In an hour-long Twitter forum in early March, BART staffers fielded rapid-fire questions, gripes and proposals from the public.
Category: Transportation
Posted inTransportation
Muni Now Free to Some Riders
This week the city starts letting some residents ride public transportation for free.
Posted inPublic Safety, Transportation
Maps Show Where Thousands of Cyclists, Pedestrians Hurt or Killed
As part of its new policy to reduce traffic deaths, the city has published maps that show where cyclists and pedestrians were serverely injured or killed in recent years, down to the nearest intersection.
Posted inHousing, Housing Solutions, Transportation
Housing Solution: Allow Off-the-Shelf Homes in San Francisco’s Underused Spaces
Two Bay Area designers are re-imagining the home as a simple consumer good. If they and other entrepreneurs are successful, San Francisco’s marginal land — including parking spaces — could theoretically be retrofitted to accommodate hundreds or thousands of these barebones, movable living spaces. Part of a special report on solutions for housing affordability.
Posted inCity Hall, Housing Solutions, Media, Transportation
Linking the Google Bus With the Housing Crisis
While San Francisco’s 350 private corporate buses take thousands of well-off tech employees to work in Silicon Valley every morning, and home to their urban apartments and flats every evening, the service gap in late-night public transportation leaves many of the city’s service workers without a ride to their homes far out of town. Part of a special report on solutions for housing affordability.
Posted inNews, Public Safety, Social Justice, Transportation
Supervisors Respond to Increased Pedestrian Deaths With Questions About Ride Sharing
With pedestrian deaths reaching a high point in San Francisco last year, elected leaders vowed Tuesday to address a problem that killed 20 people in 2013. The issue was given a new sense of urgency with the tragic death of another pedestrian just outside City Hall shortly after the supervisors’ weekly meeting concluded.
Posted inHousing, Transportation
Board of Supervisors Cripples Transit Agency Plan for More Parking Meters
Drivers will soon be able to use their credit cards to pay for parking at all 25,000 meters throughout San Francisco, but efforts to greatly expand metered parking are on hold. On Tuesday the Board of Supervisors approved a $51.2 million contract to replace the city’s aging coin-operated meters with machines that accept credit cards. But the supervisors rejected transit agency’s request for 10,000 new meters that it could install wherever it chose. In other news: Mayor Ed Lee responds to concerns about Ellis Act evictions and affordable housing, and Supervisor David Chiu wants to legalize existing in-law units.
Posted inClimate Change, Climate Change, Land use, Transportation
Planners Claim Reduction in Car Pollution, but Details Show Overall Increase
Inscrutable “per capita” and “business as usual” comparisons hide rise in total greenhouse gases
Essentially, it’s a math trick: The per capita figure hides a predicted regional population growth of 28 percent. That means total passenger vehicle emissions regionwide would actually rise by 9.1 percent — an indication that regional planning is not helping California’s efforts to become a model in combating climate change.
This story is part of a special report on climate change in the Summer print edition of the San Francisco Public Press.
Posted inCity Hall, Social Justice, Transportation
UCSF Facing Cuts in Wake of Sequester; Free Bus Passes for Youth
Sequestration isn’t just some Washington abstraction. It’s hitting home. The automatic federal budget cuts that rolled out on Friday — known as the sequester — are going to hurt the University of California, San Francisco. The world-class teaching hospital and research center receives funding from the National Institutes of Health. According to KQED’s “California Report,” the university’s vice chancellor for research, Keith Yamamoto, said that some laboratories have already instituted hiring freezes.
Posted inCity Hall, Land use, Muni, Neighborhoods, Transportation
A Central Subway North Beach Station? Not So Easy, Planners Say
A proposal to pull out tunnel-digging machines in North Beach has spurred debate about the prospect of building additional stations to extend the Central Subway project north of Chinatown. But transit officials say that’s not in the current plans, and such a move would take years more planning.