The focus of HANC’s June 2016 meeting was an examination of what real change in transportation might look like for the Haight Ashbury and for our city more broadly. HANC’s guide for this exploration was Jason Henderson, a professor of geography at San Francisco State University.
Our journey started at the global level. As other countries plan for prosperity and mobility we cannot afford the environmental cost of them emulating the US love affair with the automobile. The US has 0.786 vehicles per person, more than 10 times the rate in China, which is already experiencing gridlock and alarming pollution. Both the US and developing countries need transportation solutions beyond the personal automobile.
Partly because of its urban nature, the Haight Ashbury already has a low rate of car ownership at 0.48 vehicles per capita, close to San Francisco’s average of 0.47, and more frugal than the auto-besotted Marina at 0.65. 3,360 households in the Haight have no vehicle at all; that’s 41% of renters, but just 9% of homeowners.
A common measure of car use for urban planning is daily vehicle miles travelled (VMT). In San Francisco, this rises pretty evenly from a low of 1-3 VMT among downtown residents, to a high of around 45 VMT along the San Mateo county line and near Ocean Beach. The Haight comes in at a little under 20 VMT, which like much of San Francisco is driven greatly by people commuting to jobs outside the city.
American Community Survey data from 2012 shows that of the 15,000+ people in the Haight who have jobs, 27% drive to work alone and another 5% carpool. That compares with 42% taking transit, 7% biking and 8% who walk. A fortunate 8% work at home. The ACS categorizes the transportation mode for the remaining 3% of the Haight’s working population as “other”, and I assumed this meant that 450 of our neighbors used hoverboards or teleportation. Apparently, I was wrong and this mostly covers motorbike and taxi commuters.
Data on Uber and Lyft hasn’t reached the American Community Survey yet, but the city’s own surveys provide some insight. About 40% of San Francisco residents use TNC services at some point, most commonly about once or twice a week. These people are notably younger than the city average (48% of frequent users are 25-34) and more wealthy (59% earn more than $100,000). While the greatest TNC usage was recorded in District 2, usage in District 5 is pretty high as well.
So our neighborhood’s transportation choices are relatively environmentally conscious for San Francisco, and much better than the US average, but still far from sustainability. What more can we reasonably do to improve that position? In general, we need to look at why people choose options that have large environmental impacts and find ways to encourage them to make less harmful choices instead. Our meeting looked at two areas where we might encourage people to make better choices: east–west travel through the neighborhood (parallel to the Panhandle) and commuting out of the city.
Henderson suggested that the city would find better solutions to transportation planning if it gave up trying to fit transit, cars and bikes onto every street. Instead, we can focus on prioritizing each type of vehicle on a street where that transport mode gets priority. One example of this in the Haight Ashbury might be to prioritize Haight Street for transit, Page Street for bikes, and Oak and Fell for private vehicles. This would speed transit times along Haight Street and allow for the restoration of a bus route dedicated to run between Stanyan and downtown, ensuring that residents can rely on catching a bus even during commute hours.
One big reason for people in the Haight Ashbury to drive private vehicles is to commute to jobs on the Peninsula, in the South Bay, and elsewhere outside San Francisco. Current public transit to Peninsula locations from San Francisco rarely provides a quick commute, and so it seems the city has resolved to allow major tech employers to run whatever private bus routes they choose. But as Ed Mason of Save Muni told the meeting, these shuttles have major impacts on existing Muni services and other traffic. See Ed’s rogue’s gallery at savemuni.org/commuter-bus-infractions/. The current approach resembles the state of SF city transit in the 19th century, when dozens of companies ran whatever routes they chose.
What might work better? How about having private shuttles operate from a small number of designated hub locations throughout the city, with Muni focused on transit through neighborhoods and the shuttles focused on efficient travel to Peninsula locations. In fact, a requirement to study that exact proposal was written into the reauthorization of the shuttle program. A survey to propose hub locations closed on July 4.
Taking regional transit further, why shouldn’t we have good public transit from San Francisco to work locations on the Peninsula? Caltrain has the authority to run buses through these counties. Instead of multiple half-empty private shuttles, how about true public transit along I-280 to Peninsula cities that would serve both commuters and the rest of the public? And we need our elected leaders to step up and pressure the Peninsula cities to build housing to match the volume of office space they have built.
Sunshine and Wine
Also at the June meeting, HANC briefly covered two other issues of interest.
HANC members will be familiar with the pivotal role of the Sunshine Ordinance Task Force in biringing transparency and accountability to the murky world of city politics. Signatures are being collected through early July to qualify a ballot measure to bolster this function by expanding the task force into a commission, appointing a broader range of community members, strengthening its enforcement teeth, and requiring streaming of all public meetings.
More specific to our neighborhood, HANC heard from Luc Bergevin who has applied for an off-site alcohol license connected to 1880 Page Street. He explained that he is required to use his address for the license even though he does not have plans to sell alcohol from the residential building. Bergevin discussed various aspects of the license with HANC members.