If you were the budget czar for San Francisco, how would you allocate the city’s transportation dollars? Now, you can try your hand at making it all work online here. You can submit your final budget proposal, and it will be used to help develop the San Francisco Transportation Plan.
Check out the details here.
A stackable solar home wins the 2012 Solar Decathlon Europe. [Earthtechling.com]
A squabble between BART and the Port of Oakland blocks Clipper card for AirBART. [San Francisco Chronicle]
An increasing number of folks are making the business case for walkable retail. [Retail Law Advisor]
Photo: One of the stations from the bike sharing program in Washington, D.C., by Anna LaRue
Why young people are driving so much less than their parents [The Atlantic]
Berkeley starts to recycle mixed rigid plastics [East Bay Express]
BART is projecting a budget surplus for next fiscal year [SF Examiner]
Urban development projects in California are in limbo [NY Times]
Photo: A water fountain and water bottle filling station at O’Hare Airport in Chicago, IL, by Anna LaRue
Bay Area Rapid Transit, or BART is a common fixture in the lives of Bay Area California residents. The above-and-underground train network spans northward to Richmond, southward to Fremont, and regularly ferries passengers between San Francisco and points to the east.
Despite their centrality to Bay Area daily life, BART cars have not seen a replacement since the 1970s when the system opened; and that is about to change. BART is actively seeking feedback on its ‘Fleet of the Future’, a long-range plan to replace its cars.
This estimated $3 billion project will be the single largest upgrade expenditure that the BART has ever seen—that could be why BART is enlisting the help of the public to get it right.
A series of ‘seat labs’ are taking place at BART station near you! There, you can try out several configurations of seats and aisle widths, and give feedback on materials, lighting, signage and more. What is most important to you on your commute?
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Remaining BART seat lab schedule and locations
Read more:
Seat lab early feedback: Majority of riders want wider aisles in Fleet of the Future
The San Francisco Chronicle website has a gallery of photos from when the BART system was originally under construction in the 1960s and 1970s. You can see the photos here.
There is a photo of people on a walking tour through the Transbay Tube.
Also, there is a photo of then-President Nixon riding BART in 1972.
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(Image credit: Wikimedia Commons)
The Dublin Pleasanton BART Station under construction, much later, in 2009.
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Bike Station is an outfit that seeks to help municipalities and transit agencies reach their goals for transit oriented development by providing spacious, secure bike parking and bicycle rentals and repair services at key points along public transit routes. After months of anticipation, Berkeley’s new Bike Station opened to the public this month. The Berkeley Bike Station is the second largest in the country and expands the capacity for Downtown Berkeley BART friendly bicycle parking four-fold.
Funded in partnership by the City of Berkeley and BART, the Bike Station is located at 2208 Shattuck Avenue, just a half block from the BART entrance, and provides free bike parking to commuters from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For the cost of a few pennies an hour, commuter memberships are also available for those who want off-hour cardkey access.
U.S. Representative and House Appropriator Mike Honda secured funding to the tune of $2 million towards extension of the BART system to Silicon Valley as part of the FY 2011 Transportation, Housing and Urban Development spending bill. What is the “BART to Silicon Valley” project? It’s an extension of the existing BART system to Milpitas, San Jose, and Santa Clara starting from the future Warm Springs station in Fremont (along the eastern side of the South Bay).
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Google Energy has signed its first contract, a 20-year wind power contract in Iowa. Google will sell the electricity on the spot market and retire the associated renewable energy credits (RECs) – via TechCrunch.
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More people are freaking out about smart meters, but this time not in the Central Valley…
The Fairfax Town Council gave the nod to the creation of an ordinance that, if passed, would try to prevent PG&E from installing smart meters in Fairfax – via the Marin Independent Journal.
The Marin Association of Realtors has issued a statement calling for a moratorium on its SmartMeter program due to concerns in three areas: concerns about overcharging, concerns about health effects from the radio waves, and concerns about PG&E imposing meters on folks that don’t want them – via the Marin Independent Journal.
The Marin Independent Journal also reports that the Marin supervisors have sent a letter to Michael Peevey, president of the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC), asking the CPUC to suspend PG&E’s SmartMeter rollout until a commission has reviewed the funtion of the meters and until the health implications of the electronic emissions from the wireless devices has been addressed…
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The Department of Energy announced yesterday that $122 million has been awarded to a team of scientists from California (including Lawrence Berkley National Lab) to establish an Energy Innovation Hub that will be focused on converting sunlight into liquid fuel.
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