When BART reaches capacity, Oaklanders will be the first to suffer

For anyone who commutes between Oakland and San Francisco, I’m guessing this has been a bit of a chaotic week. And at some point, if not every day during the closure, you probably took BART across the Bay. And I have no doubt that it was beyond crowded in the stations and on the trains. [...]

Monday Morning Distractions – 4th of July on the Bay

This Saturday, I was lucky enough to take a mini-cruise out on the bay for 4th of July. As we moved away from the Berkeley harbor and across the bay, I remembered one of the reasons Oakland is so great, and that’s because it’s part of the larger Bay Area. Sure, there’s plenty to do [...]

Bart to Riders: Whatever you do, don’t ride the bus (or other transit)!

As you no doubt have heard, BART’s negotiations with unions haven’t been going so well, and there’s a possibility that workers could strike as soon as next week. So BART issued a press release yesterday, explaining alternative options to its riders in the case of a strike, which makes complete sense.
What doesn’t make sense is [...]

BART Director James Fang again chooses bling over cheaper & more sensible technology

So you might have thought that BART directors couldn’t shock me anymore. After approving the half billion airport connector blingfrastructure that robs funds from BART operations and capital projects, they couldn’t do anything worse, right?
Wrong.
Today, Matier and Ross wrote the most maddening piece about BART Vice President James Fang’s ridiculous proposal to use cell phones [...]

April 6-10 Oakland Political & Community Events

Tuesday, April 7th – A Conversation on Reentry: Making Rehabilitation an Essential Part of Public Safety Policy

Though this event is in San Francisco, I thought it would be of particular interest to Oaklanders, in light of the recent killings of four Oakland police officers by Lovelle Mixon, who was on parole. Citizen Hope and several [...]

Newsom gives lip service to public transit

Last night, I went to Gavin Newsom’s town hall at the Rotunda in downtown Oakland. Overall, I wasn’t surprised by the event. He touched on many subjects – health care, education, improving the environment – and his overriding theme for the evening was that while many candidates talk about these issues, he has shown real [...]

Mar 9-14 Oakland Political & Community Events

Monday, March 9th – AC Transit 51 Line Open House

AC Transit is hosting a series of open houses for the public to hear strategies to improve Line 51. If you’ve ever ridden the 51, you know how crowded it can get and how unreliable the buses are – it’s not uncommon to wait 20+ minutes [...]

Catching Up

So one of the only benefits of being stuck at home sick for the past three days was catching up on weeks of blogs that I hadn’t caught up on since being gone for a week at Burning Man – well, that and cleaning my apartment, which really needed it.
There was a lot of great [...]

Downtown Oakland Serendipity

Earlier this evening, I was walking towards Broadway to the bus stop and I ran into a good friend and mentor of mine who I see much too little of lately. Though I was in a bit of a rush to catch the bus, she made me stop and give her a hug, which really [...]

“Bike Commuter-cation Day” in SF

I’m hopping on a plane tomorrow morning to DC and will be gone for a week so I’ll be taking a break from blogging. While I’m gone, there’s a great event going on in San Francisco that sounds applicable to anyone living in the Bay Area – “Bike Commuter-cation Day”.
I know I’m terrified of biking [...]