Today was a full day!
We woke up early to catch a tour from Dylan's tours by Dylan's real-life brother, Brenden! Brendan grew up in San Francisco, and has been giving city tours for 7 years...he knew what he was talking about. A stop at Twin Peaks gave us a chance to view SanFran from above, so beautiful. After the tour we took a stop at the Cable Car museum to see what was happening under our feet. There are three routes throughout the city, all controlled by the constantly moving electric powered sheaves (rimmed wheels). The photo below is a shot of the active sheaves on display at the museum. Additionally, on our walk back from the museum we saw a green wall in action! Green walls are walls covered with vegetation that help to reduce the temperature rise in the building through a process through transpiration. Way to go sustainable city!
We woke up early to catch a tour from Dylan's tours by Dylan's real-life brother, Brenden! Brendan grew up in San Francisco, and has been giving city tours for 7 years...he knew what he was talking about. A stop at Twin Peaks gave us a chance to view SanFran from above, so beautiful. After the tour we took a stop at the Cable Car museum to see what was happening under our feet. There are three routes throughout the city, all controlled by the constantly moving electric powered sheaves (rimmed wheels). The photo below is a shot of the active sheaves on display at the museum. Additionally, on our walk back from the museum we saw a green wall in action! Green walls are walls covered with vegetation that help to reduce the temperature rise in the building through a process through transpiration. Way to go sustainable city!
The second day in SF began with an early morning breakfast. Following the breakfast, we had an amazing tour of SF from Dylan's Tour. While on this tour we visited multiple city attractions, learned a brief history of the city, and got to explore the city. In terms of sustainable strategies, we saw multiple examples today. Below are some of those pictures.
Below is a picture of one of the many recycling bins strewn around San Francisco! It is amazing to see the sheer number of these bins--most of which are full or overflowing like this one. While walking around the city, we can only remember a handful of actual waste bins. This is both good and bad. It is good that there are so many bins meaning that people do a lot of recycling or composting. However, it can also mean that items not meant to be composted or recycled can end up in the bins from people too lazy to carry their trash to the next waste bin. Overall, we are curious as to how Recology manages all of their bins but we suspect that we will learn the answer to this during our Recology tour on March 11, 2015.
Below is a picture of SF's new bike lanes and one of SF's Bay Area Bike Share. This is a great way for the public to move about the city in a zero-emission way. Costing as little as $30 for a 30-day trial, this system allows the user to travel for 30 minutes or less for an unlimited amount of time--trips that exceed 30 minutes will cost an extra fee. This Bike Share system compliments the cities decision to make more bike lanes and make the streets safer for not only bikers, but drivers and pedestrians on the sidewalk as well.
Today we found a tree sapling adorned with a sign about the Friends of the Urban Forest which is a non-profit organization located in the Presidio of San Francisco with a mission "to promote a larger, healthier urban forest as part of San Francisco's green infrastructure through community planting, tree care, education, and advocacy." They have planted more than 49,000 trees totaling 47% of San Francisco's street tree canopy. They offer numerous programs and services like Neighborhood tree planting, sidewalk landscaping, Trees for Tomorrow (planting around schools), tree tours, and green Christmas tree rentals. They also work with urbanforestmap.org to provide a comprehensive map of all the species of trees in the San Francisco area. This program is a great example of Step 8 in Walkable City, Plant More Trees, which talks about the effect of increasing the sustainability of surrounding streets and communities by raising property values, creating fun and safer spaces, and helping to maintain micro climates and water runoff.