Year: 2009

The Federal Transit Administration announced today that the long-planned and much debated Central Subway project will receive a $9.9 million grant to support ongoing preliminary engineering and design work. The project would extend light rail service on the T-Third line with a surface stop on 4th Street near Brannan and subway stops in the SoMa, Union Square and Chinatown neighborhoods.

Here's another installment in what could ideally become a series on how police departments are doing right by pedestrians and cyclists. We posted the Chicago bike video a couple of weeks back. We now present the Sacramento crosswalk sting. (Warning: Insufferable Geico commercial may precede video.)

Guadalajara, Mexico was host this month to the 2nd annual Congress of Cyclists in Mexico, a national gathering of bicyclist activists from around the country. I was invited to give a speech, which I somehow managed to do in Spanish (thanks to my media naranja for translating and coaching me!), detailing the history of cycling and Critical Mass in particular. I loved being at the Congress, meeting people from all over Mexico, a few old and new friends from the U.S., and one remarkable woman from Quito, Ecuador.

When Streetsblog San Francisco launched last January with a staff of two -- reporter Matthew Roth and me -- we quickly realized that to adequately cover San Francisco's livable streets movement we'd eventually need more full-time reporters. Considering the often difficult time we have getting the MTA to cooperate with our requests, it became crystal clear that the only way we can really cover Muni is to have a full-time Muni reporter. That time has come.

The Oakland City Council voted early this morning to delay action on proposed parking changes until its next meeting. After three hours of discussion that spilled well beyond midnight, a proposal to roll back parking meter enforcement from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m. was narrowly defeated, despite calls for immediate action from dozens of merchants who attended the meeting.

People see bicycles and bicycle infrastructure in a lot of different ways. In New York, for instance, some politicians and business owners seem to view bike lanes and the people who ride in them as somehow dangerous for small businesses.

Get more headlines over at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, in their role as commissioners of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA), voted unanimously to approve the TA's enormous on-street parking management study and authorized revisions to pilot Market Street pedestrian and bicycle safety zones.

As the Senate backs up the White House's push for an 18-month delay in approving a new federal infrastructure bill, one of its major arguments is that the economic stimulus law's $48 billion in transportation money would help tide the nation over until long-term legislation could be passed.