Livable City – Better Streets Plan

Livable City submitted the following comments on the Better Streets Plan Draft for Public Review in December 2008. The revised Better Streets Plan, and and a Better Streets Institutional Analysis being prepared by the Controller's office, are due in October 2009.

Recommendation 1: update the general plan transportation element and urban design element to include these new types by August 2009, and update the maps in the general plan to indicate which city streets are of which type – or which type they should be by December 2009.

Recommendation 2: work with the Department of Public Health to set upper limits for traffic speed and traffic volume for streets of different types, based on rigorous public health and environmental standard, by December 2009.

3. City of trucks. Current city standards, and many of the proposed standards, compromise pedestrian-centered street design to accommodate the movement of large trucks. Minimum roadway widths in San Francisco are considerably wider than those in other cities. This compromises the design of small streets and alleyways, and the side lanes on multi-way boulevards by encouraging excessive traffic speed. Excessively large curb radii excessively lengthen pedestrian crossing distances and encourage vehicles to whip around corners at higher speeds, which compromise pedestrian safety.

Recommendation 3a: reduce the minimum roadway width to those of European and North American 'best practice' cities.

Recommendation 3b: allow 5' curb radii on most streets, and require larger turning radii only on industrial streets, at intersections of throughway streets designated as freight routes in the General Plan, and at intersections where Muni vehicles make turns.

Recommendation 3c: have the Controller's Office assess using smaller and more resource-efficient street sweepers, or street sweepers that can clean tighter corners, to allow shorter radii on curb returns for bus bulbs and corner bulbouts by December 2009.

Recommendation 3d: have the Controller's Office assess using smaller and more resource-efficient fire trucks by December 2009.

Recommendation 4a: work with the Department of Public Health to determine the thresholds for healthy streets by August 2009. Establish a monitoring program for street environmental quality by December 2009 and publish the findings annually.

Recommendation 4b: develop a comprehensive program to make streets healthier places to live, by managing noise, pavement quality, plantings and other buffers by December 2009.

Recommendation 4c: set strict new standards for noise and vibration from city vehicles (exterior noise standards for city buses, trucks, and other vehicles, reduce the volume of sirens on emergency vehicles to lessen stress and hearing damage by December 2009.

5. Home zones (protected residential areas). Cities around the world protect residential areas from excessive traffic speed and volume by establishing home zones. Home zones limit traffic speed to 20km/hour or less using traffic calming and shared space street designs. The goal is to encourage safe movement and play for children, and allow streets to serve as social spaces. Home zones may be as small as a single block, or as large as an entire neighborhood. Some cities have converted extensive areas of the city to home zones.

San Francisco has had a policy calling for protected residential areas in the urban design element of the General Plan for over three decades:

POLICY 4.1
Protect residential areas from the noise, pollution and physical danger of excessive traffic.
In order to reduce the hazards and discomfort of traffic in residential neighborhoods, a plan for protected residential areas should be put into effect. Such a plan is intended to prevent or discourage heavy, fast and through traffic from using residential streets, and to put such traffic on arterial streets where the impact upon residential areas will be less disruptive. Although development of further traffic-carrying capacity on some arterials may be warranted, the local streets should remain as they are or have their capacity reduced.

Recommendation 5a: develop a process for designating residential areas and mixed-use residential areas, from a single block to an entire neighborhood, as home zones by June 2009.

Recommendation 5b: amend the general plan policy to encourage the protection of residential mixed-use areas as home zones by June 2009.

Recommendation 5c: develop a set of home zone design standards, including entry treatments, signage, and traffic calming treatments within the zone by December 2009.

Recommendation 5d: develop a user-friendly home zone design program and capital program within city government by August 2009.

Recommendation 6a: develop a comprehensive street and sidewalk lighting standards by December 2009. Standards should vary somewhat with street type. The standards should be among the world's finest, and require distinguished design, use the fullest possible visible spectrum, provide excellent environmental performance and energy efficiency, and minimize glare, dazzling, and light trespass. Sidewalk lighting should be below the tree canopy.

Recommendation 6b: move the Bureau of Street Lighting into the Department of Public Works by August 2009 if it can be done without a Charter Amendment, and by January 2010 should it require a charter amendment.

Recommendation 6c: develop a capital funding strategy to bring the city's street lighting to the new standard within a decade by December 2009.

Recommendation 7: fund a full update of the public works code in the 2009-2010 city budget.

8. Planning code updates. In some recently-rezoned neighborhoods of the city, the planning code has be updated to protect important bicycle, pedestrian, and transit routes from driveways and curb cuts, to minimize automobile entrances and require that parking be invisible from the street, and to require pedestrian-oriented building fronts and tall ground floors on commercial and mixed-use streets.

Recommendation 8a: update the planning code to remove residential and commercial parking requirements, protect important pedestrian, cycling, and transit streets from driveways and curb cuts, require that parking be invisible from the street, require pedestrian-oriented building fronts on all buildings, and require tall ground floors in all commercial and mixed-use zones citywide by August 2009.

Recommendation 8b: update the planning code to protect important pedestrian, cycling, and transit streets from driveways and curb cuts, and set a maximum width for driveways and garages in all residential zones citywide by August 2009.

9. Neighborhood plans: The Planning Department, Transportation Authority, and Redevelopment Agency have been generating neighborhood plans for the last decade. These plans vary in quality, completeness, and public engagement, but represent a considerable investment of city resources, and represent countless hours of community members' time in shaping the plans.

Recommendation 9a: require that ongoing and future neighborhood plans address transportation, streetscape, and public space needs in a comprehensive way by August 2009.

Recommendation 9b: define a set of neighborhood boundaries that can serve as stable units for inter-agency physical planning, capital planning, operations, maintenance, the gathering and reporting of statistics, and public consultation by August 2009. Neighborhoods shouldn't be too large (exceeding two miles square, or 100,000 residents) nor should they be too numerous.

Recommendation 9c: create comprehensive transportation and streetscape plans for each neighborhood of the city on a rolling basis. Each neighborhood should have a plan within a decade, and each neighborhood plan should be reviewed and updated after no more than 20 years.

Recommendation 9d: create an inter-agency working group to develop an implementation plan for each neighborhood plan completed to date by March 2009.

Recommendation 9e: report annually on the implementation status of each project identified in every adopted neighborhood plan starting in August 2009.

10. Agency reorganization. In San Francisco, taking a project from conceptual plan to detailed plan to funding, construction, evaluation, adjustment, and maintenance is inefficient and often ineffective. Project quality is uneven, costs are high, agency accountability is low, and the system is abstruse and confusing for neighbors and residents.

Recommendation 10: conduct a comprehensive performance audit of the city's street design, construction, management, and maintenance functions to improve its overall effectiveness, transparency, accountability, and responsiveness by December 2009. The audit should recommend specific changes to city practices, policies, organization, codes, and charter.

11. Streets Assessment. In order for the Better Streets plan to make a difference, the city needs to develop a list of priority streets projects. One criterion ought to be the degree of deficiency; what is the state of each street, measured against the minimum and optimum standards for streets of its type? Past assessments by DPW have focused on a state-of-good-repair criterion: what is the condition of the street relative to the city's minimum standards.

Recommendation 11: The Department of Public Works should complete a citywide assessment of the current state of San Francisco streets by December 2009, and, once street types are assigned to various streets, a comparative assessment performed to reveal the degree of deficiency on given streets.

12. Unaccepted streets. Unaccepted streets are streets that have not been formally "accepted", and do not receive city maintenance. Most unaccepted streets are not built to DPW standards; however, some city-maintained streets also don't meet current standards. Officially, maintenance of unaccepted streets is the responsibility of the adjacent property owners, whose responsibility extends to the centerline of the street. In practice, DPW also doesn't have a hard and fast rule about city maintenance; some unaccepted streets do receive city maintenance on an ad-hoc basis. Many unaccepted streets are alleyways, and many can never be accepted, because they are too narrow to accommodate both the city's minimum roadway width (20', as I recall) and minimum-width sidewalks. Other unaccepted streets are in hilly areas and are too steep to be paved. A handful of others are major city streets – like Townsend Street – that are important pedestrian, cycling and transit streets. A number of unaccepted streets are in Port jurisdiction.

City policy around unaccepted streets is unclear. As chair of the Prop K committee, I spoke to some senior public works staff who indicated that the department was interested in transitioning priority unaccepted streets into city-maintained streets as the opportunity arises – keeping in mind that the city can't maintain the current street network in a state of good repair. I recently received an email from a planning department staffer who wrote "DPW is not at this time willing to take on the acceptance of those unaccepted streets, nor the cost to bring them up to acceptable standard".

The notion that unaccepted streets will always remain unaccepted is, well, unacceptable. Some streets are too important for pedestrians, cyclists, and transit to remain in in their current state.

Recommendation 12a: The city should develop a strategy and policy regarding unaccepted streets by June 2009. One idea is that streets could be sorted into three "buckets" – streets that should be rebuilt as accepted streets, small streets that could become potential 'living streets' (pedestrian-priority or pedestrianized alleyways and small streets, either publicly or privately maintained); and 'paper streets' that could become public plazas, green open spaces, or greenways.

Recommendation 12b: develop an action plan and identify funding to improve and accept important pedestrian, cycling, or transit streets by June 2009, and updated periodically. Candidates include Townsend Street from 4th to 7th; Cargo Way; Division between 8th and Potrero; Kansas from Division to Alameda; Niantic from St. Charles to Ocean View Village.

Recommendation 12c: Develop a living streets program to offer design assistance and matching grants for alleyways that are good candidates for living streets by December 2009. The partnership between CCDC and DPW on the Chinatown Alleyways Master Plan is a successful example. Specific programs should be developed and lead staff people identified for the Hayes Valley and Lower Polk alleyways; Mission District alleyways; North Beach alleyways; SoMa alleyways; Downtown alleyways.

Recommendation 12d: Dedicate appropriate public streets as public open spaces, and develop an action plan for securing funding commitments to construction and future maintenance by December 2009, with periodic updates. Candidates include Terry Francois Street (entire length), Kern Street in Glen Park, the Mission Creek Greenway (Treat and Division streets from 17th to San Bruno Avenue), and the blocks of Union, Davis, Vallejo adjoining the Embarcadero.

13. Prioritization of modes: official policy, as written in the city charter, instructs MTA to prioritize the safe and effective movement of pedestrians, cyclists, and transit vehicles over automobile movement. In practice, however, private autos are still given priority in the planning and operation of many city streets, and the city has not effectively implemented the charter's

Recommendation 13a: adopt the modal priorities in the city charter into an official MTA policy on modal priorities by April 2009.

Recommendation 13b: review MTA practices by September 2009 to ensure that modal priority policies are followed in the design, planning, operations, and maintenance of streets.

14. Medians: The Better Streets Plan is very keen on medians. There is little evidence that medians serve to slow traffic; some experts are of the opinion that medians separating opposing traffic lanes can actually speed traffic. Medians can also compete for scarce right-of-way with bicycle lanes and wider sidewalks, which offer concrete benefits to sustainable transportation modes. Median lighting tends to be rather useless for effectively lighting sidewalks, and the presence of raised medians and median lighting interferes with road diet projects. While many European street designs use raised medians to separate local traffic lanes from through traffic lanes on multi-way boulevards, they often dispense with center medians, instead allocating available street-right-of-way to the pedestrian realm along the sides of the street. The policy, contained in the plan, that pedestrian crossing distances should not exceed 60' without a pedestrian refuge, is a good one. Narrowing the roadway by extending the sidewalks, although more expensive, is a superior way of reducing pedestrian crossing distances to less than 60' on many streets. The widest streets should have medians. Medians, if they are sufficiently wide, can enhance a street by providing more green space (Dolores Street), but only where sufficient right-of-way exists to provide for generous sidewalks, sidewalk planting basins, and bicycle lanes.

Recommendation 14a: Adopt a policy by March 2009 that medians should not be enlarged or improved on streets where the sidewalks are of inadequate width (i.e. Divisadero, Guerrero, Richardson, Lombard, etc.) or where a road diet could provide for bicycle lanes and/or wider sidewalks (Divisadero, Guerrero, Monterey, etc.)

Recommendation 14b: where pedestrian crossing distances can be reduced to 60' feet or less through curb extensions and/or a road diet, do so in preference to installing or widening a median.

15. Crosswalks: The Better Streets Plan recommends that high-visibility crosswalks be used consistently in school zones and mid-block crossings, but should be 'considered' at other crossings. The reasons cited for not using them more broadly is that they cost four times more than conventional crosswalks (lateral stripes), and to avoid the "over-proliferation and eventual dilution of the marking's effectiveness". As to the former reason, cost, it should be noted that the cost of a high-visibility crosswalk is minor compared to that of other improvements, like traffic lights and bulb outs, and cost shouldn't be a factor here. As to the latter, it is odd that the notion that wide use will reduce effectiveness seems only to apply to high visibility crosswalks, and not to the proliferation of other traffic control devices and signs.

Recommendation 15: High visibility crosswalks be used consistently in school zones (in accordance with state law), and on mid-block crossings, but also on throughway streets, especially where high traffic volumes and bad road design necessitate greater pedestrian visibility (Lombard & Richardson streets, Marina Boulevard, 19th Avenue, Park Presidio, Geneva Avenue, Bayshore Boulevard, Potrero Avenue, South-of-Market streets, etc.). Complement high-visibility crosswalks with corner bulbouts and other pedestrian safety features.

16. peak-period tow away zones: Peak-period tow-away zones hurt businesses by limiting curbside parking or flex parking opportunities, and degrade the pedestrian environment by eliminating the buffer between the pedestrian throughway and speeding traffic and by precluding corner bulb-outs. Prioritizing peak-period traffic flow over neighborhood parking runs counter to the admonition in the city charter to "protect the City's economic health by giving priority to commercial deliveries and access to local businesses", and the planning code's voter-approved priority policies “That existing neighborhood-serving retail uses be preserved and enhanced and future opportunities for resident employment in and ownership of such businesses enhanced” and “That commuter traffic not impede Muni transit service or overburden our streets or neighborhood parking". Where necessary, curbside parking should be removed to improve transit movement, cycling, or widen sidewalks, but removing parking to accommodate automobile commuters violates city policy.

Recommendation 16: develop an action plan for phasing peak-period tow-way zones wherever they occur by the end of 2010.

17. double turn lanes: Double left-turn lanes and double right-turn lanes are a danger to pedestrians and cyclists. DPT used to have an informal program of reviewing and in some cases removing double turn lanes, which should be formalized and expanded upon by MTA. A moratorium on new double-turn lanes should be enacted; unfortunately, the city has added some recently (Folsom and Main).

Recommendation 17a: Adopt a moratorium on new double-turn lanes immediately.

Recommendation 17b: catalogue the city's existing double turn lanes, and develop an action plan by June 2009 for removing them.

18. traffic and parking signage: The city's street signage is badly done. Overall, the city relies too much on signage, and should investigate using better roadway designs, rather than signs, that indicate to road users what to do and not to do. 'Shared space' road designs de-emphasize signage in favor of better road design, and many of these designs have proven much safer than conventionally signed streets (Kensington High Street, for example). Many of the city's signs are difficult to read or interpret. The design of signage has advanced considerably in recent years by integrating research from cognitive science and optics to improve legibility and visibility.

Recommendation 18: conduct a through review of San Francisco's signage standards, and consult with best-in-the-world designers (like Mijksenaar) to create best-in-the-world signage and policies for consistent and effective sign placement.

19: street signage: San Francisco's distinctive black-and-white street signs are iconic, but hard to read – often small, erratically placed or missing entirely, with the hard-to-read all-capitals font. The city has been compensating by mounting big, green, freeway-style signs on larger streets. These green signs are more legible, and feel like a concession to traffic operating at excessive speeds. Other cities face the same problem – on a recent trip, I noticed that Los Angeles, Burbank, and Beverly Hills all have supplemented their distinct but hard-to-see local signage with the big green signs using Highway Gothic. San Francisco should solve the problem in an elegant way.

Recommendation 19: develop a new 'family' of street signage by mid-2010 that is both distinctive and shares a degree of continuity with San Francisco's existing signage, yet is more readable, and able to be scaled to streets of different types.

20: granite curbstones: San Francisco's granite curbstones, quarried in the Sierra Nevada, are another distinctive feature that are disappearing. These stones can last a century or more, requiring only that they be reset every few decades as they subside. They are tough enough to withstand buses and trucks, which often break conventional concrete curbs. Yet DPW policy has been to remove these stones, and replace them with shorter-lived concrete curbs. Allegedly these stones are being stored in a DPW yard somewhere, but I am dubious. DPW's rationale is that installing or resetting these curbstones is labor intensive, and the city is better off with shorter-lived concrete curbs. This thinking is profoundly un-ecological (Concrete curbstones minimize initial labor cost, but create more waste and consume more energy over their life cycle). Disappearance of these granite curbstones also contribute to the increasing homogenization of the urban environment.

Livable City comments on the Draft Better Streets Plan