Earlier this year, we reported that the city was holding out hope for state grants to provide funding for the Upper Haight's Public Realm Plan's pedestrian-scale lighting. Now, we've gotten word that those hopes have been dashed, and installation of the lighting remains unfunded.
After rounds of community input and public surveys last year, improved lighting was ranked as the highest-priority component of the realm plan (which also included sidewalk bulb-outs, greener sidewalks, signs, new traffic patterns, etc.). Improved lighting is also a major component of the nascent public realm plan for the Lower Haight announced late last week.
Despite its high priority on the list of the Haight's needs, the lighting improvements remained unfunded by the city as of earlier this year. Thus, this spring, Planning and Public works filed a joint grant application with the state's Active Transportation Program in the hopes of closing the shortfall.
As of earlier this month, however, both Caltrans and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission had denied grants to the public realm plan.
Patrick Race, from the Planning Department, told us in an email on Friday that "Unfortunately the grant application submitted for Upper Haight Pedestrian improvements was not selected to receive state grants despite scoring very high in relation to other San Francisco projects."
Simon Bertrang, the plan's project manager from San Francisco Public Works, said that despite failing to earn grant approval, "because of add-backs to the City's annual budget from the Mayor and Supervisor Breed, Public Works does have the necessary funds to fully design and engineer the pedestrian lighting."
"We do not," he continued, "currently have the funding needed for their installation as part of the Upper Haight improvement project."
As to what other possible options are available to cover the shortfall, Bertrang said, it's "still up for discussion." There's still no firm word on a timeline for implementation of the project's other elements, including bulb-outs, new traffic lights and more.
