Matthew Roth

The San Francisco Police Department has arrested the suspected driver of a blue Nissan Rogue who careened into four cyclists in the span of several minutes in the Mission and Potrero Hill neighborhoods of San Francisco Wednesday night, before fleeing on foot and triggering a manhunt. Three of the four cyclists were rushed to the hospital where they are still recovering.

The California Assembly voted unanimously yesterday to support AB 1871, a bill that would allow car owners to share their personal vehicles in coordination with car-sharing services without voiding their personal auto insurance. The bill opens the door to redefining car ownership, leading to economic, environmental and traffic congestion improvements, according to its sponsors.

Mayor Gavin Newsom has released a statement in coordination with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and the San Francisco Police Department condemning the vehicular assault on four cyclists in San Francisco by a driver who went on a rampage last night, injuring four and sending three to the hospital in the span of a few minutes.

San Francisco police are still searching for the driver of a Nissan Rogue who ran down four cyclists last night over the course of several minutes, before crashing his vehicle into a pole and fleeing on foot.

Even as our freeways and bridges in the Bay Area are choked with traffic for hours every day, the population in the region is projected to grow from over 7 million now to over 9 million by 2025. Deciding where to build housing to accommodate the growth will be one of the most significant regional decisions and one that must account not only for issues like infrastructure capacity, but climate change, open space management, job growth and health impacts.

When parking expert Donald Shoup publicized his principle several years ago that cities should manage the demand for curbside parking by adjusting the cost so that there was always an available space, he probably didn't think a large city like San Francisco would move from theory to practice so quickly, nor that the city's SFPark pilot program would be as sophisticated as it is.

BART Board meetings over the past year have been tumultuous, from the public fury over the Oscar Grant killing, which included the arrest of a protester for dousing BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger with red paint, to vigorous debate over whether to spend stimulus funds on the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), to negotiations that narrowly averted a union strike that would have shut down the system and likely paralyzed the Bay Area's transportation network.

One development lost in the media feeding frenzy around the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) denying BART's request of $70 million for the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) was a letter the FTA sent to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), the Bay Area's planning body, initiating a review of its civil rights policies [PDF].

The deadline to sign up for TransForm's annual Car-Free Challenge is quickly approaching and the group is hopeful the event will raise awareness about the impact driving has on the climate, particularly in light of the recent oil spill in the Gulf.

One of the jobs I had when I lived in New York City was leading a campaign for Transportation Alternatives (T.A.) against the abuse of parking permits by city, state and federal employees, a rampant problem that led to complete curbside saturation, making deliveries more difficult and compounding New York's infamous traffic. Sidewalk parking and parking in school playgrounds was not uncommon.