Transit
Top Categories
Sacto Transit Agency Tries an “Exclusion Policy” for Misbehaving Riders
With several well-publicized violent incidents on Muni buses recently, including two brutal attacks and a videotaped fight, security has become a hot issue for the MTA. Though the agency actually reported a slight decrease in crime over the past fiscal year, it hasn't matched the 13 percent citywide drop in the most serious crimes over the first half of 2009. The San Francisco Police Department responded in late September with a one-day sting called "Operation Safe Muni," and the MTA has scrambled to test its onboard camera equipment, which has failed during several incidents, including the stabbing of a young boy in September and the West Portal light rail vehicle crash in July.
October 16, 2009
What Washington Can Do For — And Alongside — Metro Area Planners
At one point midway through yesterday's Brookings Institution forum on metropolitan planning, moderator Chris Leinberger
quipped that Portland was deliberately not represented. It's not that
Portland isn't a model of sustainability, he explained, but that "we
all have Portland fatigue" -- that urban policy thinkers are eager to
expand the models of local development beyond Oregon.
October 14, 2009
Study Finds Most of SF’s Publicly Assisted Transit-Oriented Housing at Risk
An eye-opening report recently released by AARP , Reconnecting America and the National Housing Trust identifies the Bay Area as a national leader in placing affordable housing near high-frequency transit, but also points out that tens of thousands of subsidized units are at risk of being lost in the next five years.
October 12, 2009
Two More Senate Dems Back Plan to Devote Climate Money to Transit
This week has brought news of a brewing compromise on the Senate climate change bill, introduced last month amid signals that the upper chamber would give only a bit more to clean transportation than the House's meager 1 percent set-aside of revenue from cap-and-trade carbon regulations.
October 8, 2009
Better Real-Time Maps Coming Soon to All Nine Muni Metro Stations
It's a familiar scene for many Muni riders: standing in a huge crowd on a Muni Metro station platform, scrutinizing the archaic-looking map on the mounted LCD, hoping for a two-car LL or a one-car J. Since those displays first went up at Embarcadero station in the late 1990s, and the other eight stations in 2007, they've given waiting customers something to ponder while waiting for a particularly tardy train, but have been far too cryptic to reach their full potential in keeping riders informed. Within the next few months, however, displays in all nine Muni Metro stations will switch over to a much more legible map.
October 7, 2009
Obama’s Engaged With Transit More in 9 Months than Bush Did in 8 Years
The Obama administration has brought both good news and bad news
to transit riders. But here's a positive sign you haven't heard before,
straight from Federal Transit Administration (FTA) chief Peter Rogoff:
In the nine months of the new presidency, the FTA has fielded more
requests for information "directly from the White House" than in the
entire eight years of the Bush administration.
October 7, 2009
Supes Approve $30 Million Contract for Muni Train Control System
The Board of Supervisors today approved a five-year, $30 million umbrella purchasing agreement between the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Thales Transport & Security, Inc. for Advanced Train Control System (ATCS) "improvement services and upgrades." The ATCS system controls the speed, location, and routing of Muni's light rail vehicles when they're underground between Embarcadero and West Portal stations. The MTA says the upgrades are necessary to keep the ATCS in working order for the coming decades.
October 6, 2009
Killing the Myth of the ‘More Shovel-Ready’ Road Stimulus, Part II
It has become one of the most enduring anecdotes surrounding the Obama administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus law: Democrats’ contention that White House adviser Larry Summers sliced transit aid by more than half, to $8.4 billion, out of concerns that projects were not “shovel-ready” enough. (Photo: DMI Blog) Has Summers been vindicated by the data? … Continued
October 2, 2009
Transit and Congestion, an Indirect Connection
Yesterday, Freakonomics linked to a new piece of research
[PDF] on congestion that I'd been musing over for a few days. Let me
quote the abstract here (paragraph break and emphasis mine):
October 2, 2009
High Court Rejects Appeal of Ruling Declaring Transit Fund Raids Illegal
In what the California Transit Association called a resounding victory for transit providers and riders, the California Supreme Court has rejected Governor Schwarzenegger's appeal of a lower court ruling declaring raids on transit funds illegal.
October 1, 2009