Matthew Roth
Recent Posts
Another Court Decision in Favor of California Transit Agencies
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Photo: Thomas Hawk In another rebuff to California’s practice of moving spillover funding from the State Transit Assistance (STA) fund to fill the hole in the state’s General Fund, a Superior Court ruled on Monday that the state had to pay back the approximately $1.2 billion it diverted from transit operators in the 2007-2008 budget […]
New Website Prompts Transit Agencies to Open Data to the Public
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The software developers and open data advocates at Front Seat, known more familiarly for their Walk Score rankings of the most walkable U.S. cities, have turned their focus on transit agencies that have resisted opening transit data to third-party, open-source developers. Their new website, City-Go-Round, is an effort to encourage agencies to release their schedules […]
#whyweride Offers Some Gems From Cyclists Around the Country
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Photo: meligrosa For all of you with a second at work today, check out the awesome trend on Twitter that has been building the past few days: #whyweride. There are some good explanations of the benefits of bicycles in a city, like "@velobration no parking, no gas, better view of nature, feel great, quads & […]
Quantifying the Value of San Francisco’s Unaccepted Streets
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As we have reported, Berkeley Professor Nicholas de Monchaux’s Local Code proposal for activating San Francisco’s "Unaccepted Streets" called for transforming the patchwork of 529 acres of underutilized alleys, street-ends, and pathways into a network of green spaces. Were San Francisco to build out the more than 1500 identified sites, de Monchaux estimates that the […]
SF Transportation Authority Bicycle Tracker Available for Android
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As we reported last month, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (TA) released an innovative new application for mobile devices that allows users to track their bicycle commuting patterns with a GPS-enabled iPhone or iPod and share those trips with the agency responsible for improving bicycle networks around the city. Now CycleTracks is compatible on […]
Eyes on the Street: Powell Street Parking Lane Becomes Trial Sidewalk
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Powell Street parking lane closed to cars for increased pedestrian space. Photos: Matthew Roth San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s office this weekend experimented with the temporary removal of a handful of parking spaces on Powell Street between Ellis and Geary Streets to give holiday shoppers in and around Union Square more space to navigate the […]
BART Selects Parsons Transportation Team for Oakland Airport Connector
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Image: BART BART staff has announced the selection of the Parsons/Flatiron development team for the construction of its Oakland Airport Connector (OAC) and will ask its board today to approve the $492 million dollar contract to build the 3.2–mile elevated people mover. Due to the recession and lower construction costs, the OAC proposal comes in […]
Presidio Trial Closure Leads to Large Drop in Traffic, Cut-Through Trips
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Photo: Cheryl and Rich The Presidio Trust has finished compiling the traffic data it collected during a three-week trial closure on Presidio Boulevard in October, a closure that brought much scorn for the Trust from drivers and some neighbors of the park. Despite the outcry, the trial provided important information for the Trust as the […]
Bay Area Toll Authority Mulls Toll Increase Scenarios, Seeks Public Input
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Photo: kpmarek As the Bay Area Toll Authority (BATA) continues its regional public hearings, including one tonight in San Francisco, the various options the agency is proposing for increasing bridge tolls are generating a number of debates and proposals, including the funding of the long-discussed pedestrian/bicycle/maintenance paths over the west span of the Bay Bridge. […]
Come Celebrate the Year of the Bike at SFBC’s Winterfest
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With the gradual thawing underway in the three-year freeze of bicycle infrastructure in San Francisco, this year’s SFBC Winterfest celebration, one of the best bicycle parties in any year, is sure to warm this Sunday night up right. "It’s a place where cyclists of all shapes, sizes and creeds come together to celebrate cycling and […]
Clear Channel Drops SF Bike Share, Mayor Newsom Pledges Larger Pilot
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At a press conference this afternoon to celebrate the city’s first new bike lane in three years, Mayor Gavin Newsom and MTA Chief Nat Ford learned that Clear Channel had backed out of its option to implement a public-use bike share program in San Francisco. Ironically, just as Mayor Newsom was answering a question from […]
Eyes on the Street: SFPD’s Ingleside Bicycle Beat
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Ingleside Station’s bicycle beat. Photos: Matthew Roth Mission Street from Cesar Chavez to Highland Avenue is a vibrant commercial and pedestrian strip, though it also suffers from a good deal of speeding traffic. The strip is also notorious for the noise from motorcycle owners gunning it up the hill and along the long blocks just […]