Matthew Roth

While BART will soon take a funding plan to its Board of Directors for the Oakland Airport Connector, Carl Anthony, the founder of Urban Habitat and a fellow in the Department of Geography at Berkeley, has called on the agency to wait to proceed with funding the OAC until the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) deems the project compliant with federal Title VI civil rights standards.

Though California Secretary of State Debra Bowen yesterday certified a November ballot measure asking voters to suspend AB 32, a landmark state law requiring a significant cut in greenhouse gas emissions, AB 32 supporters have been organizing for months and have formed a significant coalition to fight the initiative.

Keeping with his public recriminations of TWU Local 250-A, the union representing Muni operators, Mayor Gavin Newsom launched into a tirade today after a press conference, decrying the leadership of the union for "misleading" the rank-and-file. Newsom called the second rejection of wage concessions a mistake and said the entire workforce would be affected by the selfishness of a few at the top.

When the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) counted all the publicly available parking spaces in San Francisco, city planners argued one of the more significant benefits of such a comprehensive study would be to put to rest speculative arguments about whether or not there was "enough parking" in a given neighborhood. Without a baseline of parking supply, the argument ran, the concern of neighbors or advocates about too much or too little parking wouldn't be based on good data.

Streetsblog tipsters have been sending numerous emails about a public meeting tonight at UCSF's Mt. Zion campus auditorium, concerned that a proposed 6-story building with 7 levels of parking that will add 230 new parking spaces.

Even though BART is not in compliance with the Federal Transportation Administration's (FTA) Title VI civil rights regulations, the agency has sought funding from numerous local, regional, state and federal outlets to continue the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) project, a three-mile elevated tramway that would connect the Oakland Airport with the Oakland Coliseum Station.

Though most San Franciscans probably don't realize it, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) recently phased out its Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT) as part of the promise made to voters in 1999 to merge Muni with the department that managed the streets, theoretically realizing greater efficiencies for transit in the process.

The first 2010 Sunday Streets in the Mission drew huge crowds for five hours yesterday, with countless young kids learning to ride and enjoying the car-free space. Organizers estimated approximately 25,000 people came out, though I could have been convinced attendance was higher given the dense foot and bicycle traffic along the route. 

Very little is as emotional in city-government policy making as parking and today's San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency hearing on the addition of 1310 new meters was no exception.

Jon Stewart fired one of his more brilliant salvos last night, synthesizing 40 years of political posturing around energy independence and America's addiction to foreign oil in just under eight minutes of pointed satire. Using President Obama's Oval Office speech on Tuesday, where he urged a new energy future, Stewart skewered his rhetoric by playing clips from the past seven presidents, dating to Nixon, as they also pledged to get us off oil.