As V Smoothe pointed out earlier today, there’s no shortage of policies about improved transportation and land use, from the General Plan to various downtown and transit-first plans. However, the Council does not stand up for those plans when confronted with a dozen upset NIMBYs or business owners – from downtown zoning to development in Temescal to parking issues, the Council almost always backs off of its stated commitments to the environment in deference to Oakland’s ingrained car-first suburban mentality. This attitude extends to City Planning and Redevelopment staff, who are obsessed with building parking while limiting high-rise development. While City planners trudge out proposal after proposal designed to set land-use backwards, City transportation planners are divided among different departments and shockingly understaffed, City needs come last regionally, and important transportation decisions are made without any public review. But the ECAP offers the opportunity to institutionalize better transportation and more progressive land-use planning.

Radical change is necessary. Oakland simply cannot continue down the current path of transportation planning. From city planners using community gardens as a flimsy cover for a pro-parking lot agenda to Building Services seizing Measure DD’s widened sidewalks to provide parking for the Lake Chalet, Oakland’s transportation decision-making is a disaster apparent to even the most unconcerned citizen. Everyone who goes out on the town in Uptown has to navigate past Pican’s rude fence (approved administratively by City Planning), deal with an utter lack of parking or transit signage (thanks to the Redevelopment Agency), and step gingerly over rotting sidewalks while crossing potholed streets devoid of bike lanes, during a traffic signal that appears to be timed to kill pedestrians. And this is our showcase downtown district?

A reading of data behind the Energy and Climate Action Plan puts the focus clearly on transportation. With few clear policy demands beyond setting aggressive goals, the Climate Action Coalition is calling for a Transportation Commission to ensure action on these important issues. With the overwhelming majority of our emissions coming from cars, even small changes to mode-share will make huge differences in emissions. This requires not just a commitment, but real follow-through, and institutional changes to allow public and consistent transportation decision-making. A Transportation Commission with real authority would go a long way, but leadership is necessary too. We need elected leadership on land-use so that developers aren’t forced out of our transit corridors by Oakland’s band of increasingly aggressive NIMBYs, we need a unified (and informed) voice on regional transportation funding boards, and we need articulate and risk-taking leaders who are willing to get yelled at in order to create a better future for Oakland. Can Oakland have the leadership we need in order to create a greener, healthier, and more prosperous city? Collectively, that’s our decision.

The term “Complete Street” is used to refer to a street that is improved for all modes of transit: motorized, bicycle, and pedestrian. In Oakland, the Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plans and their associated policies provide compliance with the CA Complete Streets Act of 2008, but there are no concrete plans to add bike lanes or substantial pedestrian improvements to the entirety of Telegraph Avenue and International Blvd. The BRT plan drawn up by Oakland planners and engineers, formally if confusingly known as Oakland’s Locally Preferred Alternative, would make far-reaching and large-scale improvements to those streets, an opportunity unique in the city today.

Oakland’s Bicycle Master Plan outlines a Bicycle Network, streets in the city that should have some level of bicycle facility installed, ranging from fully-fledged bike lanes to just signage. While the Bicycle Master Plan has an Environmental Impact Report associated with it, city staff can’t remove car lanes or parking spaces without Council permission, which is a huge barrier because of the Council’s limited meeting time. In practice, the City’s Bike/Ped Program installs bike lanes when the opportunity arises, like when a street that’s on the BMP is being repaved for cars. This approach is extremely cost-effective, but frustrates cyclists who must use a patchwork of incomplete bicycle facilities. BRT installing bike lanes on Telegraph and International is a unique opportunity to create an entire 17-mile bike route in one fell swoop. But there’s another reason BRT is uniquely beneficial to bicyclists: without BRT, there would be no bike lane on Telegraph at all. Oakland’s 1999 Bicycle Master Plan EIR was successfully challenged in court, and the 2007 Bicycle Master Plan had to abandon bike lanes on Telegraph (using instead the Webster-Shafter route). Oakland’s transportation planners took advantage of the opportunity afforded by BRT to rethink Telegraph, and brought this much-desired bike lane back from the dead.

Oakland’s Pedestrian Master Plan is more of a statement of policy and establishment of best design practices than a map of areas to be improved. The Pedestrian Route Map, in the words of the plan, is “a long-term planning tool for targeting pedestrian improvements,” with no dedicated funding source. Much like bike lanes, pedestrian improvements are installed in a piecemeal fashion, based on grant funding, a private development’s mitigations, or a Redevelopment Agency district-improvement project. The BRT plan will upgrade pedestrian facilities along the entire length of the system, with widened sidewalks, more crosswalks, and even additional traffic signals. To anyone who has had to cross Telegraph Avenue at night, the need for these improvements is apparent.

Oakland’s portion of the 17-mile East Bay Bus Rapid Transit line is proposed to include dedicated bus and bike lanes across its entire length accompanied by significant pedestrian improvements, creating what could be the longest complete street in California. It’s not actually one street, of course: it’s two streets, and the middle portion (downtown) will not have dedicated bus lanes because buses already occupy most of the roadway during commute hours. That caveat aside, the BRT plan promises to be a radical improvement to an extraordinarily long transit corridor, potentially serving 40% of the city’s population.

So who loses out? After all, there’s only so much horizontal right-of-way. It’s not necessarily drivers who will feel the pinch of losing significant street space to sidewalk bulbouts, bike lanes, and bus lanes. Few portions of Telegraph suffer significant traffic delay, and the Grove-Shafter freeway parallels the route, giving drivers another option. Telegraph’s traffic problems are generally at the avenue’s destination points, where people are most likely to switch from driving to using reliable transit. It’s parkers who are going to see the hit, as the plan takes out more street-side parking than expected. But this is a solvable problem: at worst, AC Transit will install additional parking rather than allow the project to founder. International Blvd’s choke points are accommodated by also using E 12th St for portions of the route. Oakland’s plan appears to be pulling off what was once unthinkable: a major complete-street improvement that’s a radical boon to livability, without draining City coffers or drawing drivers’ ire.

Oakland’s plan, of course, is still unfinished. The City is sponsoring a series of public meetings on the project, with the opportunity to give detailed input on specific streetscape choices along the entire route. If you live, work, or hang out near the BRT route and would like to delve into nitty-gritty details like stop locations, I recommend that you visit the meeting in the neighborhood of your interest. In addition to five neighborhood meetings, there’s a meeting at City Hall for general discussion. With resuscitated Telegraph Avenue bike lanes, significant pedestrian improvements, and dedicated transit lanes, the East Bay BRT plan is Oakland’s best chance for the foreseeable future to make a citywide livability improvement on a grand scale.

You can find more information, including dates and locations of public meetings on the BRT LPA, at OaklandBRT.com.

Update: Oakland’s portion of the BRT system is 11 miles.

I wrote last month about the many problems confronting Oakland’s transportation planning process. With civic leaders pushing new ballparks, my thoughts turned to the transportation aspects of planning a major entertainment destination. Two of the announced sites were West of Jack London Square, including a site called Jack London North that has stirred significant interest (and is the most popular plan in a poll at Oakland Local). But it poses some serious transportation access problems, including being certainly outside of what can be considered reasonable walking distance from BART (as is AT&T Park in San Francisco, of course). Without an up-to-date downtown transportation plan or even summary information, it’s hard to blame decision-makers for not knowing the transportation context of grand plans. But what is really striking is how important many downtown plans consider ferry service to be, from Jack London Square developments to the proposed shuttle service, yet those making the plans clearly are unaware of the ferry’s serious shortcomings, including the likelihood that Oakland will lose its ferry service in five years.

All the information below can be found in WETA’s Transition Plan.

The City of Alameda, in partnership with the Port of Oakland and Alameda County (ACTIA), provides a commuter ferry to San Francisco called the Alameda – Oakland Ferry. Its operations are contracted to Blue & Gold Fleets, using two publicly-owned ferries. Alameda, like many other cities, subsidizes this transit service out of its General Fund, and the Port of Oakland also contributes a significant sum yearly out of general revenues, for a total subsidy of about four million dollars. Next year, the new Water Emergency Transit Authority will take over operating the service, but WETA is only committed to maintain current service for five years. So here’s the problem: the Port doesn’t want to keep paying, and WETA wants to expand service to South San Francisco, which will require increased subsidy. With Port and City budgets squeezed, the future of ferry service is very much up in the air.

The present state of ferry service is also a big problem. Everyone seems to assume that people use the ferry, but the truth is that almost nobody rides it. Ridership declined ten percent from 1997 to 2008, and has dropped 15% in the current fiscal year. The ferry’s maximum roundtrip capacity is only 2328 passengers a day,* and average daily ridership is a pitiful 640 people**, with two-thirds of commuters coming from Alameda (though most weekend trips originate in Oakland). Because Jack London Square and Alameda are so far from BART, and SF’s Ferry Terminal is in a major job center, there are several thousand people that could use the ferry to commute, but they don’t. The ferry is slow, expensive, and frankly, unpleasant to ride. There’s no signage, no ferry employees outside of the ferry itself, no waiting area, the ferries’ interiors are shabby, and the snacks and alcohol bar is woefully underutilized. On top of that, tickets are expensive. And what kind of “emergency” transit closes during a rainstorm? Unless WETA addresses these problems, ferry ridership can’t increase significantly enough for the ferry to be a real transit option.

If City officials are going to say that Jack London Square’s ferry pier is a transportation option, or attempt to make any plans including it, Oakland must determine the future of the ferry. The City should ask the Port and Alameda to explain their plans for ferry subsidy over the next ten years. Oakland should tell WETA in no uncertain terms that if they want Oakland to commit to long-term funding, WETA’s multimillion-dollar planned investments in Berkeley and South San Francisco should be matched by investments in Oakland. To determine how much of a commitment public agencies should make, Oakland should also find out what plans WETA has for increasing ferry ridership, because current levels don’t justify a continued subsidy. Local leaders are making plans based around a ferry service that is clearly failing, with no plan to improve it or to ensure it doesn’t disappear. Burdened by a chaotic and unfocused transportation bureaucracy and decision-making structure, it’s unclear who is keeping an eye on Oakland’s transit infrastructure, even as it slips away.

** 466,818 trips in FY 2007-2008, divided by 365 days, divided by two trips/person, means an average of only 640 people rode the ferry each day during that period. Remember, this includes Alameda as well as Oakland; Alameda passengers represent about 2/3s of the riders, so the Jack London Square ferry terminal is only serving about 220 people on an average day.

Obviously, ancient sidewalks and pothole-ridden streets are bad for bicyclists and pedestrians. There is still a crippling bike parking shortage in many parts of downtown, and major construction projects are unnecessarily impacting bike commuters. The Fox Theater isn’t following the new Bicycle Parking Ordinance, yet had the gall to ask the city for a subsidized parking lot on Telegraph Avenue, gaining the support of the Redevelopment Agency. Transportation planning is as much of a mess as it ever was.

But a lot has been accomplished in the last year. Oakland’s Bicycle Master Plan was passed in 2007 and is being implemented in a stuttering but cost-effective manner. Bike route signage will soon grace most thoroughfares. Pedestrian advocates were able to delay the Uptown parking lot in favor of public art (no thanks to the downtown councilmembers). Bike parking has finally come to Old Oakland and other parts of town. The Bicycle Parking Ordinance has been followed with pedestrian-friendly zoning and ground-floor design standards recommended for downtown by the Planning Commission, setting a precedent for the citywide zoning update. Dramatically increasing pedestrian and bicycle trips are not only apparent but now they are documented, setting the stage for greater government awareness of the need for, as it’s called now, complete streets.

Bike to Work Day may only be symbolic of the quest for better transportation options, but it’s fun! You can join a Pedal Pool, and bicycle with your Councilmember and neighbors to City Hall, where you’ll be greeted with a pancake breakfast and gift bag. If you’re biking to work somewhere else in the city, energizer stations will provide food, drink, and swag (a map is in today’s East Bay Express). The East Bay Bicycle Coalition will provide valet bicycle parking all day, and in the evening there’s a North Oakland Bike From Work Day party, sponsored by ULTRA, the EBBC, and Tip Top Bike Shop (starts at 5:30, on 49th St between Shattuck and Telegraph Avenues). It’s an opportunity to engage in an alternative commute in a more welcoming environment than usual, but as Becks points out, it’s also a chance to talk to your councilmembers about bike/ped issues, and even to stop by BART HQ to speak for a better East Oakland investment. If only every political event came with a gift bag!

NRDC Switchboard’s Justin Horner (former Oakland City Council aide) discusses the recent change in America’s driving habits.

StreetsFilms gives tips on locking a bicycle, and Streetsblog kicks of its national coverage with an update on progress toward a new Surface Transportation Act. Meanwhile, Transportation For America releases its priorities for greener, more equitable transportation policy.

Transbay Blog looks at newly-released BART rider survey data, and concludes that infill stations are a better investment than suburban extensions.

Tomorrow is also the big vote on the Oakland Airport Connector. Will BART borrow $150m, steal from its seismic improvement fund, and potentially bankrupt the Port of Oakland to build a flyover connector between the Coliseum BART station and Oakland Airport, with no stops at the hotels between, and a $12 roundtrip fare? Or will the BART Board choose a vastly cheaper option that would provide greater local service and free up funds for other transit improvements around the Coliseum and throughout the Bay Area? You’ve probably already read Becks’s blog, and TransForm’s report, but here’s a blog from the BART workers’ union.

Oasis Dancing Permit Appeal

Though the claim that Oakland shutting down clubs with violent incidents is an elaborate racist conspiracy is far-fetched, it is certainly true that the city is not supportive of late-night businesses even as the General Plan and other policies encourage a “24-hour city.” From the smoking ban to cabaret permit application fees to pinball bans to the city-created taxi shortage, Oakland does not make it easy for nightlife venues to be successful. But when, against all odds, a dance club is successful yet does not lead to shootings in the neighborhood, one would expect the city to be pleased. One would be quite wrong.

The Oasis, a somewhat run-down club with a wonderful space and an unique music selection, is appealing its denial of a cabaret license to the City Council tonight. Essentially, the owner’s permit was yanked because his almost hundred-year-old building didn’t pass all inspections, and he continued operation. Undercover police found after-hours operations and “the scent of freshly burnt marijuana” as well. When contacted about needing a permit (after four years of operation and business tax payments), the owner applied for a permit. His permit was rejected because he was operating without a permit. You can read the entire Kafkaesque saga in the staff report, but suffice to say that there are no allegations of violence or anything more serious than folks dancing without a permit.

Uptown parking lot

Late last year, Forest City Development asked for a three-year extension on its agreement to build a tower on a city-owned parcel at 19 and Telegraph. The Redevelopment Agency could ask for almost anything as a condition of extending their lease, but chose to ask for a surface parking lot. Ever since then, area residents, clubbers, and concerned citizens have been fighting this very visible step backwards for the Uptown neighborhood. Much has been written about this proposal, but it is important to note that, whether the parking lot is ever built or not, the only effective plans for increasing area car parking have come from pedestrian advocates opposed to the surface lot (including keeping the Franklin lot open later and installing signage). Tonight the Council will hear Redevelopment Agency’s request to apply to the Planning Commission for permission to build the lot; if they vote to move forward, it will likely be back before them in six months when either residents or the Redevelopment Agency appeals the Planning Commission’s decision.

So downtown nightlife lovers will congregate tonight, not at Somar, but at City Hall. There may be an after-party, but the meeting’s liable to run past bar closing time. If we’re successful, there will be other chances to party. After all, the City Council doesn’t meet every night!

Eager readers of the blogoaksphere certainly noticed many bloggers’ cause du jour – preventing the city from installing a surface parking lot in the middle of downtown’s up-and-coming Uptown neighborhood. The issue touched on a lot of the causes dear to bloggers’ hearts: pedestrian and transit-oriented planning, civic engagement, and enjoying nightlife. While advocates were clearly outlobbied at the City Council yesterday, and I find the Community and Economic Development Committee’s pro-parking decision as frustrating as everyone else, I see how the city came to this decision. It’s not just that the CED Committeemembers decided, for whatever reason, that they love parking and don’t understand its pedestrian impact, but also contributing to this result are the structural flaws that beset Oakland’s government in general. It’s the poor performance of the Redevelopment Agency, the deeply flawed labor contract, and the city’s lack of transportation planning that lead the city to push for parking lots instead of better solutions.

An ineffectual agency

It was the Redevelopment Agency that made the decision to ask the Council and Forest City for a surface parking lot. I have been told that the decision was reached after much internal debate, since Redevelopment had the option to ask Forest City for pretty much anything as a condition of extending their lease on the 19th and Telegraph parcel. Parking won out because the Agency has planned to build a parking structure on 18th and San Pablo for almost ten years, but can’t get it together to move forward. In fact, last year they ignored an unsolicited offer to build a structure with a bowling alley on top, and have no timeline for issuing an RFP. Yet Redevelopment told the Council that temporary parking is needed because it will take some time to build new parking, which is entirely the Agency’s fault, as the planed parking structure could have been built at any time in the last decade. In effect, pedestrians are being punished for Redevelopment’s inefficiency. And long-promised Uptown sidewalk improvements are still going nowhere, adding insult to pedestrian injury.

Labor issues

The city employees’ contract, which expired last summer but is still basically in effect, imposes stringent work rules that limit the City Council’s ability to pursue programs or efficiently manage the workforce. Several of the rules governing employees limit the options available to Councilmembers concerned about adequate parking in Uptown. Pedestrian advocates and local businesses suggested that, to increase the supply of street-side car storage, parking meter hours be extended until 2am, and street sweeping hours be pushed back until 2 or 3am. The City Council ignored those cost-effective ideas, because city work rules prevent meter maids from working after 6pm and street-sweeping crews from working past 3am. Since the city workers’ contract prevents the Council from adjusting parking enforcement to meet the needs of a late-night district, adding additional parking becomes an easier prospect than increasing the use of existing parking. It’s not just the enormous expense of the city workers’ contract that’s holding Oakland back, but its work rules as well.

Lack of transportation planning

Oakland’s transportation connections are the engine of its economy and the linchpin of residential demand. However, overlapping jurisdictions severely complicate the picture: AC Transit and BART provide most public transportation (though not all: Emeryville’s Emery-Go-Round, Contra Costa County’s WestCat, and the Water Emergency Transit Authority’s ferries also serve Oakland), CalTrans controls the freeways and some major roads, the Public Utilities Commission oversees railroads, and the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency and Transportation Improvement Authority direct most local transportation funds. When the City of Oakland is provided representation on these commissions, it is spread among the elected officials: Rebecca Kaplan is Oakland’s ACTIA rep, Larry Reid is Oakland’s CMA rep, and Jane Brunner sits on the joint ABAG/MTC policy-making board. The officials are free to pursue whatever policies they think are best on each commission without talking to one another, and the citizens of Oakland have no opportunity to influence transportation planning at public hearings.

Making matters worse, Oakland’s bureaucratic and official structure does not unify transportation decision-making. The Redevelopment Agency (the only part of Oakland city government with any money) is responsible for many if not most transportation improvements, and they do not necessarily work with CEDA’s bike/ped program or the planning department. Building Services also has jurisdiction over many transportation issues, especially as related to large-scale development projects. When Pat Kernighan asked the head of Redevelopment at the parking lot hearing if he was working with BART on signage and wayfinding, he said no. However, the bike/ped program is in fact working with BART on signage, but probably don’t realize that there are redevelopment goals that the signage can further. Transportation policy decisions are made by several different Council committees: most parking issues are handled by Finance and Management, planning for parking or transit-oriented development goes to Economic Development, most street improvements are heard by the Public Works Committee, and taxi regulation is governed by the Public Safety Committee. With most policy decisions made at the Committee level, Oakland’s City Council is structurally unable to coordinate transportation policy.

How does this lead to a bad parking lot? Besides the fact that a parking lot is obviously bad planning, if the Council committeemembers were up to speed on its transportation planning they may not have approved it. There is a transportation plan for Uptown, and it involves moving major vehicle traffic off of Telegraph and to Broadway at 20th St, a goal that clearly conflicts with a parking lot on 19th St. Sidewalk and bicycle improvements and a plaza are planned for lower Telegraph, AC Transit has already built their transit center on 20th and moved bus stops off of lower Telegraph, and Oakland’s taxi regulator is exploring adding a taxi stand to Uptown. Had the CED Committee been able to evaluate the parking lot in the context of these plans, they may have realized that it just doesn’t work. But not only is the Council unaware of existing transportation plans, it appears that city staff is as well. In such an environment, it is impossible to implement a transportation plan. It’s because of these factors, which also impact other aspects of Oakland’s poor governance, that Uptown pedestrians may be stuck with a parking lot.

Three years ago today, V Smoothe and I started this blog, FutureOakland (then on blogspot). We were disappointed by media coverage of the mayor’s race, and felt the minority of Oaklanders opposed to growth and revitalizing the city were completely dominating the public discussion of Oakland’s future. Under the reactionary handle of OaklandNative, I hoped to help move public discussion in favor of a more informed and more hopeful vision for this beautiful city’s success. Three years later, that goal has been largely realized.

It was not long ago that any discussion of redeveloping downtown was clouded by the angst of those wishing to preserve the failed past. Now, Oakland and East Bay residents take justifiable pride in the rebirth of Uptown as an entertainment destination, and countless neighborhoods have rediscovered their identities and are demanding their rightful share of city attention. Three years ago city government was regarded as problematic because of the influence of “greedy” developers; now the public is aware of the timidity of our elected officials and the enormous self-imposed barriers to economic success. Wednesday night’s meeting of the Planning Commission on the downtown zoning update feature a much younger and more hopeful crowd than perhaps the commission has seen in its history. While I may not agree with everyone who was there, I agree that they should offer their practical and optimistic vision to public officials. I am sure that this blog helped drive the ever-higher public meeting attendance that Oakland has experienced for the last year or so.

I don’t necessarily mean to take credit for the dozens of committed activists who have shaken up a complacent City Hall in the last few years, or for the New Media explosion allowing Oaklanders to understand the context and impact of city policy and cultural change for the first time in perhaps decades. Maybe I was just a little ahead of the curve. Of the three major Oakland blogs that predate mine, one is still kicking. But, as I am often reminded by longtime politicos, Oakland’s public discussion is light-years ahead of where it was when Ron Dellums was elected Mayor on a platform of nonsense.

Real change, whether you call it shaping the future of Oakland or creating a better Oakland, does not come from reporting alone. Since starting this blog I have become not only more informed, but more engaged. I have joined several civic organizations, taken leadership roles, and found my political niche. I have learned that, while full-throated advocacy (always nuanced and well-founded, to be sure) may make for exciting blogging, making a positive impact in the community means working with others. We Oaklanders are a clever and mostly well-meaning lot; civic engagement has been rewarding and thought-provoking.

So while I am thrilled that so many bloggers are lighting up cyberspace with a wealth of thought and information about every facet of life in this complicated city, and of course everyone should totally follow my Twitter, I ask the reader to do more than just read these brilliant blogs, but to take a more active role in the future of our great city. Volunteering, attending public meetings, starting a neighborhood organization, cleaning a local park on Earth Day, and emailing city councilmembers are the tools with which we make a stronger, healthier Oakland. Individually, we each only have so much time and so many issues that excite our attention, but together, we contribute to creating a thriving community.

As Becks and I have written, we and other pedestrian advocates are opposed to the construction of a surface parking lot on Telegraph Avenue at 19th St, next to the Fox Theater. The one hundred or so spaces created by this ugly lot could be found by better using existing parking resources, including the several nearby parking structures, or by extending parking meter times. The issue is not parking in the abstract, but urban design and transportation planning. At the City Council committee hearing at which the members postponed approving the lot, Pat Kernighan observed that “Oakland is not Manhattan,” and that parking is needed for Oaklanders to come from all over the city to enjoy Uptown. I do not disagree, but because 90% of trips are not going to car-free, does that mean 90% of trips must be by car? Parking is more complicated than being for it or against it. Though surface parking next to the Fox is not acceptable not matter how dolled up in flowers, planning for parking can be a boon for bicyclists and pedestrians. 

The main argument against surface parking is that it is a pedestrian hazard, and its prominence may have some driving-inducing effects. Surface parking is a pedestrian hazard in three main ways: curb-cuts allow cars to cross the sidewalk, surface parking lots are often magnets for crime, and traffic swarming around the lot will make crossing the street more dangerous. Additionally, surface lots symbolize disinvestment, and a lot on Telegraph would entirely ruin the pedestrian experience of up-and-coming Uptown. All of these objections do not apply as well, or at all, to structured parking. Portland OR has a great deal of structured parking in its transit-oriented downtown, but it is appropriately located and designed. I would not necessarily oppose structured parking in the Uptown area, as it is more efficient use of valuable downtown land than surface parking, and can integrate retail or other uses.

Not planning, but parking

The Redevelopment Agency apparently agrees, though their appetite for structured parking is insatiable. In addition to the lot under contract with Forest City for which they want surface parking, the RDA controls three lots downtown, for all of which it is in preliminary talks to dispose and develop. The three lots are 21st and Telegraph, 20th and San Pablo, and 21st and Broadway. For all three the RDA envisions structured public parking as a major component of development. This has been arrived at by no analysis or even guesstimate of parking demand; the RDA justifies their call for surface parking on Telegraph by asserting that because there were hundreds of parking spaces where The Uptown Apartments now sit, and those spaces have been replaced by new development (including parking), therefore there is a “severe parking shortage” now. That is not planning, and certainly not becoming to an allegedly transit-first city. Before requiring all future development of Uptown Redevelopment lots to include public parking, Uptown’s demand for parking should be studied in the context of overall transportation patterns and existing parking resources. It is possible that parking demand may require an additional parking structure, and, as part of an informed look at Uptown circulation, this could be a benefit to pedestrians as well.

What induces parking demand is not parking itself, but artificially cheap parking. Imposing minimum parking requirements, subsidizing parking facilities, setting meter or public lot rates lower than market rates, and planning for an overly large number of parking spaces, are all government actions that weight transportation choices in favor of driving a car. But an appropriate amount of parking, at market rates and in response to market demand, does not necessarily encourage people to drive rather than take transit or other means, but allows commercial districts to meet actual parking demand and be more economically successful. The economic success of transit-oriented neighborhoods in an inherently green endeavor, even if most customers are not taking transit. Without artificially-cheap or overly-abundant parking, well-conceived alternative transportation can compete with driving, and punitive anti-car regulations are unnecessary.

Putting the car before the house

Just as lot parking is worse than structured parking from a pedestrian perspective, and the main problem with building Uptown structured parking lots is that it is not part of a transportation plan, the idea that parking is inherently problematic can lead to a misunderstanding of the relative harm of different kinds of parking. In January, there was a brief tussle in San Francisco over a 36-unit development receiving permission to exceed San Francisco’s maximum parking requirements. In this case, the developer wasn’t arguing only that there is demand for more than one space for every other unit, but also that building so little parking would make it infeasible to put it underground, and so preclude pedestrian-oriented streetfront retail. It was a tussle because progressive San Franciscans were aghast at the prospect of parking. But what SF’s bike-ped activists miss is that advocating for a 21st-century streetscape does not mean blindly opposing the construction of new parking.

While I do not drive, I don’t think that owning a car forces someone to live a lifestyle that is bad for the environment. One can take transit to work, walk to restaurants, bike the grocery store, and still have a car for the occasional trip out of town or to Ikea. In the case of the aforementioned housing development, its residents were effectively being asked to give up their cars in order to live near transit, a position that will not smooth the transition of cities to transit-dependence. And since it’s unrealistic to demand that residents of any particular new building not even own a car, using the planning process to artificially lower the construction of off-street parking will simply encourage dependency on curbside parking. It is not private parking, but curbside parking that poses the greatest opportunity and real costs on bicyclists and pedestrians, and on car drivers and mass transit as well.

A car-park off the street is worth two in the street

In-street parking is the most harmful kind of parking because its presence in the street necessarily takes away from other transportation options. While lot parking, and structured parking to a lesser degree, may be an inefficient use of land parcels, street parking uses the precious, and severely limited, public right-of-way. The linear (street width) space devoted to car parking on a major street necessarily takes away from sidewalk, bike lanes, or lanes for motorized traffic (including cars, taxis, buses, and light-rail). Street parking’s impact on bike lanes is increased by almost one-half by the “door zone,” the area of the public street occasionally occupied by open car doors, which pose a particular danger to cyclists. A well-built bike lane does not use this space and so has to push even further into the shared right-of-way.

Curbside car parking also imposes a congestion impact beyond the opportunity cost of using its space for moving traffic. The act of parallel parking slows circulation, and the potential convenience of curbside parking over off-street parking encourages unnecessary car driving, circling the block looking for a space. While parking structures, whether stand-alone or as part of mixed-use buildings, plan the locations of their entrances and exits based at least in part on optimal circulation, street parking is haphazardly littered across major streets, with parking absent only when it is a huge and obvious barrier to other forms of transportation. Even in areas with abundant off-street parking and severe traffic congestion (like College or Piedmont Avenues), the majority of the main street is lined with car parking.

Street parking’s impact on other forms of transportation that share the right-of-way is worse than the possible driving-inducing effects of structured parking. If some amount of parking is needed for commercial districts to thrive, careful planning should guide decisions to install transportation facilities. The Redevelopment Agency must study how much parking is actually needed in Uptown before deciding that every single one of its lots should have a large parking component, and a surface lot is simply too ugly to front Telegraph Avenue. But some new public parking is probably needed in Uptown, and it’s no environmental crime to own a car. If off-street structured parking is built, rather than adding to existing street parking, new parking can replace it.  Removing curbside parking as part of building off-street parking can create additional bicycle and pedestrian facilities: widened sidewalks and door zone-free bike lanes. And that’s how car parking can be good for pedestrians and bicyclists.

After I graduated high school in 1997, my father took me and my sister on a photo-tour of Oakland’s most endangered landmarks, as published by the Oakland Heritage Alliance. We photographed the moldering Cox Cadillac Building, the abandoned Floral Depot Building, and, of course, the hulking ruin of the Fox Theater. I expected every one of these structures to be torn down by the time I returned to Oakland from my out-of-state liberal-arts college, assuming the economy remained decent enough to employ a demolition crew in the DTO.

My first job out of college was working for Forest City Residential West. I cold-called every developer on Oakland’s Major Projects List in 2002, and during that economic downtown they were the only one interested in an intern. I spent most of my time compiling evidence of why a ballpark should not be shoe-horned into Uptown, and I mapped the project area. It was the first, and mercifully the last, time I would work in downtown San Francisco. I witnessed my first affordable-housing candlelight vigil, and met the stylish and infamous Lily Hu. Along the way I learned how the project would transform an enormous parking lot into urban transit-accessible housing, a critical need in the Bay Area. The project prospectus that I helped write included the then-fantastic vision of surrounding retail and entertainment venues spurred by this unprecedented investment. Unbelievers attacked everything about the proposal, from its demolition of historic warehouses to its public subsidy.

It’s true that the Forest City Uptown project is subsidized – or, more precisely, may be subsidized. Unlike Oak-To-Ninth, Uptown’s financial deal with Oakland’s Redevelopment Agency pays for more than environmental remediation and affordable housing. Forest City received a payment for executing its development agreement, and may not pay all their property taxes depending on their profit margins. This subsidy, which will disappear if the project is successful over 20 years, was ratified by then-Mayor Jerry Brown and the City Council (unanimously) in order to soak up acres of wasted central space and spur the revitalization of downtown. Many people don’t remember that the entire Uptown project area was surface parking dotted with a few auto-repair businesses. Some people quibble with the architectural style and the site plan, but it is inarguably an enormous improvement over what was there before.

I am happy to defend Uptown because Forest City’s project accomplished Jerry Brown’s stated goal: it revitalized an entire district. The Façade Improvement Program helped restore a handful of Art Deco buildings along Telegraph, and the RDA helped build a parking lot. Without unusual subsidy, businesses like Café Van Kleef, the Uptown nightclub, and EntreZ opened up. I worked for Brog Properties for two years, during which time the company converted the Cathedral Building to mixed-use, created the Marquee Lofts from a trashed commercial mid-rise, and purchased the Latham Square Building. Even though Thomas Berkley Square is going into foreclosure, it is still a completed building in the area. The Fox Theater could not have successfully acquired $70m in grant funds for its full restoration had there not been so much public and private redevelopment in the immediate area.

Jerry Brown announced he was abandoning long-held retail plans for Uptown in favor of a residential project almost immediately after he was elected in 1998. The Forest City Uptown Disposition and Development Agreement was signed in 2003. Leasing began in 2007. By then, investors and foundations had committed over $200m in the surrounding area’s residential and commercial developments and businesses.

Of course, everything is not turning up roses, beyond the economic downtown that is hurting local condo sales (though retail/entertainment is so far unaffected). While private foundations, developers, and businesses have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in Uptown, Oakland’s Redevelopment Agency has failed to deliver the streetscape plan it promised investors and the public in 2004. Telegraph Avenue is to be cut off at 16th St, recreating Latham Square, and narrowed to accommodate bike lanes and widened sidewalks. But three years after this plan was finalized, nothing but the Fox’s sidewalk has been completed.

Every one of the endangered buildings I photographed in 1997 is now restored: the Cox Cadillac building is Whole Foods, the Floral Depot is Flora, and the Fox is becoming the Bay Area’s premier music venue.

I often hear Oaklanders complain about developers and their supposed subsidies. I hear Oaklanders complain that historic buildings aren’t respected, and that developers make promises they can’t deliver. But in Uptown, a subsidized development that involved eminent domain has spurred a renaissance of historic proportions, in historic buildings, by encouraging hundreds of millions of dollars of private investment. I am so excited to celebrate the Fox’s grand opening tonight, a direct result of the Uptown strategy I had a small part in aiding, and the only sour note is the city’s failure to deliver decent sidewalks.