Pacific Coast Homes, a subsidiary of Chevron Land & Development, has secured an option to purchase the long-shuttered Chevron station at the corner of Bay and Buchanan from Chevron U.S.A. and has drafted plans for a four-story building to rise on the 1598 Bay Street site.
As proposed, the development would include 28 condos. And “given the neighborhood sensitivity to overflow parking,” the development team is proposing to include an underground garage for 42 cars, a parking ratio of 1.5 spaces per unit, which San Francisco’s Planning Commission would need to conditionally approve.
In the words of the development team with respect to the proposed architecture:
“The design will be a contemporary expression of the local character of San Francisco’s Marina district that delivers a cutting edge residential community with nuanced and subtle references to the area’s historic architectural details. Substantial and enduring building materials will be balanced with generous windows.”
Or in the words of the Planning Department: “brick clad.”
The former Currie’s Chevron Station site has already been cleared of its underground storage tanks.
Hopefully planning stops this “parking garage disguised as housing” dead in its tracks and requires more housing.
Why? The parking is underground. Are they going to build housing underground.
Because more parking = more cars on our streets = more congestion.
Anon, I suppose that when you are reaching your retirement years, you’ll still be able to ride your bike everywhere?
Yeah, because a bike is the only alternative to owning a car, right?
public transport in the Marina sucks
This location is less than a 10 min walk from the 22, 28, 43, 47, 49 and 30/30X, seven bus lines that take you almost to each corner of the city without a transfer. I assume you ride a motorcycle – as I do – and nothing is faster than that, but to say public transport at this location sucks is pushing it.
Because after that 10 minute walk you have to deal with MUNI buses that don’t show up, crowded buses when they do, and a 3 mph ride to your destination.
^^^ this. average speed of my Muni bus (if I miss the express) is 5 m.p.h. if I had showers at work, I could do a moderate jog and get to work faster.
Muni is useless. How can this be news to anyone? “Transit first” should really be called, “if we can keep making every other mode of transportation more painful perhaps people will one day be desperate enough to take transit.”
For most people in SF it is about using wealth/car to gain time and timing. My car waits for me, I wait for Muni. Being self-mobile (car/bike/foot) means you don’t have be on the unreliable schedule set by Muni. As long as there is a place to park the car at both ends of the trip, most people will drive.
That’s why Muni needs to increase speed (faster service) and schedule reliability (less time waiting for a bus/train). SF should also increase the cost of parking downtown, which for about half of car commuters is free.
Every one second improvement in the average Muni ride time saves passengers 10,000 hours per year sitting on the bus/train. Every ten second improvement in the average variance of Muni arrival times should save passengers another 10,000 hours per year waiting to board.
If the service doesn’t get better, then the only motivation to use it more would be if the alternatives get worse or more expensive.
This is why we need to continue to work as quickly as possible on self-driving cars, so that we can have a nice fleet of cheap taxis cruising around town taking everyone where they need to go. No buses needed, no personal cars needed (who wants to waste their time driving when they don’t need to?), no bikes needed. We can finally squeeze streets down to a decent width (no street parking needed any longer), etc, etc.
This is coming in the next couple of decades, which is why it’s insane to be building such a ludicrous amount of parking space now. It’s like the people that built huge shelves to hold all of their books…
anon, in SF traffic would be much much worse if all the MUNI buses and private cars were replaced with individuals in taxis, regardless of whether those taxis were driven by humans or computers. There just isn’t enough roadway downtown to do without the passenger density of buses (and surface lightrail).
If we didn’t have to pay for a human driver, then we could augment the bus fleet with some smaller buses, but they would still need to be shared ride and the passengers would have to be willing to be packed as necessary.
But all of this is many decades away at least and requires unproven inventions. Even Elon Musk refuses to predict when if ever they will be safe enough for downtown SF. Bizarre to think we could even hope to build into current plans. Fortunately, we aren’t building much parking anymore in the SF CBD. Too much there and too cheap already.
The real solutions for the CBD are well known and have been proven for generations and in many cities: underground transit and above ground walking.
Then you might as well say, public transport sucks in San Francisco. So let’s give every unit in San Francisco 1.5 parking spaces and see how that goes…
Jake, if you replaced all cars with computer-driven taxis, you could probably double the cars on the road and have less congestion, because:
1. You could eliminate all street parking and have additional space for cars (or give some back to peds and only keep half for cars, etc)
2. Computer-driven cars could work together to route traffic the correct way, which would mean a much wider distribution of traffic throughout our grid.
3. Computer-driven cars could also have market-based pricing, meaning that it automatically gets more expensive as demand rises, limiting congestion before it starts (with prices drastically rising if congestion does start), potentially lower prices for shared taxis, etc.
Self-driving vehicles aren’t going to double the throughput on the Bay Bridge or 101 or 280. They are the main bottlenecks for SF. They are so bad they routinely backup on the surface streets during the commute for anywhere from a few blocks to a mile.
All the routes to them backup. More intelligent routing won’t solve that problem. And the busiest routes have no parking/tow during the commute.
This has all been true for decades and all the forecasts are it will be true decades from now. And not because the drivers and the vehicles aren’t smart enough.
More than 400k people commute between SF and the surrounding counties for work (about 300k into SF and more than 100k from SF). That will likely be 500k in another 10 years. They aren’t going to switch en masse to taxis, self-driving or uber/yellow/etc. They already own cars. Cars are relatively cheap for people with the income to live here. They last 10 years or more. Almost all the housing already has free parking builtin.
Drivers and their carpool passengers freely choose to sit in congested traffic for an extra 20-30 minutes each way when the alternatives are either (1) to change when they travel by an hour or more or (2) to switch to transit and spend even more time getting to/from work than they already spend driving in congestion.
After the Bay Bridge imposed congestion pricing they hired UCB traffic experts to study what happened. They discovered 76% of the cars in the westbound AM commute were headed for free parking.
We don’t need fancy congestion pricing algorithms and new intrusive billing systems or to wait for some futuristic technology that today barely works inside warehouses to be fit for the crazy streets of SF. SF needs to get cars to pay market rate to park here. USA needs to raise the gas tax. The extra money should go for heavy rail and bandwidth to the home. And intelligent people should step away from the fantasies that we all going to get around on e-bikes and robo-vanagons. We have tunnels to bore and fiber to pull.
We were talking about additional parking in the Marina for folks traveling downtown, not commuters from outside SF.
You wrote “if you replaced all cars with computer-driven taxis…”. About half of all the cars in downtown are commuters that don’t live in SF, but commute in by car from outside of SF.
And even if you just want to deal with traffic in the Marina, most of it is people that commute by car from Marin through the Marina to downtown.
If you can’t deal with the real traffic problems, then why bother?
Replacing all cars, but then talking about the effect for just those in the Marina. You know as well as I do that your average Marina-ite doesn’t give a hoot about the unwashed poors coming in from outside SF.
Fortunately, our transportation systems and zoning laws aren’t based on the compassion of individuals to strangers. I suspect that wouldn’t scale very well.
Thousands of people that live in the Marina commute to work outside of SF. About 50% of the cars owned by Marina residents are used to commute to work, which is close to the average for SF. And about 20% of the cars owned by Marina residents are used to commute to work outside of SF, which is also close to the average for SF.
FWIW, about 7500 residents of SF commute to work in Marin. Doubtless some of them could use a bath.
One of the nice things about cars is that even if your heart and mind is stuck in a small neighborhood, your body doesn’t have to be.
No, I’ll have a driver. Why do you suppose that I’d be anti-car? I just want less parking (and thus less congestion).
Parked cars don’t cause traffic jams. I can see why that may be hard to understand.
cars parked on the street do contribute to congestion. They directly reduce the street surface available for throughput, which is why we have some roads with no parking during the commute but allowed after 6 PM. It is a kind of static congestion, like arterial plaque, not dynamic congestion like thick blood.
They also obstruct the view and make it more hazardous casing traffic to slow. This is particularly a problem at corners because SF allows parking so close to the actual intersection. Drivers and pedestrians routinely edge out to see around parked cars. It is much easier in cities like DC that don’t allow parking within 25 feet of the intersection.
Driving on Pine St during the rush hour without the cars parked on either side handles much more traffic than just the sum of the free surface would imply.
Yesterday, I couldn’t get from my parking garage to the main street because there were so many illegally parked delivery trucks (3 plus a bmw mini) they completely blocked the alley size access road. One of the trucks had to back up 30 yards to unjam the road.
Parked cars move when they’re not parked. I can see why that may be hard to understand.
Retirement Years? What does that even mean…..heading for the nursing home?
My mom is retired and sold her car years ago because she realized that she was losing her reflexes and she didn’t feel like paying all the costs for registration, insurance, upkeep, etc. She didn’t mind though because she walks and takes transit everywhere. And she lives out in the westside of town, where transit isn’t any better (and may be worse) than the Marina.
what’s wrong with voluntarily incurring the expense of building additional parking? and if any neighborhood justifies it, it’s the Marina, where parking is a nightmare – and, it’s a nightmare-ishly long Muni ride to get anywhere else.
There’s your problem – no neighborhood justifies massive extra amounts of parking (and the associated congestion).
People in The Marina or Pacific Heights have several cars per family they don’t always use them but they need somewhere to store them. People should have the rite if they want to have extra cars or cars in general. Everyone can not take public transportation or Uber or bike to get their children to school or their dogs to the doctors. If each unit has 1 or 2 parking spaces as an option the units will sell for more money. I think this is a good combination of unit size and parking for this type of corner. My family is a two person, two car, two dog, family and I literally only use my car on the weekends, but I need somewhere to park it and I would not leave it on the street. That is why I purchased a house with two parking spaces inside. So a place like this would be ideal for my family even though I don’t plan to move at this time. I think units like this will do well in this part of the city and four to five stories is good for this lot and will not block a lot of views.
Off with your head! You are obviously not pure enough to live in The City!
In all seriousness, I scoff at the no parking apocalypse people on SocketSite, but that doesn’t mean that generous parking NEVER makes sense in any situation.
Um, they can pay for parking. We’re not talking about taking parking spots away, just not adding new ones, since new ones simply create congestion. I own four cars, but I pay for parking those in existing parking spots.
Real world paging anon. Have you tried to “pay for parking” in, say, Russian Hill? You’re lucky to find a spot 5 blocks from your apartment at $500/month. Lucky because there’s usually nothing around. Go ahead, I’ll wait while you search Craigslist.
They *ARE* paying for additional parking. They’re paying for it by paying the proportionate share of the increased construction costs that the developer is going to incur by building the extra parking. That’s no different than paying a monthly fee to a public or private garage… and at least here, the parking will be underground and out of sight, with useful improvements above it, instead of other areas (e.g., Fisherman’s Wharf, or One Maritime) where an entire city block or three is taken up by above-ground parking structures.
@formidable, it sounds like your problem is desiring parking for less than market rate. If you’re only willing to look for a spot for $500 or less within five blocks of a spot on Russian Hill, you’re hoping for below market pricing. Up your budget to $1000 and you should find a spot, though it will probably increase beyond that soon.
Wonderful plan, I think this is perfect for the area and will get more cars off the street and into parking garages like they belong. Happy to see the corner built out soon!
It would be great if this actually moved parking off of the street to make room for more travel lanes. But instead it is just adding more parking. The developer is just maximizing return to the detriment of the neighborhood.
How is it to the neighborhood detriment? With the additional parking there should be no adverse parking impacts on the neighborhood… with the change in use, we’re going from a shuttered eyesore to much-needed housing… and the streets here are ginormously wide, this is the one area where the City could put in bike lanes without impacting parking one whit.
Um, additional congestion. Or are you arguing that there will not be more cars in the neighborhood because of this insane amount of additional parking?
There would be more cars in the neighborhood even if the garage was not built. Your “solution” is the eyesore remaining an eyesore.
How so? My solution is a building with less parking. If the developer can’t make it pencil without the parking, I’d give him four more stories of housing to build. We need more people in this area, not more congestion.
why would there be more cars on the streets? the people who will buy here probably already own 1.5+ cars. if you dont build the parking garage, that will be 1.5+cars circling for parking 1hr + per day
Bay street is really wide in this location, a lot of the traffic seems to turn towards the water a block east. It would be great to expand the sidewalk and a row of trees.
You’re right; not adverse parking, adverse congestion.
Not having a parking spot encourages alternative modes and discourages car ownership. For out of town trips there are rental and car share programs.
“Not having a parking spot encourages alternative modes and discourages car ownership”
not for rich people
OMG, this is going to contribute as many as 42 additional cars to the neighborhood traffic! Why, that’s almost one more per minute (assuming, of course, they all leave the building in the same one-hour window every day…) Can you imagine the gridlock from having almost one more car per minute at this intersection? It’s truly the apocalypse.
The only thing that “encourages alternative modes” is the availability of fast, reliable, clean, safe and affordable alternative modes. This does not exist in the Marina. True, there is a barely acceptable express bus at peak commute hours if you happen to need to go to/from the Financial District. For all other trips at all other times you have no choice but a car. I can’t believe we’re actually dignifying anon’s delusional BS with a debate.
You’re commuting from the Marina to the Financial District via car??? No wonder we have traffic issues… that is ridiculous.
No I don’t. Where did you get that idea?
i agree with this plan in this location. there are no pay parking garages around, no open spots on the street, public transport sucks from this area, and anyone who can afford to live here will have 1+ car. 1.5 cars in a parking spot does not add 1.5 cars to the streets every day. in fact, it will remove the congestion of circling for parking, as the new residents of these units probably already own their 1+ cars. the building is not incentivizing them to have more cars.
I would have to say not. Having another spot does incentive car ownership. When I merged households with my now wife we had one spot in Noe Valley and tired of parking the other on the street so I sold it. Not having a second spot and not using the car every day is a huge pain
Someone doesn’t understand how basic economic incentives and supply/demand work.
Excellent news! More condos means more homeowners. More parking means I can actually park somewhere if I were to visit a friend. (Note to self: make new friends based on whether they have available parking.)
More parking better. Some street retail would be nice there as well. Going to be some views blocked along the way so should be some nimby fights soon.
Is this your view any where in SF?
Good, just don’t make it ugly. Would be sad to see an eyesore next to the SF Gas Light Co. building.
Also, what’s the word on Chevron’s Lombard and Steiner site? Been vacant for ages. I know the adjacent parcels are being developed, but Chevron’s site has been sitting idly. Last I heard they didn’t want to sell.
Interesting to contrast with the previous post about the 1863 Mission project that proposes to fit 37 units + 18 car spots in what looks to be a much smaller footprint whereas this project is for 28 units + 42 cars on a larger corner lot. The population center of SF will continue inching south.
thats fine if the population leads more east and south, as we want to protect this most beautiful area of the city and not overcongest it
I’m fine with a brick-clad building but how in the world does brick constitute “subtle references to the area’s historic architectural details”?
The Marina is mostly stucco, no?
The Marina is mostly stucco but there is also several buildings that are brick and there were many more before the earthquake. Many building removed the brick after instead of reinforcing them or they only had brick on the ground level and they removed them as well. I own a building that we removed the lower bricks instead of reinforcing them but at my primary residence I had the entire front of the building reinforced and kept the brick. I love the look of brick.
The historical brick is in the ground. Part of the bay fill on which the Marina is built is debris from the 1906 quake.
Well, that would certainly be a subtle reference.
Also, many of the buildings in Fort Mason (and the Presidio, further away) are brick.
Glad to see an appropriate parking ratio. It will ALL be used and much needed.
What happened to affordable housing? Guess that doesn’t apply to the 2 car 2 dog housing. So, we have housing for dogs now.
I believe the builder will pay into the BMR requirement for offsite instead of in the development it self.
The neighborhood association is not demanding onsite BMR units? I know DTNA won’t support any new development that doesn’t include onsite BMR units. They want neighborhood income diversity.
Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.
I lived in this neighborhood literally just blocks away. It is impossible to find parking and public transportation is awful. I had to circle forever to find a parking spot, and yet the 22 to get me to the heart of the Mission would often be 40 minutes or so. I do not disbelieve the reports that say 30% of SF congestion is circling for parking spots, here if you didn’t get home by 4:00 you were screwed.
The Marina is boxed in by the bay, the Presidio, and then several neighborhoods with extremely steep hills. This isn’t a central block in the Tenderloin or Mission or whatever where it is easy to get around. Lots of families and seniors live here, so biking is not an option, and honestly many people (myself included) prefer not to bike to get around anyway. That should be a choice. Due to demographics, car ownership in general, geographical terrain, lack of adequate parking on the street, and poor public transit this is a completely reasonable place to have parking.
reasonable and necessary. although 2 person families should at least considering having 1 car and 1 scooter or motorcycle. thats what we do, and it works extremely well.
people on here are so funny. I ride Muni. I see people on there with actual disabilities – people that can barely move, people that look like they are between 80-90 years old, people with small children, babies, strollers, shopping bags, etc.
I’m not saying everyone should have to take Muni everywhere they go but please stop moaning because people with mobility problems do take Muni. More parking for able-bodied and monied individuals is not going to do much for them.
I agree with you and I am so thankful that I have few financial worries. Also, I keep thinking of getting a second car and renting a spot at $400 a month at a local garage. Then I think to myself, I could Uber every single day and it would cost less than a nice second car. In other words, somewhere between taking the bus and paying for a limo driver, there is a large population of the city that would probably benefit from taking more taxis.
That said, I love garage space and think we need a lot more. Parking cars on the street is silly.
Totally agree with you on needing more parking spaces. There should be no street parking. Let people park in parking garages and in their own garage. Street parking is awful and cluttered.
It’s a suburban vs. urban mentality. One is not right or wrong but I know people who grew up in the Sunset who hardly ever ride Muni and relatives from the Mission/Noe who never owned a car
For me it’s not urban / suburban, it’s putting up with hellish inefficiency versus giving up and actually getting where you want to go cleanly, quickly and safely. I ride Muni a *lot*, but it’s mind-numbing – in a very literal sense – how long some of the cross-town busses take. For instance the 31 from Park Presidio (not the outer Richmond, mind you, just Park Presidio) to Front Street can be anywhere from 35 to 45 minutes. I think people are completely justified in thinking that that’s unacceptable, and that they shouldn’t be forced to chose between sacrificing literally hours of their day siting on a lurching, uncomfortable bus, versus actually getting where they want to go in minimal time and then getting on with things that truly matter.
I agree with all of that, but that’s really a separate issue from whether we want to add more parking (and thus more congestion) to our overly taxed streets. Better to just market price the street space that we have now (either the use of the streets or access to the streets aka parking).
I think an express would be faster but I can’t say for sure as I have not lived in this location. We clearly can’t support many more people driving downtown so I am not sure what the time to Front street tells us but Muni should be better clearly.
I am not opposed to higher parking in outer neighborhoods based on the context argument but I make the same argument for areas like Hayes Valley. There is great reasons to build much housing here with no parking.
Parking places allow people to have a car & keep it off the street in their own building…. not building parking does NOT somehow force people to not own cars! I live in the city, and park my car on the street (pre-1912 building w/ no garage), yet I take muni to & from work. The car-share/muni/uber combo alone doesn’t work for me, I don’t like bike riding on city streets, and so I keep my car to use at night/weekends. Why do people think that not building parking will reduce the number of cars? I don’t get it! If they are putting the parking underground, it’s not taking up space where homes or outdoor space would be otherwise.
My neighbor and I come home from work approximately at the same time every day. I pull off the street into my garage space. He circles the neighborhood for 10-15 minutes, sometime more, to find street parking. Which one of us causes more congestion?
I commute to Santa Clara, he to Cupertino, so you can save your delusional mass transit fantasies for another thread.
FDOTN, I cant believe you don’t ride your bicycles to work. you are truly evil
Actually, it’s usually the “people should live where they work” tirade they pull out at this point.
Naw, its “whatdya mean you don’t have a white bus?”
Say what you want about corporate busing but it does make a statement about how messed up our transportation choices are: majority self-drive with lame alternatives. The white buses also show that there is a solution that works even one that is so inefficient that four buses leave the same SF neighborhood headed for Silicon Valley, but you have to have the right badge to board the right mostly empty bus.
(This wasn’t intended as a direct reply to Susan)
In some areas it does. Most people without off street parking in Nob Hill for example do not try to park on the street every night unless they are dumb or desperate.
When I moved to Noe Valley with my now wife we both had a car but got a place with one parking spot. I sold one of the cars within a month as the hassle was not worth it. I am glad though that Noe Valley is the density it is and would not have wanted to live in an area with more parking as spatially it would be different.
Finally!!!…but 4 stories…like that’s gonna help housing shortage???
…but hey…something is better than the current nothing!
A few notes: I live three blocks form this site, and ride my bicycle to work in SOMA every day and back. The ride is faster than Muni and the best part of my day.
This stretch of Bay west of Laguna will be repaved this summer with only one lane of traffic on each side, to calm traffic in the area. Parking with be slanted which will create more parking spots.
The closest parking is at Marina Green, which is free parking. The area around Moscone Park often has easy street parking.
But, but…it is so vewy, vewy dangerous!
I need my 6,000 pounds of plastic and steel to protect meself from the other 6,000 pound personal tanks!
I think that’s an insanely self involved way of explaining your point of view. People use cars for carrying children or because they can’t bike or for a million other reasons. You aren’t helping to get people biking and are just irritating people who probably drive “tanks.” Generally not a winning strategy.
Hank, I bike to work too, but our own personal preferences don’t help matters. There’s a reason that large parts of the population won’t bike: not wanting to get to work sweaty, having kids, having muscles that are biased towards weightlifting. E-bikes might help a bit. As will e-scooters that go 30 or 40mph. But most people don’t want to hear about your success with biking because it’s not what they chose to do.
And I say this because when I used to bike a normal bike, I never was fast, even after 100 miles a week of riding. Now I have an e-bike and I am the fastest one in the bike lane. I’m also less sweaty. But mapping your experiences on to others is a very dangerous thing to do.
i travel across europe and ROW pretty often for work. besides the fact that the public transport is better in almost any modern or important city than SF, the biggest difference i notice is the lack of people riding scooters. Its rampant across EU and Asia, and very efficient. there is much more of a gap in 2 wheeled motor vehicles here than there is a gap in the use of bicycles. I would encourage families of 2 adults to consider only having 1 car and 1 scooter or motorbike. motorbike gets you around very fast in SF, easy to park, very good gas mileage, and can take advantage now of all the new empty bike lanes
I was looking at getting an e-scooter, but was afraid they wouldn’t let me take it into the office. I can park my e-bike right behind me. My new one is pedal assist and goes 28mph easily and it gets 40 miles if I leave assist on max. It’s my biggest secret for getting around SF quickly and easily.
But Asia and Europe are getting a new breed of electric scooter that should be giant in SF, 4 or 6 will fit in an average parking spot. They’d probably increase the carrying capacity of roads by a factor of 3-4, and I think they go well over 30mph. I think more people would be happy trading for something like that than a fixie.
Yes, finally adequate parking. A win-win all round! Those 42 spots will sell very quickly. The demand is there!
There’s gotta be a better reason than just demand. A lot of stuff is in demand and not all of it has a positive effect on society.
Despite all the “pro-off-street” parking commentary, the Planning Dept. will not support a project with excess accessory or non-accessory parking; nor will the Planning Commission approve it as it runs contrary to the City’s “transit-first” policy. Adding more off-street parking both contributes to the higher cost of housing as well as traffic congestions as it encourages car ownership.
You know what would support the city’s transit first policy? Transit.
I’m typing this from the T-line which seems to be running with 40 minute gaps right now. My car smells of cheap pot and something gross. The city’s transit first policy is misguided because we don’t seem to put anything first. And we let the lowest common denominator decide appropriate transit behavior.
In other words, most people here don’t drive point to point in the eastern half of the city. They aren’t generating traffic really. But mostly they don’t think the city is doing a good job of putting transit first and rather, we are mostly making everything worse. As for planning, they seem to be operating in the realm of ideals and not based upon reality.
We can all continue to complain about Muni, but unless people actually try to actively advocate for real improvements, then there isn’t much that’s going to be done to make Muni more reliable and take less time. If more people went to the many different Muni Forward meetings or left some feedback on http://tellmuni.com/ or went to a Citizens’ Advisory Council meeting, then maybe we would actually see improvements being made based on what people really want.
Actually if we just let qualified people to plan transit like they do in countries like Switzerland our Bay Area system would be much better but so long as it is planned by unions, politicians it will be a huge waste
Well Zig, instead of qualified transit engineers doing the planning the MTA, the agency seems to be entirely or partially managed by political appointments, from the director who has no transit policy experience or background, to the many appointments in management with former employees of the San Francisco Bike Coalition. When you have the gentleman who used to be in charge of fundraising for the Bike Coalition now in charge of parking policy for the city, you then understand why things are so messed up.
agree. you should be required to be an transit engineer to work in transportation planning. being able to change a tire on your bike doesn’t qualify you
Many of the actual planners in the CTA and in the planning dept are, despite not being engineers, quite bright relative to planners elsewhere having all gone to UCB and MIT for their planning degrees. They don’t really get to plan anything though. They just have to do endless public meetings and then they are told what is happening
If you want good transit you need to focus on engineering and planners who use rational models and give up ideas about planning based on social justice and corruption
agree with you. the city needs to offer the carrot of better transport and not just the stick of making it hard for individuals to drive
I’ll consider supporting the idea of fewer parking spaces, when the city eliminates any parking for all city and muni emloyees and requires them to come to work via muni, so they can all experience how well it works.
It’s all about parking. Do you want a place to live or just to park? Some interesting priorites here. Have to envy anyone who can afford to buy a condo in the Marina simply for the parking. Some people struggle just to find a place to live. Guess this project is not about housing. Also there are 3 bus routes on Filmore and Chestnut, 2 on Union as well as the 28 on Laguna. The tourists take advantage of public transit.
It’s not either or. I want a place to live and to park. They tend to go together. And yes, you should envy people who live in the Marina and can afford to keep a car there, it’s a nice neighborhood for a reason.
As for tourists taking public transit? Half the people in silicon valley don’t know that we have a subway system here. After 10:00 at night there’s really no way out of the city to the south and after midnight there’s no easy way out, period. So, I’d guess that a very large number of local tourists drive. Again, we want to make it harder on people with cars, but we have no plan to make a decent transit system.
Reply to frog: I don’t understand your comment re-silicon valley tourists. I am referring to tourists from out of state and out of country eg.Europe. They seem to think MUNI is wonderful for getting around the City. I have lived in the Marina for many years. Don’t drive. If people want to get out of silicon valley they should work on it. What does parking in the Marina have to do with tourists in silicon valley? Trying to make sense of this dialog.
i dont agree that EU tourists think Muni is great. Ive heard quite the opposite
Just watch all the EU tourists get off the “Air Train” at SFO at the Rental Car Counter station the next time you are at SFO. All my EU friends who come to visit think MUNI is “frightening” and “dirty”. When they come to visit, they love to rent convertibles, drive down the coast, up to Napa and all over especially to Tahoe, Napa, redwoods etc. I get the feeling a lot of San Franciscans have some fantasy European they want to become that only rides bikes, where as all my European friends own and use automobiles on a daily basis back in their home countries. The only cities my Euro friends use public transit in North America are either Chicago or New York.
moto and anon: We are obviously comparing apples and oranges here. The tourists I refer to are young adventurous backpackers with cameras and map in hand. They get off the 30 in droves and unto the 28 heading for GG bridge. All the passengers assist them with directions and advice. They hike along Fisherman’s Wharf to GG as well. Obviously here to see the City. Some stay at the youth hostel with a fantastic view of the bay.This is off topic re- parking which I am not opposed to. However the tech buses need to not block MUNI stops,since they service the poor and needy, including people in wheelchairs. Haven’t seen too many wheelchairs heading to silicon valley. Van Ness is super congested with cars and van pools, making public transit a nightmare for us poor folk. Not sure how this affects parking your car underground in landfill.
Can’t wait until self-driving taxis take over the world and we can just build lots of housing rather than lots of parking with a smidge of housing.
There is a new private bus that anyone can take from the Marina to FiDi. It’s called LEAP. It’s $6 has coffee and wifi and no stops in between. Must be over 18
Other than MUNI, there are not one but 3 private shuttles serving Marina – Leap, Chariot and Loup. Add Uber and Lyft, these guys have tons of options getting around. I don’t know what is so special about Marina that all these shuttle companies are rushing to them.
Affluent area that’s under-served by city owned transit. It’s exactly what you’d expect.
the private companies are rushing in because 1) public transit from the marina to downtown suck 2) the residents are willing to pay $6 for a clean ride with wifi. i linked an interesting article, from medium.com ,about LEAP on my name.
the writer is a little anti-leap for social reasons, but i like private enterprise coming in to fill gaps that the city can’t do. if only, we could get private companies to build subways. there is money to be made, but the city planners are too incompetent. I would love for googleX to be in charge of city transportation. we would have vast and efficient improvements in a few years.
Fascinating article about private transit Moto Mayhem. Also, totally agree, the private companies are filing a void MUNI / SFMTA seems to not be able to. While the SFMTA spends time worrying about parklets, street bulbs, traffic calming, bike lanes, and restricting parking, I am all for private companies taking up the slack and beginning to provide safe, clean comfortable rapid transit.
Are all the private companies vc funded? Are any of the established private transportation companies like Bauer doing this?
not sure, but established companies tend to be stuck in old ways of thinking are usually late to the party and get there through acquisition. if this takes off, some more 20 something yr olds are going to get rich selling to Bauer.
one thing i dont like about the article is that it assumes that the riders are tech workers. alot of people who live in the marina and work downtown are not in tech. think finance, lawyers, other businesses, and $6 is not that bad for a clean efficient ride. The reason I dont like city buses is because they are dirty, not on time, slow, too many stops, you need exact change, and sometimes filled with crazy people. these companies are providing a service that gets rid of almost all of that. (maybe except crazy people as we come in all shapes, colors, incomes). but certainly homeless people who shoudl be under pyschiatric care wont be on these buses.
These are some of the same reasons uber took off. they show up on time, dont try and drive you around, you dont have to worry about payment and tips real-time, and the cars are generally much much cleaner.
can we please give private companies the rights to our underground so they can develop subways for us? can we also allow them to be completely in charge of undergrounding wires. our local govt is inefficent, overpaid, underworked and just gets in the way of real progress.
As a Marina resident and former 30X rider, I can attest that trying to board Muni east of Fillmore is a gamble. Half the time the bus is full and you can spend quite a bit of time waiting until a bus that is less than full will pull up and stop.
I remember ten yrs. ago when most of my single colleagues were living in the Marina and Cow Hollow and took the 30 Express, which was called the Sexpress for all the strutting and catwalking down the aisle. My colleagues would roll their eyes when I ask them to show me their “skills” which included a faux model walk with hair flip, and come hither stare. The men were no better.
A better plan would be to completely raze the Marina and rebuilt up to 6 stories.
Since we can’t get that ideal, I’d settle for THIS site to be up zoned to 6 stories.
the marina is the most beautiful part of the city. why would we completey change it. I agree with a redo of Lombard, but the rest of the marina is beautiful as is.
Oh good grief, one of the most architecturally significant sections of the city demolished for two extra stories? Lombard is one thing, but our traditional neighborhoods (Castro, Western Addition, North Beach, Marina) that have given the city so much architectural charm are worth protecting. And I am as pro development as they come. Charm is intangible, but very real, and part of the reason why people fall in love with SF are the wall-to-wall rows of Victorian, but also Art Deco/Italianate/Edwardaian/traditional townhouses, rowhouses, and apartment buildings.
Now Lombard? Geary? Van Ness? Major thoroughfares with crappy 60s architecture, parking lots, and 2 story buildings when it could hold 20+? That offers the potential and you aren’t destroying anything. Eliminating classic neighborhoods just to add a story or two of height is a waste of time for the moment, and actually damages the city fabric.
The Marina is one of the “most architecturally significant sections of the city”? lol lol
I don’t agree with a plan to raze it, but there ain’t anything special architecturally about the Marina, of all places…
Beijing implementing an interesting strategy. Requiring that you must have a parking space in order to buy a car. I like the idea of people who buy or rent in new buildings not being allowed to own a car without a parking spot. building all of these new buildings with very low % of parking spots is going to cause mass congestion, unless a rule is made that you cannot own a car if you buy or rent a condo without a spot.
See link in name