The secret to Baltimore’s extraordinary year This April, Baltimore saw five homicides.

A great look at how Baltimore’s investment in an “ecosystem of community–oriented interventions” has drastically reduced violent crime in the city by treating crime as a public health crisis. [popular.info]

It's so awkward looking. Tinting the glass blue and having the half face and smile as glassy layers on top seems like the obviously correct answer... not sure what they're thinking here.

It’s fantastic—quality of life and supports families. We need more plazas and squares in our neighborhoods in SF!

Paris residents vote in favour of making 500 more streets pedestrian Parisians voted in a referendum on Sunday to pedestrianise a further 500 of the city's streets, giving fresh momentum to efforts by the French capital's left-leaning town hall to curb car usage and improve air quality.

BREAKING & BIG: Today in PARIS, citizens voted in a referendum to PEDESTRIANIZE 500 MORE of the city's streets, giving fresh momentum to efforts by city leaders to create people-places, curb car usage, and improve air quality. 66% of Parisians voted in favour of the measure, official results showed!

Such a no-brainer.

Haha yes!! Bad choice of words 😅

My concern is only that her scope may be too small to rise to this critical occasion. But I certainly hope those fears are proven wrong. Few people know Muni like she does.

She’s a good choice. I do have some lingering concerns about bolder policy decisions that are needed right now; let’s hope she pulls out all the stops to take Muni to thriving.

Yeah wtf is this

5,000 rides in 2 months is 83 riders per day? Even lowest performing community service routes like the 37 carry 1,000 riders per DAY. This feels like a different definition of “popularity”?

Not really.

One More French Lesson—Le Drugstore Today on TAP: In France, pharmacy chains are illegal. The result: local ownership, better service, and more price competition.

@scottwiener.bsky.social it’s a great time to see how good regulation can create thriving retail: prospect.org/blogs-and-ne...

France’s pharmacies continue to outperform right now while Walgreens and CVS are failing pharmacists, staff, & all of us.

It’s time for CA to follow France’s lead!

One More French Lesson—Le Drugstore Today on TAP: In France, pharmacy chains are illegal. The result: local ownership, better service, and more price competition.

Obligatory: prospect.org/blogs-and-ne...

It was sent to the NTSB not the FAA. The US has independent bodies to prevent political prejudices that the FAA might have, precisely for reasons like this. Many countries do not make that distinction which is why it’s much harder to trust the outcomes of analyses. The NTSB’s record is pretty solid.

It has:

1. Increased transit ridership
2. Improved equity
3. Substantially reduced financial burden for low income residents
4. Increased popular support for transit, helping increase capital investment
5. Moderately improved pollution & cars in CBD

It has not:

1. Reduced cars in the region

Given the weird regulations around RPP pricing, I think we could still address it with something like this—where RPP is only available as an add-on to a base transportation package: bsky.app/profile/next...

Totally… (It’s also wild to me that it would be not legal??)

This doesn’t seem terribly rapid in the video…? appreciate the accessibility angle though. (And Curitiba for caring!)

I think that’s a pretty reasonable hypothesis. SFMTA is far more political than it should be in that sense—and the city should be making and owning these decisions alongside.

Shockingly? No! Montreal and Vancouver have the best North American examples that I’m aware of…

I think the benefits of the L project, while good, don’t feel commensurate with the amount of time it took & disruption caused. Outside of comms issues, these generational projects have far too limited a scope & reflect a major issue of modern-day government/infra: slow with limited benefit.

Bingo. SFMTA shoots themselves in the foot far too often as well. I don’t know if it’s a comms issue or a city hall / interagency issue, but it’s definitely something that should be addressed.

This isn’t universally applicable, but it’s important for SFMTA to prioritize projects that lead to greatest benefit for all in order to shift perceptions and change the narrative. Drawn-out projects that accomplish only a single goal at the cost of others inherently invite criticism & frustration..

That quieted the anger pretty quickly and other businesses began clamoring for the same treatment. Instead of debating geometries of bike lanes, pitting transportation means against each other, they showcased the potential of real placemaking which led to a thriving outcome.

Take Montreal and their pedestrianized streets. There was quite a bit of anger and frustration by neighbors & biz owners beforehand in community meetings. A familiar scene.

But the city went all in. They didn’t half ass anything: they pulled out all the stops—and it worked. Business thrived.

I don’t love the framing of this issue, and I while I don’t blame SMFTA for this, I do think the way in which projects get watered down or overly detail focused — missing forest for the trees — (unintentionally?) invites a certain level of vitriol, unfortunately.

The problem is not that we have community outreach, the problem is how we move forward with it. Our public agencies seem to think they need to get near 100% consensus which is simply untenable in any scenario. Outreach is about sharing perspectives to consider—information gathering, not directives.

The idea of public transport was invented by philosopher-mathematician Blaise Pascal when he knew he was near death in his 30s.

I love that such an accomplished thinker
chose to devote some of his last lucid hours to drawing lines on maps.

Beautiful piece by Taras Grescoe on Pascal’s legacy.

It certainly seems most people complaining about “lack of accountability” are simply trying to defund public services.

Our problem in SF is almost comically reverse: we demand SO much accountability that we waste crazy amounts of time and money making sure nobody thinks their particular need is ignored (eg parking) or wasting money on things that each person thinks doesn’t matter—a fools errand, frankly.

Tax and spend is literally just paying for something. It’s like saying the days of withdraw-and-purchase products are over. I think you’ll find almost nobody has ever suggested we have no accountability. San Franciscans are notoriously involved at every step of every process.