San Francisco Neighborhoods

Muni riders have just gotten some sweet new transit-only lanes to speed up their commutes. Red paint is on the ground for two new bus lanes: One at Lincoln Way and 19th Avenue, and another on the east end of Haight Street.

A few years ago, SFPD's Park Station in Golden Gate Park started storing police trucks and vans on a short section of pathway adjacent to the station's fence. I first noticed this while biking on Kezar Drive several years ago, and since then I've never seen the path without a police vehicle and/or barricade in the way. The section is at a fork between a pedestrian-only path and a shared ped/bike path, so people can still walk around the barricade to take the fork.

SFPD arrested an SUV driver, 40-year-old Calixto Dilinila, for killing 78-year-old Pui Fong Yim Lee in a crosswalk Saturday at Stockton and Sacramento Streets, outside the Stockton tunnel.

The extension of Fourth Street with a car-free promenade appears mostly complete at the University of California, San Francisco campus in Mission Bay. In 2012 we reported on how this project can connect 16th Street to Mariposa Street and the Dogpatch neighborhood without inviting more car traffic as UCSF builds out its development.

When visitors land on the front page of the Presidio Parkway's website, they see an animated pelican emerging from beneath the Golden Gate Bridge, gliding across green hills and blue skies. When the bird lands, you can "Meet Parker" with a click and learn all about the Presidio Parkway Pelican.

Developers who are building towers around the Transbay Transit Center in SoMa are fighting to reduce a special property tax that will be levied on developments in the area. The biggest loser could be the downtown rail extension to bring Caltrain and California high-speed rail into the terminal, as more of the funds for the regional rail hub and other long-term projects would have to come from taxpayers.

People enjoying Sunday Streets in the Mission last weekend may have wondered why the route no longer ran on 24th Street, the most crowded street of any that see the event. Instead, the car-free Valencia Street route was complemented by an east-west leg on residential 18th Street, which saw sparse use compared to 24th.

SPUR has set adrift its proposal to halve the size of the Great Highway along Ocean Beach, as the group strives to avoid distracting attention from implementing the other priorities in its Ocean Beach Master Plan. A road diet may be revisited later, once more pressing concerns have advanced.

Hayes Valley may be one of the country's densest and most walkable urban neighborhoods, but believe it or not, it still has three closed crosswalks -- vestiges of the mid-20th century's cars-first planning.