A BART station in Duboce Park?

Don’t worry, this isn’t real!

Someone had some fun with Photoshop and posted images of what a BART station would look like in Duboce Park to the Duboce Triangle flickr group. Fascinating, but — again — a joke.

Updated: We stand corrected. This is not a Photoshop job; it was a temporary installation for the filming of Pursuit of Happyness. Still fun to muse on.

Images courtesy of WascaliWabbit on the Duboce Triangle flickr group.

Media coverage of the plan

The Duboce Triangle Transportation Improvement Plan was covered in the Examiner and Curbed yesterday:

          Duboce Avenue facelift causes concerns [Examiner]

          MTA Metaphors: Church and Duboce Score $28M Shoes [Curbed SF]

The Examiner piece was quite odd, largely because the headline and analysis was completely out of synch with the quotes from the community. We won’t comment on the nature of the Examiner’s reporting, except to point out this big inconsistency.

Don’t forget to be a part of next week’s MTA meeting on the project!

The MTA will be holding a public meeting on Wednesday, September 24th from 6:30 to 8 pm at CaPMC’s Gazebo Room (45 Castro Street) to get community input on the Church & Duboce Track Improvement Project.

This is the first official MTA meeting on the plan; the workshop earlier this year was a DTNA meeting. The MTA will be presenting the various alternatives for the locations along the project area.

Image courtesy of Neal Patel.

In honor of the beautiful day …

One of the many gorgeous roses thriving in the neighborhood. Thanks to the good neighbors on Carmelita who keep the street beautiful.

Duboce Park Tag Sale 2008

The tag sale was hopping last Saturday.

More on the Duboce and Scott Crosswalk

Current crosswalk at Duboce and Scott.

Pre-fix crosswalk invited illegal parking.

DTNA got a call yesterday from CPMC (aka, the hospital) about the crosswalk at Duboce and Scott. DTNA’s Transportation Committee successfully petitioned the Department of Public Works (DPW) to complete the crosswalk (which was missing part of the striping) over the summer, in the hopes that it would curb illegal parking in the crosswalk. CPMC reports that they were able to get the DPW to repaint the red, no parking zone on the curb above the crosswalk. The photo shows the repainted no parking zone – and the car illegally parked in the zone. Sigh. Next steps may include painting the crosswalk with the red zone and/or moving the stop sign out of the crosswalk so to help show that the crosswalk is indeed a crosswalk.

It’s frustrating to spend so much time and effort to ensure a safe crosswalk; but safe crossings in front of hospitals are especially important, so we will continue to work with CPMC to make it work. Your suggestions are, as always, welcome.

Duboce & Church station improvement on track

A key part of the Duboce Triangle Transportation Improvement Plan involves widening the currently narrow, unsafe and unpleasant N-Judah island on the north side of Duboce Avenue between Church and Fillmore. As you know probably, this stretch of Duboce Avenue features an extremely busy transit station for N-Judah customers, and is also a major pedestrian and bicycling thoroughfare. DTNA recently conducted a study of the Church and Duboce intersection and found that 979 pedestrians passed through the west side of the intersection in just one hour on a Saturday afternoon. Many of those pedestrians were stationary; the average pedestrian spent three minutes in the intersection during our study hour, with some waiting for much longer than others. Many transit customers make transfers between trains and buses at Church and Duboce, often laden with bags from the many nearby grocers.

The current design and programming of the outbound N-Judah platform does not provide enough room for transit customers to wait comfortably. Indeed, it is extremely common to see many people waiting in the travel lane just north of the platform, sitting on the sidewalk curb or standing leaning on any available object on the sidewalk.

This small stretch of Duboce Avenue has very light car traffic thanks to a left turn ban from north-bound Church Street south of Duboce and little demand for right turns from the south-bound section of Church north of Duboce. This unusual lack of car traffic is the reason that transit customers have essentially reclaimed the travel lane as an extension of the waiting platform. Though there is very light car traffic, this small stretch of Duboce is a heavily used gateway to “the Wiggle,” the popular bicycle route through our neighborhood. People on bicycles often ride through this street, coming from the bikeway behind Safeway or Church Street. The MTA recorded 420 bicyclists passing through the intersection of Page and Scott Streets in one and a half hours in 2007 – a 12% increase from 2006.  A majority of those bicyclists come from or travel to the Duboce and Church intersection. But thanks to their low speed and small size, bicyclists tend to blend in well with the N-Judah transit customers standing in the travel lane.

As part of the Duboce Triangle Improvement Plan, we have requested that the MTA traffic calm the north side of Duboce Avenue between Fillmore and Church Streets to respect the current pedestrian-dominated use of this small stretch of the street. Restricting car traffic that uses this section of Duboce Avenue, while ensuring the safety of the transit customers and pedestrians who use this small area, will enhance the transit station, improve safety and comfort and provide an appropriate gateway into Duboce Triangle.

We have sent out letters to all property owners around the area to ask for support for this change. Currently, the MTA is working with ISCOTT to move the legislative improvement forward. ISCOTT had some concern about the impact on the crosswalk (currently unmarked) on Duboce across Fillmore. But the MTA is working with them to make the improvement and improve that crosswalk (opening it up at last).

Photo by Neal Patel on the Duboce Triangle flickr group.

BART construction

At last night’s DTNA member meeting, we heard from a BART representative about the earthquake retrofit project the agency will be undertaking at the Church Street MUNI station (BART owns the land). The poster (poorly recreated here through the magic of a scanner) says it all: construction will be from October 2008 through May 2009 at night, from 9 pm through 5 am. They will be wrapping the columns in something stronger. The rep promises that there will be no street impacts.

If you have questions or are disturbed by noise, call Catherine Westphall at BART at 510-464-7595.

Street Work Signs

You may have noticed bright orange signs on Noe, Duboce and Sanchez warning about street work. In case you were wondering, this is not for the Duboce Triangle Transportation Improvement Plan. They are separate efforts by the gas and water companies.

We are checking right now with the MTA and DPW about whether this will mean tearing up the street twice. Obviously, we want to avoid that.

Save the Date! MTA Meeting September 24

The MTA will be holding a public meeting on Wednesday, September 24th from 6:30 to 8 pm at CaPMC’s Gazebo Room (45 Castro Street) to get community input on the Church & Duboce Track Improvement Project.

This is the first official MTA meeting on the plan; the workshop earlier this year was a DTNA meeting. The MTA will be presenting the various alternatives for the locations along the project area.

Please plan on being there! The more community-driven this plan is, the better.

Plan Progresses over the Summer

Though we haven’t posted much on this site for the last few months, it hasn’t been for lack of progress. We’ve been working closely with the MTA, and now the Department of Public Works (DPW) and Planning Department, over the summer. There’s a lot of good news to report.

The MTA has made a commitment to turning the rail replacement project into a more comprehensive street improvement project. In fact, we found out last night that the Rail Replacement project has actually been renamed the Church and Duboce Track Improvement Project. And it’s not just words. The MTA has delayed its initial rail replacement project “Construction and Engineering Report” (CER_ in order to incorporate additional streetscape improvements into the project. We have been working with the MTA, DPW and Planning to figure out which items can be funded through the Church and Duboce Improvement Project, and which items will need outside funding (and what that funding wil be). The agencies have been performing a technical review of DTNA’s plan suggestions, and is developing an alternatives analysis for the project. This part of the project has been mostly confined to large svale changes, and not the design details.

In addition, we have begun working with the agencies on some initial landscaping ideas. We will be bringing these idease to the full Duboce Triangle community soon to get feedback.

So all in all, we’ve made a lot of progress over the summer. It’s been a whirlwind of work, but certainly worth it thus far.