Matthew Roth

With the roll-out of the Bay Area-wide Clipper smart card, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the many transit operators adopting the card are promising the public a more convenient way to pay for transit rides across numerous counties and agencies, from BART to Muni, AC Transit to Caltrain. As the MTC and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni, begin to make it easier for some to acquire and learn to use the new smart cards, they need to do better outreach to communities like San Francisco's Chinatown, say community groups there who argue the Clipper transition has many people confused and frustrated.

Man Stabbed on Muni Bus in Sunset Will Survive, Cops Seeking Suspect (Examiner, BCN via Appeal) New Clipper Card Fare Gates at Civic Center Muni Metro Station (Examiner) SF Does Even More to Promote Car Sharing (SF Gate) Treasure Island Development Set to Begin (Examiner) More on NYC’s Landmark Pedestrian Safety Study (NYC Streetsblog) SF … Continued

Enforcement of laws on Muni has been a balancing act for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), as safety fears and controversy over work orders with the SFPD have led politicians and advocates to complain the police are charging for services they don't deliver. At the same time, saturation enforcement for proof of payment has led minority rights advocates to argue that uniformed police accompanying fare inspectors on sweeps have a chilling effect on riders who don't understand they are only being asked to show their transfer tickets, not their immigration papers.

Sorry for the long gap since our last weekly review of photos you've submitted to our Flickr pool. Thanks as always for adding photos and keep up the beautiful work. Here's a selection of some of our recent favorites. Have a great weekend!

The Tango personal electric vehicle made a bunch of headlines when George Clooney bought one in 2005, but there haven't been too many on the road given the cost of $150,000.

Though most of the California political class celebrated the groundbreaking of the new Transbay Transit Center with U.S. DOT Secretary Ray LaHood in San Francisco yesterday, significant questions remain for funding a national high-speed rail network through the federal transportation act.

In an unusually short discussion this morning, the BART Board of Directors decided not to vote on a long-debated proposal to conduct a temporary six-month fare rollback, which was brought forward by Board Chair James Fang, but has received a chilly response from the public in polling and feedback. Rather than face the possibility of a negative vote on the matter, Fang instead proposed BART delay its regularly scheduled bi-annual fare increase from January 1, 2012 to July 1, 2012.

Now that the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved Cheryl Brinkman's nomination at its meeting yesterday as the newest member of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's Board of Directors, the real work begins, and Brinkman herself is anticipating the challenges she'll encounter with her first board meeting on September 7th.

The wonderful filmmakers at California is a Place have done another short about bicycles in the Bay Area, this one focused on Godspeed Courier in San Francisco. As they did in Scrapertown, filmmakers Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari have captured a small vignette of a distinctive addition to bicycling in California with a beautiful eye. Check it out on their website for better watching.

BART has once again bucked the trend of financial pain among other Bay Area transit operators by realizing a budget surplus at the end of fiscal year 2010, in large part due to strong sales tax receipts in the fourth quarter. In a letter to the BART Board yesterday [PDF], General Manager Dorothy Dugger outlined the projected $4 million surplus, though she offered no recommendation for how to spend it or whether to save it.