This spring, SPUR and San Francisco celebrate the culmination of an extraordinary public project that started 31 years ago: the Presidio Parkway. What began as a safety project to replace a dangerous elevated highway became a community-led process to heal a landscape torn apart by freeway building. SPUR played a critical role in bringing people together to complete this once-in-a-generation project.
This year, SPUR celebrated the completion of the Regional Strategy and began the long-term work of building toward the future it envisions. We tackled immediate concerns, like public transit’s fiscal crisis, and pursued the longer-term changes that will influence quality of life for generations.
In this year's State of SPUR address, given at our annual Board of Directors retreat, SPUR President and CEO Alicia John-Baptiste reflected on the past few years and looked ahead to how we can build on what we've learned, so that the region's future is one in which all people thrive.
To reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight climate pollution, California will need to build out the infrastructure to make walking, biking and riding transit the default ways to get around. Senate Bill 288, which expires this year, makes it faster to build commonsense sustainable transportation projects. SPUR recommends that the state extend and improve the law by passing SB 922. This brief provides background on SB 288 and describes the impact of the law, including case studies on projects built since it was passed.
This year, SPUR is celebrating staff members — a.k.a. “Spurritos”— who have served the organization for 10 years or more. This month we profile Strategy and Operations Director Lawrence Li, who keeps the SPUR Urban Center in San Francisco — and our remote work across the Bay Area — humming seamlessly despite global pandemics and other unforeseen disruptions.
