Featured

An Open Letter to California Streets Readers

Posted by
October 30, 2012
NextMuni sign, 24-Divis

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To the readers, subscribers, and friends of California Streets,

After a summer hiatus to run a camping program for individuals with developmental disabilities (learn more at travelcampkrem.wordpress.com), I’m back and plan to start posting regularly again. Thank you for sticking around. Please subscribe via RSS or email to stay up-to-date on posts, and for even more content and conversation about sustainable transportation, join our hundreds of followers on Twitter or Facebook.

A lot has changed since my last post nearly six months ago, both in my life and in California’s transportation scene – for one, I now live in Marin County. The challenges of being car-free in the suburbs have provided a lot of frustration for me so far, but also a lot of inspiration. I look forward to bringing you more original content in my indignant and geeky style.

Thank you for your support. Please join me in sending California’s thoughts and prayers to the East Coast as they begin to recover from the impact of Hurricane Sandy.

Matt Nelson
@calstreets

Cities, Featured

Personal Car-Sharing Goes Nationwide

Posted by
March 5, 2012

RelayRides is expanding, and as of this morning the car-sharing startup is making its brand of car sharing available to car owners and renters nationwide. For the first time, the benefits of car sharing are now available in smaller urban markets, the suburbs, or even in rural areas thanks to the company’s peer-to-peer model based on neighbors renting out their cars to fellow neighbors by the hour or by the day. This contrasts with car-sharing stalwart Zipcar’s model that requires the company to own and maintain a fleet of cars.

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Featured, Transit

Your Muni System is Under Attack

Posted by
February 26, 2012

Muni Streetcar on Ocean Avenue, San FranciscoThe San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is facing a budget deficit of some $53 million over the next two fiscal years. Unfortunately for us, there are no obvious places for the agency to cut costs or generate new revenue – yes, they’ve tried everything, and the only option left is to cut transit service that is already at a historically thin level after a 10 percent cut just two years ago…

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Highways, Transit

Bay Bridge Work Goes Smoothly, Span Reopens Early (UPDATED)

Posted by
February 20, 2012

Last weekend’s Bay Bridge closure went smoothly according to Caltrans, and the bridge opened more than 24 hours ahead of schedule. BART saw increased ridership because of the closure and because of the agency’s limited all-night service. Motorists can expect a slightly different alignment of the bridge leaving the toll plaza – a conflicting chunk of the old span was eliminated so that construction of the new east span can continue. The next time the Bay Bridge will close, according to spokesman Bart Ney, will be Labor Day 2013, when the new east span is expected to open. [CBS5]

Updated 2:50 p.m.: Ridership numbers released today show BART had a really big weekend during the closure, including its fifth busiest Saturday ever.

Featured, Transit

A Renewed Call for Oakland Streetcars

Posted by
February 20, 2012

Possible alignment for the Broadway streetcar corridor in Oakland.

Officials will soon launch a new study on the potential costs and benefits associated with building a streetcar line in Oakland (a city which, in the interest of full disclosure, this writer hella loves). This isn’t the first time The O has looked at bringing back rail, but the lack of any viable funding plan means the cars won’t be rolling any time soon.

The idea is to lay rail down a corridor roughly from MacArthur BART to Jack London Square via Broadway – backers promise that the permanency of the rails and catenary would then encourage economic development along the corridor in a way that a bus line could never do. The streetcar corridor would also link established employment centers including Kaiser and Alta Bates Summit Medical Center to BART, Amtrak, and the ferry terminal, as well as the future East Bay Bus Rapid Transit service.

Currently Broadway is served by a number of AC Transit lines as well as the popular Free B shuttle. The shuttle is, as the name implies, fare-free, and operates on an annual budget of nearly $770,000. It is claimed to result in nearly $10 million in purchases for merchants along the corridor, but streetcar backers have their eyes on an even bigger prize – they hope to replicate the success of Portland’s groundbreaking modern streetcar line, which has reportedly resulted in billions of dollars of development in that city.

Bikes & Pedestrians, Transit

Find Hotels Based on Walking or Transit Travel Times With New Google Tool

Posted by
February 16, 2012

A search of hotels within a 15-minute transit ride of the Moscone Center in San Francisco using Google Hotel Finder.

A new tool from Google lets users find hotels based on travel time – now it is easy to see hotels that match simple criteria such as “within a 10 minute walk of the convention center” or “no more than a 20 minute transit ride away” . This tool could disrupt the mostly complacent online travel search industry, which has failed to focus on the role transit and walkability plays in the lives of travelers visiting unfamiliar cities.

It is nowhere near as detailed as Walkscore’s Apartment Search tool, which lets you drill down Craigslist housing listings based on advanced criteria such as the proximity to specific bus lines. The interface is also somewhat clunky and Google admits the tool is currently an “experiment”, but hopefully other travel sites will feel the need to step up and offer similar functionality. Give it a try at google.com/hotelfinder.

Cities

Help OpenPlans Find What Makes a Street Beautiful

Posted by
February 16, 2012

Is your street beautiful? What makes it so – is it a landscaped median, wide sidewalks, or perhaps a green bike lane? Is it possible that a few specific elements are all that separate a beautiful street from less desirable ones?

The totally rad folks at OpenPlans are trying to answer these questions. The non-profit org, whose mission is to promote sustainable mobility with new technology and open data, launched beautiful.st on Valentine’s Day – the site presents users with photos of two streets and asks one simple question: which is more beautiful? All data collected will be publicly available online for anyone to download and parse. [Atlantic Cities]

Bikes & Pedestrians, Featured

Downtown L.A. Bike Lane Giving Film Industry Fits

Posted by
February 15, 2012

Green bike lanes have been popping up on streets all across the state in recent years, and for good reason – they provide a semi-protected area for cyclists and communicate to motorists that this is a place where cars are forbidden in a way that a simple white stripe cannot. But one green bike lane in downtown Los Angeles is causing quite an outrage with the film industry (which, we hear, has some sway in this town).

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Featured, Transit

Washington Roundup: Obama Proposes Big Money for High-Speed Rail, BART to San Jose, Central & Westside Subways

Posted by
February 15, 2012

It was a huge week in Washington for the transportation sector as the issues we care about took center stage – here’s a roundup of the important storylines for California emerging from the District of Columbia:

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