January 31, 2004
It takes a village.
Do transit villages have any foundation in reality?
Fruitvale has built one; a multimodal station was recently completed in Millbrae;
Nevertheless, the Embarcadero of San Francisco has a shameful sight every Saturday: in the middle of a homegrown transit village (MUNI's F-Market, the Golden Gate Ferry, BART, and Amtrak), car-driving patrons receive discounted parking.
January 30, 2004
Strip-mining the city.
The photography of Edward Burtynsky grabbed my eye when an announcement of an upcoming (well, 2005) retrospective at the Brooklyn Museum of Art appeared in the New York Times.
His photography explores the displacement of nature through the works of man: highway interchanges, landfills, cargo commerce.
January 29, 2004
Those who cannot remember the past ...
The phoenix rising from the ashes of San Francisco's venerated Emporium will feature franchise stores, a $410MM shopping center, a department store, and a multiplex movie theatre. Within eyeshot (or spitting distance, which might be more appropriate to this neighbourhood) is the Metreon, Sony's failed experiment at an urban vertical mall.
Will the new shopping centre create synergy with its physical neighbours, as the Metreon failed to do? Will the centre entice people to spend a day in various errands and past-times, not only in the centre itself but in the neighbourhood?
January 28, 2004
Trendytransit is in the house.
Not if, when, according to the California High-Speed Rail Authority.
On the front page of today's Examiner, and scattered through other news sources, many reports about the proposed 700-mile (and 220 mph) bullet train linking San Francisco (representing Northern Cal) and Los Angeles (So. Cal) noted that our Governator has voiced strong opposition to the $37 billion project.
As an alternative, the state could build 3,000 miles of new freeway (according to the 2,300-page draft environmental report) and build at least five new airport runways. Given the debacle over the proposed expansion (and bay infill) of San Francisco International's runways, that seems unlikely. (The runways would probably need to be in places like SFO, LAX, SAN, and SAC, where population is growing most rapidly; the study says, "intrastate demand will grow 63 percent and population will grow 31 percent, mostly in the Central Valley, they found bullet trains were the best option".) Co-incident to this, the Federal Aviation Administration has announced plans to triple air-control capacity in the next 20 years -- the same time-frame as the high-speed rail plan.
January 27, 2004
Presidential dreams, Nr.2
If highways weren't freeways, and if the Federal and State governments held them to financing standards similar to other public transit ...
Toll roads everywhere: automatic, electronic metering for cars and trucks. Discounts given to pre-purchase, bulk travel (interstate hauling? regular commuters? carpoolers, or those who can demonstrate that they carry three or more people from ~1 mi of origin to ~1 mi of destination?).
This would create disincentives for ad-hoc trips, perhaps, and certainly not encourage people to commute long distances for work. Exemptions for those who make under a certain amount per household? This might reduce charges of economic unfairness. Discounts for drivers with more fuel-efficient cars? This could be deeply tied to state automotive registration. Of course, data would need to be anonymized at some level, so that the government could not track movement in a scary way. Perhaps the data could be put in escrow with a trusted independent auditor or bank, in the same (shudder!) way that Verisign holds the domain registry?
Perhaps two banks or auditors.
January 26, 2004
Permutation for a taxi.
From Joe Rogers' Metropolitan Diary column in The New York Times:
Dear Diary:
It was one of those super-frigid evenings recently. I left work about 8 p.m., desperate to find a taxi to get home and out of the cold. There were plenty of taxis heading uptown, but all were occupied. Suddenly, one pulled up to the curb about a half-block away, the medallion light went on and I dashed over to grab it.
Just as I arrived at the taxi from the downtown side, another fellow arrived from the uptown side. The following exchange then took place between two seasoned New Yorkers:
Him: "Gee, we arrived at the same time."
Me (hoping we can just share the cab): "We sure did. Are you heading uptown ?"
Him: "No, downtown."
Me: "Let's choose for it. Odds and evens?"
Him: "No. Rock paper."
Me: "O.K."
Him: "O.K., on the count of three."
Both: "Once. Twice. Three. Shoot."
At which point he held out two fingers (scissors) and I held out my hand, palm-side down (paper). Scissors beating paper, he jumped into the taxi with nary a word, and off he went. I ended up taking the subway home.
This on the heels of a recent piece in The New Yorker about an obsessive taxi driver who cruises midtown in a vintage Chcker. I like to remember how I wanted to pay for graduate school by being a hackie, aka Fountain of Wisdom.
January 25, 2004
Would I? Would I?
This afternoon, saw a man energetically applying himself to a recently-decapitated tree on Haight St.
