Muni

Mayor Gavin Newsom sure knows how to milk a press conference when it suits his needs and beefs up his image.  My favorite has been all the press attention he got for announcing a proposal for the one of the world's smallest public-use bicycle share programs (right up there with Pinerolo, Italy, and Porsgrunn, Norway). Fifty bicycles to the tune of $1 million.  Subsequent news reports about bike share programs in Seattle and Boston mentioned San Francisco in the same breath as Paris and Barcelona, despite the fact that San Francisco's proposal is laughable and arguably could doom a real public-use bike program from getting traction.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors President David Chiu has introduced a motion (PDF) that would allow his colleagues to reject the MTA's budget, which is due to be finalized and voted on by the MTA Board next week.

Aside from Malcolm Heinicke's proposal to tax rental cars at SFO -- which was apparently shot down by legal staff -- no member of the MTA Board of Directors has offered any ideas for generating new revenue, other than toying or saying yay or nay to recommendations presented by staff, to help the agency limp out of the red ink.

So Gav made it official yesterday that he's running for Guv by tweeting it to his more than 283,000 followers, announcing it on Facebook, and even running a strange pseudo-article with a lot of donate hyperlinks in the Huffington Post, all of which made a splash among bloggers and traditional media icons.  All the hullabaloo aside, I need convincing on Gav's record on the issues important to this blog.

If you've ridden any of Muni's new low-floor hybrids you've most likely encountered or witnessed the sometimes challenging task of opening the rear doors. The buses, from Orion Bus Industries, have a fault that prevents them from realizing the full benefits of the low-floor design.

MTA Executive Director Nat Ford sat down with Streetsblog San Francisco last week for an hour-long interview. In today's segment, he addresses the funding crisis facing California transit agencies, the long-awaited implementation of the Bike Plan and the internal MTA battle over how to balance the different modes.

Municipal Transportation Agency Executive Director Nat Ford has been on the job for more than three years now and is a veteran public transportation manager. He began his career as a train conductor 26 years ago at New York's MTA before moving on to a number of managerial positions. He was an assistant chief transportation officer at BART before being named to oversee Atlanta's public transit system.

While the list of budget problems facing the MTA is long, Supervisor Bevan Dufty believes he can save them a few million just by changing the way they do customer service.

The Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors, in a marathon meeting that lasted nearly six hours, voiced support for fare hikes, but balked at a budget proposal to charge 50 cents for transfers and indicated it favors service reduction options that will impose the least impact on Muni riders to close a $129 million deficit.