September 12, 2007

Transportation Focus Group

Meeting Notes by Charles Rivasplata

Folsom Street

This meeting, which was chaired by Marc Salomon, covered transportation issues on Folsom Street. While this street passes through the Western SoMa Plan Area, it also enters other planning areas, such as Eastern SoMa, Rincon Hill, Transbay, andMission. Representatives of these areas were invited to attend, along with City authorities.

The following points summarize the topics and concerns discussed at the meeting:

· Paul Lord asked Tom Radulovich to go over the developments with respect to Folsom Street. Tom explained the rationale for the entire vision

- an east-west transit corridor between the Market/Mission, Townsend corridors;

- Daly called for an SAR of Folsom Street

- Folsom would serve as the commercial heart of the area.

· Jim Meko recognized the support for developing Folsom into a good commercial street. Tom mentioned that he had asked the Task Force to look at Folsom and the possibility of moving bicycles off the street. There have been two meetings with MTA to vet the ideas presented in the vision. In response, MTA raised some concerns with Folsom.

- Eleventh/Twelfth Streets: sign-off on some residential crossings;

- Ninth/Tenth Streets: tow-away is being removed;

- Market/Mission: impacts of changes to traffic and transit flows

- Howard: worry over spill-over; two-way traffic is difficult to manage with more than two bicycle lanes (skinny sidewalks?)

- Folsom: two-way has the same problem as with Howard; one possibility would have one transit lane and two traffic lane.

· Based on recent meetings, Paul reported that MTA has concerns with two-way traffic, insofar as they present issues for including bulb-outs and providing adequate truck turning radii.

· Tom expressed the need for a holistic view of Folsom Street, including other, neighboring planning areas. He said that problems could develop if some blocks of Folsom permit two-way traffic and others permit only one-way traffic.

· Chester Fung of the SFCTA pointed out that the Folsom SAR considered a number of alternatives and called for operational analysis to be performed before a recommended alternative could be forwarded by the SFCTA. He mentioned that the Western SoMa Task Force (TF) could suggest an alternative for the Implementation Study, which is soon to be initiated by the MTA.

· Tom presented some key objectives for the Folsom piece of the transportation component:

1. Make Folsom a good transit street

2. Make Folsom a good commercial street

3. Remove barriers for residents of the neighborhood

· Tom mentioned paying closer attention to how long it would take for transit demand on Folsom to reach a critical mass for transit service.

· Paul pointed out that the Eastern Neighborhoods (EN) will be fairly silent with respect to transportation issues due to the absence of transportation in the environmental impact report (EIR) and its analysis.

· Jon Swae introduced himself to the Focus group and briefly described his work with Chester to improve the transportation system in the EN. He stressed the importance of including supporting work in the EN document, without including it in the EIR.

· The key multimodal improvements need to be based on analysis provided in the following studies:

- Nexus Study: researching the introduction of an aggressive impact fee measure that generates needed monies, taking into consideration fare levels and needs, as well as what it takes to administer such a fee. This effort would be carefully coordinated with such efforts to implement fees in other sectors.

- Implementation Study: exploring ways to introduce new transportation facilities in SoMa, including an inventory of related projects (e.g., TEP, Better Streets) that will help identify a set of priorities. Ideally, this study will help define what we're doing, where we're going, how much money is needed to achieve our objectives, and how to achieve our goals.

· Paul stressed the desire to concentrate retail uses on Folsom, between Seventh and Ninth or Tenth Streets. These blocks would constitute the heart of a neighborhood commercial district (NCD) in Western SoMa. He felt that some sort of statement should be made supporting this idea, preferably from the Task Force. He expressed interest in a phased approach to introducing changes to Folsom, i.e., effectively removing barriers for residents and providing for a safer, more attractive street. A first phase could prioritize residential needs (e.g., Jim brought the need for a crossing at Dore Alley)

· In essence, this phased-in approach on Folsom would feature the following:

- Mid-block crossings between Sixth and Ninth Streets

- Major transit facilities along much of the street

· Peter Albert emphasized the need to include a mid-block crossings scenario into the SFCTA model, but also an alternative scenario incorporating a different option, i.e., allowing for a comparison of the two.

· Marc stressed the importance of stretching Folsom treatments to Thirteenth Street , citing the need to weave together areas already separated by the freeway passing over the latter street, effectively improving connectivity to the Mission area.

· Tom identified a concern that EN could prejudice Western SoMa policies if the analysis performed is compromised.

· In response to Marc's comments, Paul stressed the need to concentrate treatments between Sixth and Ninth Streets, keeping the NCD focused on a specific area.

· Jim also pointed to the benefits of planning for a focused neighborhood commercial area. He stressed the need to keep the design of Folsom in line with neighborhood needs (e.g., active commercial uses, store fronts), and favored a three-block stretch of NCD between Sixth and Ninth Streets, with patch coverage in other areas.

· John Dunlap stressed the need to come with a coherent plan that focuses on improving streets to provide better connections from Point A to Point B. He believes that less attention should be paid to providing block-by-block changes. He recommended looking at the bigger picture.

· Paul identified the fractured nature of past planning efforts along Folsom, where numerous agencies have been involved: redevelopment Agency, the Port, Planning, etc. He believes that the area should be looked at comprehensively.

· Tom argued that in some ways, NCD zoning flies in the face of SoMa zoning needs. He suggested combining store fronts with other commercial uses in certain areas, and store fronts with only a little commercial space in others.

· With respect to regional transit service, Tom expressed the need to identify north-south and east-west transit corridors (e.g., Golden Gate Transit service).

· Peter mentioned that if we do have commercial store front uses in an area, that they be located near major transit nodes. This attempt to provide a basic level of common services around major points of access to transit lines increases the usefulness of these nodes, and can prevent them from being isolated, especially at night.

· At this point, Paul identified five areas of focus coming out of this discussion:

1. The elimination of barriers

2. A commercial street focus

3. A transit street focus

4. Streetscape along Folsom, as far as Thirteenth Street

5. A holistic plan for Folsom, based on coordinative city efforts

· Marc advocated removing bicycle lanes from Folsom, and putting two-way bicycle lanes on Howard.

· Following up on Marc's point, Tom mentioned that we might not necessarily want bicycles on and NCD street because of the level of activity (e.g., competing modes) and the relative scarcity of space.

· Marc asked if there is any truck turning information available for Folsom. In turn, Tom asked if it was practically possible to remove trucks from specific streets in the SoMa area.

· On the subject of freight movement, Tom mentioned that the European Union (EU) devised a logistical plan for distributing goods in central areas. Large trucks would carry goods to a logistics center that in turn, small trucks would be employed to distribute these goods (e.g., beer, sandwiches) to local retail stores. This solution could reduce the environmental impacts of freight movement.

· Regarding the environmental process, Tom mentioned that the Major Environmental Analysis (MEA) section requested that the Task Force provide project parameters for analysis, so that MEA can get started. These parameters should indicate a range of land uses, for example.

· Jim discussed the time constraints faced by the Task Force in completing the Community Plan. Paul then stated that he envisioned having a Plan in the draft stages by January 2008, with further refinements and hearings before the Commission in spring.

· Jim asked that all committees complete a Strategic Analysis Memo (SAM) and stressed the importance of developing plan components. He stressed the need to ensure that there is ongoing input from the Task Force, pointing out that the Community Plan must be a  living document (work-in-progress). He suggested that participants be allowed to make amendments to the document through the provision of facilities.

· Jim identified the importance of empowering Paul to go forward with the drafting of the Community Plan in an open manner.

· Tom proposed holding one more meeting on freight/goods movement in October, to be followed by a November meeting where transit is discussed again, and subsequently the group weighs in on a part of the transportation component. He believes that there are valuable lessons to be learned from the Market & Octavia Plan experience: it is important to suggest innovative transportation improvements for an area early in the planning process, but proposed zoning changes for the area must also be advanced early (to avoid difficulties at the end).

· Jim called attention to planning for the Town Hall meeting in October. He mentioned that he had grouped the Western SoMa planning principles into four clusters. These principles should be coordinated with neighborhood concerns, eventually leading to solutions. He expressed the need to get more people involved in this Plan, so that they give input to the process.

· Marc stated that conflicts with transportation need to be identified, and stressed the need to provide MEA with minimums and maximums. Similarly, Tom identified the need to look at differences in transport/land use (e.g., assumptions for land use in the northwest and southeast areas of the Western SoMa).

· Paul identified some parameters that need to be set in relation to:

- No Project

- High End

- Bottom End (e.g., lower heights in residential enclaves)

· Paul announced that Seifel had been hired as a consultant to perform the economic analysis for the area. He is aiming to have that work completed by the end of November 2007.

· Paul presented the concept of requiring a conditional use permit (cu) for any project in the area exceeding 40 feet in height (and suggested reviewing other criteria). He hopes that Jim will forward this recommendation to Supervisor Chris Daly.

· Tom closed by recommending that once plans advance, it would be a good idea to look at changes to the General Plan (through updates to the Transportation Element). Charles Rivasplata stated that he had envisioned this connection from the start and that he plans to serve as a liaison in seeing that the revised Element incorporate ideas from the Plan.

Again, upcoming Focus Group meetings will discuss the following topics:

Oct.: Focus on goods and freight movement

Nov.: Transit revisited, other transportation components discussed