People

It's a good day to talk about the costs of car ownership on individuals and families and the need to integrate transportation and land use planning regionally.

A new mural is taking shape in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, at the corner of Jones and Golden Gate, diagonally across from St. Anthony’s Dining Room where hundreds line up every day for a hot meal. Muralist Mona Caron and Project Manager LisaRuth Elliott can be found on scaffolds these days, grabbing the good weather when they can to paint on a nondescript building housing a local “sewing company.” In this first of two parts, I talked with LisaRuth Elliott about her experience with the street scene in the Tenderloin. In part two, I’ll explore Mona Caron’s murals from her well-known Bike Mural on Duboce and the Market Street Railway mural on Church, to her recent Noe Valley diptych, all of which make streets and transit central themes.

Let's hope California rail passengers can look back on the drama playing out between the Transbay Joint Powers Authority (TJPA) and the California High Speed Rail Authority (CHSRA) as a small hiccup on the way to building the nation's preeminent rail network into one of the most impressive rail stations in the world. And for our sake, let's hope Washington isn't paying too much attention to the infighting and will still award California the lion's share of the $8 billion in federal stimulus money slated for high speed rail.

San Francisco Supervisor Carmen Chu represents the Sunset District, which includes some of the city’s major thoroughfares: the Great Highway, 19th and Sunset avenues and Sloat Boulevard. She was appointed to her post by the Mayor in 2007 and elected last November.

US DOT Secretary Ray LaHood made cyclists smile at the National Bike Summit when he pledged to be a "full partner" with them through his term as head of the agency.  Not content with good rhetoric at a gala event, he wrote about it on his official Welcome to the Fast Lane blog.

BikePortland's Jonathan Maus is in D.C. today for the National Bike Summit, where Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood gave the opening address this morning. From Maus's recap:

On Sunday, in a relentless rain that rarely stopped all day, several dozen die-hard enthusiasts rode their bicycles back and forth between the new Bike Kitchen at 650 Florida (back where it once was between Alabama and Florida, Mariposa and 19th Streets, across from Cellspace) and its recent digs just off Mission and 9th. They filled panniers and freight containers, pulled trailers and bungied impossible loads of wheels, tires, frames, and all sorts of tools and shelves, moving the entirety of the Bike Kitchen BY BIKE to its new home.

File the following in the "Can't Believe My President Gets It" category.