Air Quality

Long-term exposure to toxic pollutants produced by cars and trucks causes heart disease, respiratory and lung issues in adults and children, dementia, miscarriage, psychotic episodes in teens, and reduced cognitive ability.

Streetsblog publisher responds to letters questioning the quality and integrity of our reporting and editorials on the Center Running lane

Organizers of California Clean Air Day are asking individuals and companies to pledge to take small actions that support clean air efforts on Wednesday - and every day.

The post On California Clean Air Day, Pledge to Take Action appeared first on Streetsblog California.

Update 4:53 p.m.: The SFMTA just launched a bike-share station crowdsourcing map (using, we should note, a tool from OpenPlans, Streetsblog's parent organization). The agency wants "people’s comments on where they would like to see Bay Area Bike Share stations as well as what they think of the initial 35 station locations," said spokesperson Ben Jose.

While San Franciscans eagerly await the repeatedly-delayed launch of the Bay Area's small-scale bike-share pilot program, which has now been downsized to a minuscule 700 bikes (350 of them in SF), Supervisor Scott Wiener says San Francisco needs to take the initiative to move ahead and launch a "full-scale system" throughout the city by next year.

Bike-share in the Bay Area will now arrive no sooner than the summer of 2013, roughly a year and a half after the original launch date, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District. Alta Bicycle Share, the chosen vendor, is still negotiating a contract with agencies in the five cities in which the system is planned to launch, said BAAQMD spokesperson Ralph Borrmann. Once the contract is signed, he said, the launch will come at least six to eight months later.

In yet another delay, the Bay Area's bike-share system will now launch as late as January, according to the Bay Area Air Quality Management District.

The Bay Area's bike-share system will likely be run by Alta Bicycle Share, an American vendor that already operates several systems in North America and Australia.

The Bay Area's regional bike-share pilot program will now launch no earlier than August and may be phased in over a two-month period.