Infrastructure

24th St. BART plaza will expand

Noah Arroyo, Mission Local — Apr 30 2012 - 5:23pm

Remodeling 24th St. BART plaza will add 1,200 square feet to the plaza on the southwest corner, according to planners who met with the community last Wednesday. “These plazas are important public open spaces … they are gateways to the neighborhood for residents and myriad visitors,” said BART Board Vice President Tom Radulovich. “Everyone I talk to about them agrees they are not working now the way they should.”

Rerouted bus through heart of Mission District hurts business, neighbors say

Jerold Chinn and Sandy Lopez, SF Public Press/Mission Local — Mar 29 2012 - 8:36am

Riders and businesses in the Mission District say the rerouting of  major Muni bus lines is causing confusion and hurting commerce. The 14-Mission, 14L-Mission and 49-Mission/Van Ness, which usually travel along Mission Street, have been rerouted to South Van Ness since the beginning of March because of a repavement and infrastructure project by the Department of Public Works and Public Utilities Commission. The project affects Mission Street between 16th and Cesar Chavez streets.

America's Cup may be scaled-down, but transportation challenges are unchanged

Jerold Chinn, SF Public Press — Mar 28 2012 - 5:47pm

City scrambles to invent temporary bus and train lines for legions of yacht race spectators

A version of this story appears in the Spring 2012 print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.

The effect of a scaled-down America's Cup plan on an ambitious transit effort is unclear as the city continues to view the expected flood of visitors for America’s Cup pre-events this August and October as a chance to experiment with new transit options. On Tuesday, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved an agreement with America's Cup organizers that will put more of the spectator activity along the Marina Green. The transit plan for the game calls for an estimated 300,000 spectators around the waterfront — the equivalent of almost half the average weekday Muni ridership of 637,000 — city planners said they have to get nearly everyone out of cars to prevent transportation chaos.

San Francisco catches on to bulk solar purchasing by using Groupon model

Alex Zielinski, Way Out West — Jul 18 2011 - 4:48pm

In an effort to boost the city’s solar energy use, San Francisco officials have launched a pioneering program keying in on a simple model: group discounts.

Solar@Work, developed by the city’s Department of the Environment and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, encourages commercial business owners to join together to create one solar purchasing group. The larger the group, the cheaper each owner’s cost. 

San Francisco shifting tree care onto property owners

Alex Zielinski, Way Out West — Jul 14 2011 - 12:43pm

Mayor Ed Lee recently produced a budget package for the new fiscal year that cut $300,000 from the already tight street tree care allowance. The proposal would shift the city’s responsibility for 24,000 trees in front of private property onto the property owners over the next seven years.

They would have to hire arborists to keep their trees healthy and pruned, an expense that can run up to $400 per visit. Property owners who neglect their new duties face city fines reaching $500 per citation. The city would keep maintaining trees on public property.

California officials say radiation ‘plume’ from Japan won’t increase state’s levels above normal

Alison Hawkes, Way Out West — Mar 17 2011 - 5:58pm
California health and emergency officials said a “plume” of radiation coming from the Japanese nuclear crisis that’s expected to hit the West Coast as early as tomorrow will bring radiation levels to no higher than normal background levels.

Superfund site in San Francisco proves toxic for Navy, neighbors

Monica Jensen, SF Public Press/Newsdesk.org — Jan 10 2011 - 2:52pm

A Toxic Tour reporting project

A year after the dissolution of the Restoration Advisory Board for Hunters Point Shipyard, the Navy says it will introduce a new community involvement plan that it says emphasizes diversity. The announcement follows the White House’s reconvened interagency effort on environmental justice, which held its first meeting under the Obama administration in September. The group is creating a four-year road map to develop “stronger community relationships” and targets “overburdened communities.” The next meeting is set for April.

Fund to boost Mid-Market Street cultural district has money but few takers

Ambika Kandasamy, SF Public Press — Dec 22 2010 - 10:54am

Small arts groups can’t come up with capital to lease property

An $11 million city fund to create a mid-Market Street cultural district so far has yielded one government loan—to a restaurant—while dozens of small performing arts groups cannot take advantage of the program because of their limited financial resources. Mayor Gavin Newsom announced the Central Market Cultural District Loan Fund in January as a way to support and concentrate arts groups to bring life back to the city’s long-depressed central corridor. Mid-Market stretches from Fifth to 10th streets on Market Street and from Mason to Larkin streets and up to O’Farrell Street in the Tenderloin, according to the city loan guidelines.

Muni planners say speed to come from untangling messy streetscape

Angela Hart, SF Public Press — Nov 18 2010 - 11:55am

Transit planner calls the city's streets and tunnels 'a nightmare'

San Francisco transit planners say a recipe of small fixes could amount to big changes in the nation’s fifth-largest urban transit system. But without new sources of money, many of these ideas, some of which would change the way the city’s streets are configured, will remain on the drawing board.

The system is chronically slow and crowded in part because its diverse fleet of bus and rail lines operates on a rollercoaster terrain in a fully built-out urban grid. Street fairs and demonstrations, ball games and construction routinely clog major arteries, making schedules seem academic.

The Municipal Transportation Agency launched its Transit Effectiveness Project in 2006, to reconfigure the city’s streets and tunnels — where physical constraints notoriously slow basic public transit to what one Muni planner called “a nightmare.”

Choose your own Pier 70

Matt Baume and Susie Cagle, SF Public Press — Nov 10 2010 - 4:36pm

You have 85 acres on the waterfront and two billion dollars ... what would you build?

A once-bustling industrial site that has fallen into decay on San Francisco’s waterfront, Pier 70 is facing a dramatic transformation. And in the next year, the Port of San Francisco will ask the public for feedback on as-yet unwritten development plans.

The Port has been keen to redevelop the site for years. Though the agency has been consulting neighbors at every step, most San Franciscans would be hard pressed to find it on a map. (It’s just north of Warm Water Cove, at the eastern end of 20th Street.)

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