Digest Digest (July 15, 2005)

'One percent for art' approved

To beautify the city, the Palo Alto City Council has approved a "one percent for art" program, which guarantees funding for art in city-built places.

Whenever the city undertakes a construction project that will have a visual impact on the environment, it will have to set aside 1 percent of the budget for artwork.

Artists will be selected by a request-for-proposal process, and the work is expected to be integrated into the design as a whole, rather than as a last-minute addition.

In the coming six years, the policy will cost about $42,000, according to city estimates.

Art in city spaces is nothing new; capital improvement projects such as the two downtown parking garages at Bryant and High streets have included art components. Decorated with birds and with haiku, they've come to be known as the "bird" and "word" garages.

Future capital projects affected by the "one percent for art" program could include library renovations, a new police building, parks, gateways to the city and bridges, walls and tunnels.

The new policy does not extend to private developers. Many private projects are already required to have a public-art element.

-- Jocelyn Dong

Stanford on verge of traffic limit

Stanford University is close to the limit on the number of morning and evening automobile commutes by its employees permissible under its general use permit (GUP) granted by Santa Clara County in 2001.

As a result, Provost John Etchemendy has asked all university managers to find ways to reduce the number of employees who are single-vehicle commuters by 10-15 percent, the Stanford Report newspaper reported Wednesday.

The county allows Stanford 3,474 morning commute trips and 3,591 evening commute trips. In traffic surveys taken last fall, the university came within 14 trips of its evening limit.

"The last traffic study shows us very close to the limit imposed by the GUP, and the trends suggest we will soon exceed it unless we act aggressively," Etchemendy wrote to university managers. He also wrote that the university may have to make "substantial changes" to its parking permit policies and prices to reduce single-car commuters.

The university encourages its employees to take alternative means of transportation to work, paying for both train and bus passes and providing free shuttle buses from train stations, said Jean McCown, the university's director of community relations. The university also provides financial incentives to employees who car-pool to work. If Stanford exceeds its trip limits, it would then be liable to pay for modifying street intersections to improve traffic flow.

-- Don Kazak

E-mail a friend a link to this story.