Assemblymember Rob Bonta introduced Assembly Bill 2824 Thursday which, loosely paraphrased, could help usher the construction of a bus lane on the Bay Bridge, theoretically easing traffic along the motorway and reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

As reported by the SF Examiner’s Joe Fitzgerald Rodriguez, the intent language bill created by Bonta (D-Oakland) ultimately aims to lay the legislative groundwork to create a bus lane or some semblance of one on the Bay Bridge; the yet-approved piece of authority, too, could lead to bus-only lanes on “East Bay approaches to the Bay Bridge,” helping further decongest motorway traffic.

“This bill would state the intent of the legislature to enact future legislation pertaining to the issue of high carbon emissions and inefficient public transit across the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in order to create a more environmentally sustainable, equitable, and efficient approach to transportation,” the placeholder bill reads.

The idea of a bus and bus-only lanes across the Bay Bridge are long in the tooth; these are ideas that have circulated in various political and communal circles for years. And, per the SF Examiner, it was published that Bonta was working on this bill as early as January. Now, local officials and transit agencies appear to be warming up to the idea — if for no other reason than the fact that it’s a “really great idea” on many fronts.

“The reason I think it could still be a really great idea is it will still save time for the buses when they’re on the bridge, and it will help people consider using it as an alternative,” said San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Hillary Ronen — who, like Bonta, also sits on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) — to Rodriquez. “It will create, hopefully, a culture change that will make it more likely for people to ride transit rather than individual cars.”

Bonta says, however, that while his bill is still in the works it’s progression could be rolled out in various stages. He noted that the Bay Bridge being tweaked for faster bus travel would come first, though creating a bus-only lane on the bridge is still the main goal.

Bonta is expected to write the bills “full language” within a month, empathizing that the process is more difficult than meets the eye — “just striping (paint) alone will not get it done” — but remains optimistic about the bill’s later adoption.

The Chronicle early in the month said that Andrew Fremier, the MTC's deputy executive director for operations, believes 20 percent of Bay Bridge transients would need to adopt bus travel in order to avoid “massive traffic complications" on the metropolitan nexus. But a successful rollout of a Bay Bridge bus lane would greatly reduce transport-related carbon emissions, all while creating a safer commute.

Related: Idiot Takes E-Scooter Onto Bay Bridge

Man 'Dangling' From Bay Bridge Causes Rush-Hour Shutdown

Once again: Traffic in the Bay Area is getting much, much worse.

NBC reports that according to the Metropolitan Traffic Commission, time spent in weekday traffic has skyrocketed by 80% between 2010 and 2016. The report breaks down the statistics even further, saying that in 2016, commuters are spending an average of three and a half minutes driving below freeway speeds (~35 mph). Compare that to 2010, where drivers spent a little less than two minutes doing the same.

The MTC's John Goodwin told ABC 7 that the traffic "is absolutely directly related to the economy and to the jobs/housing imbalance that we have in the region, that our two biggest job centers are San Francisco and Silicon Valley."

Drivers aren't alone in feeling the rush hour crunch, either. BART has long been seeing capacity crowds during commuting hours. As we said two years ago, they promised that their new, roomier "Fleet of the Future" cars would help ease the congestion, but those cars have yet to materialize during our every day commutes. That being said, they're looking to get those cars on the rails sometime later this month, with another major "release" later this year.

MTC chairman Jake Mackenzie pointed out that the vast majority of the "worst commutes" were made by folks who traveled in from the East Bay or South Bay. In the same report, he said:

Eight of the top 10 most-crowded commutes are routes to or from the Bay Bridge or Silicon Valley. The good news is that this shows the continuing strength of the jobs market in the South Bay and San Francisco. The bad news is that it shows how hard it is to balance where the region’s job centers are located and where comparatively affordable housing can be found.

The "fun" part (yeah, not really) of the MTC's report is where they rank the Bay Area's top ten worst car commutes. Go ahead and make a few educated guesses before you tuck into the mildly depressing list below, which is quoted directly from the MTC's full release.

• Northbound and eastbound on U.S. 101 and Interstate 80 from the I-280 interchange in San Francisco to the Bay Bridge’s Yerba Buena Island Tunnel.
• The westbound I-80 drive from State Route 4 in Hercules to Fremont Street in San Francisco, with congested conditions typically extending through at least part of this corridor from 5:25 a.m. to 6:55 p.
• The afternoon slog on southbound U.S. 101 from Mountain View to San Jose
• The afternoon commute on northbound I-680 from the South Mission Blvd./State Route 262 interchange in Fremont to Andrade Road in Sunol
• The afternoon drive on northbound I-880 from Mowry Ave. in Fremont to Winton Ave. in Hayward
• The southbound afternoon commute on I-280 from Foothill Expressway in Los Altos to downtown San Jose
• The afternoon drive on eastbound I-80 from West Grand Ave. in Oakland to Gilman Street in Berkeley
• The afternoon drive on northbound I-680 from San Ramon to Pleasant Hill
• The afternoon commute along eastbound State Route 24 from Oakland to Walnut Creek
• The afternoon drive on State Route 4 from Morello Ave. in Martinez to Port Chicago Highway in Concord

Honestly, the entire list reads like a listing of the Billboard Top Ten, except instead of hit pop songs, all the entries are the sounds of the clock ticking away as we waste our lives stuck in traffic. So, you know. Enjoy that.

Related: It's Official: San Francisco And Oakland Are The Worst Cities For Drivers

On the heels of a toll increase that makes travel to San Francisco from the north a little more pricey, an even bigger jump for the Bay Area's state-run bridges is being proposed, taking tolls as much as $3 higher... an increase pushed for by companies like Genentech, Facebook, and Google.

We first heard about this back in December, when the idea was proposed during a Metropolitan Transportation Commission "workshop" at the Hyatt in SF. According to the Chronicle, MTC members have since been in talks at the state Capitol regarding the proposed increase, which "could bring tolls on state-run spans to as much as $9 on the Bay Bridge, which has congestion pricing, and $8 on other bridges."

The additional revenue from the increase — estimated to be as much as $125 million per year — would go to traffic congestion-easing projects like additional BART cars as well as service to San Jose, work to build more high-occupancy vehicle lanes on Bay Area freeways, more ferry systems and express buses, and, the Chron writes, "the growing cost" of SF's new Transbay Transit Center.

It's the congestion management part of this plan that presumably attracted its high-profile supporters, many of which sport a workforce that commutes — per the Chron, "Two of the biggest players pushing for the toll increase are the Silicon Valley Leadership Group — whose members include such tech titans as Genentech, Facebook and Google —and the Bay Area Council, which represents some of the region’s biggest employers, including Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Pacific Gas and Electric Co. and UCSF."

“When you consider the huge amount of time that commuters waste in traffic every day," Bay Area Council spokesperson Jim Wunderman said in a statement supporting the possible increase, "adding a couple extra dollars to bridge tolls will help cut congestion and expand critical regional mass transit that benefits the entire Bay Area."

Ultimately, however, it's not up to lawmakers or these big companies, it's up to you: toll increases on state-run bridges (that's all of the bridges in the Bay Area sans the Golden Gate, tolls on which increased to as much as $7.75 today) must be agreed to by voters. And so far, voter support is looking good, as a recent poll performed by those high-powered corporate supporters say that "59 percent of those surveyed would support a $2 toll increase that paid for transit improvements, and 56 percent would back a $3 increase."

But we all know how reliable polls are these days, right? According to the Chron, supporters hope to get the increase vote on June primary election ballot. Failing that, expect to see it in November, at the general election.

Previously: Cash-Seeking Transit Officials Mull Proposal To Up Bay Area Bridge Tolls By $3

At a workshop meeting Wednesday, Bay Area transit officials floated an idea sure to invoke the ire of some local commuters: A possible toll increase of as much as $3 on the area's seven state-operated bridges.

The Chron reports that the notion was raised at a meeting yesterday of the Bay Area's Metropolitan Transportation Commission at San Francisco's Hyatt Regency. According to the Marin Independent Journal, the assembled commissioners "began discussing plans to seek state legislation to allow it to ask voters for a toll increase in 2018."

According to the MTC, a a $1 toll increase is estimated to raise about $127 million annually. A $2 increase gets you $254 million a year, and a $3 increase would generate $381 million every year.

The funds, the IJ reports, would go to "transportation projects in Marin, Alameda, Contra Costa, Napa, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Sonoma, Solano and San Francisco counties," which, if that sounds vague, you're right! A "spending plan still needs to be developed," the MTC admits, with Marin officials saying they hope the cash could go to projects like widening the Novato Narrows and building a connector from the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge to Highway 101.

Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf says that the money could instead go to affordable housing, the Chron reports, and "bicycling advocates argued that it should pay for construction of a bike path on the west span of the Bay Bridge between Yerba Buena Island and San Francisco."

Unlike tax or bond propositions, toll increases can't be placed on the ballot by the county or counties it would benefit. The measure (currently referred to as "Regional Measure 3") would have to be proposed by the state legislature in time for the 2018 election. Legislators and voters have a track record of being friendly to these types of measures, with voters passing Regional Measure 1 in 1988, which raised $2 billion for transportation projects. Regional Measure 2, passed in 2004, raised $1.5 billion for projects and an annual $41 million that goes to transit operating costs.

Will the third regional measure be as lucky? We'll soon have an inkling, with MTC officials saying that talks with legislators could begin as soon as next month. Should the Legislature agree, all nine Bay Area counties will see the proposal on the 2018 ballot. And should it garner a simple majority of votes, it will pass — and up will go tolls on area bridges including the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge and the Bay Bridge (the Golden Gate isn't state run and wouldn't have a dog in this ballot fight).

But though increases like $3 are being discussed, even that is still unclear. According to MTC director of legislation and public affairs Randy Rentschler, “The collective thought was to do something big enough to make a difference." But how big we're talking and what the "difference" will be has yet to be decided.

Related: Ongoing Bay Bridge Problems Drain Rainy Day Fund So Officials Look To Tolls

We get further confirmation today that traffic on Bay Area freeways has jumped a staggering 70 percent since 2010. A report released by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission brings us the unwelcome truth, along with the revelation that traffic now is as bad as it's ever been since 1981 — the year the MTC began keeping track.

This report only reiterates the findings of a national traffic study released in March covering 2015 that put San Francisco third in the country for congestion, behind only LA and DC. And it confirms why morning rush hour heading to the Bay Bridge has only gotten earlier and earlier in the last few years.

The Chronicle picked up the report, and explained that at the heart of the matter is what's called “congested delay” — when drivers are moving at speeds at or below 35 miles per hour.

You see, that happens quite a bit around these parts.

“The congestion data really underscore both the robust job growth we’ve seen in the South Bay and San Francisco, and the persistent imbalance between where those jobs are located and where comparatively affordable housing can be found,” Santa Clara County Supervisor and MTC Chair Dave Cortese said in a press release. “Routes leading into or out of Silicon Valley and San Francisco dominate the Top 10 [worst commutes], and they account for almost half of all congestion in the region.”

According to MTC data, which covers 2015, when it comes to traffic the single worst stretch of freeway is the afternoon drive on the 101/I-80 from San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island (check the map below for the full list of the top ten worst Bay Area commutes).

“We all feel the impacts of traffic congestion in our daily commutes,” San Jose Mayor and MTC Commissioner Sam Liccardo explained in a press release. “But today’s data starkly demonstrates how quickly we need to invest in real solutions that can provide congestion relief — expanding mass transit, improving our roads and highways, and more.”

Related: Early Bird Gets The Smog: Traffic Now Worst On Bay Bridge Between 5 And 6 AM

According to automatic passenger counters, between fiscal years 2014 and 2015 ridership declined on Muni motor coaches by by 3.4 percent and on trolley coaches by 7.3 percent. Wait, what? Muni has only felt more and more crowded, right?

The data doesn't add up because those numbers, invoked in an audit of the SFMTA performed by regional transit planners at the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, are incorrect.

The flawed stats stem from flawed automatic counters, which haven't been working properly since at least 2014, or so SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose tells SFBay. Even then, only 40 percent of Muni buses possess counters, which are placed randomly throughout the system, and 250 of those across Muni are particularly unreliable aging, "legacy" counters. Indeed, manual checks on 250 Muni trips indicated that the counters were underestimating ridership by nine percent. One hypothesis: The horizontal sensors just don't work well during crowded conditions.

“We should have been much more vigilant about catching [the errors] and taking corrective actions,” said director of transit John Haley. Historical undercounting of ridership has persisted thanks to other Muni policies, such as discounting special events like Pride and Bay to Breakers in ridership counts. Further, the T-Third line hasn't ever been counted, because train ridership counts are done manually, and only ever eight years. Numbers for the T-Third line, which opened in 2007, are therefore not yet available.

According to the MTC, the "SFMTA reports it is working to ensure that ridership data is accurate, and that both legacy and future (automatic passenger counters) systems are properly operating... It is also starting to regularly track other indicators of ridership." One big change will be built-in: Better sensors on new Muni vehicles. “The new vehicles will not only provide more reliable service, but they include accurate, state of the art APCs that will count riders more reliably," Rose told SFBay.

Meanwhile, the number of people who actually pays their fare to ride Muni remains a highly unreliable indicator of how many people really take Muni.

Related: Ask A San Francisco Native: Has Muni Behavior Gotten Better, Or Worse?

We all feel that traffic in the Bay Area are worse than ever, and now the Metropolitan Transportation Commission has the stats to prove it, with the release of their 2014 rankings of the Bay Area’s most congested freeway segments. Yeah, the news is as bad as you might think...and if it was that bad in 2014, just think how crummy it is now. Ugh!

The ranking is part of the MTC's Vital Signs trend monitor (which is actually super interesting, check it out here). Here's their confirmation that things on the roads suck more than they did in past years (bold font is mine, not theirs):

Across the region, “congested delay,” which MTC defines as time spent in traffic moving at speeds of 35 miles per hour or less, ticked up 3 percent in 2014 to an average of 2.7 minutes per commuter each weekday from 2.6 minutes in 2013. This marks the Bay Area’s highest recorded level of congested delay on a per-commuter basis and a nearly 40 percent increase over the 1.9-minutes-per-commuter-per-day figure registered in 2010.

Freeway congestion around the Bay Area is increasing faster than either population or employment. Since 2000, per-commuter congested delay has risen by 23 percent while the region’s population has grown by 10 percent, and total regional employment at the end of 2014 was only about 1 percent higher than turn-of-the-century levels.

And now, their list of the worst commutes to see this peak congestion in action:

1. 10: The morning commute on northbound 101 from Story Road in East San Jose to Montague Expressway in Santa Clara
2. 9: The afternoon commute on eastbound State Route 24 from the 580 interchange in Oakland through the Caldecott Tunnel to Orinda
3. 8: The westbound morning commute on 205 and 580 over the Altamont Pass to Dublin
4. 7: The afternoon commute on eastbound 80 from the Bay Bridge toll plaza area to Albany
5. 6: The northbound 680 commute over the Sunol Grade from Mission Blvd. in Fremont to State Route 84 in Sunol
6. 5: The afternoon commute northbound on 680 from San Ramon to Pleasant Hil
7. 4: The eastbound afternoon commute on 101 and 80 from 280 in San Francisco out to the Bay Bridge just east of the Treasure Island Tunnel
8. 3: The afternoon commute on southbound 101 from Fair Oaks Avenue in Sunnyvale to Oakland Road in North San Jose
9. 2: The morning drive on southbound 880 from San Leandro to Milpitas

Annnnd, your winner is:

1. 1: The 17-mine westbound morning commute along 80 from Hercules to the Bay Bridge toll plaza

Congratulations! HAHAHA! Not really!

Related: Here Are All The Reasons Traffic Sucks More Than Ever In SF
Toll Report: Commutes Getting Bad Even At Earliest Hours

The powder-blue bicycles available to ride around San Francisco via the year-old Bay Area Bike Share are precious, indeed: once broken, they will be out of service for a while. You see, thanks to some turmoil at the companies that built the bikes, there are no spare parts handy at the moment, SF Weekly reported today.

There are currently 700 bikes scattered around 70 stations throughout the Bay Area. In San Francisco, 350 bikes can be found at racks strategically placed in front of places like the Caltrain station, Twitter's Mid-Market headquarters, the Powell Street cable car turnaround, and the U.S. federal court building on Golden Gate Avenue.

There were supposed to be many more bikes and many more stations -- there was even funding for this! — but for the break in the bicycles' supply chain.

Bike manufacturer Alta Bicycle Share , which provides the unmistakable "hefty cruisers" with the big comfortable seats, is for sale, and the company that builds and maintains the software that oversees the system — you didn't think your bicycle ride wasn't being tracked, did you? — went belly-up in January, the Weekly reported, putting everything in flux.

This is a temporary hiccup, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission assures us. The MTC, our regional transit overlords, are taking over control of the bike share project from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in the spring. By that time, new product providers will be in place with plenty of spare bicycle-share parts.

The program's managers and backers say it's an absolute hit, with 13,000 riders a day paying for the privilege of "being the slowest bike in the bike lane...2nd slowest if you count the pedicabs," according to one Yelp reviewer. Less beloved is the program's pricing structure, which is apparently confusing some people and driving others to distraction (it's $9 per day, but unless you dock the bike every half-hour you are charged $4). That could be why a petition to ask Mayor Ed Lee to expand the bike program to 3,000 bikes has only 704 backers .

Either way, please don't take out any ire on the bikes themselves -- that there is a precious and, for the moment, non-renewable resource.

[SF Weekly]

License plate readers like those used on Bay Area bridges have come under a lot of scrutiny as creepy privacy invaders. But what happens when instead of accurately tracking a driver's movements, they screw up and mistake one plate for another, resulting in fines and collection fees for people who never broke the rules? Don't ask the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) that question — they're too busy making it harder for those innocent folks to appeal their tickets.

License plate scanner tech is notoriously problematic, known to miss actual toll evaders and to ding folks who never crossed into a toll area with fees over citations they didn't realize were legitimately sent. That's what happened to San Diego woman Heidi Allingham, who tells the Chron that though she hasn't crossed a Bay Area bridge in over ten years, she got an unpaid toll nastygram for a Golden Gate Bridge crossing.

The same was true for Jessica Musicar, who no longer owned the car a collections agency was arguing she owed $75 worth of tolls and fees on for a Richmond-San Rafael Bridge crossing she never made.

Though Musicar and Allingham got their tickets dismissed, it sure wasn't easy, requiring many many calls and emails. Usually, this is where we'd talk about how government officials apologize and say they'll try to serve the innocent public better with the limited funds and resources granted to them by your meager tax dollars. That's not the case here.

In fact, an MTC spokesperson says that the transit agency makes the appeal process intentionally difficult, because "if a citation was easier to overturn...the system would be flooded with calls from people who were legitimately billed," the Chron reports.

"The way we have to work, to function as a retail business, is for people to go through the system," MTC spokesperson Randy Rentschler told the Chron.

According to the MTC, they sent out 575,000 notices of Bay Area bridge toll violations last year. How many of those were appealed or overturned? Officials aren't saying. And, of course, it's even harder to figure out how many of the citations are incorrectly assessed, but, come on, if it was that easy for the Chron to find two folks who've suffered this glitch, there has to be more.

Meanwhile, we're left wondering how many people decide that this isn't a war worth waging, and just pay up. Musicar almost gave in to this impulse, saying that "At one point, I almost just paid the thing to get it over with."

Getting people to pay fines for offenses they never committed? That's a pretty sweet deal. And, yeah, that's certainly one way to "function as a retail business."

[Chron]

Members of the peer review panel who had already given the thumbs up for the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge to open despite some cracked bolts took bridge officials by surprise at a meeting yesterday when they insisted publicly that the bridge should still open on time, despite Monday's decision to hold off until December. The head of the panel, Frieder Seible, said that a temporary fix before the permanent "saddle" solution could be installed was preferable to continued use of the old span when an earthquake could strike any day. "I don't want to wait any longer than necessary," he said.

When news came out Monday that the opening of the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge was being delayed, it seemed a little odd given that officials had stated earlier that the final decision would not come until the July 10 meeting of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission in Oakland. That meeting happened, and Seible and fellow peer review panel member John Fisher used the opportunity to illustrate this temporary bracing that could be put in place within a month, to the apparent shock of some CalTrans and MTC officials.

MTC member Steve Heminger said he was "unware of [the] existence" of such a solution, and other board members seemed like they might be swayed to the idea, as ABC7 reports. Malcolm Dougherty, president of CalTrans, said, "We should absolutely consider [the temporary fix] as an opportunity to open up the bridge at its earliest possible time to insure the safety of the motoring public."

Seible is the former dean of UC San Diego's engineering school, and Fisher is a professor emeritus of civil engineering at Lehigh University. The lone dissenter in last month's decision to reopen on time was UC Davis professor emeritus Izzat M. Idriss, a geotechnical engineer who served on the governor's board of inquiry following the Loma Prieta quake that ultimately recommended every bridge in the state be examined and, if necessary, retrofitted for earthquake safety. Idriss has not been quoted in connection with bridge news.

Several local media outlets have also turned to UC Berkeley metallurgist and materials science professor Tom Devine for quotes, and he's been quite loud in his distrust of CalTrans and this whole situation, going so far as to suggest that Seible and Fisher had been swayed in their decisions by politicians. Back in June he noted, "Most of the people telling me, 'Relax, it's fine!' are the same people who were part and parcel of the decisions that caused these problems."

The question remains whether the conservative choice is to keep people on the shaky old span three months longer, or to put them sooner on a bridge that may be safer in an earthquake, but actually still needs to be fully earthquake-proofed.

[ABC 7]
[Chron]

All previous cracked Bay Bridge bolt coverage.

Under the premise of highlighting some vulnerabilities in Muni's contactless fare card system, two analysts with New York security consulting firm Intrepidus Group have created an app that allows riders to use an Android smartphone to unlock unlimited free rides with a paper Muni fare card.

The app, which Intrepidus analysts Corey Benninger and Max Sobell aren't sharing with the general public in it's fare share-shirking form, works by exposing a flaw in the NFC (near field communication) chips embedded in the paper fare cards. Unlike the more sophisticated plastic Clipper Cards, the chips in the disposable paper cards were never meant to be reloadable. They are reloadable, of course, because the city would hate to waste a perfectly good piece of paper, and the Intrepidus app works by simply resetting the number of rides left on the ticket. Essentially the same as if you went to a Muni kiosk and reloaded with cash, but it's all done for free with an NFC-enabled smartphone.

Benninger and Sobell, who discovered the flaw in Muni and New Jersey's Path train system, say they alerted the SFMTA to the gaping security hole last November and it is apparently still open to exploitation. "I coded the app in one night," Benninger told Computerworld last week, "and I'm not a coder so if somebody knows what they are doing it is pretty easy to do." Since you can't grab a cup of coffee in this town without hearing about someone's new app, one might wonder why there aren't more people offering discounted Muni ticket reloads from makeshift handheld Muni kiosks — a sort of high-tech step up from the guy hawking a stack of illegal Muni transfers.

Because paper Muni fare cards only hold one or two rides at a time and only has a 90-day lifetime, the idea of reloading it after every ride doesn't seem very practical. In fact, the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission says they "have not seen any discernible change in limited-use tickets," meaning it's unlikely that anyone on the street has whipped up a similar app of their own. Like anything with the Municipal Railroad, a fix will be delayed, if it comes at all. Cubic, the company that designed the Clipper system, is currently investigating whether it makes more sense to fix the problem or just live with the possibility of a few nerds endlessly reloading their crumbling paper cards.

[Chron]
[ComputerWorld]

The plan to offer free Muni service to low-income kids was apparently killed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission Wednesday, where the Bay Area-wide agency shot down a motion to fund several programs to provide discounted fares in several public transit systems. The 8-7 vote means San Francisco's $9.4 million plan, which would have provided free Muni to kids for almost two years starting with this school year, will be about $5 million short.

The Free Muni plan was pushed by the Board of Supervisors earlier this year and could be effectively dead without the extra funds from the regional authority. Although the SFMTA won't say the plan has been killed yet, they have already said they can't spare the funds to cover it. "We're disappointed in the outcome," MTA Spokesman Paul Rose told the Chronicle. "We're going to have to regroup and go back to our board and see where we are without funding from the region."

About 30 to 40 students were chanted "Shame on you" after the MTC voted 8-7 against the funds which would have also provided reduced fare or free public transit for low-income adults in Santa Clara and a student pass plan in Alameda County. The vote was split regionally, with commissioners from the East Bay and the North Bay opposed to funding these programs. Commissioners from the East Bay were apparently extra critical and questioned why San Francisco's kids should get free transit first.

Previously: Free Muni Rides For Kids?
[Chron]

Nearly 35% of the bridges in San Francisco County have been deemed "structurally deficient", says a new report from Transportation for America. With such a high percentage of crumbling bridges and elevated roadways, that makes San Francisco County the worst in the state for driving over any street that is not paved directly on the ground.

Drivers might be pleased to learn that the Bay Area's flagship spans (the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge, obviously) were determined to be in fine shape, but it's the smaller connectors, ramps and overpasses that we should be worried about.

As the Examiner explains, some of the sloppiest bridges are the Highway 101 Central Viaduct, the Third Street Bridge by McCovey Cove at AT&T park and the 13th and Folsom offramp. iPad newspaper The Daily points out that 15.6 million vehicles cross hail mary-inducing bridges in the Bay Area every day. Out of the top 10 cities in the U.S, population-wise, only New York City has more drivers crossing shaky spans every day.

[SFEx]
[TheDaily]