[TLC Member News & Alerts] Stop Home Depot Gridlock * Complete Streets movement is growing! * Daly City planning workshops

[Tom Radulovich]

STOP HOME DEPOT GRIDLOCK!
San Francisco Board of Supervisors
Thursday, October 25, 4:30 PM special order
Board of Supervisors' chambers, City Hall

The proposed Home Depot Store on Bayshore Boulevard is headed to the  
Board of Supervisors tomorrow. The project, a 120,000 square foot  
store with a 525-car parking structure, is located on Bayshore  
Boulevard, a key north-south bicycle and public transit corridor.

TLC is urging the Board of Supervisors to reject the project's  
Environmental Impact Report (EIR) as inadequate; it contains  
unacceptable negative impacts on the city's multimodal transportation  
system, environment, and neighborhood economies which must be  
mitigated before the project can be allowed to move forward. The  
report predicts that the 800-1200 cars per hour that the store is  
planned to generate will clog intersections on a number of important  
Muni routes, including Mission Street, and Cortland, Potrero, and  
Silver avenues. The traffic congestion the store would generate will  
degrade Muni's on-time service across a broad swath of the city as  
well as increase Muni operating costs, which will translate into  
further service cuts. Muni's 9-San Bruno line will be one of the  
worst affected; this line, which connects the Bayview and Visitacion  
Valley neighborhoods to Downtown and Chinatown in one direction and  
the Balboa Park BART/Muni station in the other, is an important  
lifeline for the city's southeastern neighborhoods, and will become  
even more important  when the 15-Third line is discontinued sometime  
next year. The Potrero-Bayshore-San Bruno Corridor is designated as a  
future bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor; the city MUST secure the  
transit right-of-way before the Home Depot project is approved. The  
current Home Depot project also jeopardizes efforts to calm traffic  
and establish bike lanes on Cesar Chavez Street, and to establish a  
continuous bicycle network connecting Cesar Chavez, Potrero,  
Bayshore, and San Bruno. The city must come up with its plan to  
secure and improve pedestrian, bicycle, and transit access on  
Bayshore and surrounding streets before approving this vast traffic- 
generating project.

TLC is also concerned about the impact of more big-box stores like  
Home Depot on the overall livability of the city. Numerous studies,  
including the Bay Area Economic Forum's "Supercenters and the  
Transformation of the Bay Area Grocery Industry: Issues, Trends, and  
Impacts" (January 2004) point out that big box stores generate  
profits by pushing many costs onto the public, in the form of local  
and regional traffic congestion and degraded air quality. Approving  
Home Depot will probably drive neighborhood hardware stores across  
San Francisco out of business, which makes the city less livable for  
people without cars. Neighborhood hardware stores often help anchor  
neighborhood commercial districts, so approval of Home Depot could  
prove to be yet another economic blow to San Francisco's transit- 
accessible neighborhood shopping districts. The city has not even  
begun to tally the social, economic, and environmental consequences  
of its pursuit of big-box retail; it should do so before taking us  
further down that unsustainable road.

Please take the time to contact your Supervisor and ask them to  
reject the Home Depot EIR. For contact information, see http:// 
www.sfbike.org/?leaders


COMPLETE STREETS:
SAN FRANCISCO'S EMERGING GRASSROOTS ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT STRATEGY?

As official San Francisco debates proposals for big-box retail,  
waterfront shopping malls, auto-centric office parks, and other super- 
tired suburban transplants, a growing, grassroots movement is  
pursuing a truly urban and sustainable strategy for improving the  
livability and economic health of the city: complete streets.

TLC has long been a proponent of complete streets. According to the  
Thunderhead Alliance, complete streets "are designed and operated to  
enable safe access for all users.  Pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists  
and bus riders of all ages and abilities are able to safely move  
along and across a complete street." In addition to providing  
sustainable and equitable mobility, complete streets provide  
significant social, economic, and environmental benefits to cities  
and neighborhoods. A growing body of research links quality,  
pedestrian-centered street design with economic health. This "Quality  
streets" strategy is central to the economic development strategies  
of Europe's livable cities, from Copenhagen to Barcelona. The quality  
streets has caught on in the US as well, with larger cities like  
Chicago and Portland, and Bay Area cities from Walnut Creek to  
Berkeley to Mountain View, making pedestrian-friendly street design a  
centerpiece of community revitalization efforts.

San Francisco has some fine streets, but most of them are poorly  
designed and traffic-dominated. Here in San Francisco, several  
grassroots efforts to create complete and quality streets are taking  
off. Community organizations in Visitacion Valley, with the support  
of the Evelyn and Walter Haas Jr. Foundation, kicked off a design  
effort for the Leland Avenue commercial corridor this Saturday.  
Community-based planning and advocacy efforts to create safer and  
more walkable streets are underway on Mission Street and in the San  
Jose-Guerrero corridor. Renew SF (Revitalize and Energize the North- 
East Waterfront of San Francisco) has started the "Envisioning  
Columbus Avenue" effort to create a more walkable Columbus Avenue. A  
coalition of bicyclists, residents, and merchants is pushing the city  
to create a plan for a livable Valencia Street.

TLC has been working hard to promote complete streets, by both  
improving citywide policies and planning and by supporting projects  
in specific neighborhoods. We led the effort last Fall to create a  
multi-modal planning department at the Municipal Transportation  
Agency, and worked with Supervisor Mirkarimi to enact the city's  
Complete Streets Ordinance this year. The good news is that city  
leaders have begun to listen; the Mayor, for example, launched his  
"Better Streets" initiative this summer, and don't be surprised if  
complete streets figure prominently in this week's "State of the  
City" speech. But city bureaucracies are still dominated by single- 
purpose thinking, and making complete streets still comes much too  
hard. City bureaucrats too often just count the costs of complete  
streets while ignoring the social, economic, and environmental benefits.

Still, we are greatly encouraged by the energy and dedication of San  
Francisco's complete streets advocates (although you may not all call  
yourselves that..yet). The growing complete streets movement offers a  
way forward through one of city's perennial dilemmas; how to grow  
jobs and housing without compromising livability or environmental  
quality. You are invited to Renew SF's Envisioning Columbus Avenue  
kickoff event:

ENVISIONING COLUMBUS AVENUE
A Collaborative Community Effort
Thursday, November 3,  6-8 PM
Oakville Grocery at The Cannery
2801 Leavenworth Street (at the foot of Columbus)

An opportunity to see developing plans and hear ideas that will  
change the Columbus Avenue corridor (from Montgomery to Beach  
Streets) during the next five years. For more information contact  
wells39 at msn.com


DALY CITY BART COMMUNITY DESIGN WORKSHOP
Saturday, October 29, 10 AM to 2 PM and
Saturday, November 5, 10 AM to 4 PM
Woodrow Wilson Elementary School
43 Miriam Street, Daly City

Daly City BART station is an important intermodal hub for  
southwestern San Francisco and northern San Mateo County, but due to  
its location on the county line, both counties have treated it as  
something of an orphan. That may be changing; BART and the City of  
Daly City have launched a two-day workshop focused on enhancing  
access and safety, improving transit connections, managing and  
guiding growth, and ensuring better links between the station and the  
community. The first session (Saturday October 29) will focus on  
reviewing existing conditions, touring the station area, and setting  
goals for the future; the second session (Saturday November 5) will  
be a hands-on community design workshop. Have your say in enhancing  
access and planning transit-oriented land uses for this important  
station! For more information contact Peter Albert at BART, 510  
287-4702.


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