People

Goodbye "30/10" and hello "Fast Forward America."

SFMTA Chief Nat Ford told Streetsblog today that heading up the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) is actually the first job that he's been interested in taking, despite steady rumors that he's been applying for a number of positions over the years.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, in an interview with Streetsblog this week, pledged to make the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) implementation his number one Muni priority. That'll be no easy task, however. More than three years after the SFMTA Board unanimously approved a plan to give Muni its first major revamp in 20 years, the TEP -- at a cost of over $3 million so far -- remains just another plan collecting dust.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee supports the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition's Connecting the City vision, promises to "very aggressively" carry out Gavin Newsom's executive directive on pedestrian safety, and said he has a commitment from the SFPD to do more aggressive enforcement of drivers in the Tenderloin to make the streets safer for those on foot.

In a wide ranging interview with Streetsblog this morning, San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee said he is frustrated by how long it takes to implement ideas to improve transit and pedestrian safety, and pledged to make the implementation of the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) the top Muni priority in his administration.

Rumors about whether SFMTA Chief Nat Ford plans to depart the agency have been circulating for years now.  In interviews with Streetsblog, Ford has repeatedly said he doesn't want to leave the SFMTA, telling us in our most recent meeting last September that he is confident about the future the agency is charting "and I'd like to be here for that future." The latest gossip about Ford, however, is more than just a rumor.

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee told the Bay Citizen this week that Muni will apparently not be a priority for his administration. That's troubling news but I can't imagine Lee really feels that way. With 700,000 daily boardings, Muni affects that lives of so many San Franciscans but is over capacity, struggling to find new revenue and suffering reliability issues, among other problems.

Don't be fooled by the high-pitched rhetoric in Washington. The vast majority of Americans are united, at least when it comes to the topic of transportation.

The president’s six-year transportation plan [PDF], included as part of the administration’s FY2012 budget proposal, weighs in at a hefty $556 billion and lays out several policy reforms that, if enacted, could help the nation transition to a more multi-modal, less oil-dependent transportation system.