Marina Community Association meeting tonight

A reader writes:

Plans to redesign Chestnut Street, which could include the addition of a transit only lane, traffic signals, and other traffic calming measures, along with the loss of parking, have Marina residents riled up. Or in the words of a reader who attended yesterday’s open house to discuss the project: “I’ve seen more polite crowds at a witch burning.”

A piece of the San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency’s "Muni Forward" program, the proposed Chestnut Street redesign would shave 4 minutes from the travel time for the 30/30X through the corridor, in part by removing a number of existing stops.

The Marina Community Association is slated to address the project at its spring meeting on April 21. Don’t forget your matches or extinguishers...

[From the Marina Community Association website:

"The Annual Spring General Meeting will be at the Claire Lilienthal School at 3630 Divisadero Street Tuesday from 6pm to 8pm. We hope to see everyone there!"]

In other parking news:

Following the collection of over six months of data tracking the utilization of bike racks installed in the 18 parking garages managed by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), the agency’s Parking Division has requested a reduction in the required number of racks to be installed in at least seven (7) of the garages due to “significant slack capacity” for the racks which are already in place.

The Union Square, Sutter Stockton and Civic Center garages are among those facilities for which reductions in the number of bike parking spaces required to be installed have been requested, with observed average daily utilization rates of 26.5 percent, 48.1 percent, and 14 percent for their existing racks respectively.

Keep in mind that businesses and buildings which have installed private racks, such as Twitter, Dolby and City Hall, have impacted the demand for publicly-accessible bicycle parking.

A City ordinance adopted in 2013 upgraded and increased the number and quality of bicycle parking spaces required for City-owned buildings and parking garages based on expected demand.

Rob's comment: Why use the clunky, four-syllable "utilization" when good old one-syllable "use" would do the job better?