Muni

Katherine Roberts was biking home to the Haight from a Passover Seder in the Dogpatch at 11:30 on April 11. It was raining heavily. She got to Church and Duboce and slowed to let an outbound N-Judah pass. When she started to pedal again, the wheel of her folding bike slipped and got caught by a steel plate that wasn't flush with the pavement. She crashed and smashed her head.

The San Francisco Transit Riders (SFTR) has hired its first Executive Director, Rachel Hyden. “We did a thorough search...and interviewed many good people,” said Thea Selby, SFTR chair, in the official announcement made last week. "Hiring Executive Director Hyden means that we have the capacity to reach out to more diverse riders around the city and be a better rider-based grassroots advocate for world-class transit in San Francisco.”

Tomorrow is Nicole Ferrara's last day at the helm of Walk San Francisco, where she's been since 2013. During her tenure, the group has fought hard for better and safer walking in the city of San Francisco. Ferrara and other advocates with Walk SF have been an ever-present force behind getting boarding islands for the L-Taraval, and adding turning restrictions and other safety measures on Market.

Uber, Waymo and others are in the process of developing driverless car technology, while transit systems in the Bay Area continue to rely on one operator in the front of every single train.

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.