Balboa Park Station Area Plan

Balboa Park Station Area Plan, via SF Planning

Recently the Balboa Park Station Area Plan has come back into the news as the plan slowly comes to fruition.  As with all things political, the frustrating pace is necessary to make sure that it’s done correctly.  Especially in this case, when so much of the work is meant to correct for the horrendous design visited upon this area in the past 50 years.

This formerly residential neighborhood is blessed with some of the best transit connectivity in San Francisco.  It’s BART’s busiest station outside of Downtown SF, and it is a transfer station for many Muni lightrail and bus lines.  It also was cut in half by I-280, which made a gouge through the namesake park and the affordable housing nearby.  With the main campus of City College in it’s midst, this neighborhood, for good or ill, is based on transit.

The new plan makes several admirably ambitious steps forward.  I’ll try to summarize as best as I can (organized roughly West to East), but there’s no substitute for reading it yourself.

• The newsmaker recently has been the relocation of the “Phelan Bus Loop”.  This would take what is effectively a parking lot and convert it to multi-family affordable housing, combined with the nearby vacant Kragen store.  Then a new Bus Loop would be constructed around the existing Firehouse, complete with bathrooms and a rest area for the drivers.  This new configuration would provide great connectivity to the CCSF campus, and create a more interesting street face along Ocean Ave, while providing much needed housing.
• Adjacent to the Bus Loop sits two enormous vacant properties owned by the City of San Francisco.  Two unbuilt reservoirs hold only cars and dirt.  The Plan would use the eastern half of each parcel to construct additional housing, and create open space on the western half.  This would effectively reserve area if the reservoirs are needed in the future, while allowing for construction of homes in a very desirable location.  The Campus could have a much better entrance, and Phelan has much more capacity than is used right now.
• Along with rebuilding Phelan, Ocean and Geneva are in dire need of a face lift.  The basic idea is to construct them in terms with SF’s Better Streets Plan, doing their best to create a more pedestrian and family friendly streetscape.  There is also a plan to encourage more mixed use zoning to get more people on the street.  This would also help re-link the two sides of the freeway.
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  Section through SPUI and Freeway Deck, via SF Planning

  The gem of the plan is the SPUI and freeway deck above 280.  Single Point Urban Interchanges funnel traffic entering and exiting the highway through one chokepoint, helping to control car’s speed, while also creating an easier to navigate crosswalk.  The interstate area between Ocean and Geneva would have a deck above it, creating a pedestrian and transit plaza.  MUNI’s existing turnarounds would be transferred to the deck, putting it closer to both sides of the neighborhood, and also the CCSF campus.  Of course BART would get a facelift also, trying to lighten up the trench-like station.  The deck might also host additional housing and stores, as part of the overall plan to announce the Station as a destination rather than a view from a culvert.

• Lastly, San Jose would also receive the same treatment as Ocean and Geneva.  There would be an effort to reclaim some land from MUNI to create more housing and shops, again all trying to create walkable neighborhoods.

Naturally this is a plan that will take decades to enact.  And many millions of dollars.  But this is an area that is absolutely ripe for more development.  Where else can you find schools and houses so close to BART for such affordable prices?  As I’ve written before, why not take advantage of what we have?  The question is, how can we best work to enact the needed changes?  We needed this project 25 years ago.

Proposed Freeway Deck and SPUI, via SF Planning

Negligent Design

Ever since the installation of the new detour in the Bay Bridge, I’ve heard many anecdotal stories about the terrors of the S curve.  When I was racing back to San Francisco to return a rental car (the one time I’ve driven the detour) I could see the point.  Most of the bridge is straight and flat, and people tend to speed up.  The whole reason that many newer longer bridges (think of the San Mateo Bridge) have slight curves is to avoid this false sense of security.

With the big-rig crash earlier this week, I thought of something else though.  It’s that many drivers have a sense of complacency, if not invincibility behind the wheel.  There is plenty of signage to warn of the impending curve and lowered speed limit, so what else can it be?  Maybe it’s just that we base our driving on habit rather than thinking.  This is the fundamental difference between cars and bikes/pedestrians.

I bike to work, and I have to make hundreds of life or death decisions on the roads each day.  This constant fear is what keeps me on my toes, and always aware of what’s around me.  Luckily my route follows the panhandle bike path, and a portion of golden gate park, so I’m segregated from many cars.  But it also means I have to bike on Fell or Oak for a few blocks.  If an engineer wants to call the new S curve ‘negligent’, then what would you call a bike path that ends into a 4 lane high-speed free-for-all?

Pedestrians and bikers have to always be thinking.  If there’s something in your way, you adapt.  Each day presents new challenges and puzzles.  Yet I don’t blame the designers for it.  The design is safe only if people are aware of it.  There are many ways of making people pay attention: curves, bumps, signs, paint, etc.  But if a driver chooses to go well over the posted speed limit, it’s not negligent design.

Discretionary Review Reform

Yesterday the Land Use and Economic Development Committee of the Board of Supervisors had a hearing about reforming the Discretionary Review process.  The Planning Department has proposed several different revisions to the protocol in an effort to make everything more efficient.  Mainly, the revisions would require a more thorough early notification, but would give the department power to reject frivolous challenges.  This was not the first hearing in this process, nor will it be the last, but I wanted to provide some first person perspective on the proposal.

Anyone who works in the design field in San Francisco is all too familiar with the headaches caused by the DR process.  After negotiations with the department, the plans get sent to the neighbors, and the struggle starts anew.  In a worst case scenario, someone believes that the plans are illegitimate, and demands a review by the Planning Commission.  Well, demand is a little strong – for $300 you can cause any project to be delayed by months, costing the project sponsor thousands.  It is this power that forces negotiation, even when the Design Standards are met.  Supervisor Maxwell several times cited this as the power to ‘kill’ a project.  The idea that an uninformed public should be able to override professional planners, architects and designers stings the brain, but there it is.  I think this was the main sticking point in not immediately passing the legislation.

The new version of the rules will still allow the public to bring the decision in front of a public board, however.  Any DR that is negated by planning may still be brought before the Board of Appeals.  The power to kill a project still remains valid, but yes, slightly lessened.  Because nobody should be able to kill a valid project that meets all the criteria.

The most important part of the reform has already been accomplished through administrative changes.  Pre-application notices are now required for all projects, and the information has been standardized.  Any applicable party will have the initial contact, and be able influence the design in it’s early stages.  This will prevent the type of blackmail we’ve seen when the project hangs on one ornery neighbor.  These pre-app changes are long past due, but welcomed nevertheless.  The problem is that now we’re doing too much.  A Residential Design Team has also been added to look at all projects for uniform application of the Design Standards, thereby increasing the consistency of the review.  The extended pre-application, along with the unlimited DR privileges will put too much strain on the planning staff.  That is why we must pass these reforms to the DR process as well – they’re complimentary in placing the review earlier in the process.

At the meeting many of the speakers were of this mind.  Design professionals and homeowners spoke about the intense pressure they’ve felt from one unhappy neighbor.  Neighborhood groups often spoke that the earlier they knew about a project, the less likely they were to DR a project.  Only one person spoke passionately about keeping the DRs ‘as-is’, and that was a lawyer who profits from DR clients.  Most everyone knows the process is broken and overburdened.  The effort to push forward the neighborhood notification is an effort to please everyone from the beginning.  We all like to work with happy neighbors.  And who knows, maybe we’ll end up with better buildings as a result.