Measure D, which appears on this November’s ballot in San Francisco, would allow new large general advertising signs (aka billboards) along Market Street between 5^th and 7^th streets.

The measure’s author and chief proponent is building owner David Addington, who owns several buildings on the north side of Market Street in the proposed billboard district. The measure is destructive in a number of ways, which I won’t go into here; needless to say I am hoping that San Franciscans maintain their historic aversion to billboards and ballot-box planning and defeat the measure this November. While Mid-Market won’t be helped by Measure D, Mid-Market does need help, which I also won’t try to describe here, as it is the worthy subject of one or more essays. The purpose of this essay is to correct misinformation the Yes on D campaign has repeatedly put out about the history of signage along Market Street, and what current city laws governing signs allow and disallow.

According to the account Mr. Addington and other Measure D supporters have given to groups across the city, a 1967 law called the Market Street Beautification Act required the removal of all the neon business signs, historic theater marquees, and billboards along Market Street, including the historic marquee and blade signs for the Warfield Theatre, which Mr. Addington now owns. As the story goes, this ill-conceived act sent Mid-Market into a tailspin, making the street dark, dangerous, and derelict. Measure D, they claim, is necessary to bring back these historic marquees, and will restore down-at-heels Mid Market to a thriving bright lights district that will rival the Fisherman’s Wharf as a tourist attraction.

Several elements of this story seemed shady to me.

• I have only heard of this supposed law from the Yes on D folks. My colleagues at the Planning Department seems never to have heard of it, nor have I encountered any other accounts of this law.
• No trace of such a law can be found in San Francisco’s Planning Code. The Planning Code is where most of the City’s controls related to signs are found (controls of a structural and technical nature are found in the city’s Building Code). There is a Mid-Market Special Sign District in the planning code from January 1970, but it is very different from the one described by the Yes on D campaign, as explained below.
• There are two prominent historic neon theater marquees, with multi-story blade signs, along Market Street today – The Orpheum Theater at Market and Hyde streets, and the Golden Gate Theater at Market, Golden Gate, and Taylor streets. If the law required removal of the Warfield Theatre’s historic marquee, then why are these two similar marquees still in place?
• A law like the one Mr. Addington and his cohort describe would be different from any other control in the Planning Code, and would probably be unconstitutional. The Planning Code sets controls building heights, lot coverage, uses, signs, and the like, but is generally not retroactive. Existing building features or uses which don’t meet the new rules become ‘existing nonconforming’ elements, and are allowed to remain in perpetuity, until the building in question is replaced or undergoes substantial renovation, or until a sufficient amortization period has passed. New sign controls of any sort would not mean that non-conforming structures would have to be taken down immediately, unless they posed an immediate risk to health or safety; indeed, such a requirement, if done without compensation to the property owner, would probably be found unconstitutional. For signs, the Planning Code has at times set a reasonable amortization period, allowing the property owner several years to realize the value of whatever original investment they may have made in the sign before it must be taken down.

I spent a few hours researching sign controls in the Planning Code, and in the San Francisco Public Library’s San Francisco History Center and Government Information Center. My research found:

• There is no record of a 1967 ordinance requiring historic theater marquees and business signs on Market street to be taken down.
• There was in fact a Market Street Beautification Act, but it didn’t regulate signs. It was legislation authorizing a $24.5 million dollar bond measure to be placed before the voters in June 1968 for the improvement of Market Street. The bond was approved, and paid for construction of the wider brick sidewalks, granite kerbstones, and crosswalk pavement along Market Street from the Embarcadero to Central Freeway, as well as Hallidie and United Nations plazas.
• The visual blight associated with billboards, especially rooftop billboards, was identified as early as 1962, in SPUR’s report “What to do About Market Street?”. The Mid-Market Special Sign District was added to the Planning Code in 1970, and it distinguishes between general advertising signs (aka billboards), which are disallowed, and business signs, which are permitted. The sign district makes generous allowances for business signs such as theater marquees. Business signs may project six feet over the sidewalk, and can be up to 60’ high, so long as they cover no windows above the third floor or project higher than the roof. Projecting signs with vertical lettering, like those on the Orpheum and Golden Gate theaters, are permitted up to 60’ in height, and up to 100’ above the street, so long as they aren’t taller than the roof of the building. The goal was to create pedestrian-oriented signs to enliven the street without marring the skyline, to create attractive building storefronts, and to dignify the street’s buildings by not obscuring architectural detail.
• 2002’s Proposition G, which Prop D’s proponents claim prevents the restoration of historic marquees like the Warfield’s, in no way regulates business signs; it only regulates billboards. It in fact specifies that “Nothing in this ordinance shall preclude the Board of Supervisors from otherwise amending Article 6 of the Planning Code”; leaving the Board of Supervisors and Planning Commission free to amend controls for business signs.

So could the Warfield Theatre’s historic signage be rebuilt today, under current law? It in fact can – with one change.

Two historic photos of the Warfield from the Public Library’s Historic Photos collection show the Warfield signage. The picture below, from 1922, shows two large blade signs hanging from the building’s corners, one on Taylor Street, and the other on Market. Both signs would conform to current planning code standards – they are less than 60’ high, and do not cover windows, rise more than 100’ above the street, or extend above the rooftop. The code allows one building sign per building frontage, so the two signs – one visible from Taylor, the other from Market – also conform.

Loew's Warfield Theatre, 1922. From the San Francisco Public Library's photo collection.

Two marquees projecting over the sidewalk, one on Taylor Street, at the left in the photo, and the other on Market where the current entrance is, to the right in the photo. The photo below, from 1964, shows the Market Street marquee in greater detail:

The Fox Warfield Theatre, 1964. From the San Francisco Public Library's photo collection.

Both marquees would be legal under current standards, except they could not extend more than 6 feet over the sidewalk. The previous controls allowed theater marquees to extend all the way to the curb. As you can see from the photos, the Market Street sidewalks were then much narrower, and treeless. The 1970 sign controls took into account the proposed redesign of Market Street:

The six-foot limitation is established in large part by the physical fact that double rows of trees, where they occur, will provide only a six-and-one-half foot clearance for signs when the trees are grown to their full spread of ten feet…Marquees, which in the past have been allowed to exend all the way to the curb, must be re-oriented to keep within the six-foot limit; even theatre marquees can be designed with high visibility under this limitation.

So why would the Measure D proponents continue to misrepresent the facts? The most generous explanation is that they are merely confused about both what current law permits, and about the history of sign controls on Market Street. This seems unlikely, considering that Mr. Addington hired one of San Francisco’s most knowledgeable land use attorneys to write Measure D, which changes the controls only for general advertising signs and not for business signs. If it is indeed his intent only to restore the Warfield marquee, and to build or restore similar marquees along Market Street, it seems doubtful he would run a very costly citywide campaign to allow himself to do so, since doing so is already permitted under current law, and Prop D only permits billboards.

The likeliest reason is that this misleading and inaccurate story is more compelling that the real story. For decades, San Franciscans have reviled billboards as blight, and sign regulation has moved progressively towards greater limitations on billboards, culminating in 2002 with Measure G, which was supported by three-quarters of the electorate.

On the other hand, San Franciscans love historic theaters and their marquees, and we are gladdened by successful efforts to preserve and restore historic theaters, like the Castro and the Vogue, and still mourn the loss of other historic theaters, like the Fox, which was demolished to build the lugubrious Fox Plaza.

Spinning Measure D as an effort to bring back historic theater marquees, and even historic theaters, is a much more appealing story than telling the public that Measure D would bring unprecedentedly large billboards back to San Francisco’s most prominent street, including rooftop billboards, rotating billboards, and blinking billboards, with few limitations on size or scope, and regulation and approval effectively taken away from the Planning Department and handed over to a private entity – or that the measure was concocted without a single public meeting or hearing.

Too bad that their story doesn’t jibe with the facts.

The Bay Area has done an impressive job building an increasingly connected rail transit network for the region. Yet the regional network is plagued with recurring problems – transit projects that over-promise and under-deliver, capacity problems at the region’s core, boom-and-bust maintenance and reinvestment cycles which compromise performance and safety, and funding priorities that favor new extensions over operating, maintenance, and reinvestment of existing transit.

Our best guess about the current state of our rail network and its future prospects, contained in MTC’s 2009 Regional Transportation Plan, shows a system in crisis. MTC projects that BART’s capital reinvestment needs over the next 25 years are less than half funded, with an $8 billion shortfall. The planned extensions to the BART system – Warm Springs, eBART, and the Oakland Airport Connector – are all anticipated to operate at a loss, and all will draw from BART’s overtapped operating budget for their operating and capital costs. These extension projects contribute nothing to expanding BART’s core system capacity, which, before the current economic downturn, was becoming acutely constrained.

San Francisco’s Municipal Railway (Muni), which operates the region’s second-most-used rail network (Muni has almost twice BART’s ridership, but mostly on its extensive bus network) is facing similar problems. Its light rail system is aging, overcrowded, unreliable, and saw a serious light rail collision on July 18 which injured dozens. Yet the RTP forecasts that over a third of Muni’s essential capital reinvestment needs over the next 25 years will remain unfunded, with little or nothing available for adding capacity or increasing safety and performance. Meanwhile, Muni has diverted tens of millions of dollars in capital funding at its discretion towards its $1.4 billion Central Subway project.

The Bay Area’s unsustainable transit expansion practices are not new. The region had an extensive rail transit network in the first half of the 20th Century, much of which was dismantled or allowed to fall into ruin after World War 2. As streetcar and commuter rail lines were being dismantled and abandoned, residents of three Bay Area counties voted in 1962 to build the BART system.

The initial BART system massively over-promised and under-delivered. The 1962 study projected that, by 1976, BART would have 258,496 riders on an average weekday, and operate at a surplus of $11 million/year. In 1976, the system carried only 131,370 riders on an average weekday – 51% of the projected total – and instead of running a surplus, required $40 million in operating subsidy. BART did not reach its 1962 projection of average weekday ridership in 1976 for another two decades. BART has never operated at the surpluses it initially projected, although its farebox recovery ratio (the percentage of a system’s operating budget that comes from fares) has nearly doubled, from less than 35% in the mid-70’s to almost 62% in the 2008-9 fiscal year.

Over the past 20 years, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) has been engaged in a complicated scheme to dramatically expand the region’s rail network. The rail expansion plan, like the original BART plan, over-promised and under-delivered.

The Regional Transit Expansion Plan, adopted by MTC as Resolution 1876 in 1988 and updated as Resolution 3434 in 2001, focused largely on BART expansion. The plan relies on a complex financial scheme involving federal, state, and county funds. The linchpin was BART’s extension to San Francisco International Airport (SFO); this project, originally costed at $1.05 billion, received $750 million in Federal funding, and the  the balance was to come largely from San Mateo County’s transportation sales tax. San Mateo County contributed another $200 million to help build two BART extensions in the East Bay, to Pittsburg-Bay Point and Dublin-Pleasanton. Once it opened, the SFO Extension was to draw another $146 million from projected operating profits to help build a third East Bay extension, to Warm Springs in Fremont.

The regional rail plan delivered three BART extensions, and construction of the Warm Springs Extension is about to begin. The financial arrangements, however, began to unravel in the 1990s, as the cost of the SFO extension project ballooned to $1.7 billion. The extension, which opened in 2003, has not generated the millions in operating profits originally projected; it has operated at a loss since opening day.

MTC’s plans also failed to take into account the needs of the existing system. As systems age, they require life-cycle investments in repair and replacement to keep them operating. Growing ridership makes additional demands on these systems too – more railcars, additional capacity at stations, larger shops and maintenance yards, expanded access to stations.

It is time to recognize the current crisis, and put the region’s rail network on a sustainable course. The experience of the past two decades offers several lessons about how to expand the region’s rail network sustainably. The goal is not to stop expansion of the region’s rail network – continued effective expansion is essential to completing an integrated regional rail network – but rather to expand in a way that sustains the safety and financial soundness of these systems.

• Choose the right project for the corridor. BART has historically been a one-trick pony, offering up expensive BART extensions as the solution to every demand for better transit service. BART technology offers many advantages, but is extremely costly – as much as $150-200 million per mile. BART policy now supports expanding its transit offerings to include other types of rail (light rail, commuter rail, DMU/EMU), but unfortunately BART ‘grandfathered in’ some of its long-planned extensions, even though they don’t make much transit planning sense. The recent case of the Oakland Airport Connector project shows how BART still tends to err towards high-cost projects that don’t offer substantially better service than lower-cost alternatives. Effectively balancing the considerations involved in choosing the right project for a given corridor – capital cost, lifecycle operating and maintenance costs, future capacity needs, rider benefits, right-of-way, system connectivity and interoperability, environmental and land use benefits, access, etc. – is a complex art, and the proper subject for one or more essays. Our region’s process for developing and prioritizing projects is more politically driven than policy driven, and lacks rigor and strategic thinking.
• Expand urban core service and access. Since the completion of the original, three-county BART system in 1973, BART’s management and directors have sought to expand BART further out into the suburban Bay Area, and have paid little attention to the region’s urban core. But it is the dense, mixed-use urban core communities which can be served most effectively by heavy rail metros like BART. Improving access to existing stations by improving walking, cycling, and local transit connections, changing land use to foster denser, mixed-use ‘transit villages’ around existing stations, and adding stations between stations (in places like 30th Street in San Francisco, 14th Avenue/San Antonio in Oakland, and Solano Avenue in Albany) are more cost effective ways of adding new riders than extending into low-density suburban areas. Yet these strategies receive scant attention from BART’s leadership, and receive little regional funding compared to less effective suburban extensions.
• Preserve existing service. A transit agency must demonstrate it can meet the operating and maintenance needs of the extension without compromising service to current riders, or burdening them with the additional cost. There is no public value in opening shiny new extensions while driving away existing riders with higher fares and diminished service.
• Cover core system impacts. An extension’s funding plan should cover both the full cost of the extension, and the core-system impacts of the extension (vehicles, maintenance facilities, capacity needs, etc.) For decades, BART was able to rely upon the surplus capacity built into its lines and stations, and its spare railcars, to absorb additional riders, so that adding extensions off the ends of the system didn’t create capacity problems in the core. That ended a decade ago or more, and every extension must now include core system investments to accommodate the new riders.
• Plan for life-cycle costs. Operating surpluses from extensions should go first to making sure that core-system operating needs and lifecycle capital needs of the extension and core system are covered, before going to build additional extensions. The SFO Extension’s vast pyramid scheme, which has, and will continue to, draw millions of BART fare revenue and San Mateo County funding towards East Bay extensions while making capacity and capital demands on an overtaxed core system, is demonstrably unsustainable.
• Plan using scenarios. In an increasingly unpredictable world, projects must be robust and resilient, and serve the needs of riders in a range of plausible futures. Transit expansion projects are often sold to policymakers using plans and forecasts favorable to the desired project. The SFO extension’s ridership, funding, and cost projections, for example, assumed high economic growth, robust growth in air travel, low construction costs, and unprecedented changes in observed travel behavior (assuming, for example, that 90% of northbound Caltrain riders bound for San Francisco would transfer to BART at Millbrae, even though it involved longer wait time, longer travel time, and a higher cost). The stars didn’t align precisely as BART forecast, and the project encountered huge cost increases and big operating losses. Smart transportation project planning must examine how the project fares under different plausible future scenarios – high and low economic growth rates, varying prices for energy and materials, changing real estate and financial markets, etc.

– Gary Snyder, “Four Changes” (1969)

Things are quite different from when I filed for election in August. Then, gasoline cost $4 per gallon, and  BART’s surging ridership, and the need it creates to invest in capacity – more trains, reconfigured rail cars and stations, new train control systems, etc – looked like our biggest challenge. We knew it was going to be tough; state aid, important for transit capital investments and funding operations, was being slashed, and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission proposes spending $6 billion to expand highways over the next 30 years, with nothing for to transit capacity, and huge shortfalls for transit maintenance and replacement.

Since then, the financial crisis unfolded, oil prices and gasoline prices dropped, and ridership began to level off, although it is still at historic highs. The state budget was worse than we imagined; BART received $41 million less than it should have under voter-approved transportation funding formulas. Sales tax receipts, which are BART’s second-largest source of operating revenue, are disappointing, and the current quarter looks bearish. Belt-tightening is inevitable in the short term, and BART is holding off starting some capital projects until the financial dust settles.

Financial austerity can generate creativity. The current crisis is emboldening some BART staff to think more clearly about productivity and effectiveness, and to more openly question BART’s historic subsidies for station parking, which are socially and environmentally regressive and make no business sense. Sustainability initiatives that save energy and resources also save money, and BART has an opportunity invest one-time funds from California’s 2006 infrastructure bond towards projects that provide clear benefits to riders, improve station safety, accessibility, wayfinding, comfort, and appearance, and save us money, energy, and materials over the long run.

Things look a bit brighter in the medium term. Voters approved Proposition 1A, a bond to create a statewide high speed rail system for California.

I was invited to a press conference with High Speed Rail Authority chair Quentin Kopp, Senator Diane Feinstein, and Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi on Friday before the election. Judge Kopp remarked that San Francisco’s magnificent bridges – The Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate – were built during the Great Depression. Infrastructure projects provide an economic stimulus in lean times, and there is much talk in Washington and even locally of big public works programs to create jobs and support the local economy. The view of the Bay Bridge out the window of the law firm where the press conference was being held got me thinking beyond the near-term imperative of economic stimulus, and towards the long-term; building the bridges created jobs, but they are also objects of great beauty and enduring utility.

 High Speed trains between San Francisco’s Transbay Terminal and Los Angeles’ Union Station are probably a decade away, but Californians will begin to see tangible benefits much sooner. Bond funds or the federal grants they leverage can close the funding gap for electrifying Caltrain and extending it to Downtown’s Transbay Terminal. Electrification and the Transbay Terminal will serve high-speed service, but also provide world-class regional metro service between San Francisco and San Jose.

The bond allocates $950 million to existing intercity, commuter, heavy, and light rail systems across the state to improve connectivity to High Speed Rail and to rehabilitate, upgrade, or add capacity. Under the bond’s funding formula, BART may receive around $280 million, and Muni $60 million. This will help BART fund rehabilitation and capacity needs, and can help Muni address the capital needs of its overcrowded and unreliable light rail network – provided Muni invests in the urgent needs of its existing system, and doesn’t dump the money into its flawed Central Subway project.

Finally, it looks as though Measure B in Santa Clara County is failing narrowly. The vote is quite close, and may not be settled definitively for days or weeks. What is encouraging is that some proponents are acknowledging, cautiously, that the project may need to be built in two phases, while opponents are also acknowledging that a first phase, continuing BART’s planned Warm Springs extension south of Fremont to connect with VTA’s light rail in Milpitas, and perhaps continuing to Beryessa in San Jose, may be a reasonable compromise. This first phase extension is relatively low-cost (for a BART extension – a big caveat), and connects BART to the Silicon Valley’s job-rich “Innovation Triangle”, via the Tasman light rail line. Currently committed funds can cover this first phase without looting other worthwhile projects in the county and across the region.

It was great to see so many parents and kids out enjoying the streets:

For many in the region, the media coverage of this presentation was the first news that BART faces an urgent need to address capacity, although regular BART riders are experiencing BART capacity constraints firsthand.

The issue of BART’s capacity to carry its increasing ridership has been simmering for about a decade, since the ridership surge during the dot-com boom revealed some bottlenecks at BART stations. Simply put, reaching capacity means that a portion of a system can no longer physically carry the number of passengers who wish to use it. Addressing the capacity constraints of a transit system like BART is a complex problem which necessitates a systems approach, although BART’s capacity issues are relatively straightforward compared to the issues faced by larger networks like the London Underground or New York Subway. These systems have been addressing complex capacity issues for a long time, and BART has much to learn from the experience of these and other systems.

The current demands on BART capacity are driven by BART’s recent increases in ridership; despite a slowing economy, BART ridership continues to grow quickly and exceed previous records.

BART capacity is a pressing problem for BART and for the Bay Area, and how we address it will effect the future livability, sustainability, and economic health of the region. The Regional Rail Plan released last year projects that BART ridership may grow from the approximately 370,000 average weekday trips today to over 600,000 trips over the next few decades.

I have worked to draw attention to and successfully address BART capacity issues for most of my time on the BART Board. BART capacity has many dimensions, many implications, and many possible solutions, which I will address in a series of posts, to follow.

“But we knew that when one goes into a shop and buys a cake one gets nothing but a cake, which may be very good, but is only a cake; whereas if one goes into the kitchen and makes a cake because some people one respects and probably likes are coming to eat at one’s table, one is striking a low note on a scale that is struck higher up by Beethoven and Mozart.”

Rebecca West, Black Lamb Grey Falcon

Rebecca West’s Black Lamb Grey Falcon is an amazing book – part travel diary, part history, part political manifesto, part exploration of the human condition. West was a novelist, and essayist, and feminist, and the book is a record of her travels through Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the late 1930’s, describing the young country’s mosaic of cultures and its troubled history.

All of West’s works explore aesthetics, and she wrote a book of essays, The Strange Necessity, on the subject. What I like about the quote above is her notion that great works of art are fundamentally works of love, and that the everyday works of love, unrecognized as art, are nonetheless related.