Government Organizations

Here we are in week two of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA)'s month-plus of weekend and evening closures of the core of its system--the subway tunnel from Embarcadero to West Portal. Overcrowding on the replacement bus service, as the SF Examiner reports, has left customers further peeved. In response, SFMTA is adding longer buses to its substitute routes to alleviate some of it.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) infuriated transit advocates when it announced on Saturday that it will close the entire Muni subway, from Embarcadero to West Portal, every weekend and after 9:30 p.m. during the week, for the next four or five weeks. The closures, which start this weekend, are part of a testing program for its new light-rail vehicles (LRV).

For some time now, advocates have called on SFMTA to work with more urgency to get safe-street fixes on the ground. And, it seems, this is starting to happen. "We'll pour concrete on top of asphalt to make bus boarding islands," explained Bradley Dunn, a spokesman at SFMTA, at last night's "Folsom-Howard: Safer Streets Sooner Near-Term Open House #1," held at the Gene Friend Recreation Center.

A source has informed the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition (SFBC) that at the San Francisco Board of Supervisors' regular meeting this afternoon, mayoral appointee Jeff Sheehy may vote for the planned parking-protected bike lanes on Upper Market to be delayed over an environmental challenge to the project. That's led the SFBC to question Sheehy's commitment to safe bike infrastructure in his district.

Yesterday, I took a ride on a Jump electric bike on Market Street. Ryan Rzepecki, the CEO of Jump, was riding alongside. When we stopped, we talked about how nerve racking it is to ride on Market. We also discussed how comfortable it is to ride in Berlin, where, in many places, rather than stripe a bike lane on the street (American-style, in the gutter, as on Market Street) they stripe it on the outer edge of the sidewalk.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) has published a permit application for so-called "dockless" bike-share companies. These are companies that offer rental bikes based on smart-phone and GPS technology--unlike the official, Bay Area Bike Share/Ford GoBike system, they don't require fixed docking locations where users have to pick them up and drop them off. The nine-page permit document is online, but here is the breakdown of permitting fees:

How can we make it easier to get around between San Francisco and San Jose? That was the topic discussed by a group of transit advocates and professionals last Wednesday in Palo Alto at a Caltrain / 101 Corridor Vision Forum. The corridor is today plagued by crowded trains, a congested Highway 101, and ineffective public bus services.

There's a problem with trying to do a pop-up meeting on the corner of 20th Avenue and the Ulloa in the Sunset District--and that problem is wind.

Four BikeLink electronic bike lockers used to live in the back corner of the Ulloa Street parking lot, 140 paces from Muni's West Portal Station. But now they're gone.