Matthew Roth

When San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu introduced legislation last October to limit new garages in existing buildings in District 3, which includes North Beach, Telegraph Hill, and Chinatown, his action catalyzed several advocacy groups that don't always see eye to eye. The bill is aimed at stopping no-fault evictions where building owners turn rental units into more valuable for-sale units and has united the community group Telegraph Hill Dwellers with transportation advocates Livable City and the Chinatown Community Development Center (CCDC), who are concerned about tenant rights and affordable housing, particularly in Chinatown.

Thanks to all of you for contributing these wonderful photos to our Flickr pool. We hope you'll continue to upload scenes from our streets so we can showcase your good work.

Although they aren't quite as innovative as the solar bus shelter at Geary and Arguello boulevards that we profiled in May 2009, the newly designed MTA bus shelters are appearing around the city, including these two on Market Street near the Ferry Building.

As San Francisco's Better Streets Plan (BSP) street design manual nears environmental certification, many questions remain about financing street maintenance and how all of the agencies responsible for the city's streets will work together to improve conditions for transit, walking, and bicycling, one of the primary goals of the three year BSP planning process.

Remember the beautiful new Calm the Safety Zone trial that we raved about in late November, with a liberal application of "frappuccino" colored paint to the pavement on Market Street? Yeah, well, now not so much.

SamTrans to Cut Service and Eliminate Routes on Sunday (Oak Trib) Impact of Transit Fare Increases and Service Cuts on the Transit-Dependent (Oak Trib) SF Supe Chiu’s New Bill Tries to Thwart Lawsuit Forbidding New Affordable Housing (Examiner) State Moves Closer to Approving Bills for BART Police Oversight (CoCo Times) Merc Editorial Urges High Speed … Continued

The San Francisco MTA has an interesting decision to make with bus zones throughout the city now that a number of bus routes were changed or terminated with the service reductions that went into effect on December 5th, 2009. Will the city open the curb space up to cars, potentially adding meters in zones with metered parking regulations, or take the opportunity to experiment with more innovative parking solutions, such as on-street bicycle parking protected by bollards, similar to the Grove Street entrance of the San Francisco Public Library?

Parking a car on the sidewalk is illegal and unsightly, as many San Franciscans know too well, but it also causes a hazard for those with visual impairments, as Lighthouse for the Blind illustrated when they began their campaign to eliminate the practice in the Sunset. And while a simple white line and the threat of consistent enforcement of the law by the MTA prompted drivers to park legally on 19th Avenue, the problem has not disappeared there or in any other district.  We've seen examples of the street-cleaning, sidewalk parking ballet throughout the city on sweeping days, though the burden of moving your neighbors' five cars while they're at work has diminished since DPW cut back on their runs (leaving our streets far dirtier in the process).

A number of Streetsblog readers have noticed a particularly loathsome group that has sprouted up on Facebook and has a legion of fans. As of this writing, more than 32,000 people are fans of "There's a perfectly good bike path right next to the road you stupid cyclist," a group page with a bunch of anti-cyclist screeds and some pretty nasty photos of bicycle crashes and car-on-bike violence. Facebook has concluded that the group does not violate the site's terms of use and will not shut it down.

With bids for the eBART extension project expected in early February, newly elected Congressman John Garamendi from California's 10th District conducted a tour of the planned station sites of BART's 10-mile extension from Pittsburg Bay Point to Antioch. Garamendi joined BART Director Joel Keller, Brentwood Mayor Robert Taylor, and representatives from the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, BART, Tri Delta Transit and the State Route 4 Bypass Authority on a Tri-Delta bus for the tour.