Category: News

Photo by Telstar Logistics

The governor pulled a major about-face on Monday, signing a bill he had promised to veto (SFGate, Contra Costa Times, Streetsblog SF). The legislation will restore the state’s gas-tax revenue to transit agencies across California (including SFMTA, BART, and AC Transit). MTA is set to receive an estimated $36 million. MTA Director Nat Ford says that might be enough to delay and/or reduce service cuts and fare hikes that are scheduled to kick in this May. Emphasis on “might” here, folks.

Photo by Andrew Sarkarati

A 5-Fulton bus hit a bicyclist this morning and kept going, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. Andrew Sarkarati at MissionMission has a first-person account when he arrived at the scene shortly after the collision.

Passengers yelled at the bus driver to stop, but the driver kept going, reports SFWeekly:

Multiple eyewitnesses on the street confirmed to SF Weekly that the cyclist — whose identity we were unable to ascertain — was hit by the bus, which continued onward. The victim, who was talking to police and appeared to be moving, was loaded onto a gurney and taken away in an ambulance.

Both the Chronicle and SFWeekly are reporting that the bus ran over the front wheel of the woman’s bike, and that there’s no indication that the bus made contact with the bicyclist. Judson True, spokesperson for SFMTA, told the SF Chronicle that the driver should have stopped:

The bicyclist was conscious and appeared to have a scrape on her head as she was loaded into an ambulance in a neck brace. Her injuries are not believed to be life-threatening, True said.

We’ll keep you posted.

Photo by Flickr user cbcastro

Update (11:37 p.m.): SFGate reports that the MTA board today rejected the measure to charge for transfers or cease issuing them at all. Streetsblog SF also has the story. Good news for riders!

Original post: I wish I had a more cheery post to bring you, like, here’s a picture of a really cute kid/dog on the bus or something, but alas, that is not today.

At today’s budget meeting, the SFMTA considered either getting rid of Muni transfers or charging 50 cents for each transfer to close up the budget deficit for the next two years. The Chronicle reports that charging for transfers could generate $7.5 million; getting rid of the transfers altogether would get MTA $20 million. SFMTA has, by the way, $100 million in projected deficit for the next two fiscal years. A proposal to cut Muni service by 5 percent is also on the table, reports San Francisco Business Times.

Streetsblog’s Michael Rhodes wrote that many of MTA’s ideas would be “politically difficult” to execute, and that “eliminating free transfers is almost certain to be stopped in its tracks.”

The MTA board is set to vote on the budget next month, so these proposals are still just ideas right now.

Meanwhile, you might have heard about the alternative transit budget proposal from the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research (SPUR) [pdf], which a Chronicle editorial has called, a “spread-the-pain” approach. That’s certainly preferable to Muni service cuts that transit riders will be facing soon. Right?