SFMTA

Safe-streets advocates were outraged today to read that some San Francisco firefighters are still vying to veto Vision Zero projects. According to a story in yesterday's SF Examiner, Firefighters Local 798 sent a questionnaire to all the mayoral candidates which included:

"I lived in Noe Valley, in a rent-controlled unit, and a neighbor wanted to turn a one-story building into a two-unit building--and the neighborhood lost their mind," recalled Laura Clark, at Tuesday evening's panel discussion on the future of advocacy in the Bay Area.

A majority of San Francisco voters want more subways, more bike lanes, more buses, and more investment in Caltrain, according to the 2018 Dignity Health CityBeat Poll, released by the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce.

Small but significant announcements came out of several large transit agencies this week. Here are a few highlights to start your weekend:

Tolls on most Bay Area bridges will reach $9 by 2025 to raise $4.45 billion for transportation projects, if Regional Measure 3 (RM-3) is approved by voters in June.

If you commute by BART and Muni, you've no doubt been in the frustrating situation shown in the lead image. You get off your BART train at Civic Center or one of the other downtown stations, run up the stairs, tag out of BART, run across the mezzanine, tag into Muni, run back downstairs, and miss your train by seconds. At off-peak times, this can easily add twenty minutes to your trip. And thanks to the cage bars around the stairs, sometimes you actually get to see the train you're going to miss as you rush through this Habitrail for humans.

This week, half a year after the city started offering a permit program for dockless bike share, the SFMTA issued its first permit for a non-FordGo-bike share bike.

The Central Subway subway is years behind schedule--and nobody should be surprised about that, given management blunders, says guest commentator Gerald Cauthen.

"Think about how fast you're driving. Think about that next stop sign. Just think if you're driving a motor vehicle," said Alvin Lester, co-founder of Bay Area Families for Safe Streets, and the father of 21-year-old Arman, who was killed in 2014 while riding his skateboard at 3rd and Cargo Way in San Francisco. Lester made his plea at a press event at City Hall this morning, held to discuss the apparent success in reducing fatalities and serious injuries on San Francisco's streets in 2017.