Recap Of Streetfilms San Francisco Event
There was about 200 people there, give or take. It wasn’t as many as I’d hoped, but it was still a strong showing, and a fun event. No Gavin, but his ’streets’ guy, Wade Crowfoot, was there. I had contacted a couple of supervisors, too, but didn’t see them.
Janette Sadik-Khan did show up for a minute, and was introduced from the mic, and the crowd recognized her with a good round of applause. I was this close to starting the standing ovation for her, but I chickened out. I actually think there were quite a few people there who could have used a standing ovation, not least, Clarence Eckerson, filmmaker extraordinaire.
I sound like a broken record on this, but every town needs a Streetsblog, and every town needs one, and ideally many more, public viewing events like this one tonight in San Francisco. Totally awesome.
I’d like to recommend Austin and Portland for some Streetsblog action.
At the end of watching a good mix of Streetfilms, some which featured San Francisco (including my favorite), a few notables took the stage to answer some questions from the audience - Clarence Eckerson (Streetfilms), Aaron Naparstek (Streetsblog), Jon Orcutt (NYCDOT), Leah Shahum (SFBC), and Wade Crowfoot (City of San Francisco).
During the Q&A session, there were two points that stood out for me.
The first was Jon Orcutt’s remark that European officials who visited U.S. cities were always very surprised at just how wide streets in the U.S. were - they typically have much more narrow streets in Europe. The extra width of the streets here in the U.S., these European officials reasoned, means that U.S. cities should have no problem having dedicated bike and bus lanes on every major street. ABSOLUTELY, brother - preach it. Part of my resistance to BRT is just this - we’re giving dedicated space to buses, but not bikes - it makes no sense at all. There is plenty of room for both - let’s do both. And if there’s not plenty of room for both, then let’s make room by getting rid of some more car lanes - the least productive, least sustainable, most destructive form of transport. And if we decide that a street can only fit either bikes or buses - the answer is simple - the less-sustainable one has to go - buses have to go - no dedicated bus lanes on this street for you - sorry. Bikes stay. Simple.
Leah Shahum talked about biker safety, and said that “we’ll never have a separated lane on each street, so let’s just slow down traffic significantly throughout the entire city.”
I might disagree with the tone of the first part - I never want to offer the impression that we’re ever going to stop demanding anything but the best conditions for the second-most sustainable form of transport there is just behind walking - bikes.
Other than that, though, the part about slowing all vehicle traffic down throughout the city - ABSOLUTELY, sister - preach it. That’s an idea whose time has come - we need to start talking about it a lot more - start working it into our plans in a more concrete fashion. Let’s slow down cars everywhere. I often mention the one-way highways of San Francisco - we need to clamp down on outlaw driving. I don’t know what the speed limits are, but Leah said the cars often move at speeds of about 45 MPH, and based on my experience, I’d guess she was spot on. She said getting hit by a car going at 10 or 20 MPH would really suck, but at 45 MPH it would be ‘really bad’. So, yes, let’s slow cars down throughout San Francisco.
And it was great to hear a question from a person in the crowd who had never been to the Streetsblog or Streetfilms websites before. In the circles I travel in these days, that’s pretty much an impossibility. It shows the power of an organized institution that is able to reach outside of the comfy confines of ‘the transportation advocate world.’ We advocate people need to continue to do more of this kind of thing - showing different people why livable streets are important.
Clarence and Streetfilms will be out at the SFBC Service Station this Friday, filming the final Gas-Free Fridays event of this year, so if you’ve always wanted to be in a StreetFilm, this is your chance. Bring some ideas for topics that you want Streetsblog SF to cover, because they want to know what you’re interested in. This film they shoot may show up in the inaugural Streetsblog SF post!
7:30 am to 9:30 am at Folsom & 7th, Friday morning - free fair-trade coffee, tea, snacks, and Streetfilms. Maybe you’ll get to say, “BikeBox!,” on camera. Word.
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