In an interview with California Streets last week in advance of the announcement, RelayRides founder Shelby Clark said he hopes this will help many families ditch their private autos and instead use shared cars.

“I think there are plenty of families who fall in between the number of cars that they need – they sometimes need a second car, and usually end up rounding up and buying two”, Clark said. “We want to help them round-down and borrow a car from their neighbors when they need it.”

The expansion will use a key exchange model – drivers will simply arrange to give the keys to the renter. This allows car owners to enroll and start making money from their vehicles right away, but it is a departure from the model RelayRides has used in the launch markets of Boston and San Francisco. In those markets, a hardware device was installed in vehicles allowing renters to unlock a reserved car with just their membership card.

Clark downplayed the notion that key exchange would be any less convenient for renters and instead emphasized how much easier it would now be for car owners to get involved. He also referenced the company’s partnership with GM, that will make all cars enrolled in the OnStar service “RelayRides-ready” when it goes online later this year.

“We aren’t moving away from electronic access”, Clark said. “Think about Airbnb – thousands of people use that sites and have no problem with key exchange.”

Clark also thinks the market will come up with ways to improve on the key exchange model, such as having a lock box or leaving the keys with a neighbor. Key exhcange also “reduces costs and operational complexity” for the company, he said, making this nationwide expansion possible.

Previously on California Streets: “How I Learned That Peer-To-Peer Car-Sharing Perpetuates Urbanism: My First Trip With RelayRides“

Wait, what? The SFMTA has known this deficit was coming for years, and instead of exploring options to cut costs or generate new revenue, the stewards of our Municipal Railway have actually been toying with the idea of defunding the system even further by allowing kids to ride for free. Some of the options they’ve been ignoring include (list non-inclusive):

• Expanding parking meter enforcement to evenings, dubious holidays, and Sundays;
• Making motorists mitigate more of their negative impact on the city by putting meters in more neighborhoods, congestion tolls, and steeper fines;
• Make service more efficient for riders and more cost-effective for the agency by reducing stops and idling time;
• Renegotiate unfair work orders; and,
• Make agency employees pay for their own transit passes.

Now, under this board’s watch, we are potentially facing what new SFMTA chief Ed Reskin calls an “honest option” – making even deeper cuts to Muni service. Board chariman Tom Nolan went on to call this “right-sizing” of Muni service a “laudable and important goal.”

The company line, of course, is that all options are back on the table, but expect angry rhetoric from free-parking freeloaders at upcoming budget town hall meetings in opposition to anything that would constitute a minor inconvenience to motorists. The SFMTA will likely respond by indefinitely tabling these proposals and will instead address the deficit the easier way – by attacking Muni service. They know that any backlash from that action will be less than the backlash regarding, say, meter expansion, in part because of the challenges to organizing Muni’s diverse ridership. After all, riding transit isn’t a lifestyle for most folks in the way that driving is (readers of this blog excluded) – it is simply a way to get to work. Most of our fellow riders aren’t passionate about transit issues, they simply want their bus or streetcar to come on time and not be too crowded.

We need to communicate to our fellow riders, to the SFMTA board and to Reskin that cutting service is not an “honest option” for this transit-first socially conscious city – passing the pain off to those who depend on Muni will not be tolerated any more. We must stand up for the silent majority of city residents who rely on Muni everyday. We need to speak up at the town hall meetings, rant at board hearings, and even occupy One South Van Ness if necessary to get our point across that Muni service will not be the MTA’s ATM any longer.

This year brings the 100th anniversary of the Municipal Railway’s founding – San Franciscans of that era had the foresight to found a system that would belong to the public and be used for the good of the public. Now, our generation is tasked with defending “The People’s Railway” for posterity. Our task is not dissimilar to that of the “freeway revolters” who protected our neighborhoods and parks from a state highway-building assault – if this city is to continue being a city of the 99 percent, then we must prioritize mobility for all above the needs of transient motorists just passing through.

Weigh in on the SFMTA’s budget deficit and the possibility of service cuts by attending a town hall meeting, speaking at a regularly scheduled board meeting, or emailing sfmtabudget@sfmta.com.

During overnight hours
(from the end of regular service until opening of regular service)

Saturday, Feb. 18th: 4,200 riders
Sunday, Feb. 19th: 9,100 riders
Monday, Feb. 20th: 2,300 riders

All-day service

Saturday, Feb. 18th: 230,600 riders
Sunday, Feb. 19th: 178,000

For comparison:

Saturday, Sept. 1st, 2007 (highest ridership for a Saturday): 278,600
Sunday, Feb. 5th: 112,700
Sunday, Feb. 12th: 121,000

Updated 2:50 p.m.: Ridership numbers released today show BART had a really big weekend during the closure, including its fifth busiest Saturday ever.

Possible alignment for the Broadway streetcar corridor in Oakland.

Officials will soon launch a new study on the potential costs and benefits associated with building a streetcar line in Oakland (a city which, in the interest of full disclosure, this writer hella loves). This isn’t the first time The O has looked at bringing back rail, but the lack of any viable funding plan means the cars won’t be rolling any time soon.

The idea is to lay rail down a corridor roughly from MacArthur BART to Jack London Square via Broadway – backers promise that the permanency of the rails and catenary would then encourage economic development along the corridor in a way that a bus line could never do. The streetcar corridor would also link established employment centers including Kaiser and Alta Bates Summit Medical Center to BART, Amtrak, and the ferry terminal, as well as the future East Bay Bus Rapid Transit service.

Currently Broadway is served by a number of AC Transit lines as well as the popular Free B shuttle. The shuttle is, as the name implies, fare-free, and operates on an annual budget of nearly $770,000. It is claimed to result in nearly $10 million in purchases for merchants along the corridor, but streetcar backers have their eyes on an even bigger prize – they hope to replicate the success of Portland’s groundbreaking modern streetcar line, which has reportedly resulted in billions of dollars of development in that city.

A search of hotels within a 15-minute transit ride of the Moscone Center in San Francisco using Google Hotel Finder.

A new tool from Google lets users find hotels based on travel time – now it is easy to see hotels that match simple criteria such as “within a 10 minute walk of the convention center” or “no more than a 20 minute transit ride away” . This tool could disrupt the mostly complacent online travel search industry, which has failed to focus on the role transit and walkability plays in the lives of travelers visiting unfamiliar cities.

It is nowhere near as detailed as Walkscore’s Apartment Search tool, which lets you drill down Craigslist housing listings based on advanced criteria such as the proximity to specific bus lines. The interface is also somewhat clunky and Google admits the tool is currently an “experiment”, but hopefully other travel sites will feel the need to step up and offer similar functionality. Give it a try at google.com/hotelfinder.

The totally rad folks at OpenPlans are trying to answer these questions. The non-profit org, whose mission is to promote sustainable mobility with new technology and open data, launched beautiful.st on Valentine’s Day – the site presents users with photos of two streets and asks one simple question: which is more beautiful? All data collected will be publicly available online for anyone to download and parse. [Atlantic Cities]

Spring Street green bike lane in downtown L.A. Photo by LADOT Bike Blog.

The lane in question is on Spring Street, which is sometimes used as a stand-in for a 1920s era big city in car commercials. An especially smug editorial in the L.A. Times claims that the shade of green used on Spring is the problem, as it apparently cannot be digitally edited out. But the real problem is about street space according to a representative from Film L.A., the entity that helps film crews get permits to shoot on-location in the city. From LA Weekly:

“Because they took out a traffic lane, there are difficulties putting filming vehicles on the street,” says Audley.

He estimates that in 2012, about 10 percent of filmmakers who would have otherwise shot in downtown L.A. have stayed away because of the lanes.

…

Film L.A. first learned of the Department of Transportation’s plan for a bicycle-friendly Spring Street when officials asked the org to “move any film crews” that were in the way, according to Audley.

Now, he says his group is deep in negotiations with the mayor (and bicycle advocates) in anticipation of more bike lanes being constructed on surrounding streets — particularly “upper Main, [which] is a heavily filmed area.”

So is it the lane’s shade of green or the loss of some green that is really driving this controversy? Is a street that accommodates non-motorized modes of travel simply unfit for selling cars? Thankfully, LADOT appears to be holding firm on the green bike lane for Spring Street, and we hope that the department’s plans for more green bike lanes aren’t delayed or dialed back just because they may not be film-friendly.

• President Obama’s proposed FY 2013 budget included $47 billion for high-speed rail over the next six years – much of this money could go to California’s HSR project, the only such project in the nation that would achieve speeds of 220 mph. Robert Cruickshank points out that this would put California’s project in a very strong position, especially if the Democrats retake the House and Obama is re-elected.
• The president’s budget also includes $150 million for BART‘s San Jose extension, $150 million for Muni‘s Central Subway, and $50 million for LA. Metro‘s Westside Subway. Other projects getting a nod from the White House include the L.A. Regional Connector, the Van Ness and East Bay BRT projects, phase 2 of Sacramento RT‘s South Light Rail Line, and San Diego’s Mid-Coast light rail corridor (Keep in mind, of course, that this is only from the proposed budget).
• The House’s legitimately horrible transpo bill – which would eliminate dedicated sources of funding for transit and bike-ped improvements – continues to live on, albeit in three parts. The President has said he will veto it, assuming it ever passed the Senate. If it were to go into law, the bill would cost California billions in federal investment, including an estimated $638 million annually to Bay Area transit agencies alone.

The historic Petaluma River swing bridge. SMART intends to replace it with a newer drawbridge from Galveston, Tex. Photo by The Press Democrat.

The North Bay’s budding commuter railroad intends to buy a used draw bridge from Galveston, Tex., to replace an aging swing span over the Petaluma River. The current swing bridge is 109-years-old and repairable, according to Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit, but the agency thinks it would need to be replaced anyway within 20 years – instead, they expect to buy and install the bridge from Texas at a cost of about $20 million and have it last 75 to 80 years. The bridge is currently used by BNSF to cross from mainland Texas to Galveston – it is being disassembled this week and being replaced (apparently at the request of the Coast Guard). If the deal goes through, SMART would take bids from BNSF and Union Pacific to ship the bridge to Petaluma by rail. SMART expects to run diesel multiple unit commuter trains down the corridor within four years. [PressDemocrat.com]