Brandon Donnelly — Daily insights for city builders. Published since 2013 by Toronto-based real estate developer Brandon Donnelly. — Page 1056

Back in January 2016, I wrote about Toronto’s ambition to transform King into a “transit first” street across the downtown core. 

The King streetcar is the busiest surface transit route in the entire city (65,000 riders / day on average) and it was – and continues to be – my opinion that the route was broken. Something had to be done.

Well, that something is now happening. The “ King Street Transit Pilot ” officially started on Sunday, November 12, 2017 at 7am. Here are some of the key changes , many of which are also depicted in the above image:

- No more on-street parking in the pilot area.

- Cars can no longer turn left or drive through the intersections of the pilot area (except for taxis picking up drunk people from 10pm to 5am).

- Cars must now follow a right-in/right-out approach. They can turn right onto King, but then they have to turn right off of King at the next intersection.

- Most of the streetcar stops have been moved to the “far side” of each intersection. That is, after the lights. Passenger waiting areas are now in the curbside lane and protected by jersey barriers.

- Cyclists can go through the intersections of the pilot area. “Bike boxes” have been added to intersections where there are north-south bike lanes to help with turning left.

As to be expected, some people are upset about the above changes. There are also concerns that drivers aren’t going to obey the rules and continue to drive through the intersections in the streetcar lane. But this is a pilot project. It’s about learning and adjusting.

It’s also important to keep in mind that King has at least 3x more transit riders than cars. This pilot is about figuring out how to best optimize the street so that it moves the greatest number of people as efficiently as possible.

I’ll report back here on the blog once the pilot has settled in and there is a better understanding of its impact.

Alexis C. Madrigal recently published a piece about the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco called: The Tower at the Heart of the Tech Boom . At 61 floors and 1,070 feet, it is now the tallest building in San Francisco and the second tallest building west of the Mississippi River after the Wilshire Grand Center in Los Angeles.

Hines and Boston Properties are the developers of the building. Pelli Clarke Pelli is the architect. And Salesforce is the anchor tenant. In April 2014, it was announced that they had leased 714,000 sf on floors 1, 3-30, and 61. (Get that top floor.) So almost half of the building.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Madrigal calls the Salesforce Tower the “the most visible monument to the industry [tech] in the region and the country.” It is a demonstration of the power and reach of Silicon Valley. San Francisco has a new symbol. The TransAmerica Pyramid now feels inadequate.

Though interesting, this is actually not what I want to talk about today. I’d like to talk about what it took to build such a tall building in a seismically active city like San Francisco. Unfortunately, this feels timely given that  the sinking Millennium Tower is getting so much attention right now.

The structural engineer for the Salesforce tower is Seattle-based Magnusson Klemencic Associates (MKA). They are a world-renowned structural and civil engineering firm that have been around since the 1920s. Other projects they are currently working on include the third tallest building in Chicago .

The tower’s seismic force-resisting system is made up of reinforced concrete shear walls that surround the central elevator and exit stair core. These walls are 24 to 48 inches thick. Here is a plan taken from a STRUCTURE Magazine post written by Ron Klemencic of MKA:

The tower’s foundations have been well documented, or at least frequently mentioned, because of how deep they had to go down. The site has poor soil conditions (fill, sand, San Francisco “old bay clay”, and weak bedrock), and so given the weight of the tower the only option was to go down to bedrock – approximately 250 feet below grade.

The foundation system they ended up going with uses something called Load-Bearing Elements (LBEs). The typical LBE measures 5′ x 10.5′. The entire foundation system uses 42 LBEs and a mat foundation that varies in thickness from 14′ around the core to 5′ around the perimeter. (See image below.) The LBEs were brought down to rock. And in some cases, they went down more than 310 feet below grade.

As a condition of buying the site, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority required proof that any future tall building would not negatively impact the surrounding structures – including the adjacent Transbay Transit Center – and that it would perform under a Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) event.

So while the tower itself may be a symbol for the new world, its structural system also achieves many firsts in terms of how to build a supertall in a seismically active region.

Please keep in mind that I am not a structural engineer. I just pretend to be an architect sometimes. If you’re interested in more of the details, check out the post by Ron Klemencic . All of the above information was taken from there.

Uber is currently testing a feature in a few neighborhoods in Boston and San Francisco called Uber Express POOL . 

Like the regular version of Uber POOL, this is a shared ride. But with Express POOL the app now automatically generates “smart spots” that are easy to drive to and close to the origin and destination of multiple passengers.

So instead of a direct pick-up and drop-off, you now need to walk a few blocks to one of these dynamically created “smart spots.” In exchange for the added inconvenience, you get 25% off your fare.

What’s immediately fascinating about this feature is that it further blurs the line between Uber and public transit. These “smart spots” are effectively low-volume and ephemeral transit stops that pop-up based on demand and then disappear.

It makes the notion of a fixed stop and transit schedule, particularly in low usage areas, seem inefficient. Now imagine if we created some sort of visual marker on the street every time a “smart spot” was emerging based on demand.

It is clear that Uber is trying to price these rides so that they are competitive with conventional public transit. And there’s no reason that this technology couldn’t also be applied to larger vehicles, such as buses.

I find this fascinating. And it’s a perfect example of what we talked about in yesterday’s post . This is software and networks being layered on top of the built environment.