Tag: bicycles

Better Block for a Better Valencia

Valencia Street is one of the City’s liveliest commercial and residential streets, and a popular place to walk. It’s one of the most important cycling routes in the City, second only to Market Street. It’s in a transit-rich neighborhood, served by two BART stations, frequent Mission Street transit, and several crosstown bus routes. It even…

Planning Commission Approves Better Environmental Review Standards

On Thursday March 3, San Francisco’s Planning Commission unanimously approved an essential, and long overdue, change to the way it reviews projects under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA). The Commission replaced automobile level of service (LOS), a measure of automobile delay at intersections, with vehicle miles travelled (VMT) as their chief transportation measure for analyzing projects. This…

What Makes a Livable Neighborhood?

A livable San Francisco is a network of Livable Neighborhoods. Each neighborhood should have a distinct character, but each should be complete, supporting living, working, commerce, and culture. A Livable Neighborhood is: Compact Sustainable Livable neighborhoods conserve land, and are of sufficiently density to support frequent transit service and neighborhood-serving businesses. Livable neighborhoods provide a…

2015 in Review: The Year in Livability

San Francisco faced big challenges with equity and affordability in 2015. Still, the city made major progress by building and preserving affordable housing, planning better neighborhoods, reclaiming streets for people, making room for nature, lessening automobile dependence, and fostering a shift towards sustainable transportation. Let’s take a look at the year in livability: San Francisco’s Voice for…

Creating Sustainable Door-to-Door Transportation

Although sprawling, the overwhelming majority of Bay Area residents have convenient access to sustainable modes of transit. A major hurdle for many potential users is the short distance between home and transit, and again between work and transit. These first and last mile challenges keep many people who either live or work in transit poor…

“Unaccepted” Townsend Street is Unacceptable

San Francisco has about 850 miles of streets, in 12,500 street segments, covering about a quarter of San Francisco’s land area. 2,224 of those street segments are “unaccepted streets” – streets that are not maintained by SF’s Department of Public Works. Over half of those streets are paved, but often one or more features – sidewalks,…

2014 in Review: Complete Streets and Greenways

2014 saw progress towards complete streets and a greenway network for San Francisco – and also showed that the city’s projects and practices are still falling far short of its standards, policies, and goals. Vision Zero Vision Zero – the goal of eliminating traffic deaths within a decade – made progress in 2014. Various city agencies adopted…

Corner Retail and Secure Bicycle Parking Legislation Approved

Two ordinances, Sponsored by Supervisor David Chiu with Livable City, became law on September 1. One ordinance exempts secure bicycle parking in buildings from Floor-Area Ratio (FAR) limits. Currently automobile parking is exempt, and this change will provide parity for bicycle parking, creating an incentive for both voluntarily providing secure bicycle parking, and for providing…

Complete Streets Initiative

Livable City is working to ensure that city streets, which cover over 25% of San Francisco’s land area, are designed and maintained as a safe and attractive public spaces that support walking, bicycling, and public transit. Our current efforts are to improve the City’s designs and standards to improve the appearance, safety and accessibility of…

Car-Free Living

Our culture’s reliance on the automobile has compromised our personal health, community cohesion, and the local and global environment. San Francisco’s compact and walkable scale, its dense, urbane, and mixed-use neighborhoods, and its extensive public transit allow one-third of San Francisco households to live without an automobile. Livable City is dedicated to making San Francisco…

Get in Touch

Staff Directory

Darin Ow-Wing, Executive Director
[email protected]

Jessica Tovar, Program Director
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Sally Chen, Deputy Director
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Tom Radulovich, Senior Policy Fellow
[email protected]

Isaac Santiago, Sunday Streets Program Manager [email protected]

Reina Terry, Program & Development Associate, reina@livablecity.org