High Speed Rail Interactive Map

High Speed Rail Interactive Map. One major hurdle to overcome when communicating to voters about the importance of the California High Speed Rail project is lack of familiarity. Unless you are talking to someone who has visited a foreign country and actually ridden a high-speed train, or perhaps to a train geek, it is entirely likely that the phrase “high speed train”, at least in the context of California, could simply bring to mind an Amtrak train that runs a bit more on schedule. Many voters will not realize immediately that high-speed rail — a civilized and just plain cool type of ground transportation that will link California’s cities with a downtown-to-downtown level of connectivity that air travel will never enjoy — is really an entirely different travel mode for the state of California. We have nothing like it here now, so visualizations depicting what the system might look like could be instrumental in bridging the familiarity gap. The High Speed Rail Authority is on it, with its new interactive map of the proposed system. Choose a start point, an end point, and watch the train zip through the countryside, stopping in active, high-density downtown centers. Okay, okay: so the map does mark Pacheco as the default route, though at least with no Los Banos station — but it is still fun to play with. Give it a whirl.
[California High Speed Rail Authority]

Bike to Work Day on Thursday May 15

Bike to Work Day on Thursday May 15. Yours truly owns neither a bicycle nor a car — and thus is strictly a pedestrian and transit rider — but of course wholeheartedly supports non-automotive transportation in all forms. So even if I will not be hopping on a bicycle for Bike to Work Day tomorrow, Thursday May 15, I would encourage you to do so. Bike to work, school, errands, or wherever your heart takes you. Bikers planning to use BART may be interested in BART’s “Energizer Stations” with refreshments (check BART’s Bicycle Rules if you are not already familiar with them). Other Energizer Stations are scattered throughout the Bay Area. Also, people with bikes in hand on the Alameda/Oakland and Alameda Harbor Bay ferries will enjoy free ferry service all day Thursday, on all runs. P.S. Please refrain from biking on the sidewalk; pedestrians in your immediate vicinity will be grateful!

Downtown SF Stations: Frustratingly Amateur

I generally try to keep the posts here above the realm of merely whining, but every once in awhile, a little whining is in order. You may have caught the recent SFist article about the broken change machine at Church Station — and the would-be rider pleading with the station agent to take her money, only to be told to go to another station with a functional change machine.

Sorry, but it is inexcusable to require that patrons use these change machines, and then allow them to sit broken and unusable for any period of time longer than about one hour. San Francisco only has a handful of subway stations to begin with, and of those, even fewer feature SFMTA-maintained change machines. The fact that riders without passes are still feeding fistfuls of coins into turnstiles to pay fare is already pretty deplorable — but telling riders (customers!) that their only option to pay fare for the train is to somehow travel to another station (not on the train, of course) and make change there is the type of interaction that only cements the widely-held view that Muni really could not care less about its riders, customer service office notwithstanding.

I recently found myself at Powell Station without fast pass, because the pass had mysteriously hidden itself under piles of paper on my desk. Upon opening my wallet, what do I discover but… a single $5 bill. Great: the denomination of bill you cannot get change for at the downtown stations. One minute later, I was back upstairs purchasing a bottle of water to get change, and then again on the platform — apparently having just missed a train I would have taken. Is this really the sort of complication riders should have to deal with? Of all things that Muni should make easy for riders, paying the fare is right at the top of the list.

All of the above is a clear reminder of the fact that San Francisco’s downtown subway stations could stand to be improved, especially in terms of making them clearer to navigate. Imagine you are a traveler entering one of these stations for the first time, with little to no familiarity with BART or Muni. Perhaps you wander for a bit between station booths, trying to ascertain the difference between the two systems and to determine where to catch the right train. There, you are greeted by the following “professional” signage:

Pushing the TEP Envelope

Courtesy SFMTA.

A couple weeks ago, Fran Taylor, who writes for the Mission Dispatch, posted commentary about the SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project. The article focused on the proposed service changes for the Mission and Bernal Heights, comparing the reach of current service to the reach of the TEP’s proposed routes (see map at right; streets marked in dark gray currently receive service but would not be served under the TEP proposal). The article noted that many neighborhood destinations, like schools and grocery stores, are now conveniently located on transit lines, but would no longer be if the TEP draft proposals as they now stand were to be adopted. Although realigning the 27-Bryant off of Bryant and onto Harrison south of 17th Street may fulfill the purpose of filling in the large gap between Mission Street and Potrero Avenue at a central point, the article notes that this adjustment moves buses into heavier traffic and provides direct service to industrial blocks with lower transit demand. Of course, it is necessarily the case that any service realignment will adjust which destinations receive direct service and which do not. But the important question to ask is whether, on balance — despite increasing limited stop service on the Mission Street transit spine — the net change to service in this dense, largely transit-dependent neighborhood is positive or negative.

Have Your Say on the Transit Effectiveness Project

We’ve spoken here before about the draft proposals for the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP), a plan to streamline Muni service and make it faster and more reliable. The proposed changes do not amount to a huge change in the physical environment; indeed, infrastructure investments would mostly be limited to streetscape improvements and transit preferential signal preemption. Many of the changes, as explained that previous post on the draft proposals, are centered on service changes, both through route realignments and increased limited service to reduce travel times. And yet, for all that the Transit Effectiveness Project advocates in the way of incremental changes throughout the system, the plan, taken as a whole, is bold, especially upon realizing that the SFMTA is not simply calling for more rapid service and better reliability, but is also in the process of actually allocating resources to make those priorities a future reality, including fixing the operator shortfall and hiring more schedulers, planners, and street supervisors.

Google Transit, Meet Muni — Muni, Meet Google Transit

Although Google Transit has provided trip planning information and embedded stops/stations for BART, Caltrain, and VTA for quite some time, until now, information for the Bay Area’s most heavily used transit agency — SF Muni, of course — has been noticeably absent, other than marking the subway and accessible surface rail stations. In a press conference yesterday, though, it was announced that at long last, we may enjoy the fruits of a partnership between Google and the SFMTA.

When searching for directions between two locations within San Francisco, the “take public transit” link provides directions using all Muni routes, including buses. And while there are some smaller issues to work out — for example, correct labeling of the K-Ingleside versus the T-Third — it appears to handle transfers between Muni routes and between Muni and BART/Caltrain with relative ease. Trip schedules are based on Muni’s often-fictional timetables, but Google would like to eventually expand the service so that trip routes are calculated on the basis of real-time vehicle information, rather than using static, published schedules. Of course, real-time information is already available locally via NextMuni and NextBus, but Google’s eventual goal would be to use real-time data on its maps for potentially all transit agencies across the nation and beyond, and not just for those that utilize NextBus technology — so real-time integration is on hold. At the moment, the actual locations of San Francisco bus stops are not embedded into the Google Maps, but this feature will hopefully be added soon. Stops would be viewable upon zooming in to the street level, as is the case for BART, Caltrain, VTA, and other agencies around the country.

What does this mean for Transbay Blog’s homegrown, one-man transit mapping project operation? Must The Man always emerge victorious? Seriously, though: while this new feature will certainly save me a lot of work inputting stop information, I do not plan on giving up on this project quite yet. There are still opportunities to use the custom maps as a means of filling in gaps and providing useful information that would not be included in the official Google Maps, and I expect that the project will evolve in this direction. One of my personal favorite features of the transit stop maps is the ability to relate “lay of the land”-style information that does not get reported in standard trip planners — information like Muni Metro accessibility points, and entries and exits to subway stations. Other possibilities include mapping limited bus stops and strategic points to transfer between lines. Lastly, I believe that station guides (with transfers organized by destination, as has been partially implemented on our custom BART map) are a good way to illustrate connections between regional rail and local transit routes. Implementing these features would, of course, require far less time than mapping all stops out from scratch — but they would still supply useful information to ease transit riders’ experiences, particularly when used in conjunction with Google Maps that are filled in with bus stop markers.

Do you have ideas for other supplemental information that is mappable and would be useful in conjunction with an official Google Map of Muni stops? Any impressions about the Google transit directions? Feel free to leave your thoughts in the comments.

New Plans for Senior Housing at St. Anthony

Courtesy Central City Extra.

St. Anthony Foundation has been an institution in the Tenderloin for decades, providing shelter, daily meals, clothes, as well as medical and social services to San Francisco’s homeless since 1950. St. Anthony (headquartered on the southern side of Golden Gate Avenue, at Jones) will move many of its services into a new five-story building across the street (at 150 Golden Gate) that is set to be completed next month. The second phase of St. Anthony’s renewal aims to completely replace the current structure at 121 Golden Gate. The plan for the redone 121 Golden Gate originally included a new dining facility and just 17 permanent units of senior housing, along with 17 medical discharge units. But the latest proposal for 121 Golden Gate, to be carried out in conjunction with Mercy Housing, is a $66 million project that could include not only a more spacious dining facility, but is also planned to feature 90 studio and one-bedroom units in a 10-story building, with no parking. The building would rise to the full ten stories on the corner, stepping down to eight stories on the side to match the height of Boyd Hotel next door. The latest incarnation of 121 Golden Gate could join 990 Polk and 55 Laguna as another major project featuring construction of new housing units for seniors, and the project could be delivered as soon as 2011.

Thumbs Up For Market-Octavia and 55 Laguna

A busy week prevented me from posting about this earlier, but better late than never: as you may have already read in the Chronicle, there have been favorable updates at the Board of Supervisors concerning the Market & Octavia Plan, which I addressed in a post a couple weeks ago. Supervisors Mirkarimi and McGoldrick had articulated competing visions for the contentious issues of affordable housing, parking, and density in the Market & Octavia plan area: more details are provided in that linked post. But the two proposals have since coalesced into a single compromise plan. Thankfully, Mirkarimi’s stricter parking requirements survived, helping to ensure that the Market & Octavia Plan maintains livability at its heart; the compromise also adopted Mirkarimi’s affordable housing funding plan, which set forth a tiered impact fee (of $0, $4, or $8 per square foot, depending on the location of the development) and the opportunity for developers to contribute to the citywide affordable housing fund in lieu of TDR fees. However, the compromise incorporates McGoldrick’s density cap, which will apply not just to Duboce Triangle, but to all blocks zoned as Residential Transit-Oriented (RTO), which includes most of the residential blocks deeper in the plan area, off of Market Street. These amendments were passed at first hearing at the Board last Tuesday, finally drawing some consensus on this comprehensive plan that has been highly contested in recent months.

Olympic Torch Service Updates

Well, after all the squabbles, arguments, and protests attempting to settle whether or not it properly comports with San Francisco values, the Olympic torch run is finally here. Of course, that means there are Muni service updates, affecting the torch route along the Embarcadero. For your convenience, here are today’s highlights:

• Muni Metro service between Embarcadero Station and Caltrain will be suspended, so the N-Judah will terminate at Embarcadero, and the T-Third will operate south of 4th & King. The easiest access between Market Street and Caltrain will be via the 30 and 45 bus lines.
• Cable cars will operate on bus substitution.
• The F line will only operate between 11th Street and its western terminal point at 17th Street. Alternate routes to Fisherman’s Wharf/Aquatic Park area include: 9X, 10, 19, 20, 30, 47, 49.
• There will probably be delays and unannounced route changes on several bus lines operating near Fisherman’s Wharf, including: 9X, 10, 12, 19, 20, 30, 39, 47, 49.

The service updates will apply from roughly noon onwards today. Click here for the SFMTA’s post.

Above image extracted from How Stuff Works.

New York Assembly Approves Citywide Surface Parking Lots

Which citywide surface parking lots would these be? Why, the congested streets of Manhattan, of course. Members of the Assembly, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves: ashamed of your unwillingness to improve quality of life for millions of New Yorkers, and ashamed of your utter lack of vision. Even Mary Peters — Mary Peters! (remember her? If not, here’s a refresher: she tactfully asserted that bicycles are not transportation) — gets it. Mayor Bloomberg said it best: it is a sad day for New York City.