San Francisco Sustainable Mobility Agenda presentation

NACTO, the National Association of City Transportation Officials, is doing a roadshow of presentations in its member cities. They did one in Baltimore in late September (followed by private meetings with government agencies and elected officials) and in Philadelphia on Thursday night.

The Baltimore and Philly presentations had two of the same presentations from NYC and Portland (but with different presenters), and two different ones, in Baltimore one from DC, and in Philadelphia one from San Francisco.

In relation to the blog entry from a few days ago on "Management and capacity building to realize and maintain better public places," the San Francisco presentation was spot on. The Municipal Transportation Agency there has responsibility for a multiplicity of functions, not parks, but almost everything else that is public space transportation related:

- transportation planning
- transit
- taxis
- traffic enforcement (they took on that division of the police department)
- parking and parking enforcement
- transportation related development review of new projects.

It looks like their Deputy Director of transportation planning, Timothy Papandreou, gave roughly the same presentation to APTA, so you can see much of the presentation slides that were given the other night here:

- San Francisco Sustainable Mobility and Climate Action Strategy

Most progressive jurisdictions are linking and positioning transportation (mobility) decision making and planning around sustainability, which makes it easier to deal with what we might call the car culture and automobility lobby.

Although Mr. Papandreou is a helluva presenter, one of the best I've seen in the transportation arena, so you miss out on that.

The Bike Share Philadelphia group used the presentation as an opportunity to demonstrate the Bixi bikesharing system (which is why I went) and there were between 100 and 150 people in the audience, which I thought was very impressive. (The Baltimore presentation had fewer than 40 people in attendance.) Plus, Mayor Nutter came and spoke--very well--on the issues, and the city's deputy mayor for transportation and utilities was the moderator. Sadly, the session went too long, so there was no time for Q&A, and it would have been interesting to hear what was on people's minds.

Add parks to the public realm agenda, and you have a complete package.

Public Realm as an Interconnected system, Slide from presentation, Leadership and the Role of Parks and Recreation in the New Economy, David Barth and Carlos Perez