News, Views and Analysis from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission and the Association of Bay Area Governments
Today is Walk to Work Day and San Francisco Bay Trail Project Manager Laura Thompson snapped photos on the section of trail she used to get to her office at 375 Beale St. Read More
Youth from the Bay Area are being asked to play a role in the Horizon planning process. Read More
One of the more significant projects now underway in the Bay Area is the suicide barrier on the Golden Gate Bridge.
Bimla Gill Rhinehart, who served as the executive director of the California Transportation Commission before passing in 2013, will have a planned public access boardwalk on Yerba Buena Island named in her honor. Read More
Bay Area folks have come up with interesting projects for the future of the region as part of MTC and ABAG's Transformative Projects competition. Read More
The preferred design alternative for a Bay Bridge West Span Bicycle and Pedestrian Pathway was presented to the public Nov. 19 and can be watched here. Read More
Do you daydream of new ways to cross over or under the San Francisco Bay? Close your eyes and see a fleet of flying cars, carrying commuters to work each day? This could be your time to shine. MTC and ABAG are looking for your biggest, brightest, billion dollar (or more!) ideas for redefining the way we travel in and around the Bay Area.
This month, the agencies are jointly issuing an open Request for Transformative Projects – transportation project ideas that have the potential to revolutionize how we move around the region. Transformative Projects should provide new and creative solutions for transportation in the area and should be large in scale – costing $1 billion or more. Public agencies, individuals, private sector companies and nongovernmental organizations are all encouraged to participate. Proposals are due on September 6, 2018 and can be submitted by completing the online form.
The Request for Transformative Projects is part of the Horizon initiative to explore the challenges and opportunities likely to face the Bay Area between now and 2050. Finalists will be selected in October 2018. Keep reading to find out more! Read More
As we’ve shared in previous blog posts this spring, MTC and ABAG have launched Horizon, an ambitious regional initiative that will explore the challenges and opportunities likely to face the Bay Area between now and 2050.
The Horizon initiative will allow the public, planners and policymakers to wrestle with a range of challenging questions that traditionally have been outside the regional planning process, including how to respond to the emergence of driverless vehicles, rising sea levels, earthquakes, changing economic conditions and more. Read more about the questions we hope to explore and the principles that will guide us in this project. Read More
Horizon is an exciting new effort from MTC and ABAG to allow the public, planners and policymakers to wrestle with challenging questions about the external forces that could shape the Bay Area through 2050. Horizon will explore a range of pressing issues and attempt to put the region on sounder footing as it prepares for, and tries to shape, a trajectory that is both equitable and resilient to potential headwinds.
Horizon will identify a suite of potential external forces and allow residents, planners and decision-makers alike to think through policy and investment solutions that make sense in each distinct future. Ultimately, policies and projects that perform well regardless of what happens in the decades ahead will be identified as top priorities going forward. This planning initiative will inform the next regional transportation and land use plan, a separate but closely related effort that will kick off in mid-2019.
Currently, major Horizon work efforts have been directed towards establishing Guiding Principles that will help orient the process, as well as on identifying the futures themselves. Keep reading to find out more about the futures and watch the video above for additional background. Read More
When the Transbay Transit Center (now officially known as the Salesforce Transit Center) opens in downtown San Francisco, travelers will have a myriad of transit options at this “Grand Central Terminal” for the West. As a bonus, public art projects from four different artists will provide a visual feast for the eyes. The above video from MTC's Mark Jones features San Francisco-based Julie Chang, who designed the terrazzo floor for the Grand Hall.
As described on MTC's website:
The terrazzo floor of the Grand Hall will welcome visitors into a warm and inviting environment that evokes a lush sunlit Victorian garden. Mined from local ecology, design elements include California poppies and jewel-toned hummingbirds highlighted by mirrored glass. Integrated into the design is a subtle overlay of icons and patterns, which are drawn from the rich tapestry of people and cultures across the Bay Area: flower-like circular rings from an Indian sari, cloud-like curves inspired by Chinese embroidery, Japanese crests, diamonds and chevrons found in a variety of sources including African textiles and Grecian pottery, and star and cross motifs from Islamic tiles.