Year: 2009

The BART Board of Directors voted unanimously today to unilaterally impose terms and conditions of employment on members of the Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, which represents up to 900 train operators, station agents and other workers, setting the stage for a potential strike as soon as tomorrow.

The U.S. DOT dispatched Federal Highway Administrator Victor Mendez to North Carolina yesterday to kick off construction of the $1 billion Triangle Expressway, the state's first toll road and the nation's first to use per-mile electronic tolling.

Congratulations, it looks like your city is going to be getting high-speed rail service.

More headlines over at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

The Government Computer News magazine, part of the U.S. General Services Administration, called the 511 Transit website maintained by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) "a heroic act of interagency coordination" when naming it to it's list of the "10 great government websites nationwide for 2009."

A pedestrian is in the hospital with life-threatening injuries after a hit-and-run collision yesterday. SFPD spokesperson Sgt. Lyn Tomioka said the collision occurred near California Street and Van Ness Avenue at 8:20 p.m. The driver was believed to be in a white pickup truck. A license plate number was not available.

With support for bus stop consolidation building, local leaders are starting to weigh in on political strategies for implementing a new stop spacing policy.

Acrimonious opposition to health care reform has become the biggest political story of an otherwise sleepy August, but that doesn't mean grassroots lobbying on the House's transportation bill has evaporated.

The story so far: Ed Glaeser recently began an effort to assess the costs and benefits of constructing high-speed rail lines at the New York Times' Economix blog. Last week, he posted his first substantive take on the issue, an attempt to estimate direct costs and benefits from a hypothetical line between Houston and Dallas.