People

I'll add a few more impressions to Bobby Cuza's report on yesterday's ABNY breakfast with federal transportation secretary Ray LaHood.

The Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee voted for a second time Wednesday to reject the MTA budget and send it back to the full Board. It followed a narrow vote by the full Board Tuesday to table BOS Prez David Chiu's original rejection motion, following a "compromise" reached at the last minute to put $10.3 million in revenue and cost savings back into Muni's budget.

The New York Times reports this morning that the Obama administration's $787 billion economic stimulus package has hit a few snags:

The details of Rep. Jim Oberstar's plans for the next federal transportation bill are starting to come into focus. Last Friday, The Infrastructurist ran an item about a document on the subject that has made its way into the public eye:

BOS Prez David Chiu gave quite a performance at last week's Budget and Finance Committee meeting, peppering MTA Chief Nat Ford with a series of hard-hitting questions about the agency's unpopular budget, and lining up the six necessary votes to reject the spending plan. Yesterday, though, at the full Board of Supervisors meeting, Chiu rescinded his motion, agreeing to what amounts to $10.3 million dollars in changes Ford can make at his own discretion, a "compromise" struck at the last minute.

In less than 24 hours, city officials, including Mayor Gavin Newsom, will be standing in a new pedestrian plaza on the former roadway at 17th Street at Market Street to announce the long-anticipated opening of the street as public space, the first of several such projects that will appear throughout the city over the next year. 

Another must-read from last week's Reuters Infrastructure Summit: Barbara Boxer, the California Democrat who will be responsible for shepherding the next transportation bill through the Senate, says she's open to a mileage tax and to indexing the gas tax to inflation to generate new revenue.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors Budget and Finance Committee voted 4-1, with Supervisor Carmen Chu dissenting, to recommend the rejection of the MTA's $778 million budget following a marathon meeting yesterday that featured some enrapturing political theater when BOS Prez David Chiu grilled MTA Chief Nat Ford.

I got a call a week ago from the SF Bike Coalition's media person. She was looking for someone to talk to Joe Vazquez of CBS 5, a reporter who was going to do a piece on Critical Mass. I declined, having been interviewed far too often over the years, and having learned time and time again that the mass media is not going to do any favors for Critical Mass by covering it. Sure enough, the piece is now online, and you can see for yourself just how absurd the slant is. I'll give Vazquez credit for at least going on the ride, and in fact, in his sidebar piece, describing what it was like, he admits to becoming more sentient and feeling himself, instead of playing the (impossibly) neutral observer: