Caltrans

The following is being republished from the monthly newsletter of the California Bicycle Coalition.

For BART, the past month marks the beginning of two very different extensions, though both have been controversial. After surmounting vigorous opposition to the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC), BART inaugurated the 3.2 mile, $484 million extension last week with great fanfare and a large crowd of construction workers and politicians proud to get the project underway.

It may look like a forgotten military landscape, decaying beneath an elevated freeway and overgrown with weeds, but hidden beneath the abandoned buildings and broken pavement, Presidio planners see the potential to regenerate a wetland.

Drive north from San Francisco for a few hours, and the 101 will gradually melt into a slim road between giant sequoia trees. You've found your way to Richardson Grove State Park, where you can see thousand-year-old redwoods, the South Fork Eel River, and lots of campgrounds, but you won't see any big box stores.

San Franciscans don't often spend their days contriving ways to spend more time near freeway off-ramps, especially when proximity to freeways can be a risk to your health, but the city's newest park along the I-280 exit at Sixth and Brannan Streets may make you think twice about it.

When the Examiner reported that a double-fine zone on part of Van Ness Avenue had not only failed to reduce crashes, but that crashes had actually increased by 40 percent there in the last year, it raised eyebrows. Now that SFPD has released detailed crash statistics for 2009, a closer look reveals an even more alarming figure: pedestrian crashes along Van Ness Avenue's double-fine zone quadrupled in 2009 compared to 2008.

Despite a stated Transit First policy, the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) and the California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) are encouraging solo drivers to bring their cars into San Francisco's downtown and park all day at low prices, according to a parking union who has been picketing in front of a temporary 250-space parking lot at 80 Natoma/81 Minna Street, the site of the future Transbay Transit Center.

The tax tricks known as SILOs -- in which major banks snapped up rail cars and other pieces of public infrastructure from cash-strapped localities, only to lease them back and claim a tax write-off -- has prompted an outcry from the Hill as Wall Street's biggest players invoked obscure claims to wring money from local transit agencies.

Stephen O'Brien has been coaxing an oasis out of a most unlikely environment for a long time: the small green patches at either end of the ground level Mission Street frontage of the Transbay Terminal. He started back in 1958, when the old Key System train tracks that used to bring East Bay electric streetcars to the Transbay Terminal were being torn out. The Transbay Terminal in those days was a crucial commuter hub, bringing passengers from all over the East Bay. If you've ever ridden the F bus from Berkeley to San Francisco, you've ridden on the descendant of the same-lettered streetcar that once transported you from downtown Berkeley to downtown San Francisco just a minute longer than BART does today!