points.

SFpark

As with any discussion about transportation improvements, parking gathered a majority of the comments, though not in the typical angry tones. The parking systems across the Eastern Neighborhoods differ drastically from neighborhood to neighborhood. From residential permits, to different kinds of meters, to parking maximums and minimums. There is a need to rationalize parking across the city, and the SFMTA’s answer will be SFpark. Task Force members gave great advice on implementation though, adding ideas about design of parking for trucks in the industrial zones, more city run garages near transit to encourage ‘Park & Ride’, and critique of the meter/residential permit ratio to prevent certain neighborhoods from becoming parking lots for ‘Park & Hide”.

Parking Enforcement

All the parking advancements in San Francisco will not amount to meaningful change unless they are well enforced. Double parking, handicap placard abuse, and commuters parking in residential permit zones are all current and future issues. Enforcement concerns also came up during our conversation about shuttles as well. From shuttles double parking, idling too long, and having overlapping routes. The Community Task Force agreed with the City’s suggestion of consolidating the enforcement and licensing of these shuttles.

Another way to improve enforcement of shuttles is to negotiate the desired changes with SF Redevelopment when they are allowing new developments to be built. This kind of multiple agency coordination for solutions is required for the majority of the improvements that the ENTRIPS Task Force would like to see. Though a technical advisory committee is in place for ENTRIPS, we would want to ensure that Public Health, the Port, Redevelopment, DPW, and Planning are all working together to correctly design, plan, and build transportation improvements.

ENTRIPS Study Area

The scale of these transportation improvements is also an important question. Are the vast needs of the Eastern Neighborhoods to big to be addressed by ENTRIPS? Are the individual needs of each neighborhood too small to be addressed by ENTRIPS? The limits of the consultant contract give some hard edges (no tearing down the highway), yet the challenge put forward is to rank potential projects based on their size of impact. One suggestion was to do a handful of big projects now, and get to to fine grained neighborhood planning next.  That process could potentially take a while though, and the current conditions and transportation needs for the Eastern Neighborhoods are going to be changing rapidly.

SFMTA’s next steps will be to model these upcoming changes. There was some ambiguity about the accuracy of the future condition modeling process, so SFMTA has offered to host a small example workshop at their offices within the next month. This will be a very technical meeting, differing from our usual policy related Community Task Force discussions.

SFMTA’s presentation is embeded here for your review.

ENTRIPS Issues and Opportunities Major Themes PPT June-9-2010

The Existing Conditions report details the current status of all of the different transportation modes across the Eastern Neighborhoods. This Task Force meeting was focused only on discussing the existing conditions analyses, and though everyone is anxious to talk about solutions and opportunities, that is being saved for the next meeting.

Here is are some quick notes from the Task Force and MTA discussion of each mode.

• Transit – the “Transit Effectiveness Project” will address most of the route and service issues, while ENTRIPS focuses on roadway conditions. Speed of transit is the main problem. Mixed traffic flow (ie, buses/metro cars using same lane as cars) slows down the entire system.
• Pedestrian
• Biking – Bike Plan is being implemented, still a lack of amenities.
• Cars – Car speeds vs transit speeds inequalities.
• Parking – SFpark data out in July.
• Goods Movements / Trucks – Every SOMA street is a Truck Route.
• Taxis – Catch 22 for Taxi demand as they don’t come if there is no demand, no demand because they aren’t there.
• Shuttles – Issues of openness. Employees perceptions of safety for SOMA transit. How do shuttles fit in the overall transportation system?
• Car Share

The room was really sunny and the beginning of the presentation was hard to see, so we’ve embedded it here for your review. Remember this is still a draft.
MTA Existing Conditions Rpt Ppt Draft May 20-2010

ENTRIPS is an implementation study, scoped to perform a full transportation analysis of the Eastern Neighborhoods plan area. It will include new transportation counts and modeling of all transportation modes, with influence from concurrent and past studies that overlap with the ENTRIPS study area. The study is essentially a process of sifting through the various projects identified in the Eastern Neighborhood plans and other transportation plans for the area, and focusing down on a sub-set . of improvements projects for detailed technical analysis, design and environmental clearance, and prepare a funding strategy for their implementation. The ENTRIPS study area is a big geography, with dozens of potential transportation improvement projects, both big and small. This is a complex implementation planning process which will benefit from lots of community eyes on it to make sure it is done well and informed by real-world community needs.

Comments from the Meeting
The ENTRIPS existing conditions scope has been fine tuned with the help of the Community Task Force over many months, yet there were still questions and concerns raised:

• Would the issue of skateboarding on sidewalks be included?
• Many of the existing traffic counts are out of date and need to be redone.
• How does ENTRIPS relate to the High Speed Rail and Transbay Terminal plans?
• Strong concern about the ENTRIPS project performing long range planning while all the current services are getting gutted during this financial crisis.

The Task Force then reviewed some initial data and evaluation materials the City had prepared. This included a laundry list of potential transportation projects already identified in various plans and studies relevant to the East Neighorhoods, and an evaluation matrix that uses a variety of criteria (or policy lenses) to help prioritize those projects. There was constructive discussion around how to rank the criteria within the matrix and also suggestions to add in stronger environmental language including vehicle miles traveled and carbon footprint reductions.

Tim Papandreou, the Assistant Deputy Director of SF MTA, then described the transportation agencies food chain which we will detail out in a future blog post.

Next Steps
In early May, the City is expected to release its draft “Issues & Opportunities” report that will includs a multi-modal existing conditions analysis of transportation flow in the Eastern Neighborhoods area. At the end of this highly technical document will be the City’s preliminary conclusions of the main themes for the opportunities that will guide decisions on transportation improvement projects to study in further detail. Urban Ecology is in the process of scheduling the next meeting of the Community Task Force to vet these themes and the analysis they are based upon with the city staff and consultant.

Home Depot was planning to open a new store on an un-remediated brownfield site in Visitacion Valley, yet there was a loud call for resistance swelling within the neighborhood. The residents were worried that big box retail would endanger the financial health of the competing, smaller local owned business in Visitacion Valley. They also warned of the environmental contamination of this fragile watershed area by the previous industrial use; the community wanted to be sure that the site would be properly remediated and they felt that Home Depot would not want to pay the full price of cleaning the land. Local urban planning advocates also warned that allowing a store with gigantic parking lots would endanger the potential of TOD being built at this important transportation hub.

In January 2000 Urban Ecology, using its own grant funding, worked with local community members to envision alternatives to the Home Depot development. Due to our extensive community outreach process, Supervisor Sophie Maxwell’s Office asked us to lead a fuller planning process for Schlage Lock in Spring 2001. Urban Ecology, EDAW, and other partners engaged the concerned community members through a series of design workshops. Out of these charettes we developed a Neighborhood Center Plan, envisioning the site as a mixed use addition to the neighborhood that added parks, commercial, and housing. This plan evolved into the Strategic Concept Plan and heavily influenced the recently approved Visitacion Valley / Schlage Lock Master Plan.

Today
The Schlage Lock brown field is almost done with remediation and the community vision which Urban Ecology helped develop is being built. Universal Paragon Corporation has acquired the majority of the property and will be developing it based upon the Design for Development guidelines set by the community and the Redevelopment Agency. Within this development will be a series of parks and open spaces. The planning for these is happening right now. Recently, Urban Ecology was hired to help with the community engagement process, making sure that people attend the design charettes for the open space planning effort.

We just had the second workshop last weekend. Embedded below is the full presentation from the workshop. AECOM and the design team aggregated all the information from the initial workshop and created three alternatives. We had about 50 neighborhood residents give their feedback on the alternative designs and then drew their preferred version at the end. We hope this will give the design team a clear idea of what the community wants for these new parks being built in their neighborhood.

More information can be found at http://renewvisvalley.com

100403-VVTOD Workshop2 Presentation

Urban Ecology’s purpose for being is to get folks to redesign their own public spaces. None of us working on these simulations live in North Beach or Chinatown, so we make no claim that these ideas are correct. We just hope they are interesting and get people to talk.

The Street Utopia Festival is this Saturday from 5:30 – 9:pm at #1 Columbus Avenue (five minute walk from Montgomery BART). More info can be found at http://streetutopia.org.

STREET UTOPIA is an urban design festival showcasing film, food, and art that promotes Democracy & Egalitarianism in the public spaces of North Beach. The multi-media presentation offers:

• Two screens of International Films from Samso and Copenhagen (Denmark), Bogota (Colombia), Amsterdam (The Netherlands), Portland (Oregon), Budapest (Hungary), Curitiba (Brazil), and other cities that utilize environmentally sustainable and people-friendly policies.
• New art presented by North Beach residents: painter Lutzka Zivny, photographer Chris Ferris, and the children of Destination Art.
• Wall displays by Urban Ecology of proposed utopian building and redesign projects in North Beach: Vehicle-free Grant Avenue? “Poet’s Plaza” on car-free Vallejo between Columbus and Grant? Plant 500 trees? Repair & beautify Washington Square, for environmentally-friendly events? Widen sidewalks on Columbus? Audience opinions & suggestions will be solicited.
• “Street Food” by mobile sidewalk vendors: The Girl From Empanada, Bike Basket Pies, The Hot Dog Man.
• Brief public speeches, testimonies and manifestos presented orally by local street freedom activists.

Presented by: Phil Millenbah & Hank Hyena