Streets of S.F. a road hazard as pedestrian deaths spike (SF Chronicle)

I came across this article in the SF Chronicle yesterday while eating at the 9/10 Dining Hall, and I thought it was particularly relevant to our class. The issue of bureaucratic sluggishness on moving projects ahead and the desire (and inability) to get everyone to agree on transportation projects is a huge problem for places like San Francisco. It becomes not only annoying but actually dangerous when the places that are supposed to be seeing these improvements are the site of numerous fatalities for people walking and biking.

Source here.

Perhaps this article could prompt some questions for us to explore on Feb 28 when we have a speaker panel of folks who have directly dealt with processing and implementing transportation changes like the ones discussed in this article… We can also discuss the pedestrian issues addressed in this article tomorrow, since this week's topic is walking.

Here's a snippet of the article, but you should check out the full story on the SF Chronicle website here.

"San Francisco has put together a lot of plans and budgeted a lot of money to reduce pedestrian and bike accidents and generally make its streets safer. 

"But people keep getting maimed and killed by cars - and some city officials and residents think part of the reason is that the city has been slow to follow through with its proposals to improve street designs and crack down on drivers who break traffic laws. 

"A spate of pedestrian fatalities at the end of 2013 and the beginning of this year - including the death of 6-year-old Sofia Liu on New Year's Eve and a man who was killed by a car in the Parkside neighborhood Tuesday - shows that the city's streets remain dangerous. Yet just 6 percent of San Francisco streets account for 60 percent of incidents in which pedestrians are severely injured or killed. On those streets, high-injury corridors representing 5.2 percent of the city's street miles are the site of more than half of all pedestrian deaths and injuries. 

"While the number of hazardous blocks isn't numerous, bringing down the number of deadly collisions hasn't been easy. The city has earmarked tens of millions of dollars for re-engineering dangerous corridors in recent years, but some seemingly simple projects can take years. In the meantime, bicycle and pedestrian fatalities spiked in 2013: 21 people were killed while walking, the most since 2007, and four bicyclists lost their lives, the highest number since 2001."

Why I Love Public Transportation (A re-post from Green Gal)

This was originally posted on Melissa's Green Gal blog here on September 14, 2012. 

Sure, sometimes you end up next to the smelly guy on the train or you wind up getting the bus with the loud cell phone people or the crazies. But the more you take public transportation, the more skilled you become at selecting seats, using body language (like angry faces and glaring to avoid conversations!), and just learning to deal with it because there are plenty of reasons--I'm about to name five--why public transportation is awesome. Here's why I love public transportation, and why I encourage you to utilize it as often as you can in your daily life.

1. Public transportation reduces the number of polluting, traffic-causing cars on the road.
Every time you take public transportation when you might otherwise have taken a car takes one car off the road. Think about people who take PT every day to work, school, or wherever they going when they could have driven. Certainly a bus requires more fuel than a compact car, but if you fill a bus with people and take the cars the passengers would have been driving off the road, you're saving a ton of gas and reducing pollution and traffic congestion.

2. Staring out the window when you're a passenger and letting your mind wander is really good for your brain, particularly when the scenery is nice.
When I take the bus and train home from college, I almost instantly find myself glancing up to the window and letting my thoughts wander for awhile before returning to my book or computer. Most of my commute is through forest and then through open space, so my mind has nothing in particular to grab ahold of and capture my attention--I'm free to explore whatever aspect of the universe of thought that my brain has the capacity to access. Often, I recognize how much I need that unfocused thinking to the passing world in order to let my mind wander, and I put my book or computer away. Pretty soon, the notebook comes out and ideas for things I should do at work, school, or on my blog come pouring out. I outlined the plan for this blog post while sitting on the Highway 17 Express yesterday, for example. I write best when I'm inspired after some unfocused gazing off into space, like on the bus, and I often do my best thinking when I'm the passenger of a moving vehicle without distraction. It's this unfocused attention that allows our brains to recharge, and the same kind of thing happens for me when I'm surrounded by nature and am able to simply think. Turns out, it's not just me. Richard Louv discusses this and something called "directed-attention fatigue" (28) in his book The Nature Principle:

Over time, the Kaplans [who conducted a study with a group similar to Outward Bound in the 1970s] developed their theory of directed-attention fatigue. As described in a paper by Stephen Kaplan and Raymond DeYoung: "Under continual demand our ability to direct our inhibitory processes tires. . . . This condition reduces mental effectiveness and makes consideration of abstract long-term goals difficult. A number of symptoms are commonly attributed to this fatigue: irritability and impulsivity that results in regrettable choices, impatience that has us making ill-formed decisions, and distractibility that allows the immediate environment to have a magnified effect on our behavioral choices." The Kaplans hypothesize that the best antidote to such fatigue, which is brought on by too much directed attention, is involuntary attention, what they call "fascination," which occurs when we are in an environment that fulfills certain criteria: the setting must transport the person away from their day-to-day routine, provide a sense of fascination, a feeling of extent (enough available space to allow exploration), and some compatibility with a person's expectations for the environment being explored. Furthermore, they have found that the natural world is a particularly effective place for the human brain to overcome mental fatigue, to be restored. (Louv 28)

Along these same lines, it has always bothered me when parents have their kids watch DVDs in the back of the car on long drives. I was never that child, and I'm so incredibly thankful to my parents for forcing me to sit there and gaze out the window. Occasionally, I read a book or colored or sang songs with family, but after awhile, I would get bored of doing anything and start to watch the orchards go by (you know what I'm talking about if you've ever gazed out a car window in an agricultural setting--the rows are so fun to watch, it's addicting), or start day dreaming. Those poor kids who have their eyes glued to a television in the backseat aren't developing the habit of day dreaming and thinking without being focused on something. How are you supposed to think about your life as a whole if you're always sectioning it off into "projects" or "subjects" or "to-dos"? Sometimes you need to literally just sit and stare in order to put things together in your life, and while we all know this and have had experience with it, being aware of how important this is and acting on this every single day will make us all more clear-headed. Having these experiences as a child in a car or on a bus or train set the foundation for us to be able to be creative with our thinking and learn to entertain ourselves. Being able to simply be, think, and enjoy the ride without being entertained is so important, and this is why I will never let my children (if I ever have any) watch DVDs in the back of my car--oh wait, that's because I won't have a car! :-)

3. How often do you get to be the passenger? You can get work done as you travel when you aren't driving.
While I recommend gazing out the window for a good portion of your trip, you can also get work done when you aren't the one driving. Some buses and trains have free wifi, or you can read or use a computer without the internet. You can also nap, which I call getting a lot of good work done.

4. Public transportation costs significantly less money than owning and maintaining your own car, and you don't have to worry about parking or the stress of driving.
Even if you do own a car, using public transportation whenever you can reduces the amount of mileage you're accumulating on your car and means you don't have to pay for gas at the pump as often. You don't have to pay parking fees or even find parking in the first place. You can enjoy a drink without worrying about driving yourself anywhere (a college student's best designated driver is often the bus driver).

5. You gain some perspective on life by observing those who have no other option but to take public transportation.
While I do not own my own car, I have parents who do own cars who've driven me back to campus before. I have friends with cars who could drive me places if I really needed a ride. Eventually, I will probably own a car--though I'll fight getting one as long as I can. I use public transportation largely because I'm a college student and everyone takes the buses, but I also do it because I know it is less polluting in the long run than using a car to get everywhere. But the fact is, most people who use public transportation have no other option because they have no car. Spending time on public transportation and realizing this fact can give you some perspective on your life and make you thankful and grateful for the privilege you have in being able to even make public transportation a choice rather than a necessity.

It can open your heart a little and make those uncomfortable moments on public transportation that I mentioned at the beginning of this article a little less of an issue. We're all just people doing the best we can, moving from one place to another. Maybe the smelly guy is homeless for reasons beyond his control; maybe the loud person on their cell phone is going through a rough time in their life and they need to have that conversation with whomever to make it through the day; and maybe the "crazy" people aren't really crazy after all. They just see life a little differently than you.

Hopefully this article makes you more inclined to take public transportation the next time you have an opportunity to do so. If not, I'm curious what your hesitation is, and I would love to hear from you in the comments.

Thank you for reading!
Have a great weekend!

Hasti's Transportation History

Write your transportation history - Think about the various modes of transportation that you've used in your life at different times and places. How do your experiences with these modes affect your perception of the world, your community, etc.? Have you had pivotal moments on buses, bike rides, car trips, etc. that have changed how you see the world?

Sitting in the backseat as a child during my pre-drivers license days, I remember watching the world go by and observing the different people in their cars going all sorts of places. It fascinated me that there were so many cars filled with individuals in transit with their own destination in mind. Although I was observing the outside environment, I was unaware of the infrastructure encompassing all these vehicles. It wasn't until I obtained my driver’s license that I became conscious of the legalities and logistics of our roads. I looked at each vehicle in a whole new way and better understood the responsibilities of being a driver.

But before I earned my driver’s license, I was dependent on someone else to drop me off and pick me up from the places I wanted to go. Riding public transportation in the Bay Area for the first time forced me to figure out how the Caltrain and BART systems worked. From each stop, I learned more about the geography of the area. Public transportation in the Bay Area is that is fairly inefficient though. Most of the time, it requires more than one mode of transportation to get somewhere. Someone would have to drop you off at the Caltrain station and then you take the Caltrain all the way to the Millbrae Station to switch onto the BART. A major limitation of public transportation is that it is not always there right when you need it.

Bicycling helped me gain independence because I could hop on my bike and head to a local spot at any time. I could fuel the bicycle with my own energy and was on my own schedule. Currently, bicycling is my main method of transport in Santa Cruz. When I tell people that I don’t have my car in Santa Cruz they usually respond sympathetically as if I’m missing out. In a car, encased by metal, you are isolated from the world, whereas on a bike you are exploring and engaging with the environment. It’s actually relieving to not have my car here with me because I prefer biking around town. I don’t have to buy gas, I don’t get stuck in congested traffic, and I don’t have trouble finding parking. I love the scenic routes, the fresh air, and accelerating my heart rate. 

Camille's Transportation History

Write your transportation history - Think about the various modes of transportation that you've used in your life at different times and places. How do your experiences with these modes affect your perception of the world, your community, etc.? Have you had pivotal moments on buses, bike rides, car trips, etc. that have changed how you see the world?

I grew up in Eureka, CA, a town in Humboldt County that had its climax during a time of unregulated logging and fishing, where an abundance of resources was excitedly consumed and a town was built as a dwelling for these rugged laborers.  Now it’s made up of a mixture of conservative old people and liberal growers, probably in pursuit of a quiet, undemanding life in what’s left of the lush redwood forest that is Humboldt County.  In terms of geography, the town is somewhat sprawling with no central business hub, as most jobs were concentrated at the mills which were built on the outskirts of town. Because of this, I would guess that at least 90% of the population in Eureka owns a car. Growing up, I didn't know anyone who rode their bike except for the occasional recreational weekend ride, and as a kid I saw the bus system as a dirty, dangerous and unreliable last resort for transportation. The city itself is pretty flat and not too spread out so biking would have been an incredibly easy way to get to school or work. Using a car was such a normalized way of getting around that it almost seemed ridiculous to consider walking somewhere, even if it was less than a mile away. I realize now that Eureka is a strange, isolated place where people are unconscious (in a lot more ways than transportation) of overarching issues of sustainability.

Up until high school, my parents would drive me to school or anywhere I needed to go, but once I was old enough that they felt comfortable leaving me to walk, they often left me to find my own way to and from school. Because I saw walking as a painfully slow waste of time, I started skateboarding to and from school, which was drastically faster than walking and a lot more fun.

However, once I got my drivers’ license and my parents bought me a little Toyota, I started driving to and from school, as most of the more affluent kids did. There was a whole culture built around driving at my school; different parking lots informally designated to different social groups on campus: the hicks parked their trucks in the parking lot near the metal and the wood shops; the jocks and preps parked their expensive cars in the lot next to the language building; the seniors had their own lot, etc.

Once I graduated from high school and decided that I was going to UC Santa Cruz, I figured I’d buy a bike since my car had been totaled by a reckless lady who’d run a red light on me that summer. I had a mountain bike at the time but decided I wanted a road bike because it seemed like the hip thing at the time. I took my grandpa’s 1970s Univega Sportour to Porter College but was intimidated by the hilliness of the university so it sat locked up outside of my dorm for the entirety of my Freshman year. My sophomore year, I lived pretty far from campus, and, again inspired by my frustration with the sluggishness of walking and with my impatience in waiting for buses, I started taking the bike shuttle to campus and biking home. I began to recognize other people who rode their bikes a lot and started to see how my role as a bicyclist made a statement in the politics of sustainable transportation.

Now, my junior year, I use my bike more than ever not only as a means of beating traffic and avoiding the bus system, but for fun and exercise too! At this point it’s also a choice I feel I’ve consciously made, now that I have the means to buy a car but don’t find it a necessary or sensible means of transportation anymore.