News Notes: context on deadline

New app for Muni aids navigation from A to B in Bay Area

Submitted by Jerold Chinn on Wed, 04/25/2012 - 17:25

Muni officials are looking for riders to try out their new free application for the iPhone and Android devices, called Muni+.

Launched on Tuesday, the app connects Muni riders to alerts about delays on the system. They can also check their Clipper Card balance, connect to NextMuni for arrival times and access to a map of the city. Riders will also be able to check Twitter for updates about delays or just random Muni shenanigans from Twitter users who use the hash tag Muni and tweets from sfmta_muni, the official Muni Twitter handle.

The app is currently in a three-month trial phase. The transit agency is seeking input first before it launches a one to two year pilot app that would include ads to generate revenue, said Muni spokesman Paul Rose.

The transit agency teamed up with Sky Highways, Inc., which develops apps for public transit agencies, and has an office in Oakland. The company covered the costs of developing the app during the three-month trial phase, according to Rose. 

It joins the ranks of other free apps like Routesy, which includes BART, Caltrain and AC Transit arrival time information, and Smart Ride, which includes all of the Bay Area transit agencies and more than two-dozen transit agencies throughout the United States. Both though are only available on the iPhone.

Download Muni+ in the Apple Store 

Download Muni+ in Google Play (Android)

Redistricting to reunite most of Mission District

Submitted by MCAnderson on Thu, 04/12/2012 - 12:03

By Jamie Goldberg, Mission Local

The Mission Housing Development Corporation has helped low-income Mission District residents find affordable housing for more than 40 years. But when the San Francisco supervisorial districts were redrawn 10 years ago, the nonprofit organization’s office at 16th and Valencia streets was outside of the Mission’s boundaries.

“It’s like they cut the Mission in half,” said Larry Del Carlo, Mission Housing Development’s president. “When you think of the culture and feel of the Mission, it has always included the North Mission.”

That 10-year-old map placed the district’s northern boundary at 20th Street east of Treat Street and between 17th and 19th streets west of Treat. This time around, the draft boundaries created by the Redistricting Task Force place the North Mission — all the way to 14th Street in some places and the Central Freeway in others — back in District 9, represented by Supervisor David Campos. Currently the area is in District 6, where Jane Kim is supervisor.

Read the complete story at Mission Local. 

 

S.F. school ignites online free speech battle

Submitted by MCAnderson on Wed, 04/11/2012 - 14:01

By Corey G. Johnson, California Watch

Civil rights groups recently intervened in a free-speech controversy at the San Francisco Unified School District after a school suspended three high school seniors and banned them from graduation and prom over comments they made online.

The students were suspended from George Washington High School after a teacher learned about postings on a Tumblr page called "Scumbag Teachers." Some of the comments allegedly linked to the students included: "Teaches Pink Floyd for 3 Weeks; Makes Final Project Due In 3 Days” and “Nags Student Govt About Being On Task; Lags On Everything.”

The school principal accused the students of cyberbullying. They were suspended from school for three days, banned from prom and told they couldn't walk with their classmates during graduation. One of the students was kicked off the student council.

Read the complete story at California Watch. California Watch, the state’s largest investigative reporting team, is part of the independent, nonprofit Center for Investigative Reporting. For more, visit www.californiawatch.org.

Pedestrian deaths put spotlight on bicyclist safety issues

Submitted by MCAnderson on Mon, 04/09/2012 - 15:59

San Francisco prosecutors are deciding whether to file charges against a cyclist who recently struck a pedestrian in a fatal collision in the Castro. This comes on top of last month's guilty plea to misdemeanor vehicular manslaughter by a 23-year-old bicyclist who struck and killed a woman at Mission and Embarcadero in San Francisco last year.

Meanwhile, Sunday night in Oakland, a bicyclist was killed after being hit by an SUV.

The Bay Guardian wrote about the controversy surrounding an online account by a bicyclist involved in an accident in which the details matched those of the fatal Castro accident, and in which the writer's tone is alternately cavalier and concerned. ("In closing, I want to dedicate this story to my late helmet," he wrote.)

Read the complete story at KQED News Fix. 

Mission businesses hit with 'drive-by' disability lawsuits

Submitted by MCAnderson on Thu, 04/05/2012 - 16:17

By Rigoberto Hernandez, Mission Local

The owners of Elsy’s Restaurant on Mission Street have faced their share of roadblocks to operate in San Francisco.

For reasons that are still unclear, the San Francisco Planning Department delayed Elsy’s opening for eight months in 2006. In 2008, a corrupt restaurant inspector asked the owners for money in exchange for a food handler’s certificate. The inspector was later fired by the Department of Public Health. Finally, in 2009, they thought they would be able to focus on their Salvadoran cuisine.

Then in January 2010, noted serial litigator Thomas Frankovich sued Elsy’s for an alleged violating the 1990 Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires buildings to be accessible to people with disabilities. The lawsuit alleged that Craig Yates, who is paraplegic, had difficulty accessing Elsy’s cashier counter and bathroom.

As with most of the lawsuits filed by Frankovich, Elsy’s owners decided to settle and make the required alterations, which involved lowering the cashier counter about 8 inches and building a new wheelchair-accessible bathroom. The old bathroom was in a back room near the kitchen and required negotiating a small set of stairs.

“All of this cost us money,” said owner Jaime Gonzalez, detailing the list of expenses: about $100,000 for the fixes and $17,000 to settle the lawsuit.

They aren’t the only ones. Frankovich has sued at least 23 businesses in the Mission since January 2010 — most of them small, minority-owned restaurants.

Read the complete story at Mission Local. 

Free bus rides for youth still an option, but plan lacks funding

Submitted by Jerold Chinn on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 16:55

Muni still hasn’t decided whether it can afford to let young people in San Francisco ride buses and streetcars for free. But a decision could come within the next two weeks.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors delayed a vote to approve a two-year budget on Tuesday, because members could not determine whether they should give out free Fast Passes for all youth or just those from low-income families. Both motions failed 3-3.

The two-year proposed budget, which includes free Fast Passes for low-income youth, must now go back to the board, but with an option to extend free passes to all youth.

Ed Reiskin, the director of transportation, said there would be a $6.7 million gap if the transit agency went the all-youth route. He said the proposed budget needed to reflect this change to show where the money would come from to fill the gap.

Funding for the two-year pilot project for either option would come from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, but the funding source has yet to be identified.

Board member Cheryl Brinkman said she did not think providing free Muni Fast Passes for all youth would be sustainable pass the two-year pilot project. Another board member, Jerry Lee, was concerned that Munimight fall short in funding operations if the free-for-all-youth option were approved.

The transit agency’s two-year proposed plan includes an operating budget of $816.4 million for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, and $844.1 million for the 2013-2014 fiscal year.

The two-year budget proposal would close out a projected $53 milliondeficit by enforcing parking meters on Sundays and cutting management and worker overtime. It also includes more funding for Muni maintenance, which he calls the “heart” of the budget.

The Sunday parking proposal has gotten heat from religious leaders who said the proposal would hurt those who attend church on Sundays.

The board of directors will take up the free-for-youth issue and its two-year budget again at the April 17 meeting. The transit agency must submit a balanced budget to City Hall by May 1.

S.F. transit agency jettisons plans to install smart meters in Mission

Submitted by MCAnderson on Wed, 04/04/2012 - 14:09

By Rigoberto Hernandez, Mission Local

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will not include the Mission and other eastern neighborhoods in its SFpark pilot program as originally planned, according to an announcement.

SFpark, funded through a federal grant, uses demand-responsive pricing to free up parking spaces. In December,  the agency had proposed installing some 5,000 SFpark meters in the Mission and surrounding neighborhoods to offset the loss of parking caused by the construction of a park on 17th and Folsom streets.

“Many neighbors in the 12th & Folsom, 17th & Folsom, Dogpatch, and Potrero Hill areas have expressed uneasiness about being part of the SFpark pilot project until further evaluation of its success,” read the statement by SFpark. “Based on this feedback, the SFMTA will no longer propose for these areas to be included as SFpark pilot areas. As the SFMTA revises parking management proposals for each of these areas, they will reflect regular its [sic] policies and practices.”

Read the complete story at Mission Local.

Muni still chasing 85 percent on-time performance goal

Submitted by Jerold Chinn on Mon, 04/02/2012 - 13:52

Muni's on-time performance showed little improvement during the last three months of 2011. According to the latest numbers from the transit agency, Muni was on-time 71.7 percent of the time, up from 71.1 percent from the previous quarter.

The city mandates that Muni hit an 85 percent goal, which was approved by voters in 1999 through passing Proposition E. The transit agency has yet to meet this goal.

"The numbers are what they are, but we are more focused on improving our customers’ experience on the system,” said Muni spokesman Paul Rose.

The report covers the first six months of Ed Reiskin's reign as director of transportation. Reiskin was appointed by the Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors last July.

Reiskin is taking a major step in an effort to improve service by finally allowing all-door boarding on Muni buses starting July 1.

Rose said once all-door boarding is implemented, the system should see “immediate positive impacts,” such faster boarding times, reduced travel times and more reliable service.

There is some good news to report. Unscheduled absences by transit operators went down from 13.9 percent to 12.2 percent during  the last three months of 2011.

The transit agency's directors will discuss the latest report at their 1 p.m. Tuesday meeting at City Hall along with their two year budget and a proposal to give out free Fast Passes to the city's youth. 

Advocates push for more attention to laws that target homeless

Submitted by T.J. Johnston on Sat, 03/31/2012 - 19:11

Homeless people in San Francisco, much more than the other city residents, find themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time, getting ticketed or arrested for any of more than 20 minor offenses. The city’s chronic low-level harassment of people living on the streets and in shelters amounts to a mass violation of civil rights, say advocates organizing an international day of action.

San Francisco is not unique in enforcing what are often known as “quality of life crimes.”

Two North American networks of homeless advocacy organizations — the San Francisco-based Western Regional Advocacy Project and the USA-Canada Alliance of Inhabitants, in Dowelltown, Tenn. — hope to bring attention to what they call the “criminalization of homelessness.” They assert a that the homeless have a “right to exist” in public spaces.

“Crime statistics nationally now include millions of homeless people who were sitting, lying down, hanging out and — perhaps worst of all — sleeping,” said Paul Boden, director of the advocacy project.

The groups together are organizing public rallies and direct action in 15 cities in the U.S. and Canada. San Francisco activists are gathering at Union Square at 2 p.m. Sunday. They chose the location because businesses increasingly are focused on sweeping homeless people away from the area, in favor of tourists and window-shoppers.

In a recent study, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty in Washington, D.C., found police in 234 U.S. cities employ similar strategies.

Most of San Francisco’s ordinances have prohibitions specific to time or place. A 2011 San Francisco law restricted public behavior at two plazas in the Castro District. A 2010 voter initiative banned sitting or lying on sidewalks within a 16-hour time period.

Cleaning up gas stations' legacy in Mission District

Submitted by MCAnderson on Mon, 03/26/2012 - 12:44

By Noah Arroyo, Mission Local

What the Mission District lacked in rich people, it made up for in gas stations.

Because the neighborhood was a major transportation corridor, “they were everywhere,” said Albert Lee, who handles many of the city’s cleanup cases as a senior inspector for the Department of Public Health’s Local Oversight Program.

The legacy of that bounty is contamination. Early tanks were built with steel that inevitably corroded and leaked. Other neighborhoods, like wealthy Nob Hill, also experienced contamination leaks, but theirs came from personal heating-oil tanks, Lee said.

A map of contaminated sites in the Mission shows 157 former and 15 ongoing sites. The contamination “plumes” come almost exclusively from older-generation underground storage tanks where gas stations stored gasoline, said Chuck Headlee, the underground storage tank manager for the S.F. Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board.

Read the complete story at Mission Local.