Infrastructure Weak

General Plan alternatives includes an option for a new Midtown between 14th and High St

New homes, jobs and parks

But bc Brooklyn Basin & Township Commons was built w/o transit or active transport connections...

Planners now want new development to pay for public parking to preserve access

Welcome! You are invited to join a webinar: Safety vs. Safety: Understanding and Overcoming Conflicts between Street Safety and Fire and Emergency Response. After registering, you will receive a confi... In cities across the US, attempts to improve safety for bicyclists and pedestrians are coming into conflict with fire and emergency response priorities. In this webinar, Zachary Lamb, Assistant Profes...

I just signed up for the "Safety vs. Safety" webinar, by Berkeley professor Zachary Lamb, on "Understanding and Overcoming Conflicts between Street Safety and Fire and Emergency Response."

Wednesday, August 20th, 11am

RSVP link:

I’m posting here on the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge trail meeting & vote throughout the day today.
👇👇👇

if I saw that in my neighborhood I would literally interpret it upon a quick glance as “ok I guess this bus stop is going away now goodbye bus”

Check out Fern's version - it does well at explaining when you can go the same place with a different route number.

And it's one thing that the specific service change signs are bad, but now they've started just posting this general "anything could happen!" notice. This sort of thing can make an occasional or low-info rider go "I used to like taking it, but they changed everything and now I don't know if I can."

To be fair, though, 40% of stops are affected and they've only known the exact service changes since October 9th. Not a lot of time to develop rider-focused communications

I think what drives me most wild is that the existence of the laminated sign shows that the bottleneck is not their printing or posting capacities, but some sort of manual design work. My impression from the look of these signs was not that they have to be hand-crafted.

@rideact.bsky.social do y'all need volunteers to put up stop flag service change bags? I'm free Saturday and I can find a ladder. Seems important to not make every rider parse a table in fear that their bus is about to disappear

Ok but I definitely prefer the specific stop flag service change notices they *were* putting up to this terrifying ambiguity...

If the regional measure doesn't pass next year, AC Transit will be ~$60M/yr in the hole and will have to make a massive cut.

If it does pass, AC Transit will be ~$20M/yr in the hole. Maybe the state will come through.

If we want 100% of pre-pandemic service we need ~$30M/yr on top of the $60M.

There's also been layover optimization, such as the combination of routes or the move to odd frequencies on coverage routes. We'll see whether route combination affects on time performance.

Some bigger changes got argued out:
- 51A/B combination & 6 to Alameda
- 72R elimination toward 72 frequency

Yep. Realign is a slightly more frequency-oriented network, that's still providing the 85% pre-pandemic service hours they've been running at, with a slight decrease in service miles due to partial correction for extended runtimes that have been wrecking operator breaks.

HUGE HUGE victory for San Mateo County, for anyone who rides transit in the Bay Area, anyone who drives & hates traffic, people who like breathing clean air and a growing economy.

San Mateo County will be joining IN to the regional measure for funding transit! Big group win & lots of work ahead!

101) In Salinas, the first order of business when setting up new rail service was to tear down buildings and build more parking many years of advance of running a single additional train

The End of CBOSS The rosy view, from 2011 Caltrain's troubled positive train control solution, known as CBOSS, has now been completely abandoned, to be r...

129) every once and a while I remember that a comparatively insignificant commuter line in the Bay Area somehow got ~$150m to waste developing and then abandoning their own globally unique train control system caltrain-hsr.blogspot.com/2018/02/the-...

Protecting the progress we’ve made on public transit It’s a pivotal moment for public transit in the Bay Area. This Wednesday, the SamTrans Board of Directors will decide whether to opt in to a regional funding measure that

San Mateo County Leaders speaking out for better transit in the county and better connection with the rest of the region & the importance of San Mateo joining & passing the regional measure to fund transit
www.smdailyjournal.com/opinion/gues...

On Friday I will be speaking on a free online panel to discuss Circulate's latest report "The Powerless Brokers: Why California Can't Build Transit." Join us! www.spur.org/events/2025-...

Building Skyscrapers, described by Cass Gilbert, Architect

Accidentally stumbled upon the origins of one of my favorite quotes about architecture:

"The building is merely the machine that makes the land pay." rerecord.library.columbia.edu/pdf_files/ld... 🗃️

photo of a septa passenger train next to a double stacked container train

since US transit planning is allergic to international best practices, here's a photo of a septa train (philadelphia), an electric system, sharing track with freight trains. it's not "impossible".

track ownership in LA? lines like the san bernardino are fully owned by metrolink. no strong argument

I read this as coordinated: "Oh, the RSR Bay Trail unfortunately isn't 'feasible' with our highway widening project, but we assure you it's a top priority to make it happen! Just like the Bay Bridge west span. Hey, maybe in 10 years it'll help round out our RSR bridge replacement project campaign."

Caltrans Bay Area has just released their update bike plan.

One of the "Top Tier Priority Projects" is 24/7 access to the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge.

This is particularly ironic, because the day after tomorrow, Caltrans and MTC will ask that bike/ped access be curtailed to just 3 days a week.

Great report. Transit projects go through extensive public outreach and democratic approval. After the public is on board, unaccountable 3rd parties slow them to a crawl with bad faith demands, subjective standards, and unclear or ad-hoc process. Transit agencies need more control over permitting.

No individual multi-agency pass yet, but an 18-month pilot of free/discounted interagency transfers is due to launch in several months - also with the regional coordinator reimbursing agencies.

We're definitely pushing toward a better fare regime. "BayPass" is an institutional transit benefit product good on ~all agencies, with an expanding pilot and positive revenues (they key yearly renewals to the cohort's prior year usage, and reimburse agencies per actual trip).

Clipper monthly pass prices:

Local fare: $2.85 (2 hour transfer, no daily cap)
Muni + cable: $86
Muni + cable + local BART: $104

Local fare: $2.50 (no free transfer but $5.50 daily cap)
AC Transit local: $90
AC Transit transbay: $234

Perhaps more SFers ride Muni enough for the pass to pay off?

Thank you for the correction! What they're working on rolling out (pending Clipper 2.0) is 7-day and monthly capping.

Somehow I never hear East Bay friends talk about AC Transit passes, but my SF friends are all on Muni monthly passes.

Working to Keep Muni Reliable: New Fare Compliance Strategy Results in More People Paying Fares

That number is public because it launched a fare enforcement step-up/restoration in 2024, after it had been relaxed since 2020. I don't have updated numbers on evasion, but they claim enforcement checks have increased 86%.

To round the Bay Area out there's also:

- BART (hardened stations + fare checks)
- Caltrain (offboard payment, ~every ticket checked)
- Ferries (all agencies supervised payment during boarding)
- 15-20 more bus agencies, all with front door boarding & payment enforced by operators (I think)

Oakland:
- Front-door boarding, operator is fare cop
- 1 all-door BRT line, with reportedly high evasion & periodic talk about ending all-door
- Piloted all-door on 2 local routes and ended it. All buses have unused rear reader.
- No monthly/weekly passes, but planned
- ~35M annual trips, ~1.3M pop