The world is on a crash course for further human fueled climate disasters and the local governments we’ve delegated the hard decisions to are often not leading the way. Scientists from the federal government in November of 2018 released a damning assessment of our progress towards combating climate change and the impacts we’re going to soon face. Around the same time the state level California regulators at the Air Resources Board also released their blunt progress report stating that the state is not on track to meet its carbon emission reduction targets. According to the report, this is in large part due to increased driving statewide which has cancelled out other energy efficiency gains elsewhere. Climate change is happening today and the impacts are devastating California with fires and droughts that have been causing major power blackouts and destroying communities. 

(A bike share station at the 4th and King Caltrain Station. Bike share expansion in San Francisco happened well later and much slower than comparably dense cities in the U.S.) 

Let’s cut to the chase to admit that San Francisco has not gotten the basics right for prioritizing public transit, biking, and walking. The result is that around 40% of San Francisco commuters are using the least space efficient and most polluting mode of transportation to commute, yet have little incentive to switch due to large public incentives allocated to cars over all other alternatives and a housing market that is pushing people to live further and further away. Our local leaders know the impending consequences and now have data on the current trajectory. Expecting a good result without making significant changes is pure insanity, yet we consistently see city leaders voting down housing and watering down sustainable transportation projects. 

(Graphic: SFMTA Climate Goals, Targets, and Trends Page) 

Local officials have the decision making power over land use and road design that could counteract the incentives that often make solo driving more attractive than more sustainable alternatives. Their inaction is not because solutions do not already exist or are prohibitively expensive, but rather a lack of courage to deal with short-term complaints on changes that will bring the city long-term benefits. Paint and bollards are affordable solutions to getting started on implementing proven road designs that prioritize sustainable transit However, as local planners and sustainability professionals know, the real challenge is finding the courage to change decades of status quo.

Converting travel lanes and parking for the purposes of rapid transit, biking, and walking are the changes needed if San Francisco is truly committed to a future where it’s convenient and fast to get anywhere in the city without driving a car. The resulting complete transportation network would significantly reduce emissions. Trips taken on San Francisco MUNI buses and trains make up 26% of daily total trips in the city yet contribute less than 1% to emissions. No new technologies are needed to repaint the lines on our streets and make significant emission reductions, yet people can’t be blamed for thinking new technology alone will solve all our problems.

(A protected bike lane project on 2nd street that took many years of intense advocacy and community outreach)

When repeating supportive comments about electric and autonomous vehicle development is a local politician’s climate change platform then you know there’s a serious problem. Future technologies that politicians have little control over will not solve San Francisco’s transportation problems. What they do have power over, the way our land and street space is allocated, is often missing from the climate change stump speeches. San Francisco has great written policies on transit, pedestrian, and bike prioritization. It’s just that our officials often actively oppose following through on these policies. It’s common for significant projects to meander through local politics for over a decade before construction begins. As a result the riding public is left with a slow and unreliable transit network. Our inability to implement projects city wide is a political problem that no one agency can engineer or outreach away.

(Graphic created in August of 2018 to highlight the slow pace of bike share expansion despite progressive proclamations of the importance of fighting climate change) 

City planners trying to implement projects often have to do so at a glacial pace due to a lack of political leadership. On one side city leaders proclaim climate leadership and street safety as priorities and pass admirable goals via legislation, but on the implementation side they encourage planners to keep the status quo based on political convenience. This is how San Francisco ended up with a unanimously passed “transit first” policy and 2020 goal for 20% bike commute share, but a reality that will be far from these goals. New leaders such as Paul Supawanich, the mayor London Breed’s transportation advisor, and Jeffery Tumlin, the new head of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), give me hope that there may be leadership ahead — but they certainly have their work cut out for them and need all the support they can get. 

For locals that want to help with public transportation, finding ways to increase the effectiveness of the political organizing in favor of projects will have a much greater impact than an app focused directly on the issue. An app telling users transportation times can make it easier to use transit. However, it won’t keep a person riding a bus or train that is consistently late or slow. All apps working on transportation should have functionality for getting transit riders politically involved to improve sustainable transportation. City hall reforms such as moving decisions to evening open houses instead of stodgy hearings in city hall on Tuesdays at 10AM are becoming more common for some transportation decisions, and this practice needs to be expanded further if we want to increase public participation.  

(People Protected Bike Lane Actions often organized in response to preventable deaths along unprotected bike lanes)

If a sustainable transportation project gets to see the light of day and isn’t killed early on by a local city supervisor, city agencies generally do a good job of making the case for it. Unfortunately, projects are done in such a piecemeal fashion that benefits are much smaller than if it were part of a complete network. Implementation is also hindered by the provincial nature of supervisor districts such that any project that crosses multiple districts are incredibly difficult to implement. Expect double the projected timeline. San Francisco agencies only have the political bandwidth to implement a few major projects at a time even when funding is available. This will take much longer than the less than ten years we have left to avoid the worst impacts of climate change.

The irony about fighting over a few parking spaces is that the demand for parking increases by a much larger margin if a project isn’t implemented as the population increases. San Francisco’s population increases by about 11,000 people each year. One transit line can carry tens of thousands of riders a day. If the route is efficient, more people take transit and less people drive. However, transit effectiveness and population growth are more abstract concepts than fighting over a tangible parking spot where someone sometimes parks their car (if they’re lucky enough to get that spot in the first place).

(Supervisor Matt Haney speaking at an event remembering the lives of traffic violence. Supervisor Haney has actually put actions behind his words on issues of street re-designs. The other city supervisors that spoke that day not so much)

People frustrated with parking often misdirect their anger towards projects working to reduce car demand rather than the larger parking supply management issues. These projects convert a small percentage of parking but decrease parking demand by a much higher percentage. Parking management and ending on-street parking subsidies would have a much bigger impact on the current struggles for people who truly rely on cars. Parking management has traditionally been a politically unsexy topic to address, but this is the number one issue impacting projects that would significantly reduce our city’s carbon emissions.

The scores of cars on residential blocks that only move once a week for street cleaning are a prime example of current mismanagement. People who have to park multiple times a week spend lots of time looking for parking while people that drive infrequently strategically move their cars once a week at the easiest times to find parking. In either use case the amount paid, if anything at all, does not come close to covering the actual cost of parking and driving on public streets. This heavily subsidized on-street parking system contributes significantly to parking and traffic frustrations in cities.

It is disheartening to know a whole range of transportation solutions work based on real world examples but have to be implemented through a process that won’t deliver results anytime soon. This slowness to re-design cities for resilience and sustainability comes at the high continued cost of everyday pollution and congestion and speeding up the ticking time bomb of irreversible climate change. Currently tens of billions of dollars and lots of talent are being directed towards advanced transportation solutions that in all likelihood will be too little too late. With just a fraction of that effort focused on political organizing for existing proven solutions, a breakthrough could be within reach for our transportation and climate future. If we’re going to change the trajectory we need to make our roads reflect our values.