Muni

Last night, at the Mission Police Station on Valencia, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) held an open house on making 17th Street, between Church and Sanchez, safer for cyclists. As many Streetsblog readers are aware, the railway tracks and the width of the street make for particularly hazardous conditions for cyclists traveling between the Mission and Castro neighborhoods.

Yesterday evening, at the San Francisco Transit Rider's new digs on Folsom Street in downtown, Sara Barz of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and Arielle Fleisher, with the San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), gave presentations about the move to replace the Clipper fare-collection system with a new generation of technology and opportunities to create a more rational fare system for the 27 transit operators across the Bay Area. Some 30 people attended.

Yesterday evening around six I was waiting on the Ocean and Lee K-Ingleside inbound Muni platform, looking east, when I saw a man dash across Ocean from the direction of the Phelan loop. He was struck by an SUV, propelled some five feet into the air, and landed on the streetcar tracks about a car's length from the point of impact.

Last night, some 50 people attended an open house at the Eureka Valley Recreation Center to discuss an upgrade and redesign of Harvey Milk Plaza adjacent to the Castro Muni Station. "For years and years people have asked 'can’t you do something better with Harvey Milk plaza,'" explained Andrea Aiello, Executive Director of the Castro/Upper Market Community Benefit District.

NextBus simply isn’t tracking more than half the buses on the streets.

Yesterday evening at San Francisco City Hall, the County Transportation Authority Board unanimously approved the Geary Bus Rapid Transit project's design and Final Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The approval brings the $300 million project, which has been a decade in the making, one step closer to fruition.

Geary Boulevard last had a major upgrade in 1961, as Eisenhower was leaving office. This urban highway through the Richmond neighborhood no longer serves those who rely on it most.

Now, before we get into the nominations in this category, we have to say this: all the groups are great! People who dedicate their lives to making our cities safer, more livable, more equitable, and more sustainable deserve all the praise they can get. These are people who are smart and dedicated and give more than their pound of flesh. They are all underpaid and over worked...wait, underpaid? Often they work for nothing.

The San Francisco Transit Riders, the advocacy group that brought us the 22-day Muni challenge, all-door boarding on buses, “Transit Week,” and too many other transit-improvement campaigns to list here, hit a major milestone this year: they're going pro!