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
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

The SFCTA has gathered data about the use of these private shuttles in the city in order to create a set of policy recommendations about their usage. The policies are intended to mitigate problems that have arisen due to the shuttles – noise and safety, loading area vehicle conflicts, double parking, etc. – while also maintaining the many benefits they provide.

These benefits have been studied thoroughly and quantified in the TA’s report. The shuttles reduce the amount of car trips to Silicon Valley by about one third of a million trips per year, improving the local environment, quality of life, and the transportation systems effectiveness. The report methodology also included surveys and interviews to flesh out various perspectives and experiences with shuttle services.  Many of the people who use these shuttles say they live car free because of the service, and 14% say they would leave their current employer if the shuttles weren’t offered. Local businesses near the shuttle stops also report that they receive more customers because of people waiting for the shuttles.

Although there are many benefits associated with these shuttles, the report calls out a few problems they cause as well.

Problems
The large shuttles heading south have several problems:

• They are too big for the small residential streets they operate on
  • blocking traffic, pedestrian sight lines
  • they are loud and cause vibrations
  • eroding the streets and curbs
• They block MUNI bus stops
• They have long loading and idling times.

The smaller shuttles:

• Are rarely full
• Eleven independent shuttle services.

Policy Solutions

The report concludes with a number of policy recommendations.

For the larger regional shuttles:

• The MTA should have more oversight over the shuttles routes and stops
• Best practices recommend that the MTA should use its enforcement of specialized curb zones and the shared bus stop policies to influence shuttle routes.

The local employer shuttles:

• The MTA could take over some of these routes
• The diverse shuttles services should combine into centralized entity, funded by the businesses with oversight by the MTA.

This shuttle services SAR will be presented to the Transportation Authority Board’s Plans and Program Committee in December or early January. Visit the TA website for more specific information on next steps in the process.

http://www.sfcta.org/content/view/584/380/

Thanks so much to everyone who helped us with the planning, the design, activism, and who helped with the 40+ community meeting we attended or hosted to gather input. This is your award too!

In the next few weeks we will be applying for the National APA Award. Wish us luck!

Suzanne Chen-Harding who is the project manager for MTA, provided a review of the EN TRIPS process – an 18 to 24 month technical analysis project with the purpose of preparing various transportation improvements projects outlined in the Eastern Neighborhoods area plans for actual implementation. The MTA’s aim is to take those projects through technical vetting, feasibility analysis, design specifics and “environmental clearance” with the EN TRIPS process. The Board of Supervisors has already given direction to address three high priority projects:

• Turning Folsom into a two-way ‘Civic Boulevard’
• Townsend Street pedestrian improvements
• 16th Street transit corridor improvements

While the Community Task Force will be able to guide the city in its detailed analysis of these three key projects, the community will also have the opportunity to identify and prioritize other transportation improvements to be addressed in the EN TRIPS study. The question about what will be the full scope of projects for the city’s EN TRIPS process was the major point of discussion at the Task Force meeting on Tuesday. Suzanne’s presentation noted a long list of “Other possible key projects types may include,” and MTA seems open to as broad a scope of projects as possible beyond the big three high priority items for the study. Though, she also cautioned that there “needs to be a level of managed expectations.” One strategy to be discussed would be to bundle together additional improvements projects that are related to the three big projects listed above. Alternatively the community could decide to prioritize some of the numerous other identified potential improvements projects more broadly within the Eastern Neighborhoods area that may not get addressed other than through the EN TRIPS process. Yet another approach would be “opportunistic” by focusing on improvements projects in the geographic context of development activity, thus leveraging both public and private investments to implement transportation improvements. The Task Force asked if the Planning Department can provide information on the pipeline of development projects in the EN TRIPS study area, so that the priority for transportation improvements can also be considered relative to impending development. Jon Swae of Planning said the department should be able to fulfill that request.

Discussing, debating and advocating for the “right” scope of projects to be analyzed in the EN TRIPS study is a first essential step in this process, and we expect that the Community Task Force will be a central venue for those discussions. These choices require the knowledge of the people who know these neighborhoods the best, and are the perfect example of why community input is integral to forming a more livable city. As part of our independent “community facilitator” role in the EN TRIPS process, Urban Ecology is creating several tools that will assist the community and the city agencies in making these hard choices:

1. We are collecting information on all the potential projects described in the Eastern Neighborhood Area Plans as well as in other concurrent processes – the W. Soma Plan, the Mission Streetscape, the TEP, etc. This list is still being built in collaboration with MTA, Planning Dept and the city’s consultant Nelson/Nygaard and will be distributed as soon as we polish it up. Our hope is to also map out all those projects (there are literally dozens) to create a clear “picture” of potential transportation improvements on the horizon. We believe this list will be a first opportunity for both the community and the city to look at the big picture net effect of these concurrent projects.
2. We are compiling an annotated library/bibliography of all the studies and plans either active, recently completed or to be undertaken within the Eastern Neighborhoods. Again there are literally dozens, including some esoteric works such as the Mission Bay Shuttle Study and the TA’s On Street Parking study and the Caltrain Bike Master Plan. We believe the collective information and findings from all of these reports can be highly informative for the community in understanding “who is doing what” when it comes to transportation decision making in these neighborhoods and how the EN TRIPS process connects with other plans and processes.

The Task Force suggested that we hold a community workshop in August to talk about all the projects, studies, and the issues and opportunities that the residents of the districts within the Eastern Neighborhoods know about in order to begin making recommendations to MTA on the scope of projects to include in the EN TRIPS study. We will outreach widely for people to attend the workshop. Activities we do at that Task Force workshop will also be available to the community through the online mapping tools Urban Ecology has created to facilitate input opportunities on EN TRIPS. We will be giving full tutorials on these mapping tools at the workshop and on an as-requested basis.

Look for more information on the August workshop and other updates on the city’s EN TRIPS process soon.