Matthew Roth

Two historic San Francisco streetcars on the outbound Market Street tracks collided with a Nissan SUV at Market and Noe streets in the Castro at 5:45 p.m. Monday. Six people were injured, including both people in the SUV, and the operator of the train that collided with it from behind.

A coalition of community volunteers, pro-bono landscape architects and personnel from several city agencies this weekend swooped in to North Beach to transform the roadway of Mason Street between Columbus Avenue and Lombard Street into a temporary park in conjunction with the two-month street closure for a traffic study. The resulting open space combines elements from various city agency supply yards to bring trees, plants, and picnic tables into an area that just last week was exclusively used by cars.

The MTA and City Car Share are welcoming the Bixi bicycle share program from Montreal, Canada, to San Francisco this Sunday to demonstrate how bicycle share could work if this city embraces it. City CarShare is using the event to conduct a user survey and provide information about the service to interested riders in the park.

Last week I did something wholly in opposition to the tenets of common sense cycling in a city: I left my quality bicycle locked up for four days in a high bicycle theft location, in this case on 24th Street right next to the BART station.

Wade Crowfoot, Mayor Gavin Newsom's Director of Climate Change Initiatives, quietly transitioned out of his role in city government last Friday to become the West Coast Legislative and Political Director at the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), a new post created just for him. His portfolio will be primarily climate, water safety, and oceans. Transportation and transit won't be as central to his work as it was for Mayor Newsom, except as it relates to climate change.

In case you don't qualify for the federal Cash-for-Clunkers rebate program, Mark Muller of Max Motors in Butler, Missouri, has an offer you might want to consider: get a free AK-47 with a new truck.

As the environmental review process moves forward for the Geary Boulevard Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) project, Supervisor Eric Mar is holding a community meeting to discuss the many issues at stake along the city's busiest bus route. As we've written, the Geary BRT will be complementary to the proposed Van Ness corridor project, which would hopefully be online by Muni's centennial in 2012.

Transit advocates, transit riders, politicians, and religious figures mourned the continual underfunding of transit operations by staging a mock funeral for public transit above the 12th Street/Oakland BART station today. The event was tied to a national campaign led by Transit Riders for Public Transportation (TRPT), the Transportation Equity Network and Transportation for America to pressure Congress to provide funding for transit operations.

Wired gives us a look at a number of bicycle-related applications for the iPhone, including Back Light, which allows you to tell cars following too closely on your back wheel exactly what you think they should do with themselves ("Stop!," of course). I'll admit I would put a lot of other choice statements there, but that's because I'm not as sensible as you, dear readers.

The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) presented the results of the comprehensive parking study it started in 2006 to the Board of Supervisors today, fleshing out many of the parking management principles espoused by parking guru Donald Shoup in his High Cost of Free Parking and recommending a plethora of solutions for managing the curb more strategically (presentation PDF).