Holier than You Blog

Comment on Caltrain fare changes...

2012-01-31T11:05:00.000-08:00

An anonymous commenter writes...

Now the new fees have me pissed. My old dual 8-ride system is going away so I'll have to purchase a 4-zone monthly. This ups the monthly payment by $20 and yearly up significantly since there are 2 or more months when I travel much less than the value of a monthly - so I have to go back to managing the account which is a pain in the ass. Also pisses me off that Lawrence is costing me ~$50 a month to cross that zone boundary. Makes me almost want to say fuck them and only do a 3-zone. I don't think I've ever been checked between Lawrence and Sunnyvale.

And Caltrain thinks this fare increase will work out OK.

A few things to note.

While Caltrain has noted that 6% or so of their passengers use 8 rides (down from 16% before Clipper), they don't give any real clue as to the nuances of this number. A larger percentage of riders switch to 8 rides a couple of months per year, most notably December where many riders take a week or more off from work. So the total population impacted is much higher than 6% (plus the 10% that were already impacted). And as you can see, this population is not happy.

It also underscores the level of math that riders do regarding the amount of money they spend on Caltrain. The accounting can go down to the nickel. On the other hand, it's a very rare bird that understands "If I drive at 8 AM, I burn an extra half gallon of gas on 101 than if I drive at 11 AM, because of time I spend idling in traffic". The cost of driving is very abstract. We know quite clearly that very few amortize the life of their transmission when calculating the cost to drive 40 miles to Mountain View.

It's less clear, but I theorize it is absolutely true that drivers also have a pretty static view of how much it costs them in gasoline, the one marginal cost they actually consider when comparing driving to public transit. They think "I get X miles per gallon" and "pay Y dollars per gallon". Time spend idling in traffic is neglected, and the price of gas is frozen at an optimistic level. They decide "It costs me $7 roundtrip to drive" and that number rarely changes because they aren't getting feedback from the car that "because you missed the exit and had to circle an extra 5 miles, you burned an extra dollar in gas". But they sure as hell remember every time they forget to tag off Clipper!

With the internal biases in calculation stacked against the use of transit, fare increases like this can be deadly to ridership levels.

Caltrain Fare Increase Hearing, Feb 2, 10 AM, San Carlos HQ

2012-01-28T14:42:00.001-08:00

Here is the agenda item for the Caltrain Fare Increase (also known as "Change to the Codified Tariff").

Summary - no 8 ride tickets, 8 ride ticket users use their Clipper card to buy one way tickets and get a resulting 15% fare increase.

Paper tickets increase by 25 cents per zone, which is a 12.5% increase.

Send comments to changes@caltrain.com to provide feedback.

AGENDA ITEM # 3
FEBRUARY 2, 2012
PENINSULA CORRIDOR JOINT POWERS BOARD
STAFF REPORT
TO: Joint Powers Board
THROUGH: Michael J. Scanlon
Executive Director
FROM: Rita P. Haskin
Executive Officer, Customer Service and Marketing
SUBJECT: PUBLIC HEARING FOR PROPOSED CHANGES TO THE CODIFIED
TARIFF
ACTION
On December 1, 2011 the Board approved a public hearing to be held February 2, 2012 for the
consideration of changes to the Codified Tariff.
SIGNIFICANCE
Holding the public hearing will allow Caltrain to receive input on proposed Codified Tariff
changes that may impact customers.
Changes under consideration are:
A. Additional Regional Clipper® Implementation Measures
- Increasing the cost of paper One-way and Zone Upgrade tickets by up to 25 cents per
zone and Day passes by up to 50 cents per zone. Note: The cost of a One-way ride will
remain the same for those using a Clipper card. Day passes are not available on
Clipper. Monthly Pass prices will remain the same. See Attachment A for proposed
fare chart.
- Elimination of the 8-ride Ticket.
B. Go Pass
- Increasing the cost of the Go Pass by $10 to $165, and setting the minimum level for
employer participation at $13,750 per calendar year.
C. Sales Period
- Lengthening the sales period for monthly transportation passes and parking permits
from the 9th of the month to the 15th of the month.
BUDGET IMPACT
There is no impact to the budget for holding the public hearing.
Page 2 of 2
4022012.1
BACKGROUND
Staff developed the proposed changes to meet the responsibilities placed on Caltrain by
Metropolitan Transportation Commission Resolution 3866 and upon analysis of customers' fare
media usage, especially in light of Caltrain's transition to Clipper. The proposed changes to paper
ticket prices are intended to incentivize use of the Clipper fare payment system, which has been the
focus of significant regional investment over the past several years. The 8-ride Ticket is no longer
a sustainable fare product for various reasons, including that it cannot be altered for improved
performance within the Clipper system. The proposed changes to the Go Pass cost and annual
minimum would move that program towards revenue neutrality. Finally, the extended sales period
for monthly transportation passes and parking permits would benefit the agency in terms of the
quantity of passes and permits sold, and customers, who would gain flexibility in timing their
purchases.
The public outreach program regarding the proposed changes and this hearing included four
community meetings (Gilroy, Mountain View, San Carlos and San Francisco), bilingual
newspaper notices, a news release, station flyers, bilingual onboard messages to train riders,
Facebook postings, Tweets and a presentation to the Caltrain Citizens Advisory Committee.
Information also was posted to the Caltrain website, which allows readers to translate it into
dozens of languages.
Staff established a number of ways for customers and the public to provide their input: at the
community meetings, via a unique e-mail address, through the postal service, and with a call to the
Customer Service Center’s general number or one for those with hearing impairments.
Staff will consider public testimony and input from members of the Board of Directors before
developing final recommendations for board consideration at its March 1, 2012 meeting. The
changes would go into effect July 1, 2012.
Prepared by: Rita P. Haskin, Executive Officer, Customer Service and Marketing 650.508.6248

How is Caltrain like a teenage boy.

2012-01-25T14:34:00.000-08:00

In 2011, Caltrain was in a bind. They cooked up a plan that involved service cuts and a fare increase. Their press release is no longer on their website but it is here for posterity

Caltrain Sets Public Hearings: Proposed Service Reductions, Station Closures, Fare increases and Declaration of Fiscal Emergency

Caltrain followed this with many public hearings, and community meetings that included a sitting US Congresswoman to circle the wagons and get everyone to pitch in to cry for more money for Caltrain. These hearings were very well attended, as people responded to clearly defined things that they do not want - paying more and getting less service.Got that - people don't want to pay more, and they'll complain about it, no matter what it is.Fast forward to 2012. Caltrain is trying to raise fares again. This isn't really a sky is falling moment. If you look at the Agenda from the January 2012 JPB Meeting you will see that

Deputy CEO Gigi Harrington said revenues are about $3 million over budget in October, of which $2.8 million is farebox revenue. Expenses are within budget.

Caltrain is already getting $3 Million in fares over projection yet they are proposing a fare increase. Hmm. That's going to be an uncomfortable set of public hearings where people show up to complain about the FARE INCREASE.Then again - will anyone even know that there is a fare increase?

Caltrain Holds Meetings About Proposed Changes to Codified TariffJanuary 17, 2012 Caltrain will hold four public meetings and a public hearing where staff will present proposed changes to some Caltrain fares that would become effective July 1, 2012.

Interesting. When they want to fire up the troops, it's a fare increase. When they want to slide it in before lunchtime, it's "changes to some Caltrain Fares". I used that same trick - when I was fourteen years old ;)

The case for bicycle infrastructure - Cesar Chavez Hairball

2012-01-25T13:51:00.000-08:00

This is the Cesar Chavez "Hairball" intersection with Highway 101 in San Francisco.
View Larger MapI pass through here a few times per week on my bicycle to get to Caltrain. I am not alone - on this morning's ride there were three other cyclists passing through this same spot - to get to the Caltrain station (or any other destination in that area), you either have to brave the hairball, take a "more direct route" over Potrero Hill (a hill with a 20%+ gradient) or detour a couple of miles to 17th Street.On the right side of the photo you can see a sidewalk along the freeway onramp. This leads to the "Underpass of Broken Bottles and Dreams", a sidewalk cum bike path that requires you to first access it by crossing the onramp, then follow a narrow chute under the 101, strewn with well, broken bottles and dreams (a.k.a. homeless people). There is a signalized crossing of Bayshore Blvd and then you rejoin Cesar Chavez in the offramp from 101-N. Two of my companions chose this option this morning.Another woman chose against the path. She rode "as right as practicable" so to speak, in the far right of the roadway, then crossing the freeway onramp and then hugging the white line on the right of the underpass. This required her to pass the exit onramp to Bayshore Blvd South, then go under the freeway. I chose a third option. Having turned onto Chavez via a left turn off of Bryant South, I took the middle of the far left lane. A maneuver that requires nerves of steel and hopefully cooperation from drivers as you navigate under the underpass. The majority of traffic is headed to the freeway or Bayshore so I find this to be the spot that gives me the most breathing room. After getting past the Bayshore onramp, I switch into the right hand lane to finish the underpass. This led to quite a scene - there were cars headed to the freeway, cars headed to Bayshore, and a car headed through, with a bike in the left lane and a bike hugging the curb in the right lane. Fortunately we all sort of looked out for each other and made it through, but I won't call it comfortable nor efficient. When my female companion and I finished our crossing, we then had to merge across the 101-N offramp that enters Chavez, which was a bit messed up because there were 2 cyclists merging from left to right, and 2 cyclists on the right hand side who had just crossed the onramp having come off the "UBBD".How it this optimal? Safe? Useful? Answer - it's not. You can't really say that any of us broke the rules, but we all took a different choice from three unpalatable options. Designing useful and clearly defined infrastructure that works for bikes and cars is good for everyone. And of course, when we reached Pennsylvania Avenue, where I turn left to go to Caltrain, one of the bike path cyclists took the same left turn as me, onto a three lane section, the rightmost lane being the onramp onto 280-N. I took the middle lane (rightmost non-freeway lane), he took the left lane (avoiding the 280 traffic and traffic from Chavez WB that has a free right turn into the freeway onramp and often merges into the middle lane). Needless to say that didn't work out too nicely either. The other two intrepid cyclists bypassed Pennsylvania and took a left onto Iowa Street instead, which has its own issues.This is what happens when your designs do not take into account the mix of traffic that will use a street.

Letter to John Avalos regarding Fell/Oak bike lanes.

2012-01-21T15:49:00.000-08:00

For those of you not in the loop, the separated bike ways on Fell and Oak - an important link in the Bay to the Beach route for the connecting the city set of bikeways, has been Monkey Wrenched and it if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck it's probably Mayor Ed Lee.

Supervisor Avalos -

My name is John Murphy, you may recall me from a bike ride we took down Cesar Chavez street during your Mayoral Campaign. That day I made a point that this street was supposed to have already been striped with a new bike lane, but that the office of Interim Mayor Edwin Lee delayed this very important project on a important bike route which is nonetheless not very comfortable for cyclists to utilize. Today, the Interim has been dropped from Ed Lee's title, but his disregard for the safety of cyclists has not.

The major missing link of the Bay to the Ocean bike way, the notorious blocks of Fell and Oak street from the Wiggle to the panhandle, was scheduled for an improvement including a separated bikeway by early 2012. That section is currently used by thousands of cyclists on a daily basis despite the requirement for nerves of steel. Thousands more refrain from riding between the East and West halves of the City solely because of this short 3 block section.

That improvement was suddenly delayed to 2013, with the notice from the SFMTA that this is at the behest of people who are concerned about the loss of parking. This project has been in the works for years, yet just as final planning is going into place, the parking issue is suddenly a showstopper. No matter that the SFMTA made the statement, we all know that the buck stops in room 200.

As one of the best ambassadors of cycling on the SF Board of Supervisors, I would like to ask you to utilize your slot in the next question time with Mayor Ed Lee to ask him to dovetail his pronouncements at the 2011 Bike to Work day that he wanted to see a route from the Bay to the Beach by the end of the year with the delays eminating from his office. Clearly he will give an evasive answer but I think it is important for him to put his waffling on the public record.

Thank You

John Murphy - San Francisco

SFO bike lanes update

2012-01-19T16:11:00.000-08:00

I had a screed about the new bike lanes at SFO a while back. This resulted in contact from SFO officials, who were unusually interested in the feedback. They ended up holding a meeting (I was hit on the way to the meeting) which seemed pretty productive.Here's the resultant info from SFO - and a pdf of the improvement plans.SfoDear Respective Individuals/Organizations, Last year the San Francisco Airport implemented roadway striping modifications along McDonnell Road that incorporated dedicated bike lanes in each direction. We appreciate the comments/feedback we have received from the local and neighboring cycling communities through email and an open discussion session held last month. In line with our mission to provide an exceptional airport in service to our communities, the Airport traffic engineering section are preparing to implement improvements to the Airport bike lane system. Attached you will find drawings that outline the proposed changes. We hope to improve bicycle awareness and visibility to local and commercial vehicle drivers, as well as, provide an exceptional bike lane system for not only experienced riders, but for unfamiliar/recreational riders. The proposed changes include the following: - Removal of delineators and realignment of the bike lane along the merging areas of the roadway.- Installation of sharrow markers near the San Bruno Ave intersection coming into the Airport on McDonnell Rd.- Installation of sharrow markers near the Millbrae Ave intersection for throughput movement of riders onto Bayshore Blvd.- Increased Bike Lane and Bicycle Warning signage along McDonnell Rd for awareness.- Installation more of Bike Lane Markers along the McDonnell roadway for awareness. We hope to implement this work in a timely manner (weather pending) in the coming months of February and March. Let me know if you have any questions or comments to either myself or Edwin Leung Senior Traffic Engineer.

Brisbane, California Civil Engineer "Conforms to the Standard"

2012-01-11T16:31:00.000-08:00

2 years ago I wrote about the dangerous bike lane in Brisbane California that is "separated from traffic" by a nasty rumble strip. The rumble strip makes getting around any obstacles in the bike lane a very dangerous proposition.

Yesterday I rode those bike lanes again, and noticed something even more devious than the trucks that park in there - a "crash barrier" or something that projects from the right side of the road into the bike lane, producing a very narrow lane with a crash barrier on the right and a rumble strip on the left. Ugly.

Turns out I'm not the only one who noticed. I got an email thread from Edward Hasbrouck discussing those lanes with the City of Brisbane. Edward doesn't pull any punches...

I'm not opposed to all rumble strips, but I can say that as a lifelong bicyclist who has never owned a motor vehicle, what has been done on Bayshore Blvd. is the single most inappropriate and worst-implemented installation of rumble strips I have encountered in 40 years of riding.

If you agree - and you should...

I plan to attend the next Brisbane City Council meeting, which I was told today by the city clerk is scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 17, 7:30 p.m., to follow up on this request for removal (or mitigation through replacement with *intermittent* rumble strips) of the botched rumble strips on Bayshore Blvd. through Brisbane. I would welcome support, either by others who might attend the meeting or through letters to the City Council letters to the City Council.
Peace,
Edward Hasbrouck

He has a pretty long complaint letter to Brisbane, very eloquent and descriptive. And he's correct, backed up by research shown in among other things this one from the Federal Highway Administration and this from the League of American Bicyclists

Some highlights.

According to your (Karen Kinser, Senior Civil Engineer, Brisbane) message to Ms. Radetsky:
"The incorporation of the traffic control device known as a "shoulder rumble strip" into bike lane design and in general as a tool to provide audible and physical (shaking) feedback to keep motorists in their lanes and off of shoulders, medians and the like is widespread, and is considered a nationally accepted engineering practice."
This is not correct. The use of rumble strips to separate bike lanes from same-direction all-vehicles traffic lanes, as a general practice, is contrary to Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) standards.

and

In your message to Ms. Radetsky, you say that, "the southern portion of this project (Valley Drive to the southern city limit) has been in place for several years without a single complaint similar to your concern."
Had I known where to complain, I would certainly have done so sooner. I was appalled by what had been done to the southern portion of Bayshore Blvd., but it appeared as a fait accompli. Even then, nobody ever asked those who use the road what we thought, or told us how to give feedback, before proceeding to repeat the same mistakes (and more) to the north.
Unlike in San Francisco where I live, where notices of proposals such as for revised traffic patterns or bike lanes are required to be posted on- site *before* plans are finalized, and road users and others who might be impacted (perhaps in ways that planners hadn't anticipated) have a chance to review plans and have input before they are implemented, I never saw any notices along Bayshore Blvd. before the construction started.

Here is the (ridiculous? tone deaf? arrogant?) response from the Karen Kinser, Senior Civil Engineer, Brisbane, Ca

Edward,
The City has received your email correspondence of 12/16/11.
As noted therein, the "best practices" for the design and installation of bikeways continues to evolve, with the oldest provided reference being a 2001 technical advisory (TA), and the newest being a May 2011 TA. We disagree with your conclusion that the city's installation of rumble strips on Bayshore Boulevard creates a hazardous condition; we believe that the new condition is a vast improvement over the previous Class I Bikeway on this 45 MPH arterial road. This project, which was initiated in 2004, has been reviewed by all appropriate regulatory authorities, designed by a licensed civil engineer, and approved by the City Council.
We will maintain the information you provided, and when the roadway is re-paved, we may incorporate those features which are deemed necessary by a civil engineer, and which are then current practice.
Thank you for sharing your concerns. Best wishes for a happy holiday season.
Karen Kinser Senior Civil Engineer City of Brisbane

Reminds me of this...

Menlo Park - Facebook EIR

2012-01-09T11:15:00.001-08:00

From Andrew Boone - SVBC.

Please forward this email to anyone you know who supports completing the San Francisco Bay Trail and constructing safe and continuous bike lanes!

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Cyclists Needed for Important Menlo Park Meeting about Facebook!

What: Menlo Park Planning Commission Facebook EIR Review

When: Monday, January 9 at 7:00 pm

Where: Menlo Park City Council Chambers, 701 Laurel St (near Caltrain Station)

Meeting Agenda

It's very important to attend and give a public comment in support of bicycle commuting. This is the only meeting at which verbal public comment will be accepted on the Facebook Draft EIR before the comment period ends on Jan 23, 2012.

We need maximum possible turnout to send a strong message that improving bicycle infrastructure in the vicinity of the Facebook Campus is important to:

help commuters get to Facebook and other Silicon Valley companies without driving, in order to reduce traffic congestion, noise, and air pollution impacts

Talking points for cyclists:

Thank Facebook for being a strong supporter of bicycling and other alternative modes of transportation

Facebook should help fund the completion of the one-mile Bay Trail gap through Menlo Park and East Palo Alto

Facebook should provide continuous bike lanes on Willow Rd, University Ave, and Bay Rd (there are many gaps in the bike lanes on these streets)

Menlo Park should include these bicycle improvements as Transportation Mitigation Measures in the Facebook EIR, because bike commuting reduces auto traffic

Talking points for alternative transportation experts (such as TDM coordinators):

Thank Facebook for being a leader of alternative transportation programs and having already achieved a 41% non-drive alone mode share (as documented in the EIR)

Share any relevant data or personal stories about bike commuting on the Bay Trail, or how other bicycle infrastructure improvements have increased bike commuting

Encourage Facebook to help fund the completion of the one-mile Bay Trail gap, and to fund continuous bike lanes on Willow Rd, University Ave, and Bay Rd

Menlo Park should include these bicycle improvements as Transportation Mitigation Measures in the Facebook EIR, because bike commuting reduces auto traffic

What to Expect

Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition (SVBC) volunteers will be available outside the City Council Chambers to help coordinate bicycle parking, hand out flyers containing more detailed information on the Facebook EIR, and hand out public speaker cards, which you need to fill out in order to make a public comment, and to answer any questions you may have.

There will be a "pre-party" outside the City Council Chambers from 6:30 - 7:00 pm. There we'll help each other prepare for the meeting, practice our public comments, and discuss the next (exciting!) steps.

What to Do

Wear bike-specific clothing (tight-fitting, bright colors, gloves, helmets) to the meeting that make it obvious to everyone that you're a cyclist. Bike Pride!

Getting there on Caltrain

If you take a northbound Caltrain, you can arrive at Menlo Park at 6:46 pm, 6:57 pm, 7:13 pm, 7:24 pm, or 8:04 pm and will arrive on time to make a public comment.

If you take a southbound Caltrain, you can arrive at Menlo Park at 6:28 pm, 6:34 pm, 7:28 pm, and probably even 8:23 pm and will arrive on time to make a public comment.

Attached is a map showing how to walk from the Caltrain Station to the City Council Chambers. The walk takes about 3 minutes. It's confusing - but don't be discouraged! The party will be waiting for you.

If you can't attend

Please send an email to the Menlo Park Planning Commission at planning.commission@menlopark.org. Please use the above talking points in your email.

Thanks!

Caltrain fare increase - public meetings

2012-01-07T20:02:00.001-08:00

Caltrain has announced public meetings to discuss an upcoming fate increase.CORRECTION - I got an email from a little bird with this list.

From the comments it sounds like Caltrain plans to simply eliminate the 8 ride ticket WITHOUT giving Clipper users a discount. Well, technically they do get a discount because Caltrain is raising fares for paper tickets 15% while leaving the Clipper fare the same for one way tickets.

Horrible business strategy. 8 ride users and paper ticket users are the most discretionary of Caltrain's passengers and this fare increase will be the most likely strategy to decrease ridership. 15% higher of zero is zero.

Of course recent experience with Caltrain could lead one to believe that fewer riders is THE GOAL ;)

Gilroy-Jan 24- 6:00pm, Gilroy Senior Center, 7371 hanna St

SF-Jan 24-6:00pm SF Tennis Club, 645 5th St...near Station.

MV-Jan 25- 6:00pm, City Council Chambers, 500 Castro

SC- Jan25-6:00pm Samtrans Bldg, 1250 San Carlos Ave.

proposed fare chart will be avail by Jan. 16 @ www.caltrain.com

The bitter irony of Eric Cantor

2012-01-05T13:16:00.000-08:00

I watched 60 minutes the other night, teased by a story about a story about a guy climbing the face of Half Dome with no safety ropes. Watching that guy climb scared me half to death, but the enduring emotion after the whole show was bitter anger.

In addition to the free climbing story, was a piece on House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Cantor has been one of many Republicans fighting against funding for popular programs like bike share and safe routes to school funding, and transportation enhancements in general.

Transportation enhancements include many things, among them bike paths and sidewalks for cycling and pedestrian. They are often characterized by the GOP as "recreational trails" but in large part when they are in the transportation budget thses are projects that enable people to get from point A to point B safely without using a car.

But who would want to do that?

Apparently - Eric Cantor himself

Click through this link to the 60 minutes video - saving yourself the pain of watching the whole video and go to 10:18 in the video and check Mr. Cantor going out for a ride on one of those transportation enhancements he wants to cut.

Support good food, good wine, and SF Public Schools

2012-01-03T10:47:00.001-08:00

Firefly Restaurant in Noe Valley is supporting SF public schools this January.Come in for dinner on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday in January, mention your favorite SF public school to your server, and Firefly will donate 20% of your food and beverage total to that school. Please spread the word and help Firefly support your school. For reservations, visit Firefly's website or call 415-821-7652 after 2 pm daily.Happy New Year!Firefly Restaurant4288 24th Street, SF 94114

Millbrae Ave Collision

2011-12-21T13:31:00.000-08:00

I finally decided to post this. The key actual takeaway for readers - if you are involved in a traffic incident - GET A POLICE REPORT. No matter what.

Here you go. I was headed to SFO for a meeting about their bike lanes. In retrospect it seems ironic we were having a meeting about those lanes when the real death trap is Millbrae Ave.

I decided to get off the train at Millbrae and save two bucks. Could have gone to San Bruno and saved some headache. I actually started from Rollins to save the hassle of the train track crossing. I hit the red light at the exit from 101S - in retrospect maybe I run the light to get a "free" crossing of the overpass.

I set up in the far left lane. There are three lanes crossing the freeway and they are marked - South McDonnell (where I was headed), "local traffic" (meaning the roads to the hotels), and the right lane is for the heavy traffic to 101. I was "following the lane markings" as well as avoiding having to cross the freeway onramps. The light turned green and I headed across - dead center of the left lane, the only legal lane for where I was headed.

I regretted having the cross bike which was slower to get off this overpass and slowly just decided I am just trusting my fellows on the road.

A driver coming from Millbrae who had clear view of me for several hundred feet nonetheless did not register my presence. He was also headed to S. McDonnell (which basically goes to airport service buildings - I rarely see cars headed this way). Shortly before reaching me he decided to get on 101 N instead and looked away from where his car was headed at 30 MPH to see if the right lane was clear (note this implies he needed to change lanes twice in a hundred feet or so). He looked forward again, saw me, hit his brakes but hit me anyway. I bounced off the hood and back onto the pavement. My right shoulder sublexed but went back in quickly.

He was frantic, I told him to back off. He started to grab my bike and put it in his car and I said we have to wait for the police. After some debate I relented to clear the road and instructed him to pull over so we could call the cops. He said "can't we just handle this ourselves", and I said "I'm getting the feeling you are a pretty nice, decent guy. But you are a very bad driver. And we cannot let emotion take over - injury accident means we get a police report - period. Not personal - just protocol". He said "I was a good driver until today" and I said "never confuse luck with skill" then told him to take a deep breath and let's be thankful together we both see another day.

The cops and ambulances showed up anyway. Drivers on the overpass called it in before we could.

Refused transport to the hospital. I self-diagnosed as "can wait until urgent care in the AM and will go to the SFO meeting". He was relieved but I said you weren't paying for it unless you were uninsured, and your rate increase won't be affected by a thousand dollars here or there. He fussed a lot about his financial situation and I said "you were 3 yards from bankrupt and in jail - this too shall pass."

I'm going to call and let him know my medical status either way but financially it all goes to his insurance. And I'll be following up with the Millbrae cops to get a copy of the police report to see if there is any fault determination.

Rear wheel destroyed, frame bent. "Luckily" since I expected to be locking the bike outside I had my poorly size CX bike and not my custom Seven. BoxDog is writing it up.

SFO on the other hand - those guys are GREAT. They had taken prior feedback, had great suggestions to address everything, and took our newer feedback. I am 95% sure all the soft hits will be gone. Super nice guys and very willing to listen and probably react.

Caltrain Fare Increase coming?

2011-11-30T12:42:00.001-08:00

If you pay $10 for a product, and someone else pays $10 for a product, and the seller starts charging that person $12 but you still pay $10 - do you feel like that product is now less expensive for you? Caltrain does!

There is a disturbing note in this week's agenda for the Caltrain JPB meeting. It's basically a fare increase.

We need to let them know we dislike stealth fare increases, use this handy email link to send a message to Caltrain customer service, copying the Caltrain board and staff at the same time.

SUBJECT: CALL FOR A PUBLIC HEARING FOR CODIFIED TARIFF CHANGES
ACTION
Staff Coordinating Council (SCC) recommends that the Board schedule a public hearing at its February 2, 2012 Board meeting to consider changes to its Codified Tariff.
SIGNIFICANCE
Setting the public hearing will allow staff to schedule community meetings to solicit input from customers and the general public on proposed changes to the tariff. Proposed changes include (1) elimination of the 8-ride Ticket; (2) increasing the cost of paper One-way tickets, Day passes and Zone Upgrade tickets, which will result in a less expensive Clipper cost for these items; (3) increasing the Go Pass price; and (4) lengthening the sales period for monthly transportation passes and parking permits. Further details on the proposed changes will be provided in advance of three community meetings in January.
BUDGET IMPACT
Holding a public hearing will not impact the budget.
BACKGROUND
In response to customer fare media usage, and in the spirit of Metropolitan Transportation Commission Resolution 3866, staff will propose the changes described above.

As described, this is a fare increase for people using 8 ride tickets. Paper ticket users would also see a fare increase, but it could be mitigated by getting a Clipper Card. But the population that rides Caltrain 3-4 roundtrips per week, currently getting a nice discount via 8 ride tickets, would see a fare increase of 15% if they buy one way tickets. They could buy a Monthly Pass, but that pass is priced the same as 31 rides on an eight ride ticket, users currently using Caltrain for fewer than 15 round trips per month would pay more for the pass than they currently do. 15 round trips per month is a regular rider - not the demographic that Caltrain should be lumping the entirety of an increase on.

As I've discussed before - 8 ride tickets are an anachronism and have been very inconvenient for Clipper users. I do think they should be eliminated. But that elimination is no excuse to pass on a stealth fare increase to a big chunk of the ridership. If Caltrain truly needs a fare increase, they should ...

1) Eliminate the 8 rides
2) Give all Clipper users a 15% discount off of a one way ticket.
3) Institute an across the board fare hike.

This is far more honest and does not specifically impact a subset of passengers. It could be phased - change the fare structure first, quantify the impact to revenue of people formerly paying full fare now getting a discount, and adjust fares if needed.

Of course, this brings up the topic of "Does Caltrain need a fare hike?" Despite the angst over their budget, the apparent need for a fare increase is going to fall upon a lot of deaf ears given this, also from the same report.

Revenue: For October of Fiscal Year 2012, Total Operating Revenue (line 7) is $3,079,284 or
15.2 percent better than budget. Within total operating revenue, Farebox Revenue (line 1), Parking
Revenue (line 2) and Other Income (line 5) which together are $3,066,486 or 15.9 percent better than
budget. Compared to the prior year, Total Operating Revenue (line 7) is $4,604,583 or 24.5 percent
higher driven by Farebox Revenue (line 1), Parking Revenue (line 2) and Other Income (line 5)
which together are $4,600,325 or 25.9 percent higher.
Expense: Grand Total Expenses (line 46) show a favorable variance of $1,337,579 or 3.9 percent.
Total Operating Expense (line 33) is $934,242 or 3.1 percent better than budget. Within total
operating expense, Contract Operating & Maintenance (line 23) and Services (line 31) together are
$678,465 or 3.3 percent better than budget. Total Administrative Expense (line 42) is $403,337 or
10.0 percent better than budget.

I would hope that Caltrain would quickly revisit the apparent proposals before finalizing a plan for the January community meetings. Whenever Caltrain cooks up a poorly thought out change to service or fare structures, a lot of bad blood is spilled in the process of fixing it. The customer base will not see the benefit of removing logistical nightmares from the Clipper setup - they will see a fare increase. No matter the end result, Caltrain's image with the public is the victim. Long term, they cannot afford that to be any more tarnished than it already is.

Comment of the Year

2011-11-28T12:04:00.001-08:00

It's not December 31 yet but this will be tough to beat...

From Palo Alto Online

From the 6th paragraph of the story: "... the project, which has the support of the entire City Council and the vast majority of the speakers who addressed the council on the topic in February."

At previous meetings, the project didn't have the support of the majority of speakers. Nothing like it. Then the bicycle advocates caught on and emailed their online friends to pack the chambers. Even gave them a script to read.

I realize the Weekly reporter is hopelessly naive and doesn't realize what astroturf means, but I suspect some of our council members have seen advocates seed the audience before on other issues.

Ah yes, the evil cycling cabal, flying in cyclists from places like "Europe" (especially "Amsterdam") to come give 2 minute public comment at a City Council Meeting in Palo Alto in order to spread their one world vision by taking a 3 block long dead end street that terminates in a train station, and reducing it from 4 lanes to 2 lanes.

Chicken John on the SF Election.

2011-11-06T21:27:00.000-08:00

Before we go into the thinking of all this, since I know so many of you skim, I’m gonna put my mayor picks up front here:

#1 Jeff Adachi

#2 Dennis Herrarra

#3 John Avalos

Ross Mirkirami for Sheriff

If you think it’s fun watching from the sidelines as the GOP scrapes the bottom of the barrel looking for someone who is not a nutjob like Ron Paul, not a drunk like Rick Perry, not a sexual assaulter like Herman Cain, not a disaster like Michelle Bachmann… the list goes on… who’s gonna recruit Lyndon LaRouche? As we watch in horror the freakshow parade across our screens as the Republican party has its adolescence and we get some good show, we got kinda the same thing going on here in SF. Watching the Republicans is kinda like watching animals in a zoo. We will select a mayor next Tuesday, and there are 16 candidates. And it’s a sideshow/shitshow.

First of all let me say that Ed Lee is a liar. He is a regent mayor ONLY because he promised he would not run, so that there would be on ‘open seat’ for this election. Ed is the bad guy in this drama. He is the rumpled overlord who is the wrong guy for the job. He’s a nothing. A guy that has no ideas and just keeps everything 98.6. He is not a good representation of SF, our values, our people or our tolerance.

He’s a dud.

But he’s probably gonna win. He probably already has, actually. Absentee ballots and all… And that’s really really sad. The reason he is likely going to win is because there are so many candidates. It’s a matter of the ‘aggregate’. Let’s say 250,000 people vote. There are 16 candidates. You have to get 50% of the vote (plus one vote) to win.

How people will vote in the #1 position:
Let’s say Ed Lee gets 30% of the vote.

Dennis Herrera gets 25%.

Leland Yee gets 20%.

John Avalos gets 15%.

Jeff Adachi gets 9%.

The other 11 candidates get the other 1%.

Let’s just say, to make the point. This isn’t how it will really go, but let’s just say it goes like this, so we can see how Ranked Choice Voting really works…

The first round of voting counts ONLY your #1 choice. They count up all the ballots’ #1 choices. If a candidate gets 50% of the vote (plus one vote) that candidate wins. We are supposing that the ‘aggregate’ is 250,000 voters. So if someone got 125,001 votes, they would win.

But that is not going to happen. What is going to happen is more like above. With the evil rumpled overloard Ed Lee the lying liar getting 30%, or 75,000 votes. So an “instant runoff” is triggered. And we look to people’s #2 and #3 choices to determine a winner, in a complicated way that I will explain below.

Ranked Choice Voting is also called Instant Runoff voting.

Runoff elections have occurred often in SF. In 1999 Willie Brown and Tom Ammiano had a run off election. 4 years later Gruesome Newsom and Matt Gonzalez had a run off. Run off elections costs millons and millions of dollars. Instant runoff voting costs no more then a regular election. You may remember that Jean Quan, the Mayor of Oakland who can’t seem to control her brutal police force was elected through Ranked Choice Voting even though she did not have more first or second place votes than her opponent Don Perata. Too bad that all the money Oakland saved on Ranked Choice Voting will go to her recall election… but I digress…

In looking at the #2 votes, it get a little complicated. So please just stay with me here… how we start counting #2 votes is by eliminating a candidate. And counting their #2 votes. So lets say there is a nudist running or something. He’s gonna get like 20 votes.

He gets the least amount of votes of any candidate for mayor. So we get rid of him, and we look to his 20 votes and see what we have.

Ahhhh… ten of the people who voted for the nudist decided not to take part in Ranked Choice Voting, and only voted for him in the #1 position. The ten other people all voted for John Avalos for #2. The aggregate just went down to 249,990 voters. The #2 votes for John Avalos just got added to his tally of #1 votes. But we still don’t have a winner.

So we eliminate the next candidate. And place that persons’ #2 votes. If your #2 vote gets eliminated, we count your #3. And we keep doing this, eliminating candidates and re-allocating their votes until one of the candidates gets to 50% of the vote (yes, plus one little vote).

All the while, the aggregate shrinks, and that 30% the lying scumdog Ed Lee has becomes 31%. 32%. 35%. 43%... until darkness falls… Ed will get very few if any #2 or #3 votes. He will win by the aggregate shrinking because of so many candidates.

Side note: if you don't vote for three different candidates and your candidate gets eliminated, or if your #2 and #3 candidates are eliminated before your #1 candidate, you will have what's called an Exhausted Ballot, meaning your ballot didn't count in the runoff portion of the election. Remember in District 10 last year when Malia Cohen won after 20 rounds? The real winner was Exhausted Ballots, with 9503 votes. Malia got 3879.

So back to next Tuesday – there are only really 5 candidates in this election:

Ed Lee

Dennis Herrera

Jeff Adachi

John Avalos

Leland Yee

There is a slight chance that Ed could lose. He could lose to Dennis. It’s somehow possible. It’s crazy, but it’s possible. I want it to be possible that John could win. But I’m going to give you my strategy, and you are welcome to embrace it, spit on it, yell at me, or write Chicken John as a write in candidate. For better or worse, here it is:

Jeff Adachi is the smartest guy in the room. Every time I see him, he’s the smartest guy in the room. The mayor of San Francisco should not be a rumpled idiot. We should have the smartest guy in the room leading us. I support Jeff Adachi for my #1 vote.

For my #2 vote, I vote for Dennis Herrera. Dennis runs a staff of 300 people. He’s a good guy. He’s not a jerk. He’s not an egomaniac. He’s fun. Funny. Full of life. He’s regal. Stately. I like him. I actually think that Dennis is going to get more votes then Jeff. But I don’t care, because if Jeff gets eliminated before Dennis, then it’s the same as voting for Dennis in the #1 slot. Same for John. I like John. I’ve done some things for his campaign. He’d be a good mayor. If he gets more votes than Dennis, Dennis will get eliminated. And my #3 vote for John will become a #1 vote for John (if both Jeff and Dennis get elimated).

If you vote for John Avalos and no one else, it’s like not voting if he gets eliminated. You MUST put Dennis on your ballot somewhere if you want to block Ed Lee. He has a chance, though a small one. This is my advice to you.

I personally do not like nor trust Leland Yee. He seems to be the sleazy politician type who says whatever the crowd in front of him wants to hear. He ran for his senate seat unopposed and went crazy with billboards and fundraising and flyers and mailers… he was running for mayor while he was running unopposed for Senate. That was kinda icky. I mean, he’s been in perpetual candidate mode, who’s doing his job?

David Chui is going to be the big loser in this campaign. It’s going to be so embarrassing for him to get less votes then Phil Ting, our assessor. I’ve got $20 that says ole Phil smokes David Chui…

Terry Baum the Green party candidate wins with the best slogan: “Let’s make San Francisco the town that everyone else thinks we are!”

Finally, Ross Mirkirami for Sheriff. If for no other reason, he will be the gentlest Sheriff in history. I don’t know why he wants that job, but if he wants it he can have it. The other people running are all cops. Don’t encourage them. Cops beat people up with sticks and shoot them in the face with rubber bullets. Fuckers. No cops for Sheriff. Ross for Sheriff. He’s not a cop.

You can vote any day at City Hall, you don’t have to only vote on Tuesday.

Go get ‘em…

Chicken

My #sfmayor slate

2011-11-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

Here it is. After quickly distilling the list down to a small group, then a smaller group, then settling on three candidates, I have my ranked choices.

#3 - David Chiu
I really really wanted David to be higher. He has super enthusiasm and is great in a small crowd, getting the group to drink the koolade. He's bright. His positions are mostly palatable. There were hints of him being politically opportunistic, but over the last couple of weeks he blew the doors open. First, he led a resolution in support of the Central Subway, as is. I've pointed out many flaws, including some that are largely ignored by the advocates. He probably could have left this issue alone for now, but he plowed ahead, despite the logical evidence that the project is flawed enough to basically be another J-Church, dumping hearings on future City leaders on how to fix a project even more physically challenging.

But today he really puzzled me. John Avalos offered a resolution supporting #occupysf to the Board. Scott Wiener had apparently worked closely with John to modify the language to produce a resolution which Scott felt more comfortable with, and many changes went in through that collaboration, but there was a "good faith disagreement" on wording over the use of force by the police. Wiener then offered the amendment for a vote. It passed 6-5, with David Chiu being the swing vote, saying that he expected the resolution to pass either way but that he wanted not a majority but a "supermajority".

Voting for the amendment - Wiener, Farrell, Chu, Chiu, Cohen, Elsbernd. The amendment passed. Of that group, only Wiener, Chiu, and Cohen voted for the amended resolution. At least one of those votes was required for passage. Chiu asserted that the resolution would pass no matter what, so we can assume he would vote for it. So he voted to add the amendment to get the votes of Malia Cohen and Scott Wiener (assuming they would not vote for the resolution without the amendment). Why bother?

The positions of the various supervisors are clear. The only *actual* difference from having the extra 2 votes would be to make the resolution veto-proof, but even then Wiener or Cohen could defect. And even then, it might be better (politically) to drop a 6-5 vote on Mayor Lee's desk and press him in public to sign or veto the resolution. Running up the score is meaningless, there is no Board of Supervisors BCS poll. To me, it just felt like he was trying to split the middle on the resolution, which to me is an insult to Avalos. Take your position and vote on it. I disagree with Wiener on this one but respect his position more than Chiu's.

Nonetheless, the people behind him in the fray have shown a lot less integrity or skill - his intelligence and position on key issues for me like Livable Streets gets him my #3.

#2 - John Avalos
John is very personable. Not as energetic as David, he is more subdued. Often that shows a person of great thought who speaks only when it's important. I don't really see that here - frequently Avalos seems a little out of his element when I watch the Board meetings. However, I do see him as being someone with absolute integrity and definite positions on issues. He has strong positions on issues that are important to me - livable streets/transit/bikes, social justice. I probably think he would be too far to the left on some issues regarding housing - I prefer to subsidize lower income people into an open market than to try to artificially control the market with rent control, I think that's a better way to produce more housing stock and get everyone into it. Somehow I think how he would work with the board would produce a balanced government - I don't see him as being a controlling Mayor like Newsom was, so having a variety of viewpoints going into City governance with a rudder that steers away from corruption would be palatable. I'm not quite sure exactly how this would turn out - so in the end the fact that I know with Avalos that we'd have a strong voice for our streetscapes wins out.

#1 - Dennis Herrera
There was no doubt Herrera would end up on this slate somewhere. He is the most obvious foil to Ed Lee at this point - I think an Ed Lee victory would be disastrous. But ranked choice voting left me the ability to put him downslate. Nonetheless, I think Herrera should go first anyway. Herrera also has presence like Chiu, but does not have the record of being politically expedient. He's been through a lot of battles as City Attorney. Our bike ride with him on SF2G showed him to be a good listener and he'd be reasonable on bike/ped issues. The biggest specific plus is that he's cracked open the pandora's box of the Central Subway and could force us to look at the project again and get some much needed improvements, and would be more likely to push for transit improvements in the corridor that would happen sooner. The discussion we had with him on this subject did not reveal him to be a transit wonk, but if he's willing to open the door that means we can be in the discussion if and when the project gets reviewed. His election would certainly be a nominal referendum on the project - as it is currently designed.

I actually have less to write about Herrera than the other two, because he's basically just solid, and I think that's what the city needs right now. The other two have a lot of positives but have nits that can be picked on. Herrera is a solid, good guy, and I would be satisfied if he wins. The same holds true of Chiu and Avalos.

The rest.
The only other candidate I would specifically say I would be not upset about is Jeff Adachi. The absolute worst case amongst the likely winners would be Ed Lee - corrupt and controlled by the Machine. Leland Yee is interesting but he just reeks of political opportunism which turns me off. Dufty is absolutely Supervisor Pothole and has done me some great personal service in the past, but completely butchered the Noe Valley Plaza fiasco. And on and on.

There you have it

#anyonebutedlee

Positive Momentum

2011-10-10T12:07:00.001-07:00

Left the house this AM to Fog disguised as rain. I slowly picked my way down the hill into the heart of Noe Valley and headed down 24th towards the Mission. As I crossed Guerrero, a black Mercedes passed me just as the road headed down the slope with about 4 inches to spare. In wet conditions like this it was super sketchy, getting hit or making an evasive maneuver could put me on the ground in an instant.

As always, the net result of this was that the Black Mercedes beat me to the stop light at Valencia by a few seconds where we both waited for the light. I passed him on the left to set up for a left turn onto Valencia, and I turned to give him a glare - not expecting to bark - and noticed him with his face focused on his iPhone which he was frantically typing into. That was too much. I barked "Ah, that's why you almost hit me, texting and driving".

Now this was a big dude, dressed and styled like the sort of guy who looks like he gets into bar fights all the time, and I really expected him to throw out a string of expletives at me. Instead he took me off guard completely - "I not driving now, seriously I only pulled the phone out when I was fully stopped at the red light! I NEVER text while the car is moving!" This disarmed me a bit but I was still a little annoyed - "If it wasn't texting, then why did you pass me with 6 inches of clearance!"

"There was no more room", he replied, and I said "Man, it's wet out here and if there's no room, wait until there is!" He replied "I'm sorry man, I totally respect you guys out here riding your bikes". If he wasn't sincere, he was a hell of a politician. I said "Love the attitude man, love it - the execution's a bit off but that's the easy part, have a good day and drive safe" and he gave me a thumbs up.

I was completely baffled by how this went down, but it sure beats the alternative. When Joe Bar Fighter in a super expensive Mercedes (I have to admit it was a very slick looking car) is embarrassed to be seen as a driver who texts or threatens cyclists, maybe we're turning the corner.

SB 910 Vetoed

2011-10-07T15:57:00.001-07:00

This is the Dumbest thing I've read in a while - and I sometimes read Rob Anderson's blog and have read things written by Sarah Palin.

Discuss.

Central Subway to Caltrain

2011-10-03T10:55:00.000-07:00

Which would you prefer?Getting off the Central Subway to get onto Caltrain, and seeing this...

Or getting off the Central Subway to get onto Caltrain and seeing this?

Perhaps you are headed downtown, and need to get across King Street to the station and you see this...

Station placement is very important for lines like the Central Subway. Otherwise you end up 20 years from now reading something like this - the answer to which would be "8 billion dollars or a time machine".

Moving the station to in front of the Caltrain station would make this line hum, and remove the tempation - succumbed to by hundreds of patrons daily - to jaywalk across King Street at 4th, which is also known as "The onramp to I-280 Southbound".

This can be coupled with eliminating the planned Brannan Street station, saving money and reducing the overall number of stations on the line. This is a lesson that was learned the hard way by Santa Clara VTA

Riding with Dennis Herrera

2011-09-30T12:39:00.000-07:00

Today Mayoral Candidate Dennis Herrera showed up for SF2G.

Herrera showed up, shook a hand or two and said "All right! Let's get some coffee". He's clearly a very high energy guy and 6:30 AM didn't really bother him. Scott asked him a general question about vision/cycling and he discussed that he is really positive on car-free Market Street. He mostly referred to bikes, which is important, to me the faster transit portion is more important but he was playing to his impression of the audience.

"If you had a time machine, and went back to when Rob Anderson sued the city, what would you do differently". He didn't quite get the subtle context, he answered that he would have insisted on an EIR in the first place, I wanted to know how he might have shepherded the process along faster once the suit was in place. He said that he had told the City to do an EIR, but they were so anxious to get the thing started that they took the shortcut.

I asked about the Central Subway, saying "If you become Mayor, what then". The answer was also a little off pivot but basically I would say he is against the status quo of the project, as has been clear. He pivots first to "I supported it when it was 600 Million but 1.6 Billion! Come on!" I think this is standard politico but my position is that there isn't much difference between 9 figures and 10 figures - either way it's a lot of money and the project should be done properly. The cost increases to me are just a very good opener to allow one to point out the problems in design.

His concept of the design flaws matches mine, and he understands the demographic in Chinatown does not match the transit system they are being delivered (They use the 30 like a 2 block shuttle bus!). Mike Sonn lives in North Beach and for a variety of reasons would really prefer Stockton to go car free - and soon rather than a subway 10 years from now - Herrera seemed to agree (why I didn't audiotape this whole thing I have no idea, so I could have a better description).

He is very high energy and engaging, chatty, friendly. And he acquitted himself fine on the bike.

Chavez was crap as always but we made it. Delivered Herrera to 3rd Street while Dave Blizard pointed out how crappy Chavez is and got a good picture that shows what we are up against on that street. Crosby mentioned that Pennslyvania is quite frankly worse than Chavez and I have to agree. "You're riding between trucks headed to the interstate and others headed North, and you're in the canyon pothole of doom" was sort of how Scott described it.

It was good to get another politico out in a small group and get to chat.

The ride was nice, relaxed pace which was just what I needed.

Central Subway Rant to Board of Supervisors

2011-09-27T15:33:00.000-07:00

David Chiu just introduced a resolution in support of the Central Subway which was joined in sponsorship by Kim, Campos, Chu, Avalos.I got a little fired up and shipped this one off.

Supervisors -
I am dismayed to hear your commentary regarding the Central Subway in the Board of Supervisors today. Certainly it has become a political football as we all know.
Full disclosure - in my opinon, there are better options for rider service than digging a tunnel. However, I think a well designed tunnel has a lot of benefit that might scale to larger solutions, so I cannot oppose the idea of such a tunnel.
However, if this subway does get built I feel it is imperative to move the Union Square station to connect directly at Powell. If we spend "over a Billion" dollars on this project, we must do it properly, otherwise it will not draw the support that will get us the money to extend the system further.
The transit dependent citizens of Chinatown - and transit dependent citizens of other neighborhoods - will be done a huge disservice if the subway goes in as it is designed. Every Saturday AM I ride the BART from the outer neighborhoods towards the East Bay. It is absolutely packed with senior citizens from Daly City who are headed to Chinatown, and whom transfer to the 30 at Powell Street Station. The reverse trip is also very common. Those people deserve a legitimate connection from BART and MUNI Metro to the Central Subway - not a series of escalators and a long walk to Union Square. The Central Subway supporters claim that the Union Square/Powell connection does exist, but as a reference the "combined" station will resemble the "Chatelet" station in Paris, which is used as a connection primarly by confused tourists who have yet to realize that the connection is worse than going above ground and walking to your destination.
This echos Supervisor Chu's call for outer neighborhood connectivity - the current design reduces that connectivity! The average age of the riders I see on those trains is well over 60. In theory the 30 Stockton will still exist, but the operations funding needed to run the Central Subway will reduce the ability to run that line at frequency.
Additionally, residents from upstream on the MUNI Metro line wishing to get to Caltrain will have their connectivity decreased. This is a route I used on a daily basis for months while I could not ride my bike due to a broken wrist. The transfer as designed is not attractive to residents of the Castro trying to get to Caltrain and will not draw new riders. And as I previously mentioned to Supervisor Wiener - the location of the Caltrain transfer station at Brannan Street drops riders off the Central Subway 2 blocks from Caltrain on the wrong side of a high speed arterial - Brannan - creating a proposition for pedestrians to either gamble with jaywalking or missing their train.
I do find it a bit unseemly that this project has clearly may have been siezed upon as a wedge issue to attack Mayor Lee in the Mayor's race. The issues that the Grand Jury has brought to the surface have been clear to transit riders for a very long time, why has City Attorney Herrera only now decided to speak up? Politics? Probably. But as a transit rider and transit advocate we sometimes have to take the few opportunities we get - I have shown up at a number of MTA meetings in the past and noted the problems with the project, knowing that I was mostly wasting my breath. The Grand Jury report and now this Mayor's election has opened Pandora's box, and the ridership wants to see what is inside.
As designed, this project benefits the people who will build it, not the people who need to RIDE the correct solution.
Reference - BART to SFO with a Caltrain connection, unused by Peninsula residents because the poor design has left the Peninsula residents without a direct connection from Caltrain to the Airport via BART, a connection they had before with a humble bus line. Surely for the billions spent on that project those riders expected they deserved to have service improvements compared to their jitney.
Thank You
John Murphy - San Francisco

Letter to Caltrain

2011-09-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Here is a letter I sent to Caltrain. I am asking (perhaps it is not clear) for Caltrain to eliminate the painful process of purchasing 8 ride tickets by giving the equivalent discount to all Clipper users. You get the same 15% discount whether you ride 8 times, or just once. And you never have to worry about expiring 8 ride tickets.If you agree, let them know.

If you agree - let them know, use this handy email link to send a message to Caltrain customer service, copying the Caltrain board and staff at the same time.

UPDATE: - Response from Caltrain

John – your letter to the Caltrain Board of Directors and Citizens Advisory Committee was referred to me for response. (Please note that Astrid Lindell is no longer with the agency.)
Your suggestion is very timely because I have been working with staff from our Finance and Rail departments to discuss the impacts of possibly eliminating the 8-ride Ticket. We are still evaluating the positives and negatives and hope to have a recommendation in the coming months. However, if we proceed with recommending its elimination, we would seek customer and community input before holding a public hearing.
Thank you for continuing to want to improve Caltrain.
Sincerely,
Rita

Here is the original letter

Dear Caltrain Board, Staff, Citizen's Advisory Committee, MTC Board Member Wiener -
I am writing to implore you to revisit your fare structure which is currently failing both your ridership and your organization. When Caltrain adopted the Clipper Card, Caltrain decided to go through the process of keeping the "8 ride ticket" portion of their fare structure. The 8 ride ticket has been a good method of rewarding riders who are frequent riders but not riding enough to justify monthly passes. The form of the ticket was a function of Caltrain's paper ticketing system. With an electronic fare system, the 8 ride ticket made far less sense, yet Caltrain has tried - and failed - to put a square peg into a round hole.
My opinion, and that of much of your very informed ridership is that the 8 ride ticket should be eliminated, and replaced with a 15 percent discount applied to all riders who pay for single rides with their Clipper Card. The 15 percent discount is the same discount current given to riders who buy 8 ride tickets. This strategy is the same as that implemented by Golden Gate Transit, which also had paper fare books but chose to eliminate that when they went to Clipper, offering a discount to all riders paying with Clipper. As a rider of Golden Gate Transit I can attest that their transition has been far smoother than Caltrain's.
While on its face, this sounds like a proposal for a fare decrease in a time of fare increases, this is a short sighted viewpoint. The troubles caused by the electronic 8 ride tickets have cost Caltrain money and tarnished the agency's reputation. I fully believe the savings to be had by those infrequent riders who manage to get a Clipper Card will be overwhelmed by increased ridership from infrequent riders who now have access to a discounted fare, and amongst your more loyal riders.
I offer the following anecdote. In August, I took a vacation and chose not to purchase a monthly pass. Instead I bought multiple different 8 ride tickets to cover the different types of trip I might take in a typical month. At the end of the month, I intended to purchase a September pass, but was left with several assorted rides left on my Clipper Card - rides which would expire in 30 days time, and could only be transferred by giving my Clipper Card which included my BART High Value ticket to someone else, also requiring me to get a new Clipper Card. So I decided to stick with 8 ride tickets. Like many other riders who use 8 ride tickets, I am discincented to ride the train - each time I ride the train I have to pay, unlike when I have a monthly pass. Caltrain loses money.
The final insult came when I decided to attend the Caltrain JPB meeting last month to address this issue in Public Comment. I arrived at the train station in San Francisco, and "tagged on" my Clipper Card and boarded the train. Arriving in San Carlos, I realized that if I "tagged off" in San Carlos, I would be taking a ride for which I had no 8 ride ticket. I would be charged cash, which would deplete my cash balance. Without a cash balance on my card, I would not be able to use any of the pre-paid rides on my Clipper Card, meaning I would be forced to pay cash for a full fare ticket from the machine instead of using the discounted ride I already paid for. In disgust, I stayed on the train but made my complaints heard to all who would listen on the train.
There are many operational incentives for switching to a single ride only with Clipper Discount. There are many more anecdotal incidents like my own, all of which result in calls to Clipper Customer Service which is a cash drain on the MTC. There are currently "Add-Value" Clipper Machines at MUNI, GGT, and BART stations. Caltrain does not have them - as a computer programmer I would wager a large sum of money that this is because someone is being paid a lot of money to produce special machines for Caltrain that sell 8 ride tickets. Without 8 rides, Caltrain could simply use the same stock machines as BART does - with a reasonable requirement that Monthly passholders purchase passes online or at Walgreens. And the single ride discount would incent those now buying paper tickets to adopt Clipper, which is a goal of the MTC. This might get those customers to ride more - replacing the revenue lost by giving them a discount. And with more riders using Clipper, fare enforcement would be greatly simplified for your conductors.
I urge you to adopt this strategy. Should the change produce a drop in revenue in practice, the answer is simple. Increase the fare for single rides, while leaving the Monthly Pass at the same price. This would convert a lot of riders who "do the math" to using Monthly Passes instead of 8 rides - and once they have a pass they become even more loyal to your service.

Thank You
John Murphy
San Francisco
tahoe@murphstahoe.com

Bike Share vs. "Car Share"

2011-09-07T09:39:00.001-07:00

Via BikePortland Commissioner Fritz: No to bike share until "dangerous" bicycling subsides we read about a City Commissioner in Portland who is against a bike sharing program there because it will produce - more bicyclists! Isn't that the point?

But she thinks that this would cause all sorts of trouble.

I may support a bike sharing program downtown when I see bike riders using downtown streets and sidewalks in a safe manner. Daily, I see cyclists in the Light rail and bus lanes in front of my office. I see cyclists riding on the sidewalks, endangering and harassing pedestrians.
I see cyclists running red lights and making illegal turns off the bus mall. And these are presumably experienced cyclists. I believe a bike rental program downtown would only add to these unsafe behaviors.

I'm trying to sort out the theory here. Until the people who *don't* need a bike share satisfy her, she wants to prevent anyone else from picking up a bike.

Part of her theory is that the people who don't normally ride (and thus own a bike) would be more likely to be troublemakers than people who do. Got it. They aren't experienced operating a bike, so we don't want to encourage it.

I wonder how the same gut reaction isn't applied to flying into say - SFO - from say - rural Kentucky - and renting a car. While the rules of the road are nominally similar across the US, California does have some different rules, for example you are not very likely to see someone in Kentucky splitting lanes on their motorcycle in heavy freeway traffic. And San Francisco can be a somewhat daunting place to drive for "locals" coming up from the Peninsula, let alone someone from Tinytown Kentucky.

Taken to the next level - let's say the person renting the car is from say, Germany - where the rules of the road are different. Apparently they aren't used to big signs - three of them - that say "NO RIGHT TURN". Especially if they are written in a language other than their primary language. Why do we allow drivers inexperienced with our roads to rent cars here? Why is there a presumption that they will behave with a dangerous piece of equipment but we don't give that same presumption to someone who wants to ride 10 blocks across Portland? Frankly I'd prefer someone who is clueless to be on a bike.

I know from where I speak. The first time I rented a car in France, it took me roughly 3 city blocks to run a red light. I had pulled up to an intersection, looked up to where I would expect a stoplight to be, saw none (in France the lights are on the closer side of the intersection), decided that I had the right of way since there was no traffic control device telling me I didn't and entered the intersection, right in front of a French Gendarme. I pulled over, he came over to my right window, at which point I spent about 2 minutes trying to figure out how to open the window of our rental car. He made the point about the red light and said something about the fine being 5000 Francs. That was about $700 dollars if I recall, but I had no clue, so I started to grab my wallet so I could pay the fine. The Gendarme said "This is a present this time, but do not run the red light". I thanked him and we sat there for several minutes familiarizing ourselves with the vehicle before once again terrorizing the French roads.

The rest of that trip was mostly uneventful, save for a time we stole a tank of gasoline. I was so used to paying at the pump with a credit card and then driving off, I filled the tank and never went in to pay. To this day I wonder if there is a warrant out for me in Grenoble.

Highway 9.

2011-09-06T14:25:00.000-07:00

This AM I did a pretty cool ride, I went up Kings Mountain, down West 84, up West Old La Honda, then up Skyline to Highway 9. As I turned left onto Highway 9, I did a quick check to see if there were any cars headed my way - this is a fast descent and I knew I could keep near the speed limit but I was in no mood to be tailgated by someone a bit too antsy. It was all clear and I headed down.

I am not the fastest descender but I managed to average 30.5 MPH on the 6.9 mile section as shown on my GPS.

As I was going down the hill, I noticed a car behind me. This gets a little dicey on Highway 9 as there are now rumble strips on the yellow line, which has altered the dynamics of someone trying to pass. I drifted to the left in the lane, wanting to prevent a pass until we hit a straight section at which point I drifted to the right and slowed down, indicating that I was yielding to the driver, who then rocketed by me with another car on his tail.

Shortly after this I noticed a sign that said "SPEED LIMIT 30 MPH". I took a quick glance down at my speedometer. I was going 37 MPH.

The two cars that had passed me had disappeared down the hill in front of me.

I was almost halfway down the hill when they passed me, and I averaged over the speed limit for the entire hill. They were obviously nowhere to be seen once I hit Saratoga.

Supervisor and Mayoral Candidate John Avalos shows up to SF2G

2011-09-02T13:01:00.000-07:00

John Avalos and his campaign guy Nate showed up at O'Dark 30 and joined us for a good ride for a Friday SF2G

Read John Avalos' plan for a world-class biking city

We took 26th to Bryant to the "Underpass of Broken Bottles and Dreams" to Cesar Chavez. I had scouted out the UBBD yesterday, maybe Ed Lee knew Supervisor Avalos was headed that way this AM and cleared it out - no shopping carts, not even a single homeless guy, and the dead rat that was adorning the path yesterday had disappeared. The lack of these amenities left the bike path ... still completely undignified. So it was good to show him this crap.

Then we took Chavez and he got to see it in its full glory - 4 lanes of not much traffic yet we still got buzzed by a truck or two.

I pointed out the "sidewalks" which will not be widened thanks to the cancellation of the original planned project. Sun Tsu could not have done it better - if you want to wage war on one group, figure out how to pit another group against them. In this case, the ongoing ability for people who hate bike lanes because it messes up their car centric lifestyle to suddenly become "pedestrian advocates" and pit pedestrians against cyclists. Sure, there aren't many pedestrians walking on Chavez. Perhaps because there are NO SIDEWALKS. Anyway, this was very useful - Avalos frankly had no idea about the project or it's "cancellation/postponement/modification" - "Wait, who did this? The *current* Mayor?" I pointed out the access to Caltrain via Chavez for Noe/Glen/Bernal/Mission.

Then we had a pretty cool ride down 3rd Street. Another rider remarked to me that he used to ride on 3rd a lot when he worked at Mission Bay, and he said "Wow this is so much better than it used to be". I had to agree. And now they have a Fresh and Easy down there. That has to be an upgrade. Right turn on Paul, left on San Bruno and up the one hill for the day, on which Supervisor Av alos did his best Mark Cavendish impression. We gathered at the little park thing at Blanken and Bayshore, took pictures, handed out literature, and pointed John to the Bayshore Caltrain station where he could get his "Bike On Board" to get back to 4th/King by 7:45 AM to make a breakfast he had downtown.

"Does Clipper work on Caltrain". "Yes, there is a blue box, tag your card on it. Then do NOT forget to TAG OFF as if you were on BART, when you get off". "OK, great meeting you". "Great meeting you too! DO NOT FORGET TO TAG OFF or you will be charged for a ticket to Gilroy".

I tried in vain to put an Avalos spoke card into my wheels, my wheels are tied and soldered so it was impossible.

We said goodbye and headed South down the Peninsula on a glorious Bay Area Morning.

Murph

John Avalos: @murphstahoe forgot to tag off

San Francisco's Central Subway - Caltrain misstep.

2011-08-16T16:11:00.000-07:00

One topic that Rob Anderson and I probably agree on, is that the Central Subway isn't a very good project. Unlike Rob, my beef is mostly that the project doesn't make sense as designed, following most of the concerns from the Grand Jury report on the project.

My primary issue is with the connection at Market Street. Reminds me of the "connection" at Chatelet in Paris. Sure, you look at the map and it looks like all sorts of lines conveniently transfer there. In practice, some of the transfers are very long walks - The walking distance from Line 7 at Châtelet to the RER lines at Châtelet – Les Halles is circa 750 metres . The Central Subway to Market Street Subway transfer isn't 1/2 a mile, it's 1000 feet, but this also requires two pretty time consuming escalator rides.

Once we get into this sort of thing, the transfer becomes very tedious, is a disincentive for usage, and the line is underutilized. That is the crux of why transit advocates cry for the money to be used elsewhere. But if the connection were good, it might just get usage and cries for the line to extend to North Beach and around towards the Marina, which would be a useful legacy for later generations.

But I digress - the title of this article refers to the much ballyhooed connection to Caltrain. Looking at the map, it seems like the "easy" transfer at Union/Powell will allow riders to skip the current roundabout route around Embarcadero to the Caltrain station, and go directly down 4th Street. But this is still fraught with simple mistakes that can really mess up a transit system.

The Central Subway blog brags thus...

the new station located at 4th/Brannan Street will provide an additional transfer point if needed to Caltrain at 4th and Townsend streets.

Brannan Street is 2 blocks away from Caltrain. After our valiant rider has ridden from the Castro to Powell, and navigated the Chatelet of San Francisco to get to the Central Subway at Union Station, they are then dumped off uncermoniously at Brannan, facing a similar connection. But unlike the Powell-Union transfer - they are faced with a 2 block walk that includes crossing a high speed South of Market arterial - Brannan is 2 lanes in each direction and not a fun street to cross - while at the same time looking at their watch wondering if they will make their Caltrain.

Alternatively, the rider could stay on the train until the current station on the East side of King Street - which seems to actually be the most obvious Caltrain transfer point. This requires that the rider wait through the light cycle at Brannan, another one at Townsend, and finally the light at King Street - a horrible intersection including cars rushing to 280 as well as the possibility of being held up by a crossing N-Judah train. Once across King, the rider would then have to cross back across King, a crossing that already exists and is pretty dodgy.

In practice, riders coming from the North will in fact get off at Brannan and run down 4th Street to make their train. Time is money, especially when it comes to missing the Caltrain - I ride my bike and take it on the train because taking MUNI makes it far too likely that I'll miss a train, and missing a train is deadly. I, like most N->S riders, work nowhere near a train station, and rely on a company shuttle that only meets certain trains. If I miss a train by one minute, I am arriving at work at least one hour later.

The best idea, in my opinion, is to remove the station at King, and put a station on Townsend, preferably on the East side of Townsend. This means that the Caltrain transfer for a pedestrian is simply a walk across one lane of 4th Street, much much safer and more direct. It also leaves a fairly close transfer to the N Judah - of course that transfer is not super valuable but it should exist.

Of course, this means that the station would be one block away from a current station - which doesn't make a lot of sense, does it? But if you take a step back, the current station merely exists where it is because it is the transfer spot to Caltrain! If the line were being designed as a whole, from the Bayview to Chinatown, there would not be a station on the East of King, the station would be just East of Townsend. The best play is to *remove* the station at King in favor of one at Townsend.

This would make the transfer much safer for pedestrians, quicker and more reliable, and removes one station from the line. The VTA Light Rail in Santa Clara County is very frustrating to ride exactly because it has too many stations. The station at Brannan adds very little except to add to the end to end runtime for the T/CS line, which decreases reliability and overall attractiveness to the rider. The only "loser" from a removal of the King Street station might be a rider coming from the South headed to Caltrain, who know has to endure the crossing of King before heading to the train - but the population center to the South of that stop is centered around ... the 22nd Street Caltrain station.

Caltrain fare overhaul

2011-07-28T16:16:00.000-07:00

I'm really interested in Caltrain ridership getting together and pushing Caltrain for a fare system overhaul.

See - SF Weekly's criticism of fare enforcement with respect to Clipper follies. Most of the issues are - as has been discussed ad naseum - a function of the fact that Caltrain's fare structure does not work well with the limitations of Clipper, nor does it exploit the huge advantages Clipper should provide.

My primary interests are
1) Removal of 8 rides and replacement with a 15% discount for Clipper users
2) Removal of zone structure and replacement with distance based fares - at least for Clipper users (relieving Caltrain of the burden of overhauling their ticket machines).

See also Aaron Kitashima on 8 rides

And a previous writing on the topic

If people are interested, please join the Caltrain (JPBX) Google group for an open discussion that I hope will result in a proposal we can bring to the Caltrain Staff, JPB, and MTC.

The google group is here

Dan Savage, Violet Blue, Rob Anderson...

2011-07-15T13:53:00.001-07:00

From Streetsblog

Most hookers in SF now use the internet and cell phones to do business. No need to stand around on street corners any more.

-Rob Anderson

Guy knows nothing about how we should be dealing with our streets, but I can totally see him being an expert on hookers.

just because of the now...

2011-07-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

From: John Murphy
Sent: Jul 11, 2011 4:26 PM
To: "'rgerharter@igc.org'"
Subject: photo usage

Rick –

Are your photos available for use for free as long as they are attributed?

http://district5diary.blogspot.com/2011/07/gays-in-city-just-another-special.html

From: Rick Gerharter [mailto:rgerharter@igc.org]
Sent: Monday, July 11, 2011 9:23 PM
To: John Murphy
Subject: Re: photo usage

Absolutely not. Why do you ask? And no, Rob Anderson did not ask my permission before he stole my photo and used it. He complains (and rightly so) about UC's bad faith, but he has no problem stealing a photo from a working photographer. Is that bad faith? I've asked him to show some good faith and remove the photo now.

Rick

From: John Murphy
Sent: Jul 11, 2011 9:26 PM
To: "'rgerharter@igc.org'"
Subject: photo usage

I ask because that guy is an asshole.

Why I might get a bit defensive on the whole "cyclists do blah" thing

2011-07-07T14:00:00.001-07:00

Alex Zapeda, a.k.a. zippy_monster got into a tet-a-tet that was somewhat spurred on by the last post. He must see a lot of things I never see - I walk around Noe Valley quite a lot and rarely get buzzed by a cyclist. Yes, I've seen a couple coming down 23rd or 24th take some questionable passage through a stop sign, but never felt put at risk. Can't say the same for the skateboarders who come zooming down the same streets - those guys are nuts and I keep waiting for a catastrophe. Fortunately as a pedestrian I can usually hear *them* coming.

Alex apparently spends a lot of time at Dolores Park - I wish I could spend more time there myself - and that area certainly attracts a different breed than the Freds like me riding down 24th Street to the Whole Foods with our trailers and extracycles. He complained about riders buzzing him on the sidewalk and (I think) on the lawn itself. I can envision that and it's certainly untoward. But not nearly as untoward as what I saw this AM...

Today at the top of Old La Honda, we were waiting on the right side of the road for the last cyclist to arrive before heading to 84. A pickup truck came screaming down from the North, laid on his horn, and made a sliding left turn onto Old La Honda, almost taking out one of us and the mailboxes on the other side of the road. Clearly he saw us and was not going to be bothered to be taking the turn with care.

Now, it turns out there is an Oak tree that has fallen over on Old La Honda and the road was closed, near the top. So it was fairly safe to assume we'd see this guy again. And we did. He was driving back up twisty Old La Honda Road at high speed - in REVERSE and came screaming into the intersection again, knowing full well that there were a half dozen cyclists standing at the edge of the road.

I just don't see how a PBR toting hipster riding down the sidewalk of Dolores Park compares.

Experimental data on cars vs bikes at stop signs

2011-07-06T14:51:00.000-07:00

A few months ago, there was a story in our neighborhood paper, the Noe Valley Voice regarding the intersection of 24th and Church. This intersection is a mess, a four way stop with a streetcar running down Church Street, and platforms for the street car in the middle of Church in both directions, resulting in a strange split in the lane. This also means that train riders are dropped off in the middle of the street and must negotiate their way to the curb as the train is departing.

Not surprisingly, this sometimes results in accidents, as the Voice reports in a story where resident Kevin Daniels has taken it upon himself to try to get something done after witnessing a pedestrian hit by a car - while walking with her two young children.

Checking the letters to the editor for the following month, we see some responses from the community.

Two local residents recount stories of being hit by vehicles at that intersection. Both drivers indicated that they hadn't seen the pedestrian, at least one was not cited.

Then, there is this...

Editor:

In response to Kevin Daniels’ request to Captain Greg Corrales for stepped-up traffic enforcement, the police have conducted a targeted enforcement of the 24th and Church intersection on the mornings of May 4 and 5.

The results have been forwarded to Captain Corrales and to the engineering division of the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA).

Of the 16 people cited, 14 were San Francisco residents. Nine were cited for failure to yield to pedestrians, three for being on cell phones, two bicyclists for failure to stop at the stop sign, one motorist for failure to stop at the stop sign, and one for not wearing a seat belt. One of the violators had a suspended license.

We will continue to conduct targeted enforcement at that location as staffing allows.

Captain Al Casciato
Traffic Company
San Francisco Police Department

There's the anecdotal proof. Two of those vicious scofflaw cyclists were cited for running a stop sign, but only one car! Aha!

However, 9 motorists were cited for "failure to yield" - also known as "running a stop sign with a pedestrian right in front of you". It's illegal to run a stop sign no matter what, running one with someone in the crosswalk is dangerous. As three pedestrians mentioned in just these two issues can attest to.

Rec and Park Commission hearing - Noe Valley Town Square

2011-07-01T10:17:00.000-07:00

Hi All,
From Todd David -

I received a phone call from Rec and Parks yesterday informing me that the Commission is holding a meeting on Wed, July 6 at 2PM.

The Noe Valley Town Square is going to be mentioned as one of the projects Rec and Park is pursuing/investigating. It would be fantastic if 5 or 6 people could join me for Public Comment.

Please let me know if you are available.

Todd

PS I will be sending out another email as soon as I get the exact location of the meeting

Contact Todd at noevalleytownsquare@gmail.com

Clipper Quiz Number 2.

2011-06-29T16:13:00.000-07:00

For all you transit nerds out there - here is another fun @BayAreaClipper quiz!

The last quiz answer was $5.50.

Question 2 - How much did I pay to go home, taking the same bus/bart/bus combo?

MUNI of the now

2011-06-27T23:51:00.000-07:00

Bay Area Clipper Card Quiz!

2011-06-27T15:02:00.000-07:00

Update: Though Professor Akit got this one right on Twitter inside of 30 seconds, we're giving it to Bret Lobree. Akit is a ringer.

Details on Akit's Complaint Department - totally agree with his assessment that MTC botched this one.

For all you transit nerds out there - here is a fun @BayAreaClipper quiz!

Yesterday I walked down the street. Got onto the 48 Bus at 24th/Diamond. I was going to go to Bryant and get on a 27, but NextBus was telling me 54 MINUTES! So I got off at Mission, and was going to take the 14 down to 16th to get a 22/33, but my kid said "I WANNA RIDE THE CHOO CHOO". So we got onto BART at 24th/Mission, took it to 16th Street BART, went upstairs, and got on a 22 to our final destination.

Summary
MUNI ride on the 48
BART ride from 24th to 16th/Mission
MUNI ride on the 22

All within 30 minutes. I used my single clipper card to pay for this trip.

Question - How much did I pay?

First correct answer wins a Growler of Beer from Firehouse/Tied House.

Apology worse than the original offense.

2011-06-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

Coming down Bryant headed towards a left onto Cesar Chavez, a car came out of their driveway right in front of me. I barked as loud as I could, the driver heard me and jammed on his brakes, crisis averted as I shot him a nasty look.

The light for the left on Chavez turned green, I headed East towards the nasty underpass of 101, and the driver pulled alongside me, rolled down his window and honked, and I looked over and he said "Sorry Amigo, I need to watch better, I am so sorry" while pointing at his eyes.

Between him startling me with the honking of the horn and him swerving around looking at me instead of the roadway, I think I was more in danger due to him feeling bad and doing an apology at 25 MPH than I was when he turned out in front of me.

Twitter >> Facebook

2011-06-17T10:17:00.000-07:00

@murphstahoe
There is no way I can possibly describe my hate for perforce
Fri Jun 17, 9:57 via tweetdeck

@scuttlemonkey
@murphstahoe anything in particular support@ or I might be able to alleviate, or just venting?
Fri Jun 17, 10:11 via tweetdeck

@scuttlemonkey
@murphstahoe I know #Perforce support monkeys are crazy-good at responding, even via email at support@perforce.com, might be worth a shot.
Fri Jun 17, 10:14 via tweetdeck
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
@scuttlemonkey - Gamer, mischief maker, tech lover, social media monkey, and all-around geek. Currently incarnated as Ecosystem Manager for Perforce Software.

Anthony Weiner

2011-06-08T14:50:00.000-07:00

The guy made a bunch of firebrand speeches, and he had some good points. He got on TV a lot because of it, and pushed hard on his opponents.

However, this isn't the first time he did something stupid that hurt his credibility.

“When I become mayor, you know what I’m going to spend my first year doing?” Mr. Weiner said to Mr. Bloomberg, as tablemates listened. “I’m going to have a bunch of ribbon-cuttings tearing out your [expletive] bike lanes.”

The cyclist community is very big, largely Democratic, and very active. I mean, when the scandal breaks, and "The Bike Snob NYC" starts circling looking for a dead body that isn't a good sign.

Especially when he follows up by photoshopping Rip Torn's Mug Shot onto the body.

Stupid usually isn't a one time event. If Rob Anderson is patting you on the back and BSNYC is on your back, you're making some pretty big mistakes.

Daily Caltrain Clipper Anecdote

2011-05-26T08:31:00.000-07:00

Riding the train this AM, the fare inspector showed up and shortly afterwards I heard a conversation going on between the inspector and a passenger. Liberal usage of the word "Clipper" ensued of course, and finally I hear "You're going to Sunnyvale? Well, you're going to have to get off at Palo Alto, buy a ticket, and wait for the next train". Which - means a one hour delay for that passenger.

He replied - "Well, I'm not going to do that. I would prefer that you write me a citation that I will contest and get overturned, thanks". Perfect. The inspector was not going to take this lying down, so he did write a citation.

After the dust settled I went to talk to the passenger, whom I recognized, he was a former bikes on board guy who ended up going with a bike in a locker at Sunnyvale. He's been riding the train daily, with a pass, for over 3 years.

Apparently he lost his wallet. He found the wallet (I think it had fallen out of his pack on the way to the train) but a few cards had fallen out, including his Clipper Card. He called Clipper and they cancelled his card and are sending a replacement that will have his pass on it, but it's not here yet. He asked them what to do, they told him to print out the receipt for the old card, and the receipt for the new card showing the same balance. He showed this to the inspector who was not happy with this resolution.

The only foolproof resolution our hero would have is to buy daily tickets. This is "better" than in the paper tickets days when if you lost your pass, you were SOL, but if we're going to spend hundreds of millions on this system, we could come up with some methodology. And despite the fact that it opens all sorts of Pandora's boxes, I do think the fare inspectors should use some judgement on their citations.

Our hero will almost certainly beat the ticket, but will probably spend more than the one hour (plus a one way from PA-SV) he would have lost had he just buckled.

Discuss.

Hotel Whitcomb - tour bus parking in "separated bike lane" on Market Street.

2011-05-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

Cyclists who commute down Market Street at rush hour run into the same issue every day. The Hotel Whitcomb, at 8th Street, fronts a green painted, post separated bike lane. Every day, tour buses affiliated with the hotel park in that bike lane.

Photo by thegreasybear on mybikelane.com

"thegreasybear" has a write up on My Bike Lane that can be found here.

On Bike to Work Day, I had the pleasure of riding in with my Supervisor, Scott Wiener. We encountered the exact same blockade, with the buses parked 3 wide, including the protected bike lane. Going around 3 buses means going into the F line tracks, and one of our entourage crashed in the tracks. I pointed this out to Scott, and later sent him this email.

From: John Murphy
To: "scott.wiener@sfgov.org" ,
"jane.kim@sfgov.org"
Cc: "MTABoard@sfmta.com" , San Francisco Bike Coaliton
tahoe@murphstahoe.com
Date: 05/12/2011 05:57 PM
Subject: Tour Buses in Market Street Bike Lane

Supervisors Wiener and Kim:

It was a pleasure to ride in to work for Bike to Work Day with Scott and
to hear Supervisor Kim describe her lessons from Deep Jawa on riding a
bike so she could ride in today. Great stuff!

What is not so great is something Supervisor Wiener got to experience
first hand this morning. Every morning at the heart of bike rush hour on
Market Street, tour buses pull inside the "protected bike lane" and park
for extended periods in front of the Hotel Whitcomb in Supervisor Kim's
district. Buses then double park in the "primary travel lane", forcing
everyone onto the F Line tracks. Supervisor Wiener also got to see first
hand how problematic riding a bike over those tracks can be as one woman
in our party caught a wheel in the tracks and crashed.

Scott asked me "Has anyone said something to them?"

Answer: The hotel and SFPD have been notified of this situation many
times, and complainants have tried to point out alternatives, to no avail.

That block is one of the centerpieces of the boasts the Mayor and the
Supervisors made this morning at the press conference - an actual
protected bike lane in San Francisco. But if it is blocked every day at
peak usage time - the inbound rush hour commute - then all it is is a
waste of plastic poles and green paint.

Plenty of people have said things to the Hotel. None of them has the
gravitas of a sitting San Francisco Supervisor. We'd love your help with
this situation.

Thanks

John Murphy - District 8

Scott's response is here.

From: Scott Wiener/BOS/SFGOV
To: John Murphy
Cc: "jane.kim@sfgov.org"
, San Francisco Bike Coaliton,
, tahoe@murphstahoe.com, Mike Sallaberry
, Kit Hodge
Date: 05/13/2011 07:52 AM
Subject: Re: Tour Buses in Market Street Bike Lane

Hi John. Great riding with you this morning!
Yes, that situation was not good. At one point all three lanes were
blocked by buses/shuttles. I'd be happy to address it with Jane, with
SFBC, with SFMTA, or whatever would be most effective. Since it's in
Jane's district, I'll defer to her in terms of how to proceed.

Scott Wiener
Member, San Francisco Board of Supervisors
District 8

And one from Jane Kim

Hi John and Scott,

I am more than happy to follow up with MTA to discuss what enforcement we
can place on Market Street to discourage tour buses and shuttles from
blocking the bike lane. I have cc'd Matthias Mormino and April Veneracion
from our office who can call MTA to discuss some immediate solutions.

Jane

"I'm TRYING to follow the law..."

2011-05-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

... you don't have to be so rude about it...

This was a new one. I entered the rotary at Division/8th/Townsend/etc... coming from Eastbound Townsend. As you go around the rotary you really have to watch it as you pass Westbound Townsend. Anyone coming from there has a stop sign and must yield to whomever is in the rotary, in theory. This morning I saw a big SUV rolling up to the stop sign and I put a little hitch into my pedal stroke and fingered the brakes because I was pretty sure that... the car BEHIND this SUV was going to tailgate the stop sign running SUV into the rotary. Which... is exactly what happened.

If the SUV was being a defensive driver, they would have waited for me, and really they never quite stopped at the stop sign, but they had a reasonably clear shot into the rotary and could clear me. The Subaru behind, however, was on a collision course with my front wheel. The driver gave sort of a passing glance but really just followed the SUV into the rotary and I barked "HEYYYYYYY". She startled, slammed the brakes, and I pointed at the stop sign. She followed me onto Townsend, rolled down her window, and said in her best Baaastun accent...

"I'm tryin to fallow the laaah here, you dahn't need to be so ruuude".

I was pretty ticked off to hear this so I yelled some garbage at her about "If you don't try harder I'll be dead". What I really should have said was this...

"What law is is that you are trying to follow? The stop sign? Because you went right through it. Now sometimes I'll admittedly roll through a stop sign, but in that case I'm explicitly NOT trying to follow the law, I've made a conscious decision to flout the law. But you were apparently TRYING to stop at the stop sign and failed to execute that tricky maneuver. How is this? Either your brakes failed (provably false as she stopped at the next stop light) or you are lying."

Cuz you know lying only makes it worse...

Capitalism

2011-04-29T13:06:00.001-07:00

I have Gout. On a daily basis I take Allopurinol to control the high uric acid blood content that causes gout flareups. When gout becomes symptomatic, uric acid crystallizes in the joints and the joint becomes very painful.

For centuries, it has been known that Colchicine can be used to treat gout flareups, references go back to 1500 BC, Ben Franklin took it for his gout.

The other day I was at the doctor and had to get a new prescription. He said "It's interesting, Colchicine has changed". I was puzzled - this was a drug from before Christ which is extracted from a plant. How could it change?

Turns out, that since this drug had been around forever, it pre-dated the FDA. So it was never "approved". Well, the FDA started an initiative to get drugs that were unapproved to be "approved". So URL-Pharma ran some tests, showed that Colchicine actually does what we've known it does for centuries, were granted 3 years exclusivity on Colchicine under the brand name "Colcrys", and they raised the price from 9 cents a pill to almost 5 dollars a pill. When you have a gout flareup you are supposed to take 2 pills immediately, and one and hour later - that now costs $15. for a drug that was developed by the ancient Greeks. All generic sales have been halted.

Here is an article from the New England Journal of Medicine

I'm considering not filling my prescription in protest. I haven't had a flareup in a very long time due to controlling the gout with Allopurinol - but interestingly, my allopurinol prescription ran out back in December. On January 1, I stopped drinking soda and have been avoiding sugars and especially high fructose corn syrup at all costs.

One symptom of gout is that when it gets bad, the crystals can form a hard deposit called a tophus. While gout is primarily considered a hereditary disease, the small tophus that had formed in my right elbow and was stubbornly hanging on through years of treatment, has almost vanished in the last four months since I stopped drinking a gallon or more of HFCS sweetened sodas daily. There is evidence that the fructose can lead to increased production of uric acid.

This isn't as conclusive as a blood test - we'll see what that says, I'm getting one before I start back up on the Allopurinol. I will be starting the medicine anyway, those gout flares really sucked, and large deposits can ruin your joints for good.

Stupid Human Tricks

2011-04-29T11:38:00.000-07:00

This was a good one.

Riding on Skyline just into Daly City the other day, I was sitting 5th wheel in a paceline as we reached this spot.

View Larger Map

We were passed by a car that realized that they had wanted to exit. The car passed us then abruptly turned right, through the ice plants, and onto the CA-1 Entrance Ramp. Nice work, Elmo.

Sorry Man, I just can't help you.

2011-04-28T13:01:00.001-07:00

Saw this comment on the Daily KOS , a left-leaning blog (well, the right would probably replace "left-leaning" with "leftist" or "communist").

Were gettting royally screwed (0+ / 0-)
Here in Delaware Co., OH, I took my wife to work at 7 am. On the way back home stopped to fill up my F-150. Reg. unleaded was $3.99, this was about 7:20 am. At 11:30 am, it was $4.15. 16 cent jump in a couple of hours.

We should change our names to the Fucks, because were fucked. - Sam Kinison

by DF Dickson on Thu Apr 28, 2011 at 10:39:52 AM PDT

I think there was something in there about gas prices and hardship, but I pretty much got lost when we were shuttling someone to work in an F-150.

Noe Valley Town Square - State of Play on the Road

2011-04-12T13:38:00.001-07:00

Or should I say the state of play on the parking lot.

Subject: Time For The Heavy Lifting for Noe Valley Town Square

Hi All,

I had a meeting with Phil Ginsburg (Director of Rec and Parks) and
Supervisor Scott Wiener last Friday.

Phil and Scott are both excited about the Town Square Project. We all
agreed that the project is unique in its public private nature.
Politically, we acknowledged there are some challenges in front of us.

The best probabilities for success of the project is for the Noe Valley
community to start a serious and significant capital campaign. To that end,
I want to create a Capital Campaign Committee. If you are interested in
serving on the committee, please email me ASAP so that we can hold our first
meeting early next week.

Thanks,

Todd David

Here's something annoying

2011-04-11T10:59:00.000-07:00

This morning Brooks and I went riding in the East Bay before work. Part of this ride is the descent of Calaveras into Milpitas. This is a fast fun descent.

Here's my strava gps log for the descent. On the right side you will see my average speed on the descent was 33.8 MPH over a 2.3 mile segment - over that segment size the GPS errors start to get pretty small.

About 1/2 mile from the bottom, the spidey senses went off and I did a shoulder check, and saw a vehicle behind me. I looked down and my GPS was reporting 34 MPH. There is one last S bend in front of me, and I drifted into the center of the lane to block the car from passing me. I didn't want to get passed in the S-bend at speed. This could hardly be contstrued as "impeding traffic" - the speed limit is 35 MPH.

Not surprisingly - I was passed right in the S-bend anyway. Shortly after the S-bend there was a speed trap, one of those signs with the speed limit posted and an electronic sign that shows the radar detected speed of your vehicle. The vehicle hit the speed trap - 47 MPH. Not surprising, as when I made the turn onto Calaveras there was nobody behind me and I was averaging the speed limit - the only way I could get caught is by someone exceeding the speed limit.

I caught the car at the stop sign at the bottom, but decided to just go on my way today. But I got a good look at the driver - a soccer mom in a mini-van with 2 kids in the car.

Caltrain JPB Meeting Clipper Rant

2011-04-08T14:37:00.000-07:00

So as noted, I went to the Caltrain JPB meeting yesterday. While everyone was clearly focused on the service cuts, I decided to instead focus on my favorite waste of time, Clipper.

There was a snippet in the Executive staff report on Clipper, about the amount of outreach Caltrain has done with the adoption of Clipper. It was not read aloud in the meeting, because they were going over their February Passenger Counts. The counts were good, in addition to the bike ridership in my last post, ridership as a whole was way up, and the weekend baby bullet had good ridership - and surprisingly did not result in reduced ridership on the adjacent non bullet trains. That's not to say that the bullet didn't "just" steal riders from the locals, because overall ridership was up, but it was still good numbers.

Anyway, I pointed out to the board that there was a snippet about the outreach, and that this was not something to be proud of and basically reiterated the points in this blog post . Director Ahmad had made some rumblings earlier in the meeting that alluded to the piece in the Merc regarding the JPB's "rubber stamp" history. I looked at him and said "This is something that you CAN do - this is broken, ask them what they are going to do about it"

I left before the copious comments on the service cuts. I had heard it all before and wanted to get a burrito and go to work. The burrito place near San Carlos Caltrain is first rate - as are the Buckwheat Banana pancakes at Mary's Depot cafe at the train station. What I did miss, was that the JPB voted to postpone a vote on the proposed reduced schedule

From the Caltrain website

4/7/11 update : The Caltrain Board of Directors at its monthly meeting voted unanimously to postpone a decision on a reducted-train schedule until April 21 and directed staff to work to identify additional funds that would make the cuts unnecessary

Kudos to Mike Rosenberg, as far as I am concerned, for putting the fire to the feet of the JPB.

Build it and they will come

2011-04-07T16:16:00.000-07:00

The staff report at the Caltrain Joint Powers Board meeting today had an interesting nugget.

Ridership on the train by cyclists bringing their bike on board increased by 1100 riders per day from February 2010 to February 2011, to a record level. An over 33% increase systemwide.

Supervisor Sean Elsbernd looked at the graphs and charts, and spoke up. "I am going to be a bit parochial here, but I see that the numbers are even higher for San Francisco". COO Chuck Harvey responded by saying that "4th and King is a very popular stop for cyclists, both arriving in the city and people in the city headed to the South Bay". Elsbernd asked about the "bike lockers" at 4th, Harvey responded that the Warm Planet bike shop was "flat out full - every day".

What's changed? Why the big increase?

I posit two things.

1) Increased bike capacity, thanks in no small part to the San Francisco Bike Coalition
2) New BIKE LANES on Townsend Street, making getting to the station much more pleasant.

Build it - and they will come.

Harvey was very energetically describing the additional on board capacity coming online this summer - 2 bike cars on every gallery set, money is in place and the plan is ready. The bike capacity portion of the presentation was more than mere afterthought - the staff is trying everything it can to show that ridership is strong and on the increase, and the cyclist program continues to be a huge - and growing - success.

Caltrain Staff Report FAIL

2011-04-05T11:15:00.001-07:00

From this month's Caltrain JPB Meeting Agenda - item 7 - Report of the Executive Director.

Clipper – Caltrain continued to make customers aware of the imminent elimination of the paper Monthly Pass. It also reminded customers of the top tips for riding Caltrain with a Clipper card: maintain a minimum $1.25 on the card; tag on and off each time for e-cash and 8-ride Ticket customers; and tag on and off the first ride of the month for Monthly Pass customers. Information was disseminated with staff visiting stations and onboard outreach, website posting,conductor announcements, station electronic message board notices, brochures, take ones, station flyers, and via ticket vending machines.

This should not be a point of pride. It should be a point of embarrassment. Currently the conductors get their daily orders from Caltrain and every day are instructed to repeatedly remind customers to have $1.25 on their cards, instead of focusing on passenger and train safety. All of this costs money, in addition to the $450,000 that MTC has allocated due to excess Caltrain customer complaints.

The Clipper Facebook page and some rumbling from Conductors on the train mentions that they are looking at ways to change the system. This better include public outreach.

Caltrain they held 4 public outreach meetings on fare increases and service cuts - meetings which predictably consisted of "Please don't cut the service". Unless someone was showing up with a check for $30 Million, the meetings were redundant.

Meanwhile, Caltrain - "train guys" - are probably going to overhaul Clipper without doing public outreach. Clipper is "Computer Programming", "Algorithms", "User interface", "Market Research". Some of the foremost experts in the world on these topics RIDE Caltrain, but do not WORK FOR Caltrain. Caltrain could leverage those highly paid professionals - FOR FREE - but history indicates (Bike Cars, no public outreach on Weekend Baby Bullet Schedule) that they are too stubborn or too incompetent to do so.

cyclists run stop signs? WTF

2011-04-04T20:52:00.000-07:00

Here is a video from my buddy Theo from this AM's ride. I was sitting right behind Theo when this happened. My Garmin GPS shows us going 23 MPH. A Honda passed us on the left, no big deal, Bayshore in SSF is pretty wide and we have a pretty posh bike lane.

There was a split in the group, as the front group amped it up to 26 MPH or so. The Honda passed 13 of us and then shot the gap and cut across the bike lane into the parking lane with yards to spare in front of a group of 13 cyclists going over 20 MPH.

This is ignorant, stupid behavior. If you are so careless, you should lose your license immediately - you are indifferent to the lives of others and should not be allowed near anything that can kill as simply as a car can. Yet we run stings on cyclists rolling stop signs in the middle of nowhere.

Clipper exploit?

2011-04-04T16:09:00.000-07:00

I am blogging from Caltrain right now. For this month I have a Zone 1-3 pass, this is my first ride of the month. Due to poor system design, I am supposed to tag on/off for this ride, exactly from zone 1-3 or 3-1. If I don't tag - citation. If I get off at BART and tag off at zone 2, I pay $4.50 to ride less than the pass I own allows, and my pass is still not activated.

This is asinine. To explore the algorithm the lovelies at Clipper designed, I decided to try an experiment. At Sunnyvale, in zone 3, I tagged on. $8.50 - the fare to Gilroy, was deducted. Then I tagged off - this should annul my trip and it did, refunding my $8.50. The question is - was my pass activated (probably not). I do know that the pass had been "loaded" - I had seen that on a ride last month (why not just activate it?).

I got on the train and found a conductor to ask if my pass was valid. He tagged my card and it said "YES ZONE 3 - ZONE 3".???

It did not say monthly.

I'm hazarding a guess that there is a bug that would allow you to tag on, annul the trip, and ride in the same zone.

I got off in Mountain View and tagged again.

Official Tea Party Memo: How to write a Letter to the Editor

2011-03-28T15:16:00.000-07:00

Fellow Patriots -

In order to further our mission we must make sure to get the word out about the high values that we hold dear. One of the great American traditions, dating back to the shot heard round the world in Concord New Hampshire, is the time honored "Letter to the Editor". It is up to you - Joe Tea Partier - to get the world our in the finer newspapers (meaning newspapers outside of the "Lamestream Media") by writing letters for submission. This may be difficult, fortunately we have instructions for you to follow.

1) Title: The title of your letter will discuss the topic at hand. Please include the word "Force" or some derivative. The letter should discuss one of the following key topics - Taxes, Abortion, Taxes, Gay Marriage, or Taxes.

2) Credentials: Immediately start your letter showing your bonafides. Depending on the topic, either indicate that you are a "small business person" - either in a hard-workin' profession like "plumber" or as a "job creator in a new fangled industry" (taxes) or discuss your faith (abortion, Gay Marriage). If the topic is taxes, be as vague as possible about your occupation, if a faith based topic be as painfully detailed as possible.

3) Blue/Red State Dichotomy: "Dichotomy" is a fancy liberal word for difference. Indicate that you are in a blue state, but that it is really really bad there due to instrusive spread the wealth socialism and loose morals, and that you are sadly going to have to abandon the blue state for a true American Red State.

4) Distribution: Send the letter to a "Certified Patriot Newspaper" in a Blue State, preferably one as far away as possible. Indicate your sympathy for patriots living in that godless high tax state.

Example:

High taxes are forcing state business exodus

I have a multimillion-dollar Internet business in Chicago. Due to tax hikes, I will be leaving Chicago, but not because I am greedy. I cannot afford to pay 60 percent in taxes and expect to survive my competitors. I was looking to open my business in California, either Los Angeles or San Francisco. After calculating the taxes, I could not afford to bring my business to any placein California.

I would have the same problem in California that I had in Illinois. But not only would my business not survive in California, my 10 employees could not afford to live there, and I was told that their taxes would be just more than 50 percent of their income. Final decision: We are all moving to Florida. There, we will only have to pay up to 40 percent in taxes. My business would still be competitive and I think I can hire 10 more employees.

I wrote this letter to inform Californians of the reason that businesses can not survive in the state and have left to move to low-tax areas in the country.

Ann Martinelli, Largo, Fla.

5) Proofreading: Never fear. The "Certified Patriot Newspaper" will do all the necessary spellchecking for you. Do not worry about fact checking. Saying you live in Chicago and are "moving to" Florida, yet your byline says you are in Florida is unimportant. The fact you say you have a "multimillion-dollar Internet business", yet you don't exist on Linked In, nor can any reference to your name be connected to any business at all via "The Google" is just fodder for liberal busybodies who don't work hard and earn an honest day's pay. Nevermind that the City that the "Certified Patriot Newspaper" is in just rolled out a huge tax break for a "multiBILLION-dollar Internet business" that employs thousands of people, or that you aren't very likely to attract the calibre of "internet programmer people" (a.k.a. liberals) to employ in Largo, Florida that you would in Chicago, Los Angeles, or San Francisco. These are just details that the godless left will use to try to besmirch your patriotic vision.

Putting a bandaid on a tumor

2011-03-22T12:55:00.000-07:00

Yes, Clipper on Caltrain again.

The fare readers at the stations have been emblazoned with little signs.

This one says "Always have $1.25 on your card".

The other side of the box says "Don't forget to tag off".

Of course, if you don't have $1.25 on your card, you can't do anything about it at the time you see the sign. This, in theory will be fixed.

If you see the fare reader, you really don't need to read the sign that says "Don't forget to tag off", by the time you have focused on the fare reader itself, the little additional message isn't really going to change things. If Caltrain wants to "address" the tagging off issue, they need to stop hiding the fare readers.

Caltrain is also using the bandwidth on their platform LED signs on these reminders, as well as training their conductors to make these reminders.

Of course, as I have said, the problem is the fare structure itself. It would be far simpler to have people think "I need to have enough cash on my card to pay for my ride". If they do, then they have at least $2.50 - the lowest Caltrain fare - which is more than $1.25. Get rid of eight rides, problem mostly solved. Simplify loading of a Monthly pass - if a rider has purchased a monthly pass, don't "start" a trip when they tag on - just activate the pass and be done with it. If they want to go "further" on that trip, right now they could buy a paper upgrade, later they should be able to tag on again, indicating an open ended trip beyond their monthly pass, with Clipper calculating the upgrade when they tag off.

If you put a million bandaids on a tumor - you still have a tumor, and you spent all your chemotherapy budget on bandaids.

If they refuse to change the fare structure, and want to spend money on reminders, there's probably a better way. Give one of these to all the conductors and after they scan people's cards, they can give a "Complimentary Tag Off Reminder" for people to tie around their fingers.

People who don't fathom repurcussions of their actions.

2011-03-11T13:55:00.000-08:00

From a co-worker.

This nice drunk lady decided to nearly kill me last
night on my way home. I was on Lafayette heading to the SC Caltrain
stop on that part that goes under the tracks that has no sidewalk or
shoulder. So I took the lane to head down and she literally rear ended
me, didn't even try to swerve. I was probably going about 20 and I
think she had 10-15 on me. I was thrown off the bike (luckily so I
didn't end up under the truck). She ended up being arrested for felony
dui and I ended up in the trauma unit, just with some bumps and scrapes.

I'm just wondering what I should do from here, my bike is totaled (rear
wheel pretty much disintegrated and the frame snapped), everything I was
wearing was shredded. I know you have more experience with this stuff
than me.

I had already taken the lane and was about
halfway through the tunnel when she hit me. So it wasn't [like] I swerved in
front of her.

I just talked to him - the woman was drinking at home with her family and lived nearby. She was just "running out to get a pack of smokes". The family walked over and since she was headed to jail, asked to take the car - the officer replied that he had to impound it since it was registered under her name, and besides you are all obviously drunk.

I asked him to make sure he follows up with the DA and that I'd send out a sigalert to send letters to the DA recommending maximum sentencing when the time comes.

Agent Akit finds some very interesting nuggets

2011-03-04T15:47:00.000-08:00

From Akit's Complaint Department - some very interesting nuggets.

A "change order" of $450.000 for additional Customer Service center support. The complaints about Caltrain are overwhelming the telephone lines that they need additional people to take-on the help.

and

Statistically, Caltrain is only 2% of Clipper's transaction volume, but more than half of the phone calls to the customer service center is about Caltrain problems.

Go check out his post - good read.

Unclear on the concept

2011-02-25T14:55:00.000-08:00

Here is a tweet from @CTWkendBullets - as far as I can tell an official Caltrain Twitter Account.

Take Caltrain Weekend Bullet to Disney On Ice 3 pm show at San Jose HP Pavilion. Show Caltrain ticket; save $5. http://bit.ly/iiQbsn

The one bullet on the schedule arriving before the show - arrives at 1:03 PM - 2 hours before the show. There is a local arriving 10 minutes before the show (probably not enough time for kids) but also one arriving an hour and ten minutes before the show. With young kids, longer on a train is probably better than 2 hours roaming around HP Pavilion to save 20 minutes on the train.

I have definitely changed my position on a lot of the station closures (though Hayward Park? Why?) but Caltrain should have been more aggressive with this pilot and put in MORE BULLETS, and REMOVED some local trains. Say for example going with every other train on the bullet schedule. Optimally increased ridership along with increased support, they could run 30 minute headways on the weekend, with every other train being a bullet.

Caltrain cuts. Unacceptable.

2011-02-17T12:46:00.001-08:00

I'm going to San Carlos to spit in the wind tonight.

Caltrain cannot cut *anything*.

A large number of people who take the train do not do so by coincidence. They structured their lives the way they have precisely because the train exists. I live in San Francisco and work in Sunnyvale solely because of the train - roughly as the schedule exists today.

The proposed schedule will not suit my needs. Taking a bike on board will become an exercise in folly, the sum capacity of trains will not fill overall demand and one could find themselves bumped off the last train - stranded. My company runs a shuttle to the proposed to be closed Lawrence Station. They could switch to Sunnyvale, but the shuttle cannot make a round trip in under the 30 minute headway of trains, meaning only 1 shuttle per hour for my company. The only VTA connection is from Santa Clara - also on the chopping block. Missing a train in SF by 1 second would cost me 1 hour - or an entire day of work - and with MUNI's unpredictability, the padding in my schedule would be intolerable. I would have to abandon the train, removing a critical block in my lifestyle. I would be forced to move, and I would not be alone.

If and when Caltrain recovered their funding, they would find that a substantial portion of their ridership is lost forever, having made changes in their lifestyle that rendered Caltrain obsolete. Potential new riders would not be groomed during the down time - residences near Belmont or Burlingame train station would attract solely people who have no interest in public transport. It could take decades to rebuild what was in place.

One could argue that we would be better served if the ridership moved closer to work. This could be true - but I won't be moving to Sunnyvale. I will be moving to Portland or Boulder and taking my tax dollars and job creating entrepreneurship along with me. It would be a big loss if the next Jerry Yang or Larry Page decided to attend MIT instead of Stanford due to the Bay Area's lack of dedication to what could be a great mass transit system. We are uniquely prepared for the future because we have in place a better skeleton of transit than most of the US - let's not throw that away over pennies.

The next stop is your, pardner!

2011-02-16T11:50:00.000-08:00

Last week the Bay Citizen published an article listing San Francisco's most dangerous streets for cyclists. They basically collected all the data on accidents including a bicycle and mapped them out.

I'd argue that the analysis is backwards. There's a certain probability of an accident at any given location if you are riding through it. In order to get that number, you have to normalize the number of accidents by the number of trips. The reason that places like Valencia and Market have the most accidents is that they are the most popular roads to ride on - and this is because they have been determined through experience and tribal knowledge to have the best balance of safety and utility. Certainly riding down 22nd Street from Sanchez to Church - a 28 percent gradient - would be a lot less safe, but there are no recorded accidents there!

The article also discusses fault, which brings up the issue of police bias. Over and over again we see instances where the driver made an error, but no citation is made. (Aside - I'm still trying to figure out the legitimacy of an argument made by Burlingame PD that an accident report assigning fault is effectively the same as a citation in terms of insurance *and* points on your license). Generally speaking, cyclists feel that the police often suffer from a windshield perspective and are dismissive of cyclists. The other day, I encountered an officer who doesn't share that perspective.

On Caltrain NB 267, a passenger boarded at Sunnyvale and started ranting, berating the other passengers. "You afraid I'm going to rob you? I should. Kiss my a**. I should kick your a**. You gonna call the po po? I'd f**k your shit up but I don't want to go back to jail."

This was a bad scene. We were in the bike car and there were some strapping guys in there, but this guy was a mean looking character, and young. I started fiddling with my phone trying to figure out if there was a surreptitious way to alert the conductors or police. I wasn't the only one - and the hooligan noticed. "You got your iPhone gonna try to get the po po to save your ass???"

Suddenly, the rider across from me said "OK - ENOUGH. THAT'S IT PARDNER, YOU'RE GETTING OFF AT THE NEXT STOP." I looked over and he was flipping open his wallet to reveal... a Police Badge! He waddled down the bike car in his Sidi's and between him and the 2 conductors who had finally arrived, set this guy straight and evicted him in Mountain View.

Best I can tell he's Menlo Park PD. He gets on at Tamien - as soon as the scene settled down we went back to discussing service cuts and he was concerned about losing his station.

Don't mess with the Bike Cop!

Random non-Caltrain post - Mariposa and Pennsylvania

2011-02-15T14:06:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the worst paved intersection in San Francisco - Pennsylvania and Mariposa - has been repaved. I'm surprised that intersection hasn't cost me more spokes than it has and a couple of teeth.

Thanks DPW.

Clipper on Caltrain - stupid, swindling, or both?

2011-02-14T10:36:00.000-08:00

Update from the comments via Dan Connelly which is pure gold - I'd love to see someone give this comment at one of the Caltrain forums.

A nontrivial revenue loss from canceling the Gilroy train, as is presently planned in Caltrain's "lay a turd" schedule proposal, is the "swindle" will essentially be over: they'll have only 4 zones with which to play.

From the comments, berk says...

Being charged a ride from SF to Gilroy, by default, is stupid and reeks of poor systems design, swindling, or perhaps both.

A recurring theme on board the trains these days - that Clipper was put in place because Caltrain is trying to "rip off" their customers. A rider on the train the other day had tapped his card twice in San Mateo on the way South, thus tagging on and then annulling his tag on. He wasn't checked on the way South, and "tagged off" at Lawrence - actually tagging on at Lawrence and eventually paying cash for a ride to San Francisco. This put his cash balance below zero, and despite six eight rides on his card, he was unable to board Northbound that evening. The conspiracy theorists came out - Caltrain is doing this because they are greedy! The system was designed as it was because they sat in a room and figured out how best to screw the riders!

I made what I thought was a pretty clear case that Caltrain isn't greedy - it's not like they are Bank of America, enriching themselves and their shareholders at the customers expense by nickel and diming them. And that I really think the people at Caltrain are decent folk, and wouldn't try to rip us off. Of course, the rebuttal to this was the story about Mike Scanlon's salary.

Fun fact - BART charges you $5.20 when you enter the BART system. If you don't "tag off" when you leave, you will be zinged for that fare. The fare inside San Francisco is $1.75 - if you forget to tag off, sorry pal. Of course, this isn't as onerous as charging you the $10.90 fare from Pittsburg to SFO, but it's true nonetheless. People just don't notice it because you nobody "forgets" to tag off of BART - if you skip the fare gates, it's pretty much intentional fare evasion (and you don't have to have $5.20 on your card to enter the system).

People forget to tag off from Caltrain for several reasons. Obviously, the system is not enclosed. We haven't been "trained" to tag off - I've gotten a lot better over time, that's for sure. But Caltrain has not really done its part. There are not enough tag readers at the station, and they aren't exactly in the best locations - as this photo shows...

More readers, at established places on the platform where the train doors would generally open, near transfer points or exits, would greatly help. Instead Caltrain has just deferred and called it "user error", rather than proactively trying to assist their customers. Signage in the train urging people to tag off is useful, but pretty lame in the whole scheme of things - it certainly hasn't done the trick.

The problem is user error. That's what we expect out of Redmond, not Cupertino.

The upshot is that Caltrain has produced a PR debacle at the exact moment where they are also asking their ridership to help them campaign for new taxes to support the train.

Stupid and reeking of poor system design, swindling, or both?

create free polls | comment on this

Caltrain sucks at Jenga

2011-02-10T13:42:00.001-08:00

Pablo writes in the comments...

Interestingly, the Sunnyvale station would get much better service. On the other hand, Intel/Yahoo/McAffee/Mission College/etc employees would be 5 miles away instead of 3 miles today. I wonder if they considered the increased cost in time and otherwise for the shuttles.

I doubt it. I have seen few examples of Caltrain making decisions based on how that decision impacts the entire system. Nothing operates in a vacuum. If you see a very pretty Jenga tile, you can't just pull it out without disturbing the whole stack.

Example: Caltrain cut SB train 236 from the schedule based on total ridership of that train. Fair enough. What they didn't understand was that train was very popular with cyclists. The train left San Francisco at 9:37 AM. At that time of day, there are few options for travelers to get from the station to their destination once they get onto the Peninsula - the Corporate Shuttles have stopped running, VTA and SamTrans limited frequency has become even more limited. But a bike will get you there.

By displacing these riders, capacity in the bike car of the surrounding trains was strained. Train 138, a local departing at 10:07, absorbed a lot of those riders, and has been bumping customers who then have to wait one more hour to get onto the train. Nonetheless, Caltrain did not predict this effect and make sure that train 138 ran with a 2 car gallery consist. This move also displaced Stanford riders who actually can take the Margarite Shuttle all day long - many of them switched to train 230 - due to a preference for a train with a skip-stop schedule. 230 is now full of cycling and walkon passengers going to Palo Alto - the most popular stop in the system outside SF. Caltrain could have adjusted to this demand by modifying bullet #332 to stop in Palo Alto instead of Menlo Park - at 9:35 the Menlo Park stop will only serve those who can walk directly to their office, and train 230 serves Menlo already.

Speaking to the shuttle issue. While I worked at AMD, once the bullets came in a petition was circulated amongst the shuttle ridership requesting that the shuttles start running from Mountain View instead of Lawrence. This was a very popular idea - a savings of 30 minutes on the train was easily worth a 5 minute longer shuttle ride. In theory, the Intel shuttles could use Sunnyvale - with the skip stop service the door to door time for riders might even be faster. Except that I can't really figure out where at the Sunnyvale Caltrain station the shuttles will park. The Mountain View station has a shuttle bay designed in - but it is already oversubscribed with Bauer buses lining Evelyn Street. There is also the issue of the length of the headways - it is not a slam dunk that a bus could drop off passengers at the (homebound, evening) train, get back to the office, pick up more passengers, and get back to the train in time - 30 minutes if they use Sunnyvale. SV to Intel, half a dozen stops, and then on to Sunnyvale? Doubtful that it could be done reliably. If not, then shuttle service can only run hourly. On the way home this might not be so bad, but if you are relying on something like MUNI to get to the Caltrain, and you miss the train you need by one minute, you get to work an hour later.

Other issues. When I don't have my bike, and am on a train that doesn't have company shuttle service, I can use Santa Clara station and the VTA route 60, directly. Without it, there is no manner I can go from Caltrain to VTA and get to work within 90 minutes and some convoluted transfers (Sunnyvale is a 12 minute bike ride). VTA's system map was in part designed based on Caltrain stations existing. Remove the stations, break the bus system. (Sunnyvale is a 12 minute bike ride).

As far as the beloved bike cars - would you try to get the "last train" knowing that trains at that time occasionally bump cyclists already? Getting bumped would be.. 21 hours delay! With this "off the cliff" unreliability - cyclists will abandon Caltrain. While this might put a smile on Mike Scanlon's face in the short term, the cyclists won't be finding an alternative that involves the train - in most cases there ARE NO alternatives other than driving. That's a decent chunk of Caltrain's ridership already.

The proposed schedule is simply unworkable - suicide. I do think it's mostly a draconian threat in order to bring a call to arms, but this sort of passive aggressive corporate management isn't really befitting a CEO that makes 400,000 per year.

Useless

2011-02-09T16:01:00.000-08:00

Completely useless

Caltrain rider forgets to tag off, stranded in Mountain View for "3 to 5 days"

2011-02-03T21:13:00.001-08:00

Anecdote related to me on Caltrain today.

A rider I know got his brand new Clipper Card. He set up autoload for 8 ride passes, and put $5 in cash onto his card, per instructions from Clipper, that you need to have at least $1.25 in cash in order to use your 8 rides. This is because (insert broken record) the system deducts the full fare for the longest trip possible, and refunds you when you tag off.

He tagged on this AM in San Francisco, and Clipper charged him $12.50 - the fare to Gilroy. In Mountain View, he forgot to tag off. Had he tagged off, the $12.50 would be refunded, and he would have one of his 8 rides deducted. Since he forgot, he was not refunded, and his cash balance went to negative $7.50.

That evening, when he tried to tag on - he saw "TRAVEL INVALID". This was because he didn't have "at least $1.25 in cash on his card". With no Clipper Kiosks on the platform, he was forced to add value online - and wait 3-5 days for that cash to appear on his card, before he could use his 8 ride tickets.

Oops.

His only option was to buy a 1 way paper ticket from the machines. Well, not his only option, he basically bullshitted the conductor into letting him on (The conductor's reader was broken anyway), but his card is dead unless he finds a live kiosk or waits 3-5 days.

The High Value Ticket would prevent this problem.

Caltrain service/fare cuts release.

2011-02-03T15:35:00.000-08:00

From our friends in San Carlos

Media Contact: Christine Dunn

Caltrain Sets Public Hearings: Proposed Service Reductions, Station Closures, Fare increases and Declaration of Fiscal Emergency

The Caltrain Board of Directors today set two public hearings to receive comments on possible service and fare changes, station closures as well as to declare a fiscal emergency.

Caltrain Executive Director Michael J. Scanlon called the board’s action “the first step in the process” and said, “Hopefully, we will be able to come up with additional funding sources before we are forced to implement drastic service changes.”

Operation of the current 86 train schedule would result in a $30 million deficit. With projected available funds, Caltrain would be forced to operate 48 trains only during weekday peak-commute hours. In addition, service would be suspended at up to seven of the following stations: Bayshore, South San Francisco, San Bruno, Burlingame, Hayward Park, Belmont, San Antonio, Lawrence, Santa Clara and College Park.

All other service would be eliminated, including weekday service outside the commute peak, service south of the San Jose Diridon station and weekend service.

Service for special events, including baseball games and Bay to Breakers, also would be suspended.

A 25-cent increase to the base fare also will be considered.

Caltrain’s fiscal year begins July 1 and changes to service would take effect July 2.

The public hearings will be held at the March 3 Caltrain Board meeting at 10 a.m. at 1250 San Carlos Ave. in San Carlos.

In addition, four community meetings will be held throughout the Caltrain service area to give the public additional opportunity to review proposals, ask questions and provide comment.

Feb. 14 – 7 p.m. San Jose City Hall
200 East Santa Clara St., city council chambers
San Jose

Feb. 16 – 6 p.m. San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
1 South Van Ness, Atrium
San Francisco

Feb. 17 – 6 p.m. Gilroy Senior Center
7371 Hanna St.
Gilroy
Feb. 17 – 6 p.m. San Mateo County Transit District

1250 San Carlos Ave., second floor auditorium

San Carlos

Comments also can be e-mailed to changes@caltrain.com; sent by regular mail to District Secretary, Caltrain, P.O. Box 3006, San Carlos, CA 94070; or telephoned to 1.800.660.4287 (TDD for hearing impaired only 650.508.6448).

Caltrain relies on contributions from its three partner agencies - the City and County of San Francisco, the San Mateo County Transit District and the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority – to balance its budget.

Information about the proposed declaration of fiscal emergency and service and fare changes will be posted on the Caltrain website – www.caltrain.com - by Feb. 9.

Last year, SamTrans was forced to reduce its annual contribution to Caltrain. As a result, four midday trains were eliminated, staffed ticket offices were closed and zone fares were increased 25 cents.

This year, SamTrans is expected to reduce its annual contribution to Caltrain to approximately $4.8 million, a reduction of approximately $10 million. If the other partners follow suit, the budget shortfall is expected to be $30 million.

More on Millbrae BART Caltrain Clipper transfer

2011-02-03T10:18:00.000-08:00

Pictures tell 1000 words.

This line was to tag off the Caltrain at Millbrae before we could enter the BART system. 10 people had already tagged off before I took this photo. 8 people in total could not complete the tag off transaction, go 30 yards to the BART faregates, tag into the BART system, before finally the BART train that was on the platform when we arrived, departed without us. Instead, we waited for the next train, 15 minutes later. 2 hours of lost time from one Caltrain, for lack of more readers, more appropriately placed readers, or a better software setup that would tag us off Caltrain when exiting BART. Multiply this by dozens of trains per day, 200+ work days per year.

I hadn't seen lines like this before - but February has brought with it the end of the paper eight ride tickets.

Down with 8 ride tickets!

2011-02-01T11:37:00.000-08:00

Now that I think about this...

Caltrain is ending paper 8 ride tickets. They should just end *all* 8 ride tickets.

An 8 ride ticket gets the rider a 15% discount on their rides, when purchased in bulk. The simplest answer for Caltrain would be to just sell "Caltrain Cash" at a 15% discount. So for $17, you can get $20 in Caltrain value. Done. Tag on, tag off, pay the cash fare, same as anyone - but with discounted dollars.

With that, the Caltrain clipper system is greatly simplified. Buy a pass, or buy "Caltrain Cash". As it stands, I currently have 3 different 8 rides loaded onto my card, to cover my most likely trips. It was annoying to load them all because the Clipper readers can only "load" one product at a time.

This will really benefit riders - and Caltrain. Currently if I have a Zone 1-3 8 ride, I can't use it to ride from Zone 4-2, even though the cost of the ticket is the same. This is an artifact of the paper system - you couldn't buy a "3 zone ticket" because it wasn't clear where you got onto the train for citation purposes (with the Validators, in theory the Conductor could figure it out, but that's not very efficient). With a Clipper Card, all the tag reader needs to know is "Did you tag on". With the conductor issue solved, they can go to a seamless system.

This would greatly simplify the software on the Clipper end, and the user interface as well. It solves various issues like "Why can't I use a zone upgrade with my 8 ride" - because you effectively can.

This has the benefit to the rider of being able to get the volume discount even though they take an atypical trip. Right now, with my 1-3 8 ride, going from San Francisco to Sunnyvale is $5.53. But sometimes it might be more convenient for me to use Lawrence (zone 4) but since I don't have an 8 ride, the fare is $8.50. I'd be much more likely to take that extra zone if I automatically get to pay the discounted rate of $7.22.

In a perfect world, the "Caltrain cash" could be applicable to the purchase of a Monthly pass, allowing people to more easily move between 8-rides and passes for months where they ride more, and ones where they ride infrequently.

The $20 denomination is the same as a 1 zone 8 ride ticket now, but would allow riders who go longer distances to purchase volume tickets for fewer rides, allowing them to try out the system without as much commitment.

Convenience. Simplicity.

The only downside is that this would probably reduce the amount of "shrinkage" that Caltrain benefits from, but that should not be the goal of a ticketing system - Caltrain is not Bank of America, they are a public agency and nickel and diming should not be their strategy. But with a simpler, more user friendly system, they are likely to make up the shrinkage in increased ridership that comes from a happier ridership.

The monthly pass product needs to stay for now - because of the dearth of Clipper readers at the station.

Clipper, Caltrain, 8-rides, Monthly passes.

2011-01-31T11:20:00.000-08:00

@jack650 asked me the following question which dovetails with the @skid commentary.

Do you know if I can switch from an initial 8-ride later to Monthly pass on Clipper? Thanks.

The answer - generally, is no. The question isn't completely specified - does he want to switch to a Monthly the same month, or in a future month. Definitely you cannot apply 8 rides towards a Monthly pass. But this brings up something that has been a huge annoyance for me in the past, and in fact currently.

In December, I was out of town for a week or two. Add in some days where I rode to work, and I was only going to get say 60% value out of a Monthly Pass vs. just buying 8 rides. So I autoloaded some 8 rides on my Clipper Card and started tagging on and tagging off.

In the past, I would do this with paper tickets. When the month ended, if I had extra rides on my 8 ride ticket, I would usually give them away to a friend, but there was also always a secondary market for 8 ride tickets on Craig's List.

Now, as January began and I had a couple of eight rides left, if I wanted to go with a pass, I would basically forfeit the 8 ride tickets. The 8 rides expire in 60 days. If I bought a pass, I would need my card and the 8 rides would basically be unusable.

The only way out that I can see is to get a brand new Clipper Card, load the pass onto it, and give away the old card (after disconnecting it from my Credit Card). This certainly is not the intent of the system.

To me, the perfect setup is to just charge cash, but give graduated discounts as the month progresses, incenting riders to ride more often and get the volume discounts, without them having to figure out how to keep from getting gamed by the system.

As it is, I am in 8 ride ticket hell for now and am thus incented to ride as little as possible! Especially once I zero out my 8 rides and must then pay cash for the rest of the month, lest I start up another 8 ride ticket. Aside from Caltrain getting less money, in theory every time someone who holds a pass rides "for free", we all "win" by getting cars off the road/less pollution. Every rider - even after they stop contributing additional funds, means Caltrain "earned" something towards their overall utility function.

Lord only knows what would happen if I did buy a February Monthly Pass and tried to validate it by tagging on/tagging off, with 8 rides still valid on my card. The system checks to see if the user has a valid 8 ride or Monthly Pass - what does it do if you have both . I wouldn't be surprised if it caused a Segmentation Fault and took the whole system down. Fun for the whole family.

Great commentary on Clipper from @skid

2011-01-28T14:27:00.000-08:00

@skid

it's so ridiculous that with the right software changes we would all be praising the clipper transition instead of cursing it

Spurred on by me forgetting to tag off on a Southbound trip in the AM, at which point it's impossible to go to Gilroy, yet being charged a Gilroy trip.

@skid

Clipper's primary failure is modeling an electronic system after the paper one. So it inherits the shortcomings of both

Part of what Ammon is getting at here is this. I can ride from Millbrae to Mountain View (20+ miles) for the same amount of money as he pays riding from San Bruno to Broadway to grab a sandwich (4 miles). When BART came online with their distance based fares, they did so because the whole thing is "tag on/tag off". Now that Caltrain with Clipper works that way, they could obsolete the zone system completely and just charge by distance. The zone based system that made paper tickets easier to check, was kept despite going to an electronic ticketing system for which a zone based system wouldn't make sense in the first place.

This also applies to things like 8 ride tickets - also an artifact of paper ticketing. Instead of 8 ride tickets, Caltrain could simply apply discounts for riders who ride a certain amount in a certain timeframe - maxing out at the price of a monthly pass.

I think the concept of buying a monthly pass needs to be kept around - where riders don't need to tag on or off, because of the limited availability of translink readers at stations (Pass holders don't have to tag on or off).

D8 DCYF Meeting

2011-01-28T11:59:00.000-08:00

Well, I won't say it wasn't worth going, I did get to talk to Gillian Gillett and also Liz Lian Ungar from Friends of Noe Valley. And I learned a little - not necessarily anything applicable, but sometimes academic exercises are useful.

DCYF is an organization that has a pot of money from yet another ballot box set aside, that it distributes to non-profits who write grant applications. The grant cycle just ended with some distributions, if I understand it correctly, so they start anew looking at what neighborhood needs are.

Basically, Noe Valley isn't getting any of this money, and maybe that's just as well. We have a pretty solid support structure, and the problems we face in the Family/Children/Youth space aren't the sort that you solve with barrels of money anyway.

About 30 people showed up. Roughly ten of them we'll call - "People from the City", DCYF staff, consultants, Supervisor Scott Wiener. There were roughly ten parents of children age 2 through late teens, from Noe and Duboce Triangle for the most part.

The last ten or so people caught my attention and gave me some understanding of the scope of DCYF. After a few comments about after school programs for middle schoolers, a transgendered person spoke up and talked about the need for homeless transgender and queers in the 18-24 year old range to have programs for them so they have a place to go, and maybe something to eat. OK - this definitely isn't just a meeting to discuss pre-school options for Noe Valley Stroller Moms! They were outside afterwards doing a post-meeting wrapup session - to them this meeting was important to try to show numbers and get some help. Frankly they were probably the closest thing to the charter of DCYF.

Most of the applicable commentary to me - a father of a 2 year old in Noe who hopes to be able to send his son to school nearby and have something to entertain him with after school - also nearby - was mostly off topic for the meeting. Of course we did go into that topic, which is basically the school assignment system. Turns out there is also some trouble that you might get the school you want, but might have trouble enrolling in after school programs in the same neighborhood - one parent complained that they got into Alvarado School in Noe, but then AFTER school they had to truck over to Japantown.

Other random topics - why not throw in the trouble between dog owners and parents (this time in Duboce, not Noe Courts), Swim lessons closer to D8 was brought up as well.

Noe Valley/Glen Park/Castro Community Meeting, Jan 27, 7 PM

2011-01-27T10:51:00.000-08:00

What are the needs of children, youth & families in District 8?

The SF Department of Children, Youth & Their Families wants to know.

We are conducting a citywide Community Needs Assessment and we want to hear
from your community.

DCYF is hosting a community meeting in partnership with the Friends of Noe
Valley and Upper Noe Neighbors.

Please join us:

Thursday, January 27, 2011

7:00-8:30pm

James Lick Middle School’s Auditorium

1220 Noe St.

All community members of District 8 are invited to participate in this
meeting. For more information or questions, please contact Maria Porter at
DCYF at mporter@dcyf.org or at 554-8791

D8_CNA_Flyerv2

Caltrain funding rant.

2011-01-25T14:16:00.001-08:00

The absurdity of this situation is beyond comprehension.

There is a $30 Million deficit. Meanwhile, Caltrain is spending $165 Million to put in three grade separations and elevate the San Bruno Station.

Grade separations are certainly a helpful thing. But what irks me is this. According to the 2010 ridership stats San Bruno station is used by ~380 riders daily. Meanwhile Caltrain cancelled trains 236, 237, 256, and 257 – trains that carried roughly 1100 passengers daily. Why is it that the riders of those trains are expected to use a different train, but the people of San Bruno – who have voted against Caltrain with their feet – are not expected to use a different station? Millbrae Caltrain/BART is 2 miles from San Bruno station and has a lot of parking. San Bruno BART is 1 mile away from San Bruno station.

Eliminate stations – not trains. Run faster trains, attract more riders – the same fact sheet indicates that the average Caltrain trip is twenty miles. Running with fewer stops – permanently – provides a superior service on the whole that will attract more riders and removes the cost of maintaining, upgrading, and rebuilding the underutilized stations.

This is already proven – since the introduction of limited and bullet service, the stations with bullet service have seen an increase in usage, and the ones without have had decrease in service – it is not far fetched to conclude that the people living near Hayward Park (current ridership 227 per day) simply started using Hillsdale instead – the extra time to the train more than made up for by a faster trip to their destination.

Of course, we then get into the issue of “Capital vs Operating” budgets. If Mike Scanlon is really worth $350,000 per year, he can work on solving that problem. He has the access – US Congresswomen, Mayors, and CA assemblymen are showing up to these meetings.

On another note, SamTrans – also run by Mike Scanlon – has reduced funding to Caltrain last year and is threatening another reduction. This for service that is inferior and in many ways duplicative to Caltrain and BART. Why? Occam’s razor says – if SamTrans funding were cut, there would be no “Friends of SamTrans” with Congresswomen and CEOs showing up to save the system. Given the choice of cutting the budget of SamTrans and losing the money for good, or cutting Caltrain and enlisting high-powered allies to get more money – Scanlon made the obvious choice, except from the standpoint of the ridership.

Today's blood boiler

2011-01-25T06:28:00.000-08:00

From Carole Sykes via the Alto Velo Mailing list.

Cycling Community,

The accident involved Rene Baker from LGBRC who was hit in the bike lane by a Mercedes.

I was riding ahead of Rene on Foothill heading to Edith. A car heading the same direction went into the bike lane. Rene was well to the right in the bike lane. The car hit her from behind going between 40 to 45 mph. The driver claimed (to me) that he never saw her. She was hit so hard that she came out of her shoes, was thrown into the air and initially came down onto the car's windshield shattering it. There were two eye witnesses who were behind Rene taking this all in. The Police were on the scene within minutes. The driver did stop and seemed genuinely concerned but I'm not sure he was processing much of anything. He was cited for being in the wrong place on the roadway and released. I just don't know why he was driving in the bike lane as there are no roads or driveways to the right on that stretch of road. There were so many cyclists out on Foothill because of the nice weather he was destined to take someone out.

She is in Stanford Hospital and had surgery today for a compression fracture of L1 – the vertebra was broken all the way through making it a very unstable fracture that had to be fused. She is recovering this evening having been very lucky after being very unlucky…. She has some nasty road rash and a questionable broken elbow (waiting for x-rays). She will be a Stanford for 2 to 3 days and right now is as comfortable as can be expected. Pain control will be the next challenge over the next several days. She is expected to make a full recovery.

There just seems to be something wrong with a driver that almost made a paraplegic out of a mother of two and he walks away with a moving violation. I thought that to have a driver’s license you had the responsibility to operate a motor vehicle in a safe manner. There have been too many of these kinds of ‘accidents’ that have really hurt or kill people. And there is nothing more than “oh, it was an accident” which strikes me as a completely “of no consequence” event so that there is NO imperative to operate motor vehicles in a safe manner. Oh yes, I know that you can bring a civil case but that is a different thing compared to a criminal system that judges something as wrong and/or illegal.

There is something wrong with the law around this – mainly because there is no law.

Carole Sykes

Woodside Vigilantes

2011-01-20T11:08:00.001-08:00

This AM - commuting to work on Canada Road. 7 man paceline. As we approach the stop sign at Olive Hill, and start to slow, we are passed by a pickup truck pulling a horse trailer. The truck and trailer then start to drift into the bike lane!

The truck pulls up to the stop line fully over to the edge of the road, blocking the bike lane, stops, then pulls out back into the nominal traffic lane.

Showed us! Of course in the process with his trailer he almost showed the lead man the ditch well before we got near the stop sign.

More Parklet Fun

2011-01-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

Another parklet has been proposed in front of Arizmendi Bakery in the Sunset.

As is the custom, there is an Online Petition to garner support. Please help our underserved friends in the Inner Sunset or Greg Dewar will come get you!

Clipper response on Facebook Re: Millbrae

2011-01-10T13:32:00.000-08:00

I made a comment on Clipper's facebook page about the poor placement and insufficent number of Clipper readers at Millbrae Station and how they really make the transfer difficult.

After a month, they responded.

Hi John,

Bay Area Clipper commented on their wall post.

Bay Area Clipper wrote:
"John and Jonathan,

Thanks for reaching out to us. We've heard from a few customers about the placement of the Clipper readers at Millbrae and have provided the feedback to the appropriate teams at Clipper and Caltrain. We'll look into a solution to make that transfer easier.

- Lisa"

I for one was telling everyone I saw go through this hassle to "Email Caltrain, Email BART, Email Clipper, please". Thanks for getting the numbers up.

For reference, I emailed Caltrain Customer Service about this, this was their response.

Dear Mr. Murphy,

Thank you for your comments concerning the placement of the Clipper Card readers on the northbound platform at the Millbrae station. As you may already know, this station is a BART facility and due to wiring issues, etc. Clipper was not able to put a reader closer to the entrance to the BART platform.

We regret the inconvenience this causes. Caltrain patrons may want to board a Caltrain car that will stop in front of the card readers, which will eliminate the need to walk back an forth to tag off.

Sincerely,

Astrid Lindell
Customer Service Representative 2

My dad wanted a TV in his bathroom, my Mother said she didn't want to see any Coax running around the house. That is a "Wiring issue". My dad punched a hole along the drywall, ran the coax, patched the drywall, repainted, voila! Brent Musberger in the loo.

Asking me to ride another car is amusing, given that I have a bike and cannot. Caltrain has a specific luggage car which is primarily used by people transfering at Millbrae to get to SFO. Wheelchairs are also in specific cars.

The inconvenience is 100's of Clipper users who will end up missing a BART train at Millbrae, per day, at 15-20 minutes per. The burdened labor rate of those patrons would more than pay for multiple new readers in a month or two. Brutal.

Well, cross your fingers. I suspect this nefarious wiring issue will be resolved. But what do I know, I'm not a train guy. I'm an electrical engineer.

Caltrain is going broke

2011-01-07T13:55:00.000-08:00

So they raised fares. Gotta get more money, right?

The fare increase was authorized in October. There has been plenty of time to get ready for it.

This morning, I tagged on at San Francisco, and my card was debited $11.25 - the amount of money it would cost for me to ride to the farthest point in the system - Gilroy.

Or not. The fare to Gilroy was $11.25. Now it's $12.50.

Upon exit, I was refunded $3.50, making my trip $7.75, the old fare to Lawrence.

I tagged on again, just to check. It deducted $7.75, the amount to ride to SF. I tagged back off, getting the refund as if I didn't ride the train.

I wandered over to the ticket machines. Ticket to SF from Lawrence - $8.50, the correct amount.

One week in to the fare increase, and the Clipper system is not reflecting the new fare structure, at least not for one way trips. I have not triggered the autoload on my eight rides to see if I am undercharged for purchasing one - that will happen tonight on the way home (hopefully before Caltrain sees this and gets Clipper to fix it).

Great. Raise the fares, scaring off customers, but don't actually charge the higher fares to the customers who stay. While it is really in my best interest to just keep my mouth shut, chances are this blog entry won't be the trigger, and even if it is, if history is a guide it will take them a while to get it sorted out anyway.

Santa Rosa Junior College US 101 Bike/Ped Bridge in jeopardy

2010-12-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

Santa Rosa has proposed a Bike/Ped overcrossing of US 101 near the Santa Rosa Junior College and Coddington Mall. There is a major destination on both sides of 101, and many residences on both side. In between there might as well be a brick wall. US 101 in Santa Rosa is a trenchlike barrier between the West and East. If you aren't in a car - good luck getting across, the freeway overcrossings are gnarly. I ride from our place in Healdsburg down to the bus depot at Piner/Industrial and have to cross 101 on Bicentennial. It's only mildly nervewracking - but I'm crossing it at 5:30 AM with almost no traffic. That's not when people go to Junior College.

The bridge was up for a vote recently, and passed 5-2. Well, really it passed 4-3, but one of the opponents voted for it in order to be allowed to bring it up for another vote in January, when new council members will be seated and the balance will tip the other way. You can read about it in the Press Democrat here.

Regardless of the "political shenanigans" - cancelling this project is just a bad idea. And I don't believe any talk of "It's a recession, this is a bad time". US 101 from Rohnert Park to Windsor has been under construction throughout the entire recession, none of these guys have gone into hysterics asking to delay portions of the project. "It's a recession, this is a bad time" is code for "Here is my excuse to delay it so hopefully it will go away".

This whole thing is very disappointing to me. Sonoma County is a very progressive area and a great place for recreational cycling. As a general rule it is also a good place for transportational cycling, with some good infrastructure in place. One of the thorniest spots is crossing 101 in Santa Rosa (don't get me started on trying to figure out how to get past Petaluma with any sort of rational ease). There are some crazy people out in the hills, but mostly very bike friendly. They certainly love the money that comes from all the people who come for the events - Wine Country Century, Levi's Grand Fondo, Vineman Triathlon. Santa Rosa has hosted the Amgen Tour of California every year since the event started.

So I fired off the following letter to the Santa Rosa City Council. Even if all of your bike rides start with taking your bike off of the roof of your car, you should care about this. The same mindset that is trying to kill this bridge is why there is a cop camped out at 84/Canada in Woodside or Camino Alto and Blithedale in Mill Valley, ticketing cyclists for rolling a right turn at a stop sign while motorists do the same and get ignored. If you're on a bike, you don't count. Though we will take your money, thanks!

Feel free to drop a line to the following people supporting this bridge and expressing you will support nearby places with a little more sense... like for example This Friendly Burg

gwysocky@ci.santa-rosa.ca.us, sgorin@srcity.org, mvasdupre@ci.santa-rosa.ca.us, jsawyer@ci.santa-rosa.ca.us, eolivares@ci.santa-rosa.ca.us, vjacobi@srcity.org, jbender@ci.santa-rosa.ca.us

Dear Santa Rosa City Council -

While I am not one of your constituents, I would like to express my dismay at the rumored demise of the project for the bike bridge over US-101 at SRJC. I am frequently in Santa Rosa with my bike and your city can be tough to navigate due to the configuration of 101 - I typically cross on Bicentennial to get to the Piner Road Golden Gate Transit bus stop, and that crossing is not for the faint of heart - I fortunately have a strong heart and quick reflexes.

Others who choose to bike around your city - primarily your residents - may not be as bold as I am, and the proposed bridge would make your city a much safer and enjoyable place for all, but especially pedestrians and cyclists needing to make a crossing in that area.

What dismays me most about this possibility is this. I am a San Francisco resident and the owner of a Vacation Rental property in Healdsburg. I have invested a lot of time and money buildi ng a business and our primary constituency - a very lucrative one - is recreational cyclists. It is not uncommon for our guests to request that we try to get them a reservation at Cyrus in Healdsburg, and also to ask for other destinations, and we frequently send them to downtown Santa Rosa and Railroad Square. We also patronize these businesses ourselves - LoCoco's has fueled many a ride on Kings Ridge.

I do as much as I can to promote Sonoma County as a destination for cyclists nationwide, and as you probably can tell, I pale in comparison to your constituent Mr. Leipheimer. This population brings a lot of money into Sonoma County and I am a big flag waver in San Francisco and the Peninsula to ship that money into your county.

While I will continue to do so, if you are so short-sighted as to kill this invaluable project, I will have to recommend to my guests that they bypass your city. I will tell the 100's of friends that go to Levi's Grand Fondo, the Wine Country Century, and dozens of other cycling events, that they should stay, shop, and eat in Healdsburg or Windsor. The triathletes participating in Vineman should eat in Sebastopol. If Santa Rosa is hostile to cyclists, cyclists should not give Santa Rosa our money. Maybe Amgen is on to something.

Transportational cycling in Santa Rosa can more of a cycling challenge than Kings Ridge Road. That's a shame. You have the power to do something to fix that. I urge those of you against this project to reconsider your position.

Thank You

John Murphy - San Francisco/Healdsburg

DPT going after cabbies parking in bike lane by Caltrain

2010-12-02T11:37:00.000-08:00

Riding to Caltrain I had to (broken record) leave the bike lane to avoid cars parked in the bike lane, in this case the typical cab line overflow from the Caltrain cab stand.

Suddenly one of these cabbies whips out of the line into the lane I am now occupying, right in front of me. I swerve around and stop when I get past, blocking him. I grab my water bottle and start a Tim Lincecum when a sweet voice calls out "breathe deep honey - smell this rose". I turn to see a DPT officer with a rose extended and she says "smell the rose, it helps. I'm out here ticketing these people for blocking your bike lane."

I looked back at the cab and he was slinking down and giving me the I'm sorry. I decided after yesterday getting yelled at by the bus driver, why not smell the rose today. Thanked the PCO and went on.

Thinking it through - the cabbie had seen the PCO and was evading the ticket, which ended up being worse than just being in the bike lane. Wish I had figured it out immediately so I could have asked her "ticket him first".

Incident with "First Student" bus 12/1/2010

2010-12-01T15:23:00.000-08:00

Update sent to my supervisor and Avalos (D11 Supe), and School Board.

From Dufty

I'm sorry for this and am asking Chris Armentrout to make sure the right people see it ASAP

B

On Alemany around Mt Vernon, Jason, Signe and I were cruising along in the bike lane. There were three contractor trucks double parked in the bike lane, maybe there is a day laborer pickup spot there? Anyway, as we are merging out of the Bike Lane into the rightmost traffic lane I hear a honk from 30 or so yards behind us, close enough to hear but not close enough to startle. But what did startle me was a "First Student" bus that buzzed within a foot or so of us, fortunately before we made it to the double parked cars so we had a little room to veer away (I think, it happened pretty fast). We were going 16 MPH or so, the bus was almost certainly exceeding what I am pretty sure is a posted 35 MPH speed limit. There was zero additional traffic - the left lane was clear.

Of course, as is always the case, this allowed the bus driver to make it to the red light 50 yards in front of us much faster. As we pulled alongside I started scanning for the bus number and found it on the front of the bus - 215866. As I have learned - instead of looking first at the driver, I pointed at the number - indicating to the driver I didn't want a fight, I wanted to report him. He opened the bus door and started screaming at us.

Among his points - "YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE BIKE LANE" (not true - you are allowed to leave the bike lane to avoid obstacles, 3 pickup trucks generally count as obstacles). "I SHOULD CALL THE CHP ON YOU" (Alemany isn't in the CHP jurisdiction, SFPD could not ticket us but probably not ticket him, to me it was an unsafe pass but that's hard to quantify - nonetheless he was the one operating unsafely). Beyond that there was a bunch of rambling.

Mid 50's grayish hair, blue baseball cap with a logo of interlocked letters of some sort. Small sized bus.

He had decision points where he could have avoided incident. Seeing us signal and merge out he could have slowed until we passed the double parked cars (it really annoys me - the root cause of his "delay" is three double parked cars, not three bikes). He could have switched lanes. If he's lazy he could just move over 3-4 feet and given us plenty of room. Any argument that this was impossible is thwarted by the fact he had the wherewithall to take a hand off the wheel and honk his horn. And certainly that verifies - along with his statement "YOU CAN'T LEAVE THE BIKE LANE" that he had seen us, and he made a conscious decision to not accommodate us and thus endanger our lives for no reason.

He saw us, and drove right at us. Period.

Note that the "First Student" website pretty much starts with

First Student, Inc. is North America’s leading school bus transportation services company and responsible for safely transporting 6 million students to and from school every day.

Technically, I'm not a student.

Sad. This guy is a professional driver for an organization that 6 million parents (give or take) trust with their children, and he made a measured decision that he didn't care if he ended someone's life.

Just to add insult to injury, in Woodside we made a foot down stop at 84/Canada, watched a car cross from our left, then from our right, then we proceeded into the intersection and had to slam the brakes when another car proceeded from the left. Apparently our friends from the Woodside PD were in the bakery for that one.

It's that time of year.

2010-11-30T15:15:00.001-08:00

Our Vacation Rental in Healdsburg gives us a couple of unique opportunities to help out some good causes.

We have a pretty decent orchard up there, but since we are in and out, we can't always pick the fruit or the veggies I plant. There is a program in Healdsburg called "Farm to Pantry" and we talked to them at the Farmer's market a few weeks back. They wandered by this week and managed to get some late season fruit.

Hi John,
Thank you for inviting us to glean. We found all of the trees you mentioned and picked 11.5 pounds of hachiya persimmons, 18 pounds of pomegranates and a handful of almonds We took everything to the after-school program at the Healdsburg Community Center where the children will study the almonds as part of their nut unit and enjoy the fruit for their afternoon snack.

We would love to work with you when your garden comes in, the fruit trees are ripe and you have surplus to share. Just email me when it's about time, and we'll swing by, glean what we can and return if needed.

Melita
Farm to Pantry
Cultivating Community through Healthy Food

I think this is a really cool program and allows me to plant in the Winter even if I don't think I'll be able to harvest. We have spinach, cilantro, parsley, snow peas, and fava beans in the ground, we'll see what they do.

We are also donating a Wine Country Vacation package to the San Francisco Bike Coalition Winterfest Auction - a 2 night stay at our house, wine from Limerick Lane Winery , 50 dollars in shopping credit at the Healdsburg Farmer's Market , and four 2 day bike rentals from Spoke Folk Cyclery in Healdsburg.

See you at Winterfest!

Notes from a rainy commute

2010-11-23T10:57:00.000-08:00

Slogging my way to Caltrain this AM, thinking I probably could have gone riding because it wasn't *that* cold and it wasn't *that* wet, I noticed a couple of interesting things.

On 14th Street, there is a bike lane. That wasn't the interesting thing, it's been there since before Rob Anderson laid down his fatwa. There was a van double parked in the bike lane, also not terribly interesting because that seems to be de rigeur. What *was* interesting was that just as I spotted the van parked in the bike lane, I also spotted a DPT PCO ("Meter Maid" in pre-PC parlance) to my left. The PCOs drive around in little golf cart like vehicles with open windows, so I looked left, pointed forward, and said - "Puuuleeeese tell me you are going to ticket that guy".

She nodded, and promptly drove right past the van, presumably to go after street cleaning duty in some backwater across town.

Disheartened, I continued on my way, but on Division Street my day brightened, as I saw this...

A brand new bike lane on Division Street - complete with a line of soft hit posts - had arisen where formerly there was only car parking.

I also saw these guys on the other side of the street.

DPW was curating a similar lane on the other side of Division.

This is a pretty obvious place for a bike lane, it is a highly used bike corridor that runs to SoMa and Caltrain. I stopped to take a photo and tried to catch the cyclist that had been behind me, but they got out of the frame too fast, so I waited for another. All around good guy Janne Karjalainen from SF2G happened by within 20 seconds or so.

While I'm sure Rob Anderson would be very upset at the sight of parking being removed for bike lanes, even if it was happening at Burning Man, these removals would cause a conundrum for him, and no conundrum at all for the local "permanent" residents/businesses. That stretch of Division was pretty much populated by RV's and beater sedans that people were living in. Rob hates the down and out almost as much as he hates the cyclists (I think he pretty much considers the two groups the same, with the addition of rich white hipsters to the cyclist population). I won't say that I'll miss the "Mobile Homes" very much.

Mark Simon on Pico Boulevard

2010-11-09T13:37:00.001-08:00

I'm in Mark's "inbox", now - he dug out my address by finding an email about the Giants selling Caltrain tickets. I'm officially a "troublemaker".

Hi John -
I just read your online petition and I have to tell you I think it's unfair to say we closed the gate for "unspecified safety concerns." Our concerns are exactly as specific as those who object to be rerouted to Redwood Shores Boulevard - someone is going to get hurt or killed if circumstances remain unchanged. I'm going to forward you a letter to the editor I sent out last week, which includes a link to the initial safety assessment.
In addition, we have contracted with a traffic engineer who is undertaking a safety assessment at this moment.
That should take about 30 days.

Mark Simon
Executive Officer for Public Affairs
San Mateo County Transit District
SamTrans
Caltrain
San Mateo County Transportation Authority
Phone: (650) 508-6340
Fax: (650) 508-6281

More District 8 Shenanigans

2010-10-28T11:57:00.000-07:00

From: Scott Wiener for Supervisor
Date: Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 11:16 AM
Subject: ALERT: Fraudulent Email Impersonating the Democratic Party

You may have received a recent email claiming to be from the San Francisco Democratic Party and attacking Scott Wiener.

Warning! This email is a fraud.

The web address attached to the email, www.sfdemocraticparty.org,
is NOT the URL of the San Francisco Democratic Party ( www.sfdemocrats.org )
In fact, the http://www.sfdemocraticparty.org domain name was registered on October 25th-- the day before the fraudulent email went out. It is not a functioning website.

Don't be fooled by those trying to swift boat our former Democratic Party Chair Scott Wiener, who is endorsed by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senator Dianne Feinstein, Senator Mark Leno, Congresswoman Jackie Speier, and the Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide Church.

Not only is the domain name false, but so are the charges: the email is full of lies about Scott Wiener’s position on rent control.

SCOTT WIENER STRONGLY SUPPORTS RENT CONTROL.

Scott fought against Prop 98, which would have ended rent control in California. Ted Gullicksen, the Tenants Union director, was reported in Beyond Chron as stating that Scott has a “pro-tenant voting record” as a member of the San Francisco Democratic Party. In fact, Scott received an award from the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights for his work defending low-income tenants from eviction.

Don't fall for these desperate last minute tricks.

Be on alert for false and misleading information in these last few days before Tuesday’s election.

For more information about Scott Wiener’s actual positions and background, go to http://www.scott2010.com

Paid for by Scott Wiener for Supervisor 2010, 538 Castro Street, San
Francisco, California 94114,
info@scott2010.com.

Mandelman's Mularkey

2010-10-26T15:36:00.000-07:00

I got two mailers from outside contributors for the Rafael Mandelman campaign in the past week. The California Nurses Association and the SF Tenants Union.

There is an organization called the Alliance for Jobs and Sustainable Growth that has contributed to the Scott Wiener campaign, I have gotten mailers from them as well.

I found something very appalling in the Mandelman mailers. The CNA mailer connects these dots... Alliance for Jobs contributed to Wiener. Chamber of Commerce backs the Alliance. Sutter Hospital involved in the Chamber. ergo... "WE COULD LOSE TWO SAN FRANCISCO HOSPITALS IF SCOTT WIENER IS ELECTED SUPERVISOR".

The Tenants Union one is similarly thin. The San Francisco Apartment Association backs Scott Wiener. Ergo Scott Wiener wants to end rent control.

What? This sort of backwards causation is brutal. But effective I guess, Wiener had to respond with a "I support Rent Control" robocall ad. Go on offense, make the other side play defense. But not intellectually honest - and I can't stand that. I'm dropping Mandelman to the third line on my Supervisor ballot - he went from First to Worst.

Here is Gillian Gillete's rebuttal of the St Luke's ad.

This e-mail is to respond to the inaccurate, nasty mailers and telephone
calls that the California Nurses Association (CNA) has been sending out
against Scott Wiener. As someone who has served on the St. Luke’s Hospital
Advisory Council since 2003, was part of the Blue Ribbon Panel process about
the future of St. Luke’s and delivered both of her children at St. Luke’s, I
feel it is important to call MALARKEY when I see and hear it.

CPMC’s St. Luke’s Hospital is a very troubled institution that has been
largely unsuccessful in attracting privately insured patients for decades.
That’s unsustainable and unacceptable. The poor should not receive separate
healthcare from everyone else. St. Luke’s should be great; and a lot of
people, including me, are working on it becoming a model community medical
center that treats everyone by offering the services we actually use.

CPMC has agreed to the United Healthcare Workers (a competitor to the CNA)
unionizing the proposed Cathedral Hill Hospital. Nurses at St. Luke’s are,
and will continue to be, CNA union members. CNA is therefore pushing for a
much larger St. Luke’s Hospital, at the cost of UHW jobs, than has a viable
future. Their mailers to us are about CNA union jobs, and not necessarily
about healthcare or what’s good for San Francisco.

Contrary to CNA’s claims in their phone calls and mailers:

Scott Wiener supports rebuilding St. Luke’s. Period.

Scott Wiener supports HIV and AIDS funding and services. He is a gay man who
co-chaired the original committee that built the LGBT Center on Market
Street.

Davies Medical Center, which serves Noe Valley and the Castro, makes
money--contrary to St. Luke’s. Davies is so successful, in fact, that CPMC
is seeking permits to build a **new* *medical office building there. No one
wants to close Davies.

Please join me in calling MALARKEY and consider Scott Wiener for the next
District 8 Supervisor!

Sincerely,

Gillian Gillett

Letter to Mark Simon of SamTrans regarding Pico

2010-10-21T12:23:00.000-07:00

The Pico Boulevard situation continues.

Mark Simon of SamTrans sent out this note.

Thank you for your correspondence regarding the closure to through traffic of Pico Boulevard in San Carlos .

Last December, out of concerns that automobile, cycling and pedestrian traffic on Pico Boulevard presented a significant safety hazard, San Mateo County Transit District (SamTrans) staff closed the east-end gate, thereby blocking access to through traffic.

This decision was prompted by several near-collisions between buses and automobiles, cyclists and pedestrians. Pico Boulevard is the only access road to the SamTrans South Base and it is used throughout the day by hundreds of buses.

In the intervening months, SamTrans, as the lessee and principal user of the road, conducted a safety review of the street. A copy of the safety review is attached.

That review is complete and a report concerning that review was provided to the SamTrans Board of Directors at its regularly scheduled meeting on October 13.

As part of that report, staff indicated that the road as currently configured does not meet District safety standards. Therefore, the east gate will remain closed as a continuing safety measure, while further options are explored.

Here are the principal findings of the review:

n Pico Boulevard is an unimproved, privately owned road that is the sole access to South Base for the hundreds of buses that travel in and out of the base every weekday.
n The road is used, additionally, to provide parking for base personnel.
n As an unimproved road, Pico Boulevard is neither designed nor configured to meet California Highway Patrol definitional requirements as a publicly accessible highway appropriate for through-passage use by automobiles, cyclists and pedestrians in traffic interaction with buses.
n Specifically, the road:
o Is not engineered for public usage to accommodate through traffic of any kind, including pedestrians, bicycles and pedestrians;
o Is of insufficient width to support mixed traffic, particularly mixed traffic that could include two buses traveling side-by-side and additional automobiles or bicycles;
o Lacks appropriate safety signage, including speed limit signs and signs designating Pico Boulevard as a private roadway;
o Lacks sufficient lighting. Current lighting on Pico Boulevard is designed and installed to provide minimal safety and security features for the SamTrans base, not vehicular, pedestrian and bicycle traffic in darkness;
o Is not subject to consistent maintenance of the roadway to ensure safe operation of vehicles for the purposes of accommodating through traffic.
n A formal traffic engineering study is necessary to determine what changes and improvements would be required to bring Pico Boulevard to an acceptable standard of safety and to ensure that public access to the roadway would not compromise security and safety at the SamTrans base.
n A determination will have to be made whether such a safety review is warranted and, as lessee of the property, whether an investment of public funds is warranted to improve a privately held roadway;
n In the interim, the gate will remain closed.

In the report to the Board, it was noted that a number of comments were received from cyclists who expressed concern that the alternative to Pico Boulevard , Redwood Shores Parkway is significantly more hazardous for cyclists.

We do not have the expertise to judge the relative safety of one road over another.

We are particularly alarmed, however, that a public thoroughfare designed to be used by bikes and including a well-marked bike lane, is considered unsafe and significantly more hazardous than an unimproved, private roadway that is used by hundreds of buses every day.

We are prepared to assist in facilitating a meeting between cyclists and the City of Redwood City to determine what steps may be taken to improve the safety of Redwood Shores Parkway, which is already designated and designed for pedestrian, bicycle and vehicular traffic. When such a meeting is scheduled, we will notify you.

We believe the city is in the best position to provide, legitimate, safe passage on public roadways and we are prepared to work with the city and cyclists to assure that the right conditions exist for Redwood Shores Parkway .

We understand and sympathize with those who have been frustrated by the decision to close the gate. Our concern for safety – including the safety of bicyclists – must be the paramount concern. We would prefer to have cyclists alive, well, and angry at the agency, than any of the alternatives that might arise due to unsafe conditions.

Sincerely,

Mark Simon

I wrote this letter.

Mr. Simon -

I just read this snippet from a mail you sent out about Pico Blvd and Redwood Shores.

"We are particularly alarmed, however, that a public thoroughfare designed to be used by bikes and including a well-marked bike lane, is considered unsafe and significantly more hazardous than an unimproved, private roadway that is used by hundreds of buses every day."

Words fail to describe my anger at this statement. Redwood Shores was designed to be used by cars - not by bicycles. Just because they slap down some paint on the road that says "BIKE LANE" does not mean the roadway was designed to be used by bikes.

A well marked bike lane on the right side of the road is of no use to a cyclist needing to merge across three lanes of high speed traffic in order to make a left turn. The majority of people using Pico Boulevard were doing so in order to accomplish exactly that - by crossing Redwood Shores using the traffic light, they were able to remove the procedure of merging across three lanes of traffic to get to the left turn lane. Incidentally, the left turn light from Redwood Shores to Shoreway does not trigger for bicycles, so in addition to the hazardous merging situation, cyclists are forced to wait for the rare instance of a car turning left onto Shoreway in order to get a green arrow - the result being that most of them simply run the red light to their own peril.

If this description was not clear to SamTrans, then your review was worthless.

Pico Boulevard is used by hundreds of buses every day. Redwood Shores is used by hundreds of cars EVERY FIVE MINUTES.

The situation is broken. Samtrans has within its control the ability to make a broken situation better. Instead you appear content to pass the buck to Redwood City and San Carlos. You should know full well that any solution that mitigates this on the roadway would be years until fruition - and more likely is simply impossible. Any solution that provides a safe merge across three high speed traffic lanes for cyclists would be met with howls of protests from the drivers who use that roadway currently - it would involve changing light cycles and potentially removing a lane.

If you had simply said "We're scared to death of the liability issue so we aren't opening the roadway", I'd think SamTrans was gutless. Instead I think you are completely disingenuous.

Sincerely

John Murphy

Simon's reply

We do not think the road meets our safety standards. We have said so repeatedly.

Mark Simon
Executive Officer
SamTrans
Caltrain
SMCTA

Remember this part from his first letter...

We understand and sympathize with those who have been frustrated by the decision to close the gate. Our concern for safety – including the safety of bicyclists – must be the paramount concern. We would prefer to have cyclists alive, well, and angry at the agency, than any of the alternatives that might arise due to unsafe conditions.

I'm not sure how closing an "unsafe" road and forcing people onto a "more unsafe" road accomplishes that aim.

If you ever wanted to hear me pontificate with audio

2010-10-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

I was on KALW - San Francisco Public Radio this week talking about Caltrain.

Caltrain! Weekend Baby Bullets!!!???

2010-10-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

Caltrain has just posted the agenda for the next JPB meeting.

You can read the minutes HERE

Here's the highlight - at least for me!

Further, Staff Coordinating Council recommends that the Board direct staff to implement a minimum of a 3-month weekend Baby Bullet demonstration in response to customer comments.

THANK YOU to everyone who signed the petition - and sent them a LOT of emails!

I love it when we win one. At the last JPB meeting I said "We LOVE Caltrain, I feel that we are in this together, and I think this is a good idea"

John

Caltrain Clipper FAILBLOG #4

2010-09-30T12:01:00.000-07:00

This is a good one.

The Millbrae Intermodal Terminal contains both the Caltrain and BART stations in Millbrae. You can connect from the two services at this spot. Depending on the connection you are making, this can be difficult - for example transfering from BART to a Southbound Caltrain, you must go up a set of stairs, exit BART, walk across the upstairs level, and down a flight of stairs to the Caltrain SB platform.

However, if you are transfering from a Northbound Caltrain to BART, it's a snap. Exit your Caltrain, and on the opposite side of the platform are the BART gates. There are two sets of BART gates on the platform, one on the Northernmost part of the platform, and one sort of in the middle. Since I have my bike with me, I am usually in the Northernmost Caltrain car - the bike car. This means from the door of my Caltrain to the BART gates is roughly a 5 yard walk. Perfect.

Aside - For the purposes of this conversation we will ignore that this set of fare gates which is next to the Caltrain bike car does not have a faregate that facilitates bikes, and the emergency gate which you are supposed to use to get your bike onto the BART platform is routinely blocked by BART staff.

OK, so I am getting off Caltrain and I'm going to get on BART, by entering the gates which are five yards away. There is only one problem. Since I am adopting our fancy new technology, I am using my Clipper Card to pay for both my Caltrain and BART fares - which should be super convenient. However, before I enter the BART system, I need to "tag off" from Caltrain. I look to my left. I look ahead. I look right.

There is no Clipper Reader in sight. What is in sight is the rarest of all birds, a BART train at the station at the same time as my Caltrain arrival. If I can just get "tagged off" and "tag in" to BART, I can make this train and avoid a 15 minute wait. So I start running down the platform. With my bike. Wearning bike shoes.

I run 30 or so odd yards and there it is - tucked behind a bank of pay phones.

Aside - why are there more payphones here than there are Clipper readers?

Suffice to say, shortly after I heard the "BEEP" from the Clipper reader, I heard the unmistakeable sound of a BART train leaving the station. That left me the time to take the picture.

In the right foreground of the picture you can see the Clipper reader. If you squint real closely and look on the left side way in the background, past the handicapped lift and the handicapped riser platform, a sign that shows where I came from - the BART gates that I wanted to enter but could not until I ran 30 yards down the platform to find a Clipper reader.

The BART gates aren't near anything else. The only persons who would use those gates are transferring from Caltrain - someone initiating a BART trip at Millbrae has to enter the Intermodal station from the BART side and go up to the upstairs level where there are a dozen or so gates, and would have no reason to then trek down to the Caltrain platform. If both systems use Clipper, the only way those gates retain any usefulness is if there is a Clipper reader at the fare gates. But no - they put the Clipper reader in the middle of nowhere, positioned in a way that adds no value (pun not intended) to the ridership.

Of course, how it really should work is that I don't need to "tag off" from Caltrain at all. When "Tagging on" to BART at Millbrae station, the system should recognize an open Caltrain trip, and "tag off" of Caltrain and "tag on" to BART in one fell swoop.

But what do I know, I'm not a train guy. I'm a computer programmer.

If you squint real closely

Clipper Caltrain FAILBLOG #3

2010-09-29T12:02:00.000-07:00

Caltrain has a multi-ride discount program called the "8 ride pass". This is a pretty good deal, the discount is pretty steep. In fact, it is perhaps too good - a rider must ride the train round trip 16 times per month in order for a Monthly Pass to be a better deal than the 8 ride tickets. Which pretty much means that if a rider works from home or drives to work once a month, they are better off with 8 ride tickets instead of passes. Caltrain would be better off in a future round of fare changes to increase the 8 ride prices more compared to the Monthly Pass. In this manner, they would collect more money and service more trips - a rider who has a Monthly Pass feels that they now have to "pay" to drive, whereas if they are on 8 ride tickets, driving costs money but saves them money on train fare. This makes the marginal cost of driving higher, and encourages people to become more loyal train riders. But I digress - this is about Clipper.

Recently I have been using 8 ride tickets using my Clipper Card. Normally I get a Monthly pass, but I had a month where we were out of town two weeks, so I did the math and decided to go with 8 ride tickets. This causes a bit of consternation because I need to use up my 8 ride tickets by the end of the month so that I can go back to using a Monthly Pass. This wasn't so bad in the days of paper tickets when I could sell my extra tickets - with the 8 ride on my Clipper Card it's much harder to transfer the extra rides.

I use 8 rides for zone 1-3 and zone 1-4, my two most common Caltrain trips. The 8 ride tickets are "autoloaded" from my Credit Card. I was working my zone 1-4 eight ride down to zero rides, so I could turn off the autoload and pay the one way fare if needed to end the month. Taking the train to Lawrence from SF one day, I tagged off at Lawrence and looked at the reader to see how many rides I had left. I figured I would have two or three rides left. I tagged the reader and saw this...

RIDE USED
RIDEBOOK ADDED
10 RIDES LEFT

??? What happened? I had 2 rides left, but Clipper added another 8 rides to my card? Why? I asked Clipper and they said that the card does indeed autoload another 8 rides onto your card when your eight ride ticket gets down to 2 rides.

This is just stupid. The best I can guess is some brain surgeon at Caltrain or Clipper looked at it and said "Well, it will be more convenient for the user if we add more rides at 2 so they don't run out". Of course, this makes no sense - in order for the rider to use a ride, they have to access a Clipper Kiosk. And if they can access a Kiosk, they can have a ridebook added. The system should wait until the rider gets to zero rides, and THEN it should add 8 more rides.

At first glance, this really only impacts someone who is trying to bleed their rides down to zero, like I was. If I had just turned off the autoload as soon as I knew I didn't want to buy any more tickets, I would have been fine. Except for one thing.

Eight ride tickets expire. In 60 days.

By autoloading new rides when you still have 2 left, riders who ride occasionally are penalized by their tickets starting to expire before they really need to buy the tickets. Bogus.

Caltrain Clipper FAILBLOG #2

2010-09-28T15:07:00.000-07:00

Usually I have my trusty Caltrain paper monthly pass on me. Soon though, paper passes will go the way of the dodo, and you will need to "load" your monthly pass onto your Clipper Card.

In our last installment, we looked at a poorly placed Clipper reader. The readers are there for riders to tag on and off the train, so that the system knows how far you have ridden the train, and can charge you appropriately. But how does that work if you have a monthly pass, you ask?

I will be "autoloading" my pass onto my Clipper card via my Wageworks Credit Card every month. So come the first of the month, I will have my pass ready to go. However, the pass is autoloaded into the system, but not magically transmitted to my Clipper Card. In order to get my pass onto my Clipper Card, I need to load it onto the card by tagging on and off to ensure the zones traveled match the zones purchased for the pass.

Here's where it gets dodgy. If I have a Zone 1-4 pass, does Zone 2 "match" that pass? Answer - no. This is a problem. I work near Lawrence Expressway, in Zone 4. But the Baby Bullet trains require me to get off the train in Mountain View, in Zone 3. On the first of the month, if I get on a bullet train, and tag on in Zone 1, and off in Zone 3 - that doesn't "match" my pass. I will get charged a $7.75 cash fare that I have already effectively paid by buying my monthly pass. Additionally, my pass will still not be activated.

I asked Clipper about this...

"Yes, you do need to tag off in Zone 4 or else you will be charged the Zone 1-3 cash fare.

I understand that it can be inconvenient, but since Caltrain is a zone-based system with open entry/exit, they have instituted the policy that every c...ard be charged the maximum fare (from the originating station) until the card tags off at its destination. At that time, Clipper searches for an applicable pass or ridebook. If there isn't one, than the fare is deducted from the cash balance.

- Lisa

Kind of sucks given that Caltrain's Clipper Brochure says this...

Monthly Pass: When you load a Caltrain monthly pass, you’ll receive unlimited rides within the zones specified, just like a paper Caltrain monthly pass. Monthly passes can be purchased on the 21st of each month for the coming month through the 9th day of the valid month.

Technically correct - the rub being that you have to go through the proper procedure to "load" the pass.

I told Mike Scanlon last month - "I am not a train guy", and he fed off this to say something about "this seems like common sense but...". Well, I AM a programmer guy. This should be trivial to get right. No - this IS trivial to get right. But they FAILed instead.

Clipper Card Caltrain FAILBLOG #1

2010-09-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

I took Caltrain to Santa Clara today. After getting off the train, you need to "tag off" if you are a Clipper Card user. This can often be quite frustrating trying to locate the card reader, but at Santa Clara it hit a new low.

Here is the Clipper reader, off the sidewalk, off the curb, sort of dumped into some landscaping woodchips, behind the trash can and some newspaper racks. It was probably placed before the construction started, but it's still very poorly placed, in a spot where there is only 2 or so feet of open sidewalk before another curbing.

If you look to the very right of the frame (or by looking next to my shadow taking the photo) you can see that there is in fact another Clipper reader on the platform itself. So it's not like there isn't an "accessible" Clipper reader - I just want to know why they decided to put another one behind a trash can. Even if there were enough detraining passengers that a second reader would speed things up, nobody can get to the second reader, especially with a crowd around the first one.

This placement makes no sense. There are a lot of translink placements out there that seem to makes sense at first glance but in fact are quite broken, but this one is broken on its face.

Ford's Paradox - Central Subway and Congestion Pricing.

2010-09-23T13:04:00.000-07:00

I saw the following snippet on the SF Appeal that I found very humorous, in this article.

During his presentation of the report to the board, Ford said that with local sales tax revenues in decline and other sources of SFMTA revenue susceptible to market fluctuations, "We need to seek out more stable funding sources."

He cited ideas such as congestion pricing and variable parking prices in more parts of the city as ways to add revenue.

"Without these, we will not be able to close critical funding gaps" to pay for projects such as the Central Subway Project, he said. The Muni extension is slated to open in 2018.
Each of the board directors addressed the report and expressed how they would like to see Muni service improved.

This is amusing to me. A lot of transit advocates oppose the Central Subway on the grounds that it's pretty much a waste of money. I am in this camp - the arguments for the Central Subway trumpet the fact it will go to Caltrain, as someone who has taken the MUNI underground to Caltrain I can very clearly state that getting off at Powell and walking 5+ minutes the opposite direction of the Caltrain station, then going down 2 levels to switch to the CS, will not be an improvement. At that point, I'd rather just go to ground level and walk down 4th Street.

Most people advocating for the CS (aside from Construction firms who stand to profit and Politicians who will get photo ops) don't actually take transit. They just know that Stockton Street is a mess, and think that a subway will magically fix that. They look at a map in isolation and see the "connection" at Market which isn't really a connection, or they just assume that since we are building it, that there will actually be a connection. They ignore that the Chinatown stop will be NINE stories underground - tell me how that is an improvement to a ground level stop for the 30/45?

On the flip side, Transit Advocates generally are in favor of congestion pricing, and people who don't take transit think congestion pricing is a dumb idea. Now, Nat Ford is connecting the Central Subway with congestion pricing. In order to have the money to complete and run the Central Subway, we're going to have to raise parking prices and implement congestion pricing.

So if you are against the Central Subway, would you be willing to let them build it if we get congestion pricing? (for the record, I am completely ambivalent on congestion pricing - I rarely drive or bike in the areas affected). If you are for the Central Subway, but were told that if we build it that the city will be implementing congestion pricing, does that change your mind?

Personally, I say no Central Subway, no congestion pricing. The Subway is a waste of money, and I'm not so sure that we really have the traffic to justify congestion pricing - granted I have driven onto the Bay Bridge from SoMa during rush hour once or twice and it wasn't very pleasant, so I can't really speak to this compared to people who deal with that daily. I just wonder how much money the city would take in compared to the implementation, and if it is justified by whatever benefits congestion pricing would bring (vs the unintended side effects).

Noe Valley Parklet "status"

2010-09-20T11:42:00.001-07:00

Here is an email I received from Robert Roddick yesterday.

The Merchants Association conducted a survey of its members and also non-members and the result was that Seventy-Two (72%) favored the Park Lets. Sixty-eight percent supported Park Lets as beneficial for business. The remainder just liked the idea.

The results were forwarded to all members in good standing and to Andres Power on Tuesday.

The first choice was Martha Bros. and the second was in front of the old Real Foods, but this was disqualified as there is no operating business to assume the responsibility. The next choice was Just For Fun.

Andres Power was in agreement and I believe that the establishment of the Park Lets at these locations is now proceeding. The details of the site business's responsibility are being finalized.

The Noe Valley Association will take up the cleaning and maintenance in conjunction with our ordinary every day cleaning, beautification and maintenance schedule.

From the newspapers and Andres Power it looks like Park Lets will become part of the ordinary permit procedure. I hope and expect that it will require Conditional Use Hearings before issuance. This is something that the NVA and the Merchants will be watching closely.

Bob Roddick

This doesn't necessarily sound good for the residents of Vicksburg Street with respect to their concerns that a parklet in front of Martha Brothers will not attract coffee drinkers and people with their dogs, but will instead become a magnet for drunks rolling out of the Dubliner.

You hear that Mr. Anderson?... That is the sound of inevitability... Goodbye, Mr. Anderson...

2010-09-09T09:52:00.000-07:00

I received the following tweet this morning...

@murphstahoe Haha, SF is claiming $52K legal costs against Rob Anderson for losing lawsuit against the bike plan http://bit.ly/djmeUMless than a minute ago via webChristopher Hayes
hayesesq

Checking out link to the case

MEMORANDUM OF COSTS AND DISBURSEMENTS, $51,959.00 TOTAL COSTS, MATURE DATE SEP-10-2010, FILED BY DEFENDANT CITY AND COUNTY OF SAN FRANCISCO

The City might not get it but you gotta love the fact he'll have to deal with it.

Noe Valley Parklet Feedback

2010-09-03T11:24:00.000-07:00

Update - fixed reference and link - grant came from the "Noe Valley Association" which is different than the "Noe Valley Merchants Association.

I have found that there is an amusing side effect of sticking your nose where perhaps it doesn't belong. Suddenly a mild mannered Silicon Valley engineer with no real authority becomes the listening board for random issues and the "owner" of issues - e.g. "How are things going with 'your plaza'". This becomes more prevalent when you have a big email distribution list, which of course I would never abuse ;)

So now I occasionally get random emails that are directly or tangentially related to the two most recent issues I have been pontificating about - Caltrain weekend Bullets and the addition of public space in Noe Valley (I will use a generic term there rather than "Plaza" or "Parklet" or "Town Square"). For example the bullet train thing has gotten me a lot of email from people about High Speed Rail, Gilroy Service (apparently an extension to Salinas is what would solve the whole problem), and running 10 minute headways all day long. Surprisingly, no "What we need to do is kill Caltrain and run BART down the Peninsula".

Last night, I got another email regardling "Public Space in Noe Valley". For those not following the saga, the Noe Valley Association wrote a grant which was looked upon favorably by San Francisco's San Francisco's Pavement to Parks program to put a Plaza on Noe Street in Noe Valley. I became a F-List Celebrity in Noe Valley - at least electronically - for advocating for this plaza but alas, we lost this battle in spectacular fashion . Instead Pavement to Parks decreed that Noe Valley would get two "parklets" along 24th Street.

If one thing was generally agreed upon during this whole saga, was that no matter the outcome, the process was flawed. While the NVA was very well meaning, many citizens felt that they figured out something they liked, and flung it upon an unsuspecting populace. They developed the idea, went to P2P, P2P approved the idea, and got set to roll it out. The idea was then leaked, a few people with enough influence to get their phone answered by our Supervisor put a bunch of DON'T BLOCK NOE signs in their windows, and the project was deemed to be too divisive before people who might like the project got to voice their opinions. So then me and mine got equally as pissy, and a lot of people who probably would have nice conversations over the Giants prospects in the playoff race ended up screaming and shouting at each other, online and in public.

That's water under the bridge. Supervisorial Candidate Rebecca Prozan saw me on the street and told me she thought she had figured out my plaza problem (again with the ownership meme!). "Vicksburg" - she said confidently. I had a bag of bagels and my wife was waiting for me, so I just nodded and said "Vicksburg" and pointed at the Farmer's Market and said "Well, maybe we'll get a 'plaza' here" - referencing an effort to get money to buy the Noe Valley Ministry's parking lot and turn it into a non-street-blocking public space. What I really wanted to say was "It's over, we had fun, we lost, sometimes that happens, now I just want to go to Healdsburg and work on my tomatoes.

However, there is one open issue. We get two parklets! And this brings this longish thread (I like to write - deal with it) to the new news. Remember several paragraphs ago where I said I often get random emails? Last night I got an email address "To all those involved in the decision-making of the parklets on 24th Street:". Remember - I am an engineer in the South Bay, not a politico in San Francisco. I am not any more involved in the decision making than the author of the email.

I struggled with what to do with the missive. Then thinking back about the whole thing - I recalled that the problem with the Noe Street Plaza was that everyone was upset that decisions were ostensibly being made by a secret cabal - and not by the public at large. Noe Valley is a community - and as such, we are ALL the decision makers - are we not? So in that spirit - I am publishing the email. I have redacted the names because while I think the content is relevant, the persons involved did not expect to have their names and emails published.

To all those involved in the decision-making of the parklets on 24th Street:

Please keep parklets far away from any bars because people coming out of the bars late at night tend to congregate on the sidewalk and stay for a long time (sometimes hours). This creates a noise disturbance for the residents. Late at night their voices and laughter travel far distances, unlike during the day, because their voices aren't masked by other noises. And having just left a loud bar, they continue talking loudly as they had been used to doing inside the bar.

I know you are considering placing a parklet at Martha Bros. or by the parking lot owned by the Noe Valley Ministry (used for the farmer's market), but these locations are very close to the Dubliner bar. PLEASE do not place any parklets on the eastern half of that block. If you "must" place a parklet between Sanchez and Vicksburg, please place it closer to Sanchez to remove its temptation from the departing bar patrons of the Dubliner.

Thank you for considering these facts.

Name Redacted
Vicksburg Street resident

cc to other Vicksburg residents

As to my personal opinion on this issue - I do not drink coffee and Sanchez is a long way from my house so a Martha's parklet would be underused by me. But you see, I'm ambivalent about the outcome - I'm concerned about the process ;)

But I'm pretty sure this means that Rebecca Prozan has not solved "my plaza problem".

Sean Elsbernd, Caltrain JPB Chairman, on service cuts

2010-08-24T11:17:00.000-07:00

I emailed Scott Wiener - who is running for Supervisor in San Francisco's District 8, about the Caltrain cuts. Scott is sharing his campaign headquarters with FIX MUNI NOW which is the organization pushing Prop G which entails some reforms to MUNI's labor negotiation rules. FIX MUNI and Prop G are in large part the work of Sean Elsbernd - the District 7 Supervisor (D7 is Park Merced, West Portal, etc...)

Sean Elsbernd is also the Chairman of the Caltrain Joint Powers Board - the group overseeing Caltrain Staff.

Scott Wiener read my missive on the Caltrain cuts and forwarded it to Sean. I gave Scott some background as to how important Caltrain is, that there is no excuse for Caltrain not to close a 2.3 Million dollar budget gap, and that they should be creative in finding more revenue and reducing costs. This of course including getting over the last hump to solid bike capacity and weekend limited/express trains.

Here is my petition for limited/express trains on the weekend! Please sign it and pass it on!

Here is Sean's response - unedited.

Unfortunately, there is no easy answer to this one. Feel free to pass on this
e-mail, cut and copy parts of it, or just toss it.

Caltrain is the forgotten step child of Bay Area Transit. Unlike every other
regional public transit system, Caltrain has no dedicated source of revenue.
60% of itsoperation costs are covered by fare revenue (which, as an aside, is
actually a tremendously high level of fare box revenue) and 40% is covered by
the 3 member agency (MTA, SamTrans, and VTA) contributions. For years, those 3
contributions have been a steady source of funds. This year, however, SamTrans,
in order to balance their budget, reduced their contribution to Caltrain. Once
they did that, the MTA followed suit. The VTA has not done it yet, but its a
given that they will next fiscal year.

So, long story short, the financial troubles of the MTA, SamTrans, and the VTA
are the cause of Caltrain's poor fiscal condition. I do believe that this year
we will be able to make it through the budget without some of the draconian cuts
listed below, except for maybe the Gilroy cut - that service could very well be
eliminated.

My very real worry is July 1, 2011 and forward. If financial projections hold
at all accurate, Caltrain will fall off the cliff next year.

We are looking at all kinds of other revenue ideas, and I will absolutely pass
on the suggestion of a limited line on the weekends - that's a new one to me.
The issue of bikes on the train has been discussed at nearly every meeting I've
attended. If it was as a simple as simply removing some seats to make room for
my bikes, that would have been done already. It, of course, is not. We have
doubled the amount of space available for bikes in the last 12 months, and
continue to do more. The number of bicyclists who are "passed up" has dropped
significantly. We are working on it.

Shirley Johnson pointed out that Sean's numbers were a bit off. The farebox recovery is 42%, the bike capcacity was increased 39%.

Letter from Dan Connelly to Caltrain regarding Monthly Passes

2010-08-20T12:55:00.000-07:00

Letter to Caltrain from Dan Connelly on the Monthly Pass vs. 8 ride conundrum. I agree wholeheartedly

Presently the monthly pass is an unwise investment for many due to the
relatively large ratio of cost of a monthly pass to a 10-ride.

Consider the following example:

30 days in month
21 weekdays
1 holiday, on average
1 vacation day, on average
1 sick day
travel for business, 2 days per month
alternate transportation, average 2 round trips per month

That's 15 round trips per month, yet the ratio of a monthly pass to an 8-ride
ticket costs is 16 round trips. And with the gradual reduction and impending
cancellation of weekend service, there's little if any value there.

So the reality is for many professionals the monthly pass is an economic loss on
average. I therefore propose you spare the monthly pass from further fare
increases, decreasing the ratio of monthly to 8-ride tickets well below the
present 16 to a level which makes more economic sense. By encouraging riders
to buy monthly passes, you will likely increase revenue, as more part-time
riders choose to spend a bit more for a monthly and become full-time riders.

The economic sense of this is further supported by the view that regular train
users are likely more price-elastic than, for example, Giants fans, who view the
cost of a train ticket a small portion of an evening's expense, while commuters
are already in large numbers making the decision that using a car is cheaper.

Sky View Tours San Francisco, run by Grey Line Bus

2010-08-19T14:36:00.001-07:00

Tuesday, leaving 22nd Street Caltrain Station.

My route home goes down Pennslyvania and then right onto Cesar Chavez. The run in to Cesar Chavez is downhill, my Garmin typically pegs me at 25 MPH leading into the right hand turn. At that speed, to make the banked corner onto CC you need to set up a line in the left side of the lane. I do a shoulder check to see if some driver appears really impatient and set up the line. I can make this corner at speed because the bike is more maneuverable than a car going through the narrow turn pocket, and my exit line goes into the far right hand side of Cesar Chavez - a motorist making this turn must merge into Westbound Traffic on CC.

I look back, see nothing, and go to set up my line. Then my spidey sense goes off and I see one of those big double decker tour buses coming up to my left. There is a small possibility he's turning left, but the bus starts to veer towards my line and I look over at the driver.

The bus is open air, so I look right into his face and say "What the hell are you doing" and he flips me the bird and says "FUCK YOU", then continues to merge into the turn pocket. I hit the brakes and head for the sidewalk. There is no bailout here - there are parallel parked cars right up to the turn itself, so I do sort of a kung fu stop and get right next to the cars.

I follow the bus through the turn and note the bus number - 91237.

He heads up CC to make a left turn onto Evans. He has a red arrow so I can catch him. I pull up and fumble with my cellphone in an attempt to get a picture as he screams at me in some foreign language. Light turns green and he slams off the accellerator, still yelling.

I had to get home to Liam, so I bypassed the SFPD, and after that I knew they weren't going to do shit anyway. So I called Sky View tours, which happens to be Gray Line Bus. The reservation person transfers me to the dispatch, who transfers me to "Safety and Training". I get voice mail and leave a nastygram. As predicted, 2 days later, no word back about their driver who decided he was going to play chicken driving a 4 ton bus against a 200 lb cyclist, and he wasn't going to lose even if he killed me.

Please do not patronize Grey Line Bus/SkyView Tours.

More Townsend bike lanes.

2010-08-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

They have finished striping Townsend on the Westbound side from 4th to 7th.

I feel like crying. Not because we have a bike lane on such a notoriously bad stretch of road - but because San Francisco managed to get this done quickly despite a minor logistical hurdle.

See those cars? Thursday, they were parked perpindicular to the road. As I rode down Townsend this AM, I noticed the parallel parked cars and was a little shocked that a change went in without months of public notice and hand-wringing.

A "PARK PARALLEL" sign is in place reminding the regulars of the change. I tried to snap a photo but failed - there were signs that designated this stretch of road a tow-away zone last Friday, they must have just rousted all the cars off Townsend and put the stripes and signs in that day.

This is a huge improvement to the street. The travel area is now wider with a designated bike lane in a spot that was formerly occupied by perpendicular parked cars - cars that would back out into bike traffic with little notice at alarming frequency.

I also saw workers on the Eastbound side of Townsend this AM - probably prepping the parking changes that will happen on that side of the road, that will supposedly allow the City to add a sidewalk, removing pedestrians from aimlessly walking down the roadway.

Bike lane on Townsend

2010-08-13T10:32:00.000-07:00

Finally - a bike lane on Townsend.

This street sees a lot of bike traffic, being the primary route for the majority of Caltrain bike riders - 2500 people ride Caltrain with bikes daily. It's also a primary route to a large part of SoMa with people from the Mission and Potrero hill going this way to the Embarcadero.

Previously this intersection was completely unstriped. Vehicles would set up where you see the line of cars right now, but impatient drivers would swerve out of the line and into the unmarked area that is now a marked bike lane and a right turn pocket - often without looking for the cyclists off to their right. This problem was exacerbated because some motorists would see that the cyclist had "room" to their right, of course that "room" includes 2 train tracks and getting pushed into those tracks by a swerving car is a recipe for disaster. Supposedly with CEMOF in place for Caltrain, these tracks can be paved over/removed/whatever now, but the bike lane dilineates space for the cyclists to the left of the tracks.

Of course, the first time I rode down this lane - a car did the same thing, using the bike lane as a through lane on Townsend.

V C Section 21209 Motor Vehicles and Motorized Bicycles in Bicycle Lanes
Motor Vehicles and Motorized Bicycles in Bicycle Lanes

21209. (a) No person shall drive a motor vehicle in a bicycle lane established on a roadway pursuant to Section 21207 except as follows:

(1) To park where parking is permitted.

(2) To enter or leave the roadway.

(3) To prepare for a turn within a distance of 200 feet from the intersection.

(b) This section does not prohibit the use of a motorized bicycle in a bicycle lane, pursuant to Section 21207.5, at a speed no greater than is reasonable or prudent, having due regard for visibility, traffic conditions, and the condition of the roadway surface of the bicycle lane, and in a manner which does not endanger the safety of bicyclists.
Amended Ch. 262, Stats. 1988. Effective January 1, 1989.

That day, the stripes were down but the cyclist symbol was not. I predict this lane will be utilized in this manner anyway, but the striping will help. And if it gets real bad - there are plenty of cops at the Starbucks at 8th and Townsend who we can ask to help patrol this intersection.