San Francisco Public Press (https://www.sfpublicpress.org/category/utilities/)
The state agency responsible for ensuring Uber and Lyft rides are safe failed to consistently track the number of accidents, assaults and drunk driving complaints that occur on them, according to a new study by San Francisco traffic planners.
The California Public Utilities Commission did not even consistently collect the most basic industry information, such as ride requests and miles driven, the report from the San Francisco County Transportation Authority shows.
With a holiday coming up that usually involves a lot of boxes, we revisit two stories about recycling. Follow recycling driver Gareth Willey on his morning route and hear how recycling is sorted by Recology.
The Bay Area can house millions more people without increasing its water use, according to a new report from the urbanist and water-use think tanks SPUR and the Pacific Institute. This could be done by continuing to improve water conservation efforts while concentrating on developing infill housing to prevent urban sprawl.
Two key elected officials have criticized the California Public Utilities Commission’s inconsistent collection of information on passenger complaints about assaults and threats on Uber and Lyft rides and called for reforms. A leading researcher on sexual assault added that the commission’s methodology was out of line with accepted practice and that it suggested a “lack of concern” about monitoring the incidents.
The agency responsible for regulating the ride-hailing industry in California has failed to collect consistent data on complaints of assaults, threats and harassment on Uber and Lyft rides, a San Francisco Public Press investigation found.
Sasan Saadat, a research and policy analyst with Earthjustice, gave “Civic” an overview of the hazards associated with gas use in homes and explains some of the shortcomings of fossil gas alternatives.
In recent years, the mills and foundries that receive recyclables from Recology have stopped accepting bales of material with more than 1% impurities, so the sorting facility at Pier 96 must work to a very high standard. Through a recent tour of the sorting center, “Civic” reported on what happens when things that cannot be recycled end up there, and what should be done about material that is difficult to recycle, like plastic bags.
Tere Almaguer, an environmental justice organizer with PODER, talked with “Civic” about how the group has adapted to years of inconsistent rainfall. Almaguer said California’s exceptional drought conditions have already had visible effects on the farm, like flowering plants that grew shorter and bloomed later this year than previously. Hummingbird Farm will also be experimenting with an alternative water source: Drawing water from the air.
Laura Feinstein, sustainability and resilience policy director at the urban think tank SPUR, explained the difficult choice between attempting to create separate drinking and nonpotable water systems, or developing robust wastewater recycling systems.
San Francisco’s residential water use is among the lowest among large cities in California, said Steven Ritchie, assistant general manager for water for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. Ritchie joined “Civic” to explain how the city sources and uses its water, and why it is fighting state restrictions on the use of Tuolumne River water.
In an effort to keep certain buildings from collapsing during an earthquake, thousands have received city-mandated seismic retrofits. But as Joe Eskenazi, managing editor at Mission Local, revealed in a recent special report, some of these upgrades left gas lines encased in concrete, which raises concerns about post-quake fires or explosions.
“The real problem is if it breaks and the gas leaks out inside the building, where it’s leaking out quote-unquote under slab,” meaning under the concrete foundation. “Then all you need is some manner of spark, and then you have an explosion,” Eskenazi told “Civic.”
It’s unclear how many of the 4,000 retrofits completed in the city have potentially problematic encased gas lines, which makes it difficult to measure exactly how catastrophic the aftermath of an earthquake could be. “If even just a small percentage of the retrofits have a problem like this in an earthquake situation, that could be a significant number of fire risks throughout the city,” Eskenazi said. “Even a small portion of these having this risk could lead to a terrible situation following an earthquake, because all the emergency services are going to have enough to do after an earthquake.”
In a second special report, he surfaced complaints that engineers have been making for years about shoddy construction work on such retrofits, which they allege were brushed off by the building inspection department.
