citymaus

“A few days ago, a story was circulating about how the infrastructure bill, which was recently passed by the House of Representatives, included funding for research on beacons to be worn by cyclists and pedestrians to make them legible to autonomous vehicles. A story in Forbes noted that the bill “formalizes the acceptance of so-called ‘vehicle to everything’ (V2X) technology that, on the face of it, promises enhanced safety on the roads for pedestrians and cyclists.”

The assumption in the tourist’s statement is clear and brutal: it is the responsibility of humans to adapt to their technical milieu. For the sake of a development he likely neither needed or desired, this man’s environment was transformed so as to render it hostile to him, but it is somehow his fault for failing to promptly adapt himself to the new reality. As Illich notes, there’s not even an air of the tragic in the tourist’s claim. One can imagine some not-too-distant future when a cyclist is struck and killed by an autonomous vehicle and an observer declares, “Well, she wasn’t even wearing her beacon, so she had it coming to her.”

As I thought about Illich’s anecdote, my own parental anxiety to convey to my children the importance of minding the cars around them at all times appeared in a new light. When one remembers that it has not always been necessary to carefully train a child, with ritualistic precision, just so that they can walk about without fear of mortal injury, then the whole thing takes on a rather absurd and malicious character.

Once you see this dynamic in one set of circumstances, you start to see it again and again. In innumerable ways we bend ourselves to fit the pattern of a techno-economic order that exists for its own sake and not for ours.” 

read more: theconvivialsociety, 21.11.21. 

bay area transportation project road map. from BART’s expansion to SF’s rail extension, here’s when 10 major transit upgrades will (finally) be done. sfchronicle, 20.10.2021.

ODOT plans to widen freeway next to a middle school in portland. 

read more: bikeportland, 19.08.21 & 28.04.21.

the bay area ridge trail, first proposed “in the 1980s by William Penn Mott Jr., who by then had directed public lands agencies in the East Bay for 40 years and later helmed the National Park Service.” 

read more: sfchronicle, 30.07.2021. 

“The San Diego Association of Governments (SANDAG) published a notice of preparation (NOP) for environmental review of a central mobility hub — either at the Navy’s Old Town Campus or a site between Interstate 5 and Pacific Highway near the northeastern edge of the airport. It would become the region’s primary transportation center, connecting all rail and bus lines with a people mover to the airport.

rendering of the “central mobility hub”

“The submission is a formal act alerting the public and various governmental agencies that SANDAG intends to prepare an environmental impact report (EIR) through a state process mandated by the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). Members of the public have until May 28 to provide input on what the agency should study in its report. Then, SANDAG will work toward releasing a draft environmental analysis of different options in December of 2022, said Keith Greer, who is in charge of environmental compliance. 

“For the region’s lead transportation agency, the NOP is a small step, albeit a pivotal one, with monumental implications. It also marks the first major milestone toward the region’s quest to bring high-speed transit to the airport since the SANDAG board in 2019 agreed to more deeply study several options and routes, including an underground or elevated people mover. 

SANDAG’s preference is to build its central mobility hub on the Navy’s 70-acre Old Town Complex, or what’s commonly referred to as NAVWAR. The proposed NAVWAR revitalization effort is a joint commitment between the Navy and SANDAG, cemented in 2019, to redevelop the military’s obsolete cybersecurity campus with the transit hub alongside all-new Navy facilities, housing, retail and private-sector office space.”

read more: sd-ut, 21.04.2021. 

seamless bay area: vision map and caltrain-BART integrated rail system map.

read more: mercurynews, 13.04.2021. 

terry taplin, new berkeley city councilmember. 

read more: berkeleyside, 18.12.2020. 

new print by chris arvin! commissioned by the sf transit riders union. 

“At this hour, there were only about 10 people on the bus, mostly sleepy commuters getting off the night shift. But there was one woman she flagged immediately as a potential PIN (Person In Need). She was an elder, white hair stuck to her pale forehead, with a tattered raincoat hanging off one shoulder and three canvas bags slumped at her feet. As Cruz passed her seat, the woman began talking and gesturing. “They are all dogs,” she said. Her voice got louder. “They are dogs and killers!” Surreptitiously, Cruz checked to see whether the PIN had an earbud. Negative. She was talking to herself.

It wasn’t necessarily a sign of distress. Lots of people talk to themselves without realizing it. Still, Cruz made a mental note to keep an eye on the woman, looking for signs of escalation. Part of her training involved mental health interventions, and the rule was to leave people alone unless they were overwhelmingly disruptive — or a danger to themselves or others. She took a seat behind the potential PIN, trying to beam a chill vibe directly into her brain.

morning commute on muni. flickr/dlytle

“A Black woman in a nurse’s uniform got on the bus at Masonic, and the PIN in front of Cruz got agitated. “Your dog is killing me!” she screamed. “It almost bit my face!” Ignoring her, the nurse walked to the back of the bus and sat down with a sigh. The PIN was just getting started, though. She screamed again. “Call off your dogs!” A few of the sleepy commuters woke up, and one moved to a seat farther from the PIN. The woman continued to yell about dog attacks. This was officially a disturbance...

Gently, Cruz put her hand on the PIN’s arm...

“Hey, I’m with Muni Social Support,” Cruz said. “Do you need some help? We can find you a warm meal or a place to sleep tonight. Or we can get you a doctor if you are hurt.” The woman turned to Cruz, face distorted by rage or confusion — maybe both. She glared at Cruz’s hand, brown against her white bicep. Cruz thought about how the PIN had started really losing it when the Black nurse got on board. Was this going to become a thing? Was this woman going to pull a Karen?

read more: sfchronicle, 12.07.2020. 

social workers on public transit to take care of the “crazies” and homeless. what do you think? would you support it? 

“In Oakland, a city that’s seen school closures and a rapid rise in homelessness in recent years, the police budget takes up around 44% of the total city budget. And yet, OPD has been under federal oversight for nearly two decades and has failed to meet standards for reform. After the 2016 sex abuse scandal and numerous fatal police shootings over the past decade, activists are calling for Oakland to take millions of dollars out of its police budget and invest in social services while the city council grapples with a budget crisis due to the COVID-19 economic shutdown.

Below, activists, educators and artists imagine what community-driven efforts to keep the peace could look like in Oakland.”

“In conjunction with our defund OPD campaign, we’ve been very focused on building a model of response to mental health and interpersonal violence that does not rely on law enforcement. We don’t understand why—when we should be sending compassionate care—we’re sending a badge and a gun. We made a very specific demand in the last budget cycle to redirect money from the police to make sure that Oakland had a 24/7 mental health crisis response team.”

—Cat Brooks, Anti Police-Terror Project

“As someone who grew up in the ’80s, when you were pulled over by the police and the first thing they told you was, ‘Don’t fucking move. I’ll shoot you. I promise you.’ We absolutely have to do away with that system. It still exists today, it’s just more relevant now because it’s on camera. We have to defund the police to eventually abolish them. That money needs to be put into reentry programs, taking care of the homeless, education, and mental health programs. I remember being a kid and going to a Boys and Girls Club-type thing after school, and when they shut that down I didn’t have anything to do but be in the streets.”

—Rasheed Lockheart, reentry coordinator at Planting Justice

“Historically, the police are an institution that is built on the foundation of slave catching. Throughout my entire life growing up here [in Oakland] and in Los Angeles, I have never had a good experience with the police. 

I want specialized experts who address sexual assault, I want specialized experts to be able to come to somebody’s home when there are mental health issues.

I would like to have collaborative programs for when I have issues with noise or fireworks in my community, or I notice someone is abusing an animal. I would like for service workers to be easily accessible. I don’t believe the police are necessary for that. We don’t need force of peacekeepers who are so heavily militarized.

I believe in abolishing the police and I think it starts with defunding them. But I fully believe we have to transition to another way of keeping the peace. That’s something that’s many years away, but it has to evolve from investing in things that work."

—Favianna Rodriguez, artist and president of the Center for Cultural Power

read more: kqed, 15.06.2020.

“This lack of cars has contributed to a sudden drop in emissions of carbon dioxide, pollutants like nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter. Its effect on oil prices has been not so much a drop as an implosion. Some cities have temporarily turned emptier streets into walking and cycling-only zones to enable socially distanced exercise. 

Meanwhile, Milan—the epicentre of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak—announced it would transform 35km (21.7 miles) of its streets for cycling post-lockdown. Could this pandemic, a global emergency, actually catalyse an ongoing movement towards cleaner air—and might Milan’s scheme form a blueprint for cities that have repeatedly tried to tackle the domination of the car?

new bikeways in milan for physical distancing. twitter/demescope, 30.04.2020.

“To accommodate streets now busier with bikes, as well as facilitate social distancing, some places have installed temporary cycle lanes or closed streets to cars. Pop-up bike lanes have appeared in cities including Berlin, Budapest, Mexico City, New York, Dublin and Bogotá. Governments from New Zealand to Scotland have made funding available for temporary cycle lanes and walkways amid the pandemic. In Brussels, the entire city core will become a priority zone for cyclists and pedestrians from early May for the forseeable future. Meanwhile, temporary street closures to cars have taken place in Brighton, Bogotá, Cologne, Vancouver and Sydney as well as multiple US cities including Boston, Denver and Oakland. In England, restrictions have been lifted to enable and encourage councils to more quickly close streets to cars.

But these, of course, are temporary measures. What will happen as lockdowns are lifted?

There are widespread concerns that as travel resumes, people will avoid public transport amid continuing fears of the virus and instead turn to private cars, clogging roads and causing pollution, perhaps even more so than before. Chinese cities, including Beijing and Shanghai, are already seeing this happen.

A decline in car use cannot be expected unless people have efficient, accessible and affordable alternative options. But as Fataar points out, mobility is linked to every aspect of life in cities, and a change in car use may only be possible if issues around housing, public services, and work culture are addressed too. Such huge volumes of commuting, for instance, may not be necessary if working from home is made easier, services are more equally distributed geographically or people can afford to live within walking distance of their work.

“Policy and behaviour change may take a long time, but there exists a building momentum across the world that recognises car-free streets as a critical way of tackling the urgent climate crisis, as well as a strategy to improve health and wellbeing. This pandemic has resulted in countless forced changes to our lifestyles, economies and environments. Seeing what’s possible can lead to change—the question is how to ensure the change resulting from this global emergency improves health for people and planet.

We are a long way off from the demise of the car, but as the world seeks to recover from the collective trauma of the Covid-19 pandemic, perhaps the willingness to tackle another deadly emergency—outdoor air pollution causes—will get stronger.

“This Covid-19 crisis is allowing us a glimpse of what a changed world looks like with far fewer cars and much cleaner air,” says Claudia Adriazola-Steil, deputy director of the Urban Mobility Program at the World Resources Institute. “Dramatic change is indeed possible.”

read more: bbc, 29.04.2020. 

in 1954, turning market street into a car park seemed like a good idea.

read more: sf.streetsblog, 28.08.15. 

presidio tunnel tops park begins construction. 

“The target completion date was 2018 when a design team was selected in 2014 for what then was a $51 million project. Now the budget is $118 million — all but $20 million to come from private donors — and the space is set to open in fall 2021.

The park is intended to complete the transformation of the descent from the Main Post and Crissy Field — evoking topography that was altered in the 1930s when the Doyle Drive viaduct was erected to link downtown San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge.”

read more: sfchronicle, 07.11.19. sfexaminer, 07.11.19.  

the global march for the climate.

read more and more photos: “protesting climate change, young people take to streets in a global strike.” nytimes, 20.09.19.

kids/youth need to get their parents to STOP DRIVING and making choices that are deleterious for their future. 

graphics/maps by john blanchard.

read more: “the bay area's 11 biggest transportation projects.” sfchronicle, 14.03.19. 

“It’s the most expensive public works project in the history of California. Years behind schedule, it cost more than 25 times what was originally promised.

I’m talking, of course, of the replacement of the Eastern Span of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, which opened in 2013–six years behind schedule, for a whopping $6.5 billion. It was supposed to cost $250 million.

Rightfully, people complained and criticized, yet nobody talked about abandoning a partially built bridge.

Last month, the state auditor released an 87-page report analyzing problems with California’s high-speed rail project, which is already helping to modernize woefully neglected rail infrastructure throughout the state. When completed, it will one day link Northern and Southern California, as well as cities in between, with the kind of modern, high-speed trains that are currently taken for granted in advanced economies throughout the world.

Naturally, petroleum-backed lobbyists, failed politicians, and anti-tax crusaders immediately seized upon the report to call, again, for killing it.

In reality, the audit merely identified everything that is wrong with how large public-works projects are funded in California and the United States. The takeaway should be that we need to reform “environmental” laws that allow NIMBYs to tie up projects in pointless lawsuits, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars. The state also needs to stop outsourcing management and oversight.

And most of all, we need to return to a political system where two sides debate the merits of a project such as HSR and, if a majority decision is made to move forward, even those on the losing side act like adults and help build it. Or at least stop trying to sabotage it, as Jeff Denham and others in California’s Republican delegation did last year in Washington–despite the fact that HSR is still supported by the majority of the people of California.

construction of the muscat avenue viaduct west of state route 99, just east of cedar avenue in fresno, 2017. 

“Most opponents of high-speed rail don’t care a lick about “fiscal responsibility,” or, safety, or anything like it—it’s about oil interests, and the politicians and ‘think tanks’ they back, protecting their gold-plated rice bowls. It’s why we never see them sending out press releases about over-budget road projects or pushing referendums to kill the latest fruitless road widening.

Remember that when you’re waiting in airport security lines or stewing in mind-numbing traffic jams this holiday season, deprived of the modern rail choices that are enjoyed everywhere else in the developed world.”

read more: sf.streetsblog, 18.12.18. 

“The $1.6 billion Central Subway to Chinatown is over a year behind schedule, but SFMTA is moving forward with plans to extend it into the Marina district–and perhaps as far as the Presidio.

Last night the SFMTA held the second of two “kickoff” meetings, this one at the Marina Middle School, to discuss plans for extending the subway north of Chinatown. About fifty people showed up to discuss possible alignments with transit planners. Eric Kingsbury, a transit advocate who attended the meeting, lives in the Marina and currently takes the 30X Marina Express bus every day to his job downtown. “The 30 is one of the slowest lines in the entire city,” he told Streetsblog. “It takes at least forty minutes every day… to go three miles.”

“That future could take a while. The extension is currently unfunded and even the San Francisco Transit Riders’ estimation of it being ten years off is probably optimistic. Kingsbury said he was told by an SFMTA official at the meeting that even twenty years would be ambitious.”

read more: sf.streetsblog, 06.12.18.  more info: central subway extension—phase iii of the t third rail project, sfmta.