According to the SFMTA, there are 8,713 weekday bicyclists in San Francisco, with an estimated 6% of all trips made in San Francisco by bike. San Francisco is in the middle of implementing a comprehensive bike pathway plan. Without question biking is a big part of transportation in San Francisco. While San Francisco has 45 miles of bike lanes in the city, and is planning on adding more - very few of those miles include buffered bike lanes. Read More
On Monday at 7:32 p.m. the trains just stopped running. A system-wide BART shutdown stranded thousands trying to get home from a day at the office or a night out at the ballpark. Others were stuck trying to get into work for an overnight shift. What may have seemed like an inconvenience to many was really a monumental failure by a transit system that serves as an essential part of our region’s economy.
Let’s hope this shutdown serves as a dire warning to elected officials and transit agency leadership that the potential for significant failures in our region’s public transit systems is very real – and potentially very costly. Read More
As government services decline due to budget deficits, a slew of “social entrepreneurs” have stepped in to do public services traditionally handled by government agencies.
Blockboard is one such social entrepreneurship doing just that.
Blockboard’s mission is to build stronger neighborhoods with an app through which neighbors can interact with one another. Users can report potholes and graffiti directly to the city, alert each other about crime and vandalism through a “blockwatch,” ask their neighbors questions, and post pictures of lost and found items. It’s like a neighborhood bulletin board on your phone. Read More
Research shows that cars hit two to three people every day on San Francisco’s streets –that’s more than 800 pedestrian crashes a year.
According to San Francisco General Hospital trauma surgeon Dr. Rochelle Dicker (as first reported by SF.Streetsblog) an incredible 22 percent of all trauma cases in San Francisco are pedestrians who were hit by cars. Mindful of this statistic, Dr. Dicker and her team examined the cases of 3,619 pedestrians who were injured by drivers in the last five years in order to better inform public safety measures to prevent pedestrian injuries. Read More
While London rioters protesting a police shooting used BlackBerry Messenger to organize three consecutive days of riots, hundreds of Britons are showing social media can also be a platform for social good.
Last night, after three days of riots ravaged London, hundreds of people gathered to sweep broken glass, patch broken windows and clean graffiti. The people were not government public works employees but regular citizens who had been mobilized by Twitter to form their own cleanup crews. Read More
Only 19th? We don’t know about you, San Francisco, but at Reset we’re all geek, all the time.Urban Dictionary defines a Geek as: The people you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult.
According to the National Science Foundation, however, a geek is a worker with at least a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering related fields that works in an occupation that requires some technical knowledge or training. And apparently San Francisco is seriously lacking in people who fit those qualifications. Read More
Reset has written frequently about the benefits of both modern car-sharing systems like Zipcar and not-so-modern car sharing services like San Francisco’s creaky taxies.
New data generated by the University of California, coming to us by way of Sharable Cities, quantifies the benefit of the modern car sharing systems. The new study found that each car-sharing vehicle takes between 9 to 13 private vehicles off the road. And what’s more, this is just one more data point showing how taking cars off the roads puts dollars in our pockets. Read More
Muni is a huge part of daily life in San Francisco. San Franciscans know Muni can be unreliable, crowded, late, and frustrating -- among other things. What other adjectives do you have to describe Muni? Watch Reset’s video to hear San Franciscans share their thoughts and experiences on using Muni. San Franciscans want more trains, faster service, and more night service. What do would you like to see Muni improve? Read More
Reset readers know we don’t have a crush on Muni, but a new report shows they have a crush on us – on all of us.
This week we attended a presentation of the San Francisco Transportation Authority’s 25-year transportation plan at SPUR. San Francisco County Transportation Authority’s Tilly Chang, Deputy Director for Planning, and Zabe Bent, Principal Transportation Planner led discussion of the plan.
In addition to pointing out the obvious – Muni is really slow compared to cars, Bent and Chang also discussed how projected population growth in San Francisco will affect space on transportation, and the news isn’t great. Read More
According to the 2011 Huntington Backpack Index, families can expect to spend up to 25 percent more to stock their children’s backpacks with school supplies and pay for extracurricular activities this year. This increase marks the largest annual increase in the index’s six-year history.
The Huntington survey found that between this summer and last, elementary school costs rose from $474 to $530 – a 12 percent increase. Middle school costs increased 25 percent, and high school costs increased nine percent. As schools continue to face shrinking resources and budget cuts, costs once covered by schools are being passed onto families. Read More
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