Matthew Roth

Of the many agencies in a city, a department of public works (DPW) isn't usually the flashiest or most interesting. In San Francisco, however, under the leadership of Ed Reiskin, the DPW has taken the lead on a number of high profile projects like Pavement to Parks plazas and parklets and the Market Street trials, thrusting the agency's work in front of the cameras and into the public view.

Don't forget to come out for Sunday Streets this Sunday from 10 am - 3 pm in the Bayview. The route runs from 3rd and King to Bayview Park at 3rd and Carroll. And please add your favorite shots to our Flickr group.

Mark Fiore, this year's Pulitzer Prize winner for Editorial Cartooning and the first to win for animated cartoons, recently provided this gem. Joe Commuter tries to explain to an alien visitor how mobility works on Earth and how convenient our cars are with their fuel made from "dinosaur squeezin's." With more than a few jabs at BP and the Gulf Disaster, Fiore does a great job dissecting our phenomenal reliance on petroleum. Though the alien doesn't know much about cars, he does suggest riding a bike to work instead. Higher life form indeed!

Federal Transit Administrator Peter Rogoff has been shaking up transit agencies across the country in the short year he has headed the FTA, from working with advocates in the Twin Cities who wanted additional stops added in under-served communities along the Central Corridor rail route to his decision to deny BART the $70 million it requested for its Oakland Airport Connector.

More headlines at Streetsblog Capitol Hill

After the tremendous success of the trial sidewalk extension, or "parklet," on Divisadero in front of the Mojo Bicycle Cafe, San Francisco planners set their eyes on 22nd Street near Bartlett Street in The Mission, where they have re-purposed three parking spaces in front of Revolution Cafe, Escape from New York Pizza, and Loló Restaurant to be the city's newest public space.

A few weeks ago we stumbled across this amazing video of the Scraper Bike phenomenon in Oakland, which we've also documented in this Streetfilm by John Hamilton. In the California is a Place film "Scrapertown," filmmakers Drea Cooper and Zackary Canepari give you another look at Baby Champ and the work he is doing to promote bicycles and community in East Oakland.

When the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni and manages city parking policies, completed the first-ever count of all the publicly available parking spaces in San Francisco, the agency hoped software developers would use the data to create apps to reduce the delays to transit caused by drivers circling the block in search of parking. Through the SFPark pilot, the SFMTA intends to make it easier and clearer for drivers where available parking is located so they spend less time in traffic and less time creating traffic.

San Jose kicked off its first ViaVelo Saturday with the opening of seven blocks of San Fernando Street downtown to bicycle riders, skaters, and pedestrians who enjoyed five hours of car-free space. Several hundred people showed up, many of them families and the burgeoning young fixed-gear crowd, riding bikes and socializing on a brilliant spring day.