Tag: California

Welcome to San Francisco

A panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean and the “gate” of the San Francisco Bay. Taken this past Sunday.

I had my Planet Bike SuperFlash attached to a slot near the bottom of my Deuter Trans Alpine 30 cycling backpack. I stopped riding, stepped on the pavement, and turned my body and backpack. The light was knocked out of the slot by the bike saddle and fell down… onto the bridge girder outside the sidewalk! I stood there and stared at half my light (the other half fell onto the sidewalk) thinking of my options. There weren’t any and I’m sure I picked the best one – moving on.

If I had more hair, you would see it blowing in the fast and heavy winds under and over the bridge deck.

Voting on bikeways in San Luis Obispo County

Session summary: A staffer at San Luis Obispo Council of Governments (SLOCOG) wants to learn about ways to have residents learn about proposed bikeways in the jurisdiction, their costs, and possibly vote or rank them to prioritize installation. SLOCOG is also considering a referendum for a sales tax that would fund transportation improvements to pay for road maintenance, transit service, and bikeways. This tool could be used to decide how the sales tax revenue is spent.

UNEDITED

SLOCOG – what a funny name
250-300k population for the county.
slow-growth county, not affordable

GIS, web interface – routes of bikeways, identified by color
$30m over 25 years
bike plan
Oh, you want that class 1 to the beach? That’s $15m
survey of unmet bike needs

This is what we want to do, this is the money we have.
This is where 10k people want a bike lane.

passenger car sales tax (I missed how the sales tax would work)? county sales tax increase to fund transportation
quadruples range of options.

Adriel Hampton: Bright Idea – ideation, vote them up and down
Lot of marketing, moderation, outreach
Just cuz you build it, people don’t come
You have to market it hard.

Me: Will there be a soft side to this? In-person charrettes? No, but will consider.
Have the potential bikeways already been identified and have all had their costs estimated?
Yes, bikeways identified.
Costs will be estimated soon based on past construction projects.

Starting with bikeways, then complete streets modules, streetscapes.

Jeff Wood:
Phily Planning Organization, web interface – click on the projects you want
Portland
Sacramento – Willingess to pay game?

Matt: How do they frame sales tax? This is the touchiest subject for us.

OpenPlans GeoExt application.

Adriel: I think scenarios is better than open.
Matt: We’ve made the plan, have the network. We need the people to justify the funding decisions we make.
mottmann@gmail.com

Leah: TechSoup – let county-wide bike coalition get grants to pay for software/application.
Google StreetView – have the trike feature your best bike route.
LA Times, if you do this in the budget, then this happens. Generated a lot of buzz.

Sean Hedgpeth: Capital and operating budgets.
I added about federal funding not paying for maintenance.

Matt: rideshare.org
Richard: 66% votes needed to approve the sales tax.
Sean: Have to sell sales tax with potholes.
Matt: Cycling will get 7% of sales tax.

What’s the county’s policy on open data? It’s not that it’s hidden, it’s just that the organization and outreach is not there.

SidewalkChalk (?, url)

Adriel: SeeClickFix – civic points – put a gaming aspect on things. participation rates are so low.
1-9-90 model. Create, read, do nothing to web content.
Look at
Adding some goofy elements to project.
So anti-Farmville until I found out about their special corn that would help Haiti

On my way to San Francisco

Actually, I’m not leaving until Thursday, March 17th, 2011; I’ll stay through Tuesday, March 22nd. I’ll be going to San Francisco with Brandon to visit a friend who recently moved to Stanford, visit some new and old California friends, attend Transportation Camp West, and of course visit the San Francisco Cable Car museum and plant (this is my favorite place). I think I also want to visit the Yuba Mundo folks in Sausalito.

If I know that you live in SF or environs, I will try to email you beforehand, but if I don’t, please leave a comment so we can get together – after Transportation Camp on Saturday would be a great time. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos I took in San Fran myself – I was last there in 2001 or something. I lived in Benecia until the end of kindergarten.

Also, I would like to borrow a bike. Can you help me?

Photo of cable car in Nob Hill. Photo by Marcel Marchon.

Cyclist on Market Street. Photo by Richard Masoner.

Interview with Bay Citizen on bike crash map

Thank you, Tasmeen, for asking about my bike crash map that your newspaper inspired me to create.

Read the interview.

Read about the bike crash map for Chicago.

View the bike crash map for Chicago (2007-2009).

It’s not this sunny yet, but today it was 49°F in Chicago. This photo was taken on Milwaukee Avenue, where the most people bike, and where the most people have bike crashes.

Who wants to give up high-speed rail

UPDATED: 11/16/10 and 11/19/10 to include new reports from Journal-Sentinel about Walker’s campaign contributions and to reorder the timeline (now in chronological order) and news about North Carolina.

The Governors-elect of Wisconsin (Scott Walker) and Ohio (John Kasich) made it clear during their campaigns that they would put an end to current or upcoming high-speed rail construction paid for mostly by competitive grants from the Department of Transportation.

Illinois was the first state to start high-speed rail construction using federal stimulus money. Photo taken just outside of Springfield, right before IDOT announced the first phase of track construction (from Alton to Springfield) is complete and phase two should have begun yesterday, Monday (from Springfield to Lincoln).

Because of their stance, and because Secretary Ray LaHood has made it clear that Wisconsin’s $810 million and Ohio’s $400 can only be used for high-speed rail, the news changes daily. Here’s the latest in the chronology that’s happened in the past two weeks:

LaHood is laying on the pressure that high-speed rail will happen, but perhaps not in Wisconsin, if Walker has his way.

*3C stands for Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus.

Two Amtrak trains waiting to depart Chicago Union Station (CUS) in May 2010. Photo by Eric Pancer.