San Francisco news briefs

Treasure Island

In converting Treasure Island from a naval base to a sustainable San Francisco community and public amenity, the San Francisco Group is calling for a plan to minimize driving. This includes building a minimum of parking and designing street plans that encourage walking and bicycling. The new community should have enough shopping so that residents don't need to leave the island for essentials, and the shopping should be located within easy walking distance of homes. All cars traveling between the San Francisco mainland and the islands should pay bridge tolls.

The Sierra Club's San Francisco Group is requesting a study comparing the proposed new ferry service with an expanded version of the existing Muni #108 bus service. We suspect that the view of the Bay from a bus will prove as attractive as from a ferry - and the ride will be faster most of the time. Arrival at the new Transbay Terminal will be more convenient for more users than at a ferry terminal farther from downtown. The bus will also have lower fares and require lower subsidies.

Hastings Law School garage

Hastings Law School is again proposing to build a garage. Two years ago the school shelved its previous garage plan because of pressure from then Assembly Speaker John Burton. The new proposal has a smaller garage, and would include a replacement building for the YMCA which is now on part of the site.

The Sierra Club opposes even this smaller garage. Rather than encouraging driving, this site could be used to meet the housing needs of students at Hastings and at the nearby new location of the Conservatory of Music, and of people who want to live near downtown without a car. Hastings could even make more money from renting housing than renting parking.

Parking spaces

San Francisco collects a parking tax of 25% from over 70,000 paid commercial parking spaces all over the city. Annually this tax provides almost $22 million for Muni, another $22 million for other city services, and $11 million for senior services.

But the city collects nothing from the 3,200 parking spaces provided to office tenants as part of their rent. This inequity subsidizes parking and encourages more people to drive. Much of this driving occurs during Muni's peak service hours and impedes transit service.

The Sierra Club urges the city to extend the parking tax to these office parking spaces. This would be a fair way to raise another $3 million for essential services.

Also, the Planning Department is beginning to seek ways to eliminate the requirement in the Planning Code for a minimum of one parking space for almost every new housing unit.

For example, on Rincon Hill and along Market Street from Fifth to Tenth Street and south to Mission, new dense housing is being built with no parking minimum and a maximum of one space per unit. We expect that most residents of these new neighborhoods will walk or bike to work and/or use convenient transit to get around. The plans include shopping streets within easy walking distance for all residents and provision for car-sharing for people who will drive only occasionally.

Unfortunately not every housing developer shares our expectation, and so developers often build the maximum amount of parking. Therefore, to help reduce driving in the city, Supervisor Chris Daly has written an ordinance to reduce the parking maximum, in downtown, to one space per two units. This will also reduce the cost of half of the new units by about $40,000. Contact your supervisor and urge them to support this reduction in the parking maximum.

Other San Francisco Group projects

It is illegal for dogs to be off-leash in most city-owned open spaces, but enforcement is spotty. The San Francisco Group will be working to encourage better public education and enforcement to protect natural areas managed by all city agencies, not just the Recreation and Parks Department but also the Public Utilities Commission, the Fire Department, the Department of Public Works, etc.

The San Francisco Group is preparing a response to the Environmental Impact Report for the so-called renovation of Harbor Bay Marina. We will point out the environmental impacts of Bay fill and dredging, and the cultural impacts of eliminating berthing for small boats.

The Group is also starting the long-term work to keep the $4.3 billion Water System Improvement Project from damaging the Tuolumne River.

For many years the San Francisco Group and many of our individual members have worked to protect the city's natural areas. Partly as an outgrowth of these efforts, a new organization is being formed called Nature in the City. To learn more about it, visit www.natureinthecity.org or call (415) 564-4107. We especially recommend the fabulous web site, one of the best we have ever seen on any topic.

Howard Strassner