Making Special Events Possible

Making Special Events Possible
By Michael Delia

A crowd of people at a street fair with blockades in the foreground and businesses in the background. Outdoor festivals like Sunday Streets Phoenix Day celebrate the spirit of San Francisco. Such special events rely on the cooperation of many city departments.

San Francisco is a city that loves its outdoor events. Whether it’s a cultural heritage or holiday festival, farmers market, street fair, dance party, road race or even just a neighborhood block party, what often gets overlooked is the intricate collaboration and planning across city departments to make these events a success.

Nick Chapman is one of the people behind the scenes at the SFMTA who helps make them a reality. For seven years, he has worked to manage the permitting process that’s required for any special event. As a native San Franciscan who knows many corners of the city, Chapman has an appreciation for the public’s requests and finds the work to be fascinating.

“Every project is a little different. Every event, every location is a new situation with different stakeholders. Working with other city departments makes it fun and interesting,” he says.

Chapman is the manager of ISCOTT, or the Interdepartmental Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation. The board is made up of representatives from seven city agencies, including the SFMTA, Public Works, Police, Fire, the Entertainment Commission, Public Health and Planning. ISCOTT is responsible for approving or denying any event permit that requires a street closure on a roadway managed by the SFMTA. Certain exceptions outside of its jurisdiction include requests for street closures within parks managed by Recreation and Park, the National Parks Service and the Presidio Trust.

ISCOTT convenes for public hearings twice a month, except in November when it meets once. There are many considerations that go into any event request.

The first step is to submit an application. There are two types, one for Neighborhood Block Parties and one for all other Special Events. Applicants are encouraged to provide as much detail as possible about their event, including a site plan of any streets requiring closure.

Chapman reviews each application for possible issues. If an event falls on a particularly busy date, he may contact other city departments to determine resource availability and suggest alternatives to the applicant. He ultimately wants events to be approved and tries to caution applicants before they submit the non-refundable fee.

The minimum deadline to submit an application is 30 days before the event date, but applicants are encouraged to send in proposals as much as four to six months in advance. This allows time to secure any additional resources, such as food, alcohol or vendor permits, insurance, a medical plan or restrooms. It also provides flexibility if a certain date is unavailable. In recent years, the SFMTA has tried to improve the process by moving applications online, offering increased transparency about permitting and working to reduce fees, especially for small scale block parties and non-profits.

When ISCOTT approves a request and the date is set, we coordinate resources to determine next steps. Several agency groups work together to prepare an array of services for upcoming street closures. Parking Control Officers might be required to direct traffic around the area. Reroutes of Muni lines need to be planned and communicated to the public and operational staff. Transit stops need to be moved with new temporary signs posted. Taxi stands, paratransit pick-up and drop-off zones or areas for car and bike shares might need to be defined. For the largest events, the signal timing of traffic lights may even be modified. Thought also goes into notifying Google Maps, Waze and autonomous vehicle services about street closures, so they show up on maps on the day of the event.

The contributions from the Streets, Meter Shop, Temporary Sign Shop, Transit and Communications divisions are small but vital parts that make these events a success. The interagency work that goes on between the SFMTA and other city departments is also key.

Special events help to stimulate the economy, strengthen social ties within the community and encourage civic pride. Every planned event requires resources so that they can be held safely, and it’s important that different city departments are aware of them. ISCOTT helps to serve that need so that these events continue year after year.

For more information about applying for a special event street closure, please visit our website (SFMTA.com/StreetClosures).

Published August 11, 2023 at 04:19AM
https://ift.tt/NW7pQav

Comments

As the city gradually reopens, mechanical street sweeping enforcement is set to resume

As the city gradually reopens, mechanical street sweeping enforcement is set to resume By Mayor London N. Breed and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) today announced that the City will resume enforcement for parking violations related to street sweeping beginning on Monday, June 15. Mayor Breed had announced on March 17 that SFMTA would not ticket for street sweeping following the Stay Home Order for COVID-19 in order to allow people to stay home without worrying about receiving a parking ticket. While the City had still encouraged people to move their vehicles if they could, street sweeping crews from San Francisco Public Works continue to see a large number of vehicles failing to do so, as many as 18,000 per day. Resuming enforcement for mechanical street sweeping is necessary to ensure that streets remain clean as the City begins to allow more businesses and activities to resume. “At the beginning of the Stay Home Order we wanted to ensure that people wh...

New top story from Time: Sunisa Lee’s Incredible Journey to a Historic Olympic Gymnastics All-Around Gold Medal

https://ift.tt/3zRsjGq The women’s gymnastics all-around final at the Tokyo Olympics was the coronation everyone expected it to be. Only the star was different. After Simone Biles withdrew from the competition to prioritize her mental well-being, American Sunisa Lee stepped into the gaping void left by her iconic teammate and stepped up to win her first gold medal and Team USA’s fifth straight in the event. With a steely calm, the 18-year-old Minnesotan leaned on her consistent execution and a spectacular uneven bars routine—the hardest of any gymnast competing—to triumph in a competition that until days before had seemed a foregone conclusion. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The absence of the defending gold medalist opened the door for the rest of the field, including Americans Lee and Jade Carey, who replaced Biles . “We were all coming in to compete for second place,” said Lee. “I just had to switch gears. I feel like the whole season I was second to her, so when th...

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager By Jeremy Menzies In recognition of Black History Month, we bring you the story of Gene Henderson, the first Black man to become the head of a Muni bus division, Muni’s Kirkland Division. Henderson’s Background Gene Henderson was born in Houston, Texas, in 1916. He married his wife Naomi in 1939 and then served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the war, Gene and his family moved to San Francisco where he began his career at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Early Career On February 1, 1946, Henderson was hired as a streetcar motorman out of Sutro Division, which was located on the corner of 32nd Ave. and Clement St. He was hired just five years after Muni’s first Black transit operator, Audley Cole, had successfully fought to integrate the carmen’s union in 1941. In his early days at Muni, Gene worked one of the three lines running out of Sutro Division from the Ferry Building to the Richmond District o...

New top story from Time: Who’s Ariarne Titmus? The Australian Swimmer’s Rivalry With Katie Ledecky Has Captivated Olympics Fans

https://ift.tt/3fdGe1v Before this week, many people knew Katie Ledecky as one of the most dominant names in swimming for the last decade. So they might have been surprised by the success of Australia’s 20-year-old Ariarne Titmus during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, who has now bested Ledecky twice to snatch gold medals. In Tokyo, Titmus’ rivalry with Ledecky has been one of the most captivating parts of the Tokyo swimming program. The rivalry between the two star swimmers dates back to the 2019 world championship, when Titmus became the first woman to beat Ledecky at the international level. They’ll have one more chance to race in Tokyo, this time in the 800-m freestyle on July 31. She isn’t the favorite this time, however. Ledecky is undefeated in the 800 m, holding the fastest 24 times in the event’s history as well as the world and Olympic records, which she set during her winning race at the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics . [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Titmus, who gre...

New top story from Time: Militarized Feds Will Stay in Portland Until Attacks on the Federal Courthouse End, U.S. Attorney Says

https://ift.tt/305Lo8I (PORTLAND, Ore.) — U.S. militarized officers will remain in Portland until attacks on a federal courthouse cease, a top official said Monday after another night of violence. And more officers may soon be on the way. “It is not a solution to tell federal officers to leave when there continues to be attacks on federal property and personnel,” U.S. Attorney Billy Williams said. ”We are not leaving the building unprotected to be destroyed by people intent on doing so.” Local and state officials said the federal officers are unwelcome. Meanwhile, the mayors of Portland and five other major U.S. cities appealed Monday to Congress to make it illegal for the federal government to deploy militarized agents to cities that don’t want them. “This administration’s egregious use of federal force on cities over the objections of local authorities should never happen,” the mayors of Portland, Seattle, Chicago, Kansas City, Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Washington ...

FOX NEWS: Couple married for 73 years die hours apart: 'God was up to something' Wanda and James “Jim” Wold passed away last Tuesday within hours of each other.

Couple married for 73 years die hours apart: 'God was up to something' Wanda and James “Jim” Wold passed away last Tuesday within hours of each other. via FOX NEWS https://ift.tt/2UTUNQG

New top story from Time: Fox News and Donald Trump Have a Dysfunctional Relationship, But It Works For Them

https://ift.tt/3biWlrJ This article is part of the The DC Brief, TIME’s politics newsletter. Sign up here to get stories like this sent to your inbox every weekday. All the signs of codependency were there. The irrational desire to make the other party happy. Manifestly low self-esteem. Abandonment issues. A compulsive desire to know what the other is doing. Seldom has such an amateur armchair diagnosis been so easy as when ex-President Donald Trump and the Fox News switchboard reconnected on Wednesday for a conversation about the death of conservative media personality Rush Limbaugh . It was a two-way manipulation of the moment. Trump had a message to get out and Twitter is no longer available to him. Fox is a ratings machine and getting the still-popular Trump to talk about the passing of the combatively conservative host was going to be a cultural moment for its viewers. So it became mutually beneficial to set aside years of bad blood between the network and the Ne...

New top story from Time: Matt Damon Shines in Stillwater, an Uneven Thriller Inspired by a Real-Life Murder Case

https://ift.tt/3iYwyJq In Tom McCarthy’s somber thriller Stillwater, Matt Damon plays the ultimate ham-fisted American in France, doing such a good job of it that he helps disguise the flaws of this sometimes compelling but often frustrating movie. Damon plays Bill Baxter, an out-of-work Oklahoma oil-rig worker who travels to Marseille to visit his estranged daughter, Allison ( Abigail Breslin ), who’s serving a prison sentence there for a murder she claims she didn’t commit. Though he speaks no French and is generally known to make a mess of things, Bill attempts to investigate new evidence in Allison’s case, drawing a local single mom, Virginie (Camille Cottin), and her young daughter Maya (Lilou Siauvaud) into an increasingly tangled net. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Stillwater was loosely inspired by the case of Amanda Knox —who spent nearly four years in an Italian prison after being convicted of the 2007 murder of a fellow exchange student—though the movie foll...

New top story from Time: Google’s Employee Vaccine Mandate Could Influence Other Companies to Do the Same

https://ift.tt/3BQnXRv (SAN RAMON, Calif.) — Google is postponing a return to the office for most workers until mid-October and rolling out a policy that will eventually require everyone to be vaccinated once its sprawling campuses are fully reopened in an attempt to fight the spreading Delta variant. In a Wednesday email sent to Google’s more than 130,000 employees, CEO Sundar Pichai said the company is now aiming to have most of its workforce back to its offices beginning Oct. 18 instead of its previous target date of Sept. 1. The decision also affects tens of thousands of contractors who Google intends to continue to pay while access to its campuses remains limited. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] “This extension will allow us time to ramp back into work while providing flexibility for those who need it,” Pichai wrote. And Pichai disclosed that once offices are fully reopened, everyone working there will have be vaccinated. The requirement will be first imposed at Goog...

New top story from Time: Watch TIME’s Exclusive Footage of NASA’s Most Powerful Rocket Ever Under Construction

https://ift.tt/3xqnVOf Rockets are built slowly—slowly and exceedingly carefully—which is in keeping with giant machines on which humans stake their lives and nations stake their prestige. In NASA’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, America’s next great moon rocket—the Space Launch System (SLS)—is being constructed with all that in mind. It is here too that TIME set up half a dozen cameras over the course of two months, capturing 3 million images for a time-lapse video that makes it possible to compress those months of work into just a few kinetic minutes. Under the eyes of the cameras, the rocket’s twin solid-fuel boosters came together—each of them 177 feet tall, weighing 1.6 million pounds and generating 3.6 million pounds (1.6 million kg) of thrust. Twenty-five percent taller than the solid boosters on the space shuttle, the twin engines are made of five separate segments, compared to the shuttle’s four. When they are completed, they will be attached ...

My precise view

Search This Blog