SFWeekly is running a tremendously in-depth (and long) article about their TARC equivalent, MUNI. It's called "The MUNI Death Spiral", and some words apply equally well to River City:

This leads to the last group of people responsible for Muni's woes: its owners, we the riders. We enjoy boasting about how you never need to walk more than two blocks to find a stop, but we don't seem to ponder how costly and inefficient this is. We are quick to rail against moves affecting the most vulnerable among us — but we seem to accept hardships affecting everyone, which render the system unreliable. ...

Once again, Muni exists for you. Not the drivers, not the managers, not the politicians — you. And you have some difficult decisions to make about what kind of transit service you want to have, and what, if anything, you'll do to get it. Complaining about Muni is easy. Owning it is not.

This is San Francisco's Market Street in 1905, the dawn of the automotive age. The interplay between pedestrians, streetcars, wagons, and cars is amazing. As foreign as anything you'll see in another country.

hat tip INFRASTRUCTURIST

East Bay Express unloads on the anti-condo crowd:

If you live in an urban area, you can't call yourself an "environmentalist" and continue to act like a NIMBY by blocking new housing.

I can feel the finger-wagging from here. Consider this an ad-hoc 4th installment in the SFBay Lessons series - this one talking about land use. Though the article is preachy, that fits right in with the series so far.

[This is Part Two in a three part series examining alternative transit in the Bay and what can be applied to Louisville]

Walking in the San Francisco Bay area is a very foreign experience to a Louisvillian. It is a totally different endeavor altogether. Its not just that the engineering is better, but also its as if human nature is different.

We walked extensively in three different cities:

Berkeley - an upscale, quiet bedroom community for the rest of the Bay, but also the location of the UC Berkeley campus. Its the only place we walked where people actually lived.

San Francisco - We tromped around the CBD and Lil' Italy. Very built up, very good infrastructure, and a pedestrian tide of epic proportions.

San Jose - We 'strolled' the downtown -  but also hiked sprawl and through expressway interchanges into the the airport. Outside downtown, few appeared to walk, but there was still a strong effort to accommodate peds.

[This is Part 1 in a three part series examining alternative transit in the Bay and what can be applied to Louisville]

Transit just works better in the Bay Area than it does here. No Duh. But why? And what can we do to bring that here? Click through the jump.

A visit to the San Francisco Bay area has reminded me of what a great transportation system Americans can build when they pay attention. It also reminds me of why I got into transportation advocacy in the first place. In a three part series over the coming days, I'll examine the transit, bicycling, and walking conditions we encountered there.