Survey on Diviz and Oak development

Neighbors Developing Divisadero sends this:

Your two cents

Take this survey to shape the future of inclusive development at SE Divis & Oak.

158 units of housing along with ground floor retail have been proposed to replace the Shell gas station and car wash at 444 Divisadero. Neighbors Developing Divisadero has created an online survey so that we can take the neighborhood pulse on this proposed project. Here's your chance to weigh in on the proposal. This survey is geared towards neighbors who reside in the following zip codes: 94117, 94115, and 94118.

It's great that hoodline.com helped bring this to neighbors' attention with their recent article so that we can provide preliminary feedback to the project sponsors and Planning Department in an easy to read report, rather than waiting to give public comment on an EIR designation hearing a year down the road. 

Read the full preliminary project assessment here.

Neighbors Developing Divisadero has a mission to support inclusive, enriching, and sustainable neighborhood development in the Divisadero Corridor and surrounding neighborhoods. In alignment with the results of 2014's Proposition K, Neighbors Developing Divisadero actively promotes the inclusion of at least 33% on-site units for low-and- moderate-income households and at least 50% on-site units for middle-class households.

Rob's comment: The project calls for only 78 parking spots for 158 housing units. Instead there should be a parking spot for every unit.

Obama on the Obamacare decision

+

The Huffington Post reports that the Repug presidential candidates are unconvinced.

Traffic congestion: Excuse to bully motorists?

Will California use congestion to coerce motorists?

by Dan Walters

the Sacramento Bee

When Jerry Brown staged a symbolic “groundbreaking” for his pet bullet train project in downtown Fresno five months ago, he traveled to his event by car.

He wasn’t alone. The 350 miles or so he traveled on his round-trip that day were a minute fraction of the approximately 900 million miles that California motorists drive on streets, roads and highways each day.

Or to put it another way, autos account for well over 90 percent of Californians’ transportation. Even the most optimistic projections of non-automotive travel say that’s unlikely to change much in the future as the state’s population and transportation demands continue to grow.

That fact and years of political neglect generate two problems---the nation’s worst traffic congestion and its third-worst pavement conditions.

Brown says he wants to do something about the state’s deteriorating roadways and has called a special legislative session to explore ways to put billions of dollars more into maintenance and reconstruction.

However, he is silent on congestion. The special legislative session may bring a simmering dispute over that facet of the transportation conundrum into sharper focus.

Three months ago, Brown’s Department of Transportation, fulfilling a 2009 legislative mandate, began circulating a draft of a California Transportation Plan, aimed at setting policy for the next quarter-century.

Citing California’s commitments to reducing greenhouse gases and improving access to non-automotive transportation, the CTP proposes to reduce automotive travel by increasing motorists’ taxes, flatly rejecting “road capacity enhancing strategies,” and urging the state to “avoid funding projects that add road capacity.”

Implicitly, therefore, it contends that increasing traffic congestion and the cost of driving would compel Californians to abandon their cars in favor of transit, bicycles and other non-automotive modes.

A punitive approach doesn’t sit well with the California Transportation Commission.

This month, the commission declared the CTP “is planning for significant actions that will fundamentally alter how Californians will utilize our transportation system” and urged that it balance “environmental goals with economic and mobility needs.”

The CTP, the commission says, puts too much emphasis on reducing automotive travel and too little on technological advances, such as electric cars, that could reduce fossil fuel use---Brown’s goal is a 50 percent cut---while maintaining personal mobility.

Californians support greenhouse gas reduction. But do they also want the state to compel them to change their lifestyles by parking their cars, jumping aboard trolley cars and bicycles, and trading their single-family homes for denser housing, as the CTP and other state policies assume they must?

It would be interesting to put that question on the ballot.

Punk "artist" Shepard Fairey busted for vandalism

The Department of Public Works fights this form of vandalism:

Thanks to The Huffington Post.