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The Board of Supervisors yesterday unanimously approved the original agreement to fund Transbay District transportation upgrades, like the downtown rail extension to the Transbay Transit Center, through development charges. Although supervisors had announced a compromise agreement two weeks ago, some developers apparently backed out of it. City Hall officials decided to move forward with the original agreement, since those developers threatened to file a lawsuit either way.

Supervisor Scott Wiener has introduced a bill that would make the National Association of City Transportation Officials' guides for Urban Streets and Urban Bikeways official city policy. The SFMTA Board of Directors already adopted the NACTO guides in January, but Wiener's legislation would establish them as official guidelines for other agencies to use, including the Department of Public Works, the Planning Department, and the SF Fire Department.

Developers agreed to pay nearly the full property assessment rates to help fund transportation projects in the Transbay Transit Center District, under an agreement announced by the Board of Supervisors yesterday. Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee stood their ground against the developers, who hired former mayor Willie Brown as a lobbyist to try to lower the rates on the special infrastructure tax district, known as a Mello-Roos District. The move threatened to cut funds from the extension of Caltrain and high-speed rail downtown into the Transbay Center under construction.

Ever since we broke the news that New York City's Tom Maguire would be hired as the new director of the SFMTA's Sustainable Streets Division, we've heard only positive reactions. If nothing else, there's a lot of hype building for this promising veteran of the livable streets renaissance seen under Janette Sadik-Khan's NYC Department of Transportation. On the other hand, Sadik-Khan and her executive staff had the full support of former NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

BeyondChron editor Randy Shaw, who gets funding from the Mayor Ed Lee's office for projects like the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, penned a predictable defense of Lee's recent attack on Supervisor Scott Wiener's transit funding ballot measure today. Shaw backed Lee's decision to drop support for the vehicle license fee increase, and argued that Muni's share of the city's general fund has increased enough in recent years, compared to other city services.

Ed Lee isn't the first San Francisco mayor to go to bat for free parking. But maybe he'll be the first to realize that this is no way to leave a lasting legacy -- the city will never build a monument to his crusade against parking meters.

Mayor Ed Lee, who has cut into transportation funding by nixing Sunday parking meters and abandoning a proposed vehicle license fee increase, now says that he will punish the six supervisors who voted to approve a ballot measure to increase transportation's share of the general fund. Supervisor Scott Wiener proposed the charter amendment as a stop-gap measure to fund the city's transportation needs, while SF waits two years for the mayor to support a vehicle license fee measure.

In a trailblazing move that advances sustainable transportation policy in San Francisco, Supervisor Mark Farrell successfully changed an outdated and mostly unknown law that prohibited San Franciscans from using their residential garages to store anything besides automobiles.

A California state appeals court ruled last week that "reckless driving" can be applied to people on bicycles who kill or injure others, just as it's applied to people driving, as the SF Chronicle reported. No one, including bicycle advocates, seems to dispute that full accountability should be brought to anyone who commit acts of traffic violence -- but the reality is, drivers who maim and kill rarely ever face penalties.