Confessions of a Yelp Addict

Of all my geeky passions and misadventures, one that I have yet to touch upon with this blog is my most recent love affair with the review site Yelp.

Yelp, you say??? Isn't that the site where bitter housewives go to kvetch and moan about how their cobb salad at the local dinner was just awful, the service at their hair salon dreadful, or the waiter at the bistro down the road gave them a mean look? Yelp, the sworn enemy of the service industry, you mean?

This is a good summary of the reactions I get when I tell my friends that not only do I write reviews for Yelp, but I am an "Elite Squad" member.

I first got started writing for Yelp because I saw it as an important way to reward local businesses who are bringing great products and services to the community. In 2011, the economy is certainly no great friend to small businesses, so why not publicly highlight when a local business - be it a restaurant, doctor, or car mechanic - goes above and beyond the call of duty and provides truly high-quality service?

In its ideal form, I see Yelp as a "crowdsourced" ally of small businesses that can help to counteract other market forces (reviews from media critics, rising rents, and chain franchises) that could otherwise conspire to put them out of business. Yelp is also a terrific resource for finding a car mechanic that won't rip you off, a chiropractor who truly knows what he's doing, or new restaurants in an unfamiliar neighborhood. It has been a huge source of knowledge of my own Mission neighborhood by letting me know which places are the most popular (based on number of reviews), and which are off the beaten path. I have even surprised some of my friends who have lived here for years by checking out places they had not even heard of, all thanks to Yelp.

I only have a few cardinal rules when I review a place:

1. Only review places you have actually visited - you'd be surprised how many Yelpers ignore this common courtesy
2. Only include experiences you actually had in your review - if you didn't order something, don't pretend you know how it tastes!
3. No chain businesses - the fact that anyone bothers to review their neighborhood Starbucks or Chipotle is baffling to me. They are chains, people! They're supposed to all be the same.
4. Special priority goes to the places you enjoy frequently - you'd like your favorite restaurant or cafe to stay in business, right? Then you owe it to them to write a glowing endorsement!

My reviews (75 currently) generally range from the generally praiseworthy,

NOPA (Western Addition, San Francisco)

After hearing from countless people in San Francisco - foodies, industry people, and other friends - that NOPA is like heaven in restaurant form, I decided it was high time to check it out. 

We got here at 5 so we could try their happy hour bar menu, available from 5-6. Note: This is the BEST way to score a table on a busy Friday or Saturday night. Once we were seated at the bar, we were able to get our name on the list in minutes and were seated by 6:15! Not bad for a place otherwise packed and buzzing with food-scene excitement.  

Space: Hands down the best part of NOPA is the physical space. The restaurant resembles an Aspen ski lodge plunked down in San Francisco and redecorated by celebrity interior designers. 20 ft + loft ceilings, elegant furnishings, beautiful lighting, and a public-facing kitchen allows you to watch the chefs go at it right from your seat. Simply being in this space may bring you closer to Buddha...

 Drinks: Drink service here was solid. The first bartender who seated us (brown-haired ponytail guy) seemed put off when we needed a minute to look at the expansive drinks menu, so quickly became disinterested and faded to the background. Another bartender (good-looking Mexican guy) quickly took the reigns and took much better care of us. Their spirits menu is vast and intimidating for the uninitiated like myself. I recommend the Rittenhouse Rye 100 proof whiskey on the rocks. One of the best whiskeys I've ever tasted! The Russian River Blonde Ale is also very good and worth a try.

Appetizers: Started off with the goat cheese and crostini. That goat cheese was like crack! Finger. Lickin'. Good. Perfect temperature and disappeared quickly from the bowl. Followed up with the sea bass crudo, which was also excellent.

Their albacore tuna melt (from the bar menu) was the one true miss of the evening. Cheddar cheese doesn't taste good on everything, especially less-than-fresh tuna fish. Fail.

Food: Rotisserie chicken was very good but not spectacular. Their best dish, by far, was the halibut flank. Simply delicious with a unique red sauce that made you really savor each bite.
One complaint with the dishes throughout: nearly all of them came on top of a bed of frisee lettuce. Why??? It's got no flavor and adds nothing the dish. They would be much better off pairing their food with arugula, kale, or even romaine. Service was impeccable, as one would expect of a four-star restaurant.

Overall, NOPA is definitely a rockstar of a restaurant. The physical space is breathtaking, and they are probably the most talked-about new restaurant in SF. Their reputation is not without merit. Their dishes are fantastic and their drinks are second-to-none. Aside from a few minor misses here are there, this place serves up reliably excellent food and is well worth checking out if you want "the" place to do fine dining in SF. All told, we paid about $150 including drinks for a party of three, not bad in the most expensive city on the west coast!

To the deservedly spiteful:

Studio Cleer (U-District, Seattle)

A few words of advice for Chris at Studio Cleer:
1) Your location is VERY HARD TO FIND. I know this because, after buying your $25 promotional coupon on BuyWithMe, I tried to scope out the place and get an appointment. I circled the block 5 or 6 times and could not, for the life of me, find any address labeled 945 Boat Street. You are in an industrial area with very few other businesses like you nearby. You need MAXIMUM VISIBILITY. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has encountered this problem.
2) ANSWER MY FREAKING PHONE CALL when I call asking for directions to your studio. I left a message on your voicemail two weeks ago and have yet to receive any kind of response. Am I wrong in taking this to mean you don't want my business??? I'm a hairy mofo who would have been a regular customer of yours if you had bothered to engage in just a bit of customer service.

The "helping a new business along:"

Little Water Cantina (Eastlake, Seattle)

As a resident of the building where this restaurant just came in, I was thrilled to finally give it a try yesterday! We were told when we moved in last September that the place would be ready by last fall - guess there was a bit of delay in construction???
First impressions: this place is definitely trying to aim for the same upscale Mexican atmosphere as other knockout restaurants like Barrio or Cactus. The decor is very trendy and artistic, full of clever design touches - it's clear the owners put a lot of thought into the look and feel of the place!
The patio area is absolutely delightful, but then again I live here so I already knew that :). If anything, I think they could use several more tables on the patio given the demand this place will see in the summer months. We had to wait almost 20 minutes to get a spot on the patio which we had reserved in advance, and this would've been unnecessary if they had enough seating on the patio area - there was more than enough room, they were just short on manpower!
Service-wise, we had no other complaints. Our bartender was very gracious and took the time to mash the mint leaves of our mojitos (probably her least favorite drink for that reason). Our server was very polite and knowledgeable about the menu, which was on a blackboard cafe-style. Why you would open your restaurant without printing menus first, though, is beyond me. She had no trouble doing a complicated split check, which we definitely appreciated. Since this place is just starting out, they will probably need to hire at least a few more servers and an additional bartender. It's only May and they were looking SLAMMED!
Their drinks are fantastic - get the house margaritas - they are strong, delicious, and only 4 dollars. Mojitos had just the right amount of mintyness and hit the spot.

Food-wise, it's probably too early to deliver the verdict, as they are still working on their final menu. We had the carne asada, which was served quite rare with a side of beans and mushrooms (interesting combination you seldom see in most Mexican restaurants). I personally thought it was delicious, though it may be too rare for others' taste. The Rockfish tacos were excellent and well worth the $7. Turkey enchiladas - that's right, TURKEY ENCHILADAS?!? These were good but not outstanding, with a very unusual flavor (sesame?). This is by far their most creative dish, but it needs some work (maybe extra spice?) if they're going to be on the menu long-term.
My one complaint besides the 20-wait for the patio echoes what @Allison F. said: chips and salsa should be free at any Mexican restaurant, I don't care who you are. Especially if you're charging $14-18 for your entrees. And $8 for guacamole is more than a bit outrageous (good guac though!).

In all, despite the opening night kinks, this place is a winner with a solid waitstaff, wonderful space, and an innovative chef who clearly knows what she's doing.

I try to be as fair and balanced as I can when I review a place. I do my best to be both detailed and compelling case for the businesses that really are doing great work for their customers.

It seems, however, that the number of Yelp-haters is on the upswing, especially from the business owners themselves. Yelp, it appears, is not the meritocracy I had envisioned when I signed up for it, at least not if you're paying $300 a month for advertising on their website.

Here's what a recent Huffington Post article had to say about the pitfalls of relying on Yelp reviews:

1. Lies Are Just "Personal Opinions" - A Yelper claimed, falsely, to be a writer for SFWeekly in a restaurant review. SF Weekly's Food editor caught the lie and contacted the reviewer; she admitted that she actually wrote for SF Weekly Voice, and said she'd ask Yelp to change the review. But the website refused to amend the review -- a representative told SF Weekly that the lie in question was "personal opinion."

It's very discouraging to hear that I could throw my standards of review-writing out the window and say literally ANYTHING, I wanted about places, even abject lies, and Yelp would sit back and call it a "personal opinion or experience". That logic smacks of GW Bush and his spurning of the "reality-based community". If I write in my next review that the taqueria down the street is serving giraffe's brains and fried dog liver in its burritos, would they take it down? I'm curious to test out this little experiment, but worried my Elite status would be revoked if they found out. Such a whore, I know :)

2. Yelp Is a Known Outlet for Shilling - The fact that any restauranteur or publicist would deliberately try to inflate their own ratings by writing fawning reviews of themselves is shameful, though not at all surprising. NY Eater even has a column devoted to sniffing out these bastards' reviews. On this count, however, I will give Yelp some credit, as I have known a few people who have been banned from the site for shilling for their employers or colleagues in this way.

3. Yelp is Anonymous - Yes, Yelp is anonymous, and reviewers can and will say anything (often with less tact or empathy than they would show "in real life"). This is true of nearly EVERY WEBSITE EVER MADE. The reviewers can still be contacted and yelled at for writing a crappy review, as could any conventional newspaper or magazine restaurant critic. This argument just fails.


4. Yelpers Can Review Restaurants They Haven't Visited - This is one of the biggest crimes a Yelper can perpetrate. See my own Rule #1 above! Don't give a one-star review for a place just because it isn't open or you couldn't get in because it was too busy one night. The fact that it's super-busy probably means the food is good and worth the wait!

5. Yelp Has Been Known to Bully Restaurants - According to The East Bay Express, Yelp sales reps have been accused of bullying restaurant owners to purchase their $300 monthly advertising in exchange from removing negative reviews from the restaurant's page. This is absolutely sad and desperate tactic Yelp is using to squeeze hard-earned profits from restaurants' razor-thin budgets. That this happens at all only reinforces my rule #4 in writing reviews - write positive reviews of the places you love before you write a single negative review. It is free publicity and no one will ever have to pay to remove it!

6. Yelp Gives No Guidelines for Star Ratings - There are no official guidelines to how to rate your experience at any business on Yelp, between one and five stars. If your review was unnecessarily scathing, inaccurate, or even full of blatant lies, the Yelp gods will not intervene. And because most people aren't motivated to write a witty review of an experience that was merely OK, the reviews do tend to be polarized into the camps of extreme reactions: people who either loved or hated the place.

7. Yelp Throws "Elite Squad" Events that Bias Reviews - I haven't had time to attend any of the Elite events since moving to SF, but I plan on doing so very soon! There's a free Elite event nearly every week in SF, which is the top Yelp market with 30% of the site's activity, according to a New York Times article. In some respects, Elite Squad members can be considered a source of free labor for Yelp. We do the groundwork of reviewing a vast directory of diverse businesses, the scale of which no review site could ever find the money to support, and are rewarded with the positive feedback of other readers...oh, and did I mention the awesome Elite events? I'll have to update this blog after meeting other Elite Squad members at one of these oh-so-exclusive meetings of we foodie illuminati.


Yelp is certainly not without its faults, as you can see. I still am a firm believer, though, that accurate, relevant, and personalized reviews of small businesses from the customers who love them is a blessing and a powerful resource these businesses can leverage.

More Yelp updates to come after I finally get myself to an Elite party. In the meantime, feel free to check out my reviews here. For a sampling of some of the most absurd, unfair and heinous Yelp reviews (they type I try to avoid), check out the hilarious blog Fuck You Yelper.

The weather here in San Francisco has been delightful these past few weeks, with sunny skies and temps in the high 70s. On Tuesday, I checked out Twin Peaks for the views on a rare cloudless day. Unfortunately, my phone takes low-quality pictures, so I will pretend the photos are instead Impressionist paintings of the views I saw :)

The New Seattle Manifesto

In earlier posts I've talked about the infamous "Seattle freeze" that every transplant to the area seems to experience and then starts bitching about to anyone who'll listen. You've heard the mantra before: Seattleites are tirelessly "polite" and "nice" to new people on the surface level, but instantly shut down and reject social advances the second you try to actually "befriend" one of us. We're a collection of people who move here to escape wherever it is that we're from, so we isolate ourselves from genuine social interaction as much as possible. Seattle is a place full of awkward only-children, who don't quite get how to branch out and meet new people in non-ironic ways. We're a city of the mind, a city of nerdy blogger-types who sit in Starbucks silently plugging away because we're just...that....edgy, man :) 


Well, in celebration of our city's reputation for bitchy cold-shoulderness, I dedicate this post to a very funny, very spot-on op-ed from Crosscut. I think this manifesto just about covers it!

Since I believe one good manifesto deserves another, I hereby offer my own:
David Guterson and other figures on Bainbridge Island like to talk about the countryside as being the only real place to live. We know better. These are our values:

• We value diverse workplaces and gatherings. Upscale white men alongside upscale white women — and even upscale white gays.

• Yet we also admire African-Americans, preferably if they are both musical and dead.

• We champion the institution of public education, as long as our own kids can get into a private school.

• We celebrate people's expressions of sexuality, provided they're not too, you know, sexual.

• We strive toward progressive, inclusive laws and policies except when they would inconvenience business.

• We take pride in our urban identity, as we build more huge edifices and monuments to desperately prove how world class we are.

• We support the arts, particularly when that support doesn't stick us in the same room with unkempt artists.

• We value regional planning and cooperation, even with those mouth-breathing hicks out there.

• We protect and enhance the environment, particularly those environments we drive 40 miles or more to hike in.

• We love a strong, vital music scene that's in someone else's neighborhood.

• We appreciate our heritage. We moan about how everything in this town sucks; then, years later, we claim it was great back then but all sucks now.

• We value a strong, independent news media, regularly alerting us to the city's 103 Best Podiatrists.

• We admire innovation and original ideas, especially if they're just like something from New York or San Francisco.

• We support locally based businesses, until they get too big.

President Barack Obama has advocated "the fierce urgency of now." Mr. President, the people of Seattle will get around to it once they've finished playing "Halo: Reach."

Via: Crosscut

Has Seattle "Reinvented" Itself?

I don't normally write online comments to newspaper articles, but every so often one will come along that really pushes my buttons. This recent piece in The New York Times is trying to capitalize on the country's almost cult-like fascination with Seattle that's been around since grunge and Sleepless in Seattle. Not only are we responsible for $4.50 mocha frappuccinos and the Dreamliner, we have also "reinvented" our economy through education and cutting-edge urban design, the author argues, in a way that has uniquely saved us from the recession. Did I get that right? Because of course, Seattle likes to think of itself as being so "progressive" it's practically from the future. But are we really? Does the way we run things in the Emerald City really hold true for other cities?


Here's the original article:

As the 2010 Census rolls out, much of the attention of news organizations is focused on the continuing growth of Texas and Florida, but there is much to be learned from the less extreme, but still significant, population growth in less sunny places, like Seattle.
Seattle is one of the few large cities outside the Sun Belt that is growing more quickly than the country as a whole. The city’s growth reveals the benefits of concentrating smart people in dense cities. 

The success of Seattle was hardly foreordained, as it shares much with America’s many declining cities. Like Detroit and St. Louis, Seattle grew as a node of the great transport network, which included canals from Erie to Panama and intercontinental railroads, which enabled Easterners to access the vast wealth of America’s hinterland. 

Seattle’s growth spurt during 1880s coincided with its rail connection to the East. In its early years, the city specialized in providing access to timber and Klondike gold. 

To succeed in the 20th century, American cities needed to do more than help move natural resources, and Seattle moved into manufacturing transportation equipment, natural enough given the vast distance that separated the city from the country’s population centers. 

During World War I, the city’s shipbuilding industry expanded rapidly, andBoeing began as a partnership between a naval engineer and a lumberman. 

Just as Michigan’s forests were part of Detroit’s early success in making cars, since early automobiles — like the carriages that preceded them — had plenty of wood, early planes used light wood and Washington’s timber industry was a boon to Seattle’s airplane industry. William Boeing’s own expertise in wood products helped him to be smart about early airplane construction. 

In 1954 more than half of Seattle’s manufacturing workers labored in the transportation industry. By 1960, Seattle was seen by many as Boeing’s town, but that should have been recognized as a bad omen. 

For 50 years, economists have documented that urban reinvention and entrepreneurship rely on small companies and industrial diversity, not industrial monoliths. 

At the start of the 20th century, Detroit was one of the most innovative cities on earth, with an abundance of small automotive entrepreneurs supplying each other with parts, financing and new ideas. 

As the Big Three rose to dominance, Detroit became synonymous with urban decline. Boeing’s outsize footprint in Seattle set the stage for the city’s 20 tough years after 1960.
Before the industrial revolution, cities were centers of small, smart companies that connected with each other and the outside world. Small companies and smart people are the sources of urban success today. The industrial city now seems like an unfortunate detour during which cities exploited economies of scale but lost the interactive exchange of ideas that is their most important asset. 

As Boeing scaled back its Seattle employment, the city floundered. By 1971, amuch-discussed billboard read “Would the last person to leave Seattle please turn out the lights?”
But there was a crucial difference between Seattle and Detroit. Unlike Fordand General Motors, Boeing employed highly educated workers. Almost since its inception, Seattle has been committed to education and has benefited from the University of Washington, which is based there. Skills are the source of Seattle’s strength. 

Over the last three decades, human capital has become increasingly linkedwith urban growth outside the Sun Belt. 

The ability to attract skilled people was intimately tied to the success of Seattle’s star companies, such as Amazon; Nordstrom’s, whose strategy of empowering employees was more feasible because those workers were skilled; Starbucks, a coffee chain founded by educators; and Microsoft, which depends on a steady supply of smart software engineers. (Disclosure: I serve on the domestic advisory board of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.) 

A great paradox of our age is that despite the declining cost of connecting across space, more people are clustering together in cities. The explanation of that strange fact is that globalization and technological change have increased the returns on being smart, and humans get smart by being around other smart people. 

Dense, smart cities like Seattle succeed by attracting smart people who educate and employ one another. 

A person’s earnings rise by more than 7 percent as the share of people in his or her metropolitan area with a college degree increases by 10 percent, holding that person’s own level of education constant. Educated neighbors are particularly valuable in dense cities, where contact is more common. 

Skilled people have often chosen to come to already educated cities, and the share of Seattle adults with college degrees has risen to 56 percent from an already high 47 percent in 2000.
Today, Seattle is one of the wealthier and most productive metropolitan areas in the United States. Per-capita personal income is 25 percent above the United States average. Per-capita productivity is 37 percent above the metropolitan average in the United States. That productivity explains why Seattle has grown so robustly over the last decade. 

Seattle has also helped itself by permitting taller structures. That density enables ideas to flow freely. Building up is also an environmentally sensitive alternative to building out, and Seattle’s height helps the city maintain a relatively high level of public transportation use and a relatively low level of carbon emissions. 

Sun Belt sprawl isn’t the only model of modern metropolitan success. Skilled, tall cities like Seattle provide an alternative model of urban growth that emphasizes the creation of knowledge. 

The Seattle model is particularly important, because the ideas created in skilled cities are likely to be the economic mainstay of America in the next century.

I've lived in Seattle for 21 years, and I have lived in both its central city (Capitol Hill) and in suburban areas (Kirkland), graduated from the University of Washington, now working for a Microsoft vendor.

The article is absolutely right to point out the UW and the Port of Seattle as primary ingredients in the success of our fair city. The Port is responsible for nearly a quarter million living-wage jobs in the city, and as Asian economies grow, so do we. Washington is the most trade-dependent state in the US almost exclusively for this reason.

The UW is probably the world's best kept secret among top public universities - it's affordable (less than $8,000 a year in-state tuition), full of top-ranked departments, with 60,000 students packed into a relatively small city neighborhood a 10-minute bus ride away from one of the best and most vibrant downtown areas of the West Coast.

With other factors, the article is a bit off. Luck has definitely been just as much a factor in Seattle's success as entrepreneurship and the "creative class." Microsoft took root in the Eastside suburbs not because a highly educated workforce was ready and available, or because the various infrastructure was secure and well-established. It did so because two of its founding partners, Bill Gates and Paul Allen, had the serendipity of being upper-crust white nerds at an elite prep school working on computers at the precise economic moment (de-industrialization and restructuring in the late 1970s) when doing so could make any decent programmer a millionaire. Starbucks, likewise, emerged at the tail end of the largest crime wave in American history during the late 90's, before- which building sidewalk cafe culture and walkable downtowns (as the early espresso carts before Starbucks did) would have been unthinkable.

Second, the author is quite mistaken if he believes that Seattle's affinity for density is at all responsible for its growth. 75% of Seattle is zoned as single-family neighborhoods. Areas of true high-density living, like one would find in New York, Chicago or San Francisco? There are exactly four of them: Downtown, Capitol Hill, the U District and Belltown, with a combined population of perhaps 100,000 people. Seattle only rezoned areas of South Lake Union and the Denny Triangle for high densities in the past 5-10 years. Before that, these and several other areas were nearly barren and full of parking lots. We just got to the point where major groceries became comfortable locating downtown, which in the US is some kind of accomplishment. How about families with children living downtown? Elementary schools in high-density areas? Compared to a New York, Chicago, or even Vancouver to the north, Seattle shows few of these key signs of life in its "high-density" areas.

Transportation is a severe problem in Seattle, and it is precisely because the city has not adequately invested in truly high-density, sustainable neighborhoods (especially in its middle-class "urban village" areas), that this is the case. The 520 bridge, the Alaskan Way Viaduct debacle,  and our notoriously pothole-plagued streets do not help our case for being paragons of the quality transit infrastructure needed to "win the future", as Obama might say. Need I mention our relatively pathetic light rail system that was rejected in a public vote in the 1960s - it might reach our suburban job centers by 2030, and that's if Tim Eyman doesn't have his way. Outside of a few key corridors, bus service is infrequent and low-quality. In reality, the city's transportation network is a lot like that LA - lots of transit "ridership" on a few highly-trafficked routes, but with the vast majority of commuters trapped in congested freeways with no alternatives in sight.

What is really so special about Seattle?
1. Seattle really is the most educated city in the country, topping even Boston and SF. Do you have a Bachelor's degree? So do 55% of Seattleites over 25. A Master's degree? 1 in 4. 1 in 10 Seattleites has a PhD. If are you are a high-school grad, GOOD LUCK trying to live here.

2. Compared to local incomes, Seattle has some of the most overpriced real estate in the country. The quality of life here makes up a lot of that. Geographically, Seattle is hourglass-shaped with water on all sides. Pretty much anywhere with a "view" - and this is a large chunk of the city - is out of reach to the middle class.

3. If there was one cultural vibe you get from living in Seattle, it is the feeling of being unique and/or apart from the rest of the US. As one of my transplant friends often tells me, this is a "city of the mind." It's like Scandinavia on the Pacific. If you want to study with some of the smartest people on the planet, write code that will change the world, fight global warming, or do business with China, this is the place to do it. Socially, this feeling of constantly being on "the edge" of the next big thing has some negative consequences. The "Seattle Freeze," an ever-present lack of social energy and perceived coldness to outsiders, is something every transplant experiences. Part of it is indeed due to the gloomy weather. As I'm writing, I'm thinking back to the last time I saw sunshine, and the number of weeks it's been is daunting. Another is the dominant upscale, corporate culture of the city that dampens the nightlife on weekdays in most areas. Finally, the high-tech emphasis of our economy (geeks working long hours) and the influence of Asian and Nordic local cultures blends together to create a relative shyness, indifference even, to new people you don't find in other cities.

A Picture Speaks a Thousand Words - Part Tres

As I've said before on the blog, a picture really is worth a thousand words. Highly informative "infographics", as they're called, are an outstanding way of broadening our understanding of politics, the environment, and pretty much any big questions you can think of.

Here are a few of my favorites:

1. Where do tourists take the most pictures of Vancouver? And where are the locals' favorite spots? Using geo-located photo compilations from Flickr users, Eric Fischer was able to show us a map of where their shutters go off. Blue pictures are by locals, red by tourists, and yellow is unknown.

Some other great versions of Seattle and LA:

So these pictures essentially answer the question of "where are the local secret photo spots?" I won't tell you where they are, but here are a few of my secret spots:

My friend Devon, who writes the inspiring blog "Answering Oliver"

      2.  What do 100 million phone calls say about New York?

New York City's public non-emergency hotline - where residents report anything from complaints about trash removal, to graffiti, to noise complaints, is a virtual library of information in itself. It offers a real-time glimpse at the pulse of the city's millions.

Who knew that most calls between 12am and 6am were due to noise complaints? 

            3. Just how bad is your city's problem of urban sprawl? Take a look at the ringroads, or beltways, around the city's borders and you might get a general idea.

     4. Where do people actually go when they use London's bike-sharing program? This video/graphic from The Bike Sharing Blog tells you pretty much all you need to know.

Boris Bikes redux from Sociable Physics on Vimeo.

     5. Should I rent or buy when I move to a new city? Real estate website Trulia has the graphic for you...Surprise! You should probably rent if you're moving anywhere cool (LA, SF, Seattle, or New York, that is).

Via: Planetizen and Sustainable Cities Collective

Bike-Only Boulevards: This Would Be Portland's Idea...

In Seattle, late February marks the unofficial start of biking season, because let's be honest, everyone except the most hardcore bike commuters and Critical Mass-types among us has pretty much had their bike sadly rusting away in storage since late October.

So in honor of this, I dusted off my 15-year-old Trek hybrid bike, which had been sitting in my apartment's front doorway almost unused since I moved here in...gulp....September! I'm a terrible cyclist - terrible, terrible, terrible. Bicycling used to be a big part of my life, the one type of exercise I never wanted to quit, the way I discovered new neighborhoods anywhere I went. Hell, a 60-mile ride around Lake Washington was a "training ride" at one point for me not so long ago. I promise to redeem myself this year by doing two things:

1) Train for and do STP, the annual 10,000 rider-strong race from Seattle to Portland. I did STP two years and absolutely loved it!!! There's free food and drinks every 20 miles (a drop in the bucket compared to the 200 miles between the two cities), and my favorite part about it - getting tranced out on my iPod the whole f*cking way there. Wouldn't do it any other way :-)

2) I will devote more space on Green My Fleet to bike-related issues, like bike infrastructure, bike sharing, upcoming rides and events, and bicycle cultures from around the world.

Riding through one of my favorite cities in the entire world - Valencia, Spain

In deference to ultimatum #2, I found a pretty interesting trend that's emerging among the more left-leaning green circles of - where else ?- Portland, Oregon: bike-only boulevards. What's that, you ask? A street where only bikes are allowed - in America??? Impossible. It has to be the psychotic dream of some deranged  hipster twat with chronic anomie and gauged ears! (see below in case you missed the latest episode of Portlandia):



You'd be wrong in thinking that bike-only boulevards are doomed to be an idea of the loony fringe, however. Portland happens to the be the US city with the largest bicycle mode share of 7% (planner-speak for the proportionate ways we get from point A to point B), but it pales compared to bike-friendly cities internationally. European cities take the cake on bicycle population - some 30-35% of all trips are made by bike in most Dutch cities, as well as many cities in France, Germany, and Scandinavia. That most US cities, including Seattle (2% bike mode share), fall way behind Portland is an indictment of our unsustainable transportation system in general.

Portland achieved the success it did by allocating more bike infrastructure - bike lanes, sharrows, bike racks on buses and light rail trains - than any other American city for many years. Portland pioneered the neighborhood bicycle boulevard and the traffic-separated bicycle track that were a first in the US, though hardly elsewhere. A large portion of Portland's large biking population is due not only to its relatively flat geography and outdoorsy culture, but also its 15 neighborhood bicycle boulevards, where traffic is calmed to the point where cyclists almost begin to take precedence over cars.

Recently installed traffic-separated bike track on Manhattan's 9th Avenue, photo courtesy of Seth Holladay of http://www.nycbikemaps.com

Recently, though, Portland's bicycle hegemony may be slipping. Portland was bested by Minneapolis as the most bike-friendly city in America by Bicycle Magazine this past spring. New York City has laid 250 miles of bike lanes in the past three years alone under the partnership between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and DOT Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan. Meanwhile, bike-sharing systems are sprouting up like weeds across the US, from Washington DC to Denver, San Francisco, and Miami, and Portland is nowhere to be found on this important trend.

Bike-only boulevards represent one of the great bits of uncharted territory for bike infrastructure that Portland and other cities are now looking to tap into. How exactly do you make the transition to a street completely dedicated to bikes? This is something no city in the US can match, and only the densest parts of Amsterdam have any experience with. One of the most important ways to encourage more people to hop on their bikes is to eliminate the threat of riding in traffic, a danger that deters an estimated 60% of "would-be cyclists", that is, people who say they would like to ride their bikes as their primary mode of transport but choose not to.

So by this measure, all of the previous bike infrastructure we've ever experimented with doesn't even come close to meeting people's needs. Bike lanes are often narrow, rarely continuous, and provide zero safety if cars are speeding just inches away from you at 40 miles an hour or more. Most streets lack the space for a dedicated bicycle track, so this option does little for us. Bike paths built on railroad spurs, like Seattle's Burke Gilman, are fun recreational spaces but impractical as commuting paths because they are difficult to integrate with the street network and can only be built where there was once a railroad. Sharrows don't even pretend to give you any space as a cyclist - rather than allocating any street width for bikes, they just paint a bicycle on the asphalt to "warn cars" that bikes might be nearby. Big help that is...

There's already a great deal of evidence in support of bike-only boulevards. The city of Bogota, Colombia, regularly sees almost two million people use its 100-mile plus system of bicycle boulevards that are closed on Sundays as part of its Ciclovia (Spanish for "bike-highway"). Los Angeles copied the event with its own CicLAvia series and likewise saw a huge increase in people out on their bikes. Why? Because the bike-only boulevards remove car traffic and finally make people feel safe being on their bikes.

As cities grapple with how to become more sustainable, we're set with some very big goals to achieve. San Francisco aims to have 20% of its residents moving by bike in just ten years, by 2020. Portland is aiming even higher, 25% bicyclists by the same year. It might just take something otherwise considered radical to hit targets like these. The San Francisco Bike Coalition is lobbying the city's Board of Supervisors to install 27 miles of bike-only boulevards that connect the most important commercial and transit hubs. I can only suspect a proposal like this would cost far less than what the city has spent so far on who knows how many bike lanes.

The bike-only boulevard trend is even spreading to cities as ass-backwards as Seattle. A "neighborhood greenway", borrowing Portland's granola terminology, is planned for the NE 45th St. corridor in Wallingford.

Will these bike-only boulevards work as truly functional transit arteries, and not just a fun Sunday recreational pastime? If the two boulevards installed in London recently are any indication, we needn't worry about that. Bicycle traffic went up 70% in less than a year since installation, which speaks volumes about the difference good infrastructure makes in our transportation choices.

In case you needed any more motivation to be on the look out for bike superhighways, check out this statistic:

According to a report from the Political Economy Research Institute, a think tank based out of the federal Department of Transportation, construction on bike and pedestrian infrastructure creates TWICE the number of jobs per dollar spent than road construction. Take that, Tea Party assholes!

Ecotality's EV Project Gives Coulomb's ChargePoint a Run for Its Money

Last month I wrote about how Coulomb Technologies' ChargePoint America program plans to install 4,600 EV charging stations across nine metro areas in the next several years. So far, however, the EV stations have been geographically limited, especially in the Puget Sound area. Long story short, it's going to be hard to ease questions of "range anxiety" that many potential EV buyers will have if the only available ChargePoint stations are at Bellevue City Hall, UW Bothell, and a high-end condo building in Downtown Seattle (residents only). That's hardly the way to expand a network and create the necessary perception that plugging in your electric car will be as seamless and convenient as filling up at any gas station.

Luckily, that necessity breeds invention, and Ecotality's EV Project has filled in to give Coulomb's ChargePoint America program a real run for its money. The EV Project has a much larger budget, having landed a $99 million grant from the DOE - nearly three times the size of the grant awarded to ChargePoint.

The EV Project began in August 2009 and will be completed by the end of 2012 and takes a markedly different approach to the implementation of EV infrastructure than Coulomb. Rather than focusing on installing public charging stations, the EV Project is assisting customers who bought the Chevy Volt and Nissan Leaf by providing then with over 8,300 home charging systems. Not to be outdone in terms of public visibility, Ecotality is also installing 15,000 public charging stations. The project spans six states - WA, OR, CA, AZ, Tennessee (odd choice, although they've installed some of Ecotality's charging stations at the Cracker Barrel!), and DC.

Courtesy of The EV Project

Ecotality's EV Project also has the advantage of having major funding outside of the federal government. Swiss power grid corporation ABB just agreed to invest $10 million in the EV Project.

The bulk of the 15,000 plus residential and commercial charging stations will be primarily on the West Coast, as well as Texas and Tennessee. Just where will you be able to soon find your Ecotality charging station? One of the coolest things to come out of Ecotality's EV Project has been the official maps it has released showing station density in several cities.

OREGON

According to a September press release, Ecotality plans to install 1,100 charging stations in four Oregon cities: Portland, Euguene, Salem, and Corvallis. The stations seem to be logically aligned along Portland's major arterials, like Burnside Street, Sandy Blvd, MLK, and the downtown core.

Map of Portland charging stations

WASHINGTON

The EV Project plans to install 1,200 charging stations in Washington State, which will be a great complement to plans already underway to create an electric highway on I-5. With the help of planners at the Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC), Ecotality has finally released a detailed map of charging station density in the Seattle area.

Via: GigaOMElectric Vehicles

Looking Up Your Bus Route Should Not Be a Chore - Seattle Transit Frequency in One Easy to Use Map

Don't you hate it when you try to look up a bus time, and 10 minutes go by as you try to understand the oh-so-cryptic bus schedule information and route maps? For many of us, it's one of the biggest turn-offs to taking public transportation.

I can remember so many times when I would become trapped in remote areas like Factoria, Kingsgate, or Overlake because I misread a bus route map and caught the wrong bus, only to find that the next bus I was looking for didn't come for another two and half hours!!!

Thankfully, the good people of the Seattle Transit Blog have come to the rescue with this handy map of bus frequency in Seattle. This is an easy-to-use resource that shows all bus routes that have a frequency of 15 minutes or less - that is, they stop every 15 minutes. Realistically, people are only going to use public transit if they don't have to plan every single trip according to its schedule (hence the 15 minute frequency) and if routes are logically placed.

What's not surprising about this map is the extent to which it shows how imbalanced the transit density of Seattle is - Downtown, Capitol Hill, and the U-District pretty much have the greatest number of high-frequency buses, while the rest of the city is left high and dry. Part of this is due to the fact that it's easier to build transit in high-density areas, and part of it is due to budget cuts and bad planning on the part of King County Metro. In particular, the scarcity of frequent buses in West Seattle and Lake City is astonishing - these areas aren't exactly out in the boonies!

I'm sure this map will become my best friend as soon as I start taking the bus more due to the horrendous tolls coming this spring on 520.

Check it out!

Via: Seattle Transit Blog

Seattle Bike Share Comes Closer to Reality

In the past six months, there's been a wealth of attention devoted to starting a bike-sharing system in Seattle. In November, I wrote about the first feasibility study done for bike-sharing in Seattle, a collaboration between SDOT and the UW.

The UW study divided the city into 10-square-meter cells and ranked them based on factors like residential population density, job density, retail density, proximity to transit, and existing bike infrastructure.

The result is a detailed portrait of where bike-sharing is most likely to succeed in Seattle. The results of their analysis suggest that bike-sharing should first be rolled out in the downtown core, Lower Queen Anne, and Capitol Hill neighborhoods. These neighborhoods both have very high residential density and walkability, extensive bike and transit infrastructure, and are full of retail and tourist destinations.

Photo courtesy of Publicola and the UW Bike Share Studio

Phase 1 of the proposed bike-share system begins with the green zone of downtown and its immediate neighbors Lower Queen Anne and Capitol Hill, along with parts of the Sodo stadium district. Continuing down the hierarchy of density, the system would be later expanded in Phase 2 to include Upper Queen Anne, Eastlake, the Central District, Beacon Hill, Ballard, Fremont/Wallingford, and the U District. Lower density neighborhood centers, known in City of Seattle parlance as "urban villages" would be the last to be added in a Phase 3. 

According to Seattle Transit Blog, King County is currently seeking a $150,000 federal grant to get the pilot Phase 1 off the ground. The program would launch first in the green downtown areas with between 800 and 1,000 bikes, with a capital cost of $3,500 - $4,500 per bike. Operational costs would average $1,200 to $1,600 per bike, which would be paid through monthly or annual user subscription fees in the range of $45-$75 per year with an hourly rate after the first free half-hour.

The King County planners STB interviewed seemed to indicate that Redmond (with its large high-tech workforce) be included in the Phase 1 and the suburban centers of Bellevue, Kirkland, Renton, and Kent would be included in the Phase 2.

The UW study explicitly recommended against this approach of including outlying population centers in the initial phases so as to not create a disjointed, less functional system. They even recommended not including the U District in the initial Phase 1, despite the high student population and retail density, because of the lack of bike connectivity with the downtown center. We'll have to see if King County follows this reasoning in their final proposal.

Also unclear is whether the County would require helmets on users of the bike-share system - most European systems have done away with their helmet laws completely to boost their ridership, and this approach seems to have been its saving grace. Will our litigious American culture subside enough for helmet laws to be relaxed? Or worse still, will there be vending machines at the bike stations to sell helmets? That just sounds like nanny-state ridiculousness, but with Seattle you never know!

A second interesting study was done in April by an STB writer, Adam Parast. He did a GIS analysis of the current bikeability of Seattle versus Portland. The project compared factors of street connectivity, existing bike infrastructure, slope, land use (proxy for density) and barriers (like a freeway interchange or an impassable slope). The result? Not surprisingly, Portland takes the cake on bikeability in nearly every respect.

Due to a combination of our more challenging geography (Portland has it easy lying in a mostly flat river valley) and our comparative lack of bicycle infrastructure, Seattle is reduced to "islands of bikeability" in a hostile, car-centric sea. One of the more surprising and extensive bike-friendly areas is Ballard. Should this area be included in Phase 1? It's about 10 minutes away by bike from the downtown core via 15th Ave. W and Elliott. Also in its favor: its fast-rising residential density, numerous tourist attractions, and largely self-sufficient retail district.

Current bikeability comparison, blue = high bikeability, red = low bikeability

Potential bikeability comparsion

More good news for bike sharing: bikes travel faster than cars during rush hour in most cities! According to a study out of Lyon, France's bike share system, bicycles are faster and more direct than cars in high-density areas during rush hour because of the complications of circling the block to find parking and then finally walking to your destination. Intuitively, this makes sense in Seattle - you can ride your bike between Downtown, Capitol Hill, and the U-District faster than rush hour car traffic.

King County is looking to launch the Seattle bike-share system by summer 2012, so there's sure to be a lot more going for bike-sharing locally, and a lot more reporting to come from Green My Fleet!

Via: Planetizen and Publicola