Regarding BART:
> A bike-friendly BART car is in the works (haven’t seen one for myself yet, though)
> Why exactly can’t we take bikes on escalators? Whoever made that rule- have they ever carried their bike up 100 steps, each day?

My least favorite moments on my work commute – because if I can’t rant here, where can I rant?!
- Hipster girl who sped past me at a stoplight as I was starting off, nearly hitting me. On a fixie.
- Cars that race in front of you on a green light, so you have to fall in behind them, then they screech to a halt at the next red, while you cycle up past them. Why do cars race to the next light? I’ll never understand.
- Those big black limo-van things hog the lane and swerve into the bike lane. Each one of them.
- Pedestrians who step into the street while checking traffic. Check traffic, then step into the street! Key intersections: Embarcadero & Market, and Bay & Embarcadero, Sansome & California. Also, I ahve to say pedestrians are so focused on cars they miss cyclists.

On a good note:
- Buses and shuttles have been very courteous to me, on my routes (EmeryGoRound, the 10-Townsend).
- It’s been gorgeous out in the morning and afternoon
- Cycling in SF is so fast- everything is so close together
- It feels like there’s been more people out on bikes, doing errands and stuff. Bike racks seem really full
- Most bars/restaurants/public places I’ve been at, if I ask if they have a place for bikes, they usually do! It’s this neat kind of underground chivalry.

I circled the Bay basically on bike + public transit. Amtrak to San Jose ($15 from Emeryville), Caltrain ($7) to MUNI ($2) and then cycled back home to North Beach.

Day 1: Notice the sign on Embarcadero turnstile, “no bikes during commuter hours, 7-9AM” (It’s 10AM). Started this long discussion on FriendFeed. I’m sweaty and exhausted at work, and it’s worst going home- where every staircase is uphill (a quirk of going from an underground station to an overground one).

Day 2: Instead of biking up Embarcadero- which is wind tunnel every which hour or way or day- tack up the streets on the East side of Telegraph Hill. Less wind, a little more distance. I run into an old friend on BART, and I realize the social aspect of public transit cannot be overrated.

Day 3: It all goes by in a blur. It’s faster and becoming rote. I’m not as tired, it’s easier, and I start noticing the signs of approaching fall- ripening fruit on trees, the earlier darkness, and realize it’s great to be outside so much, each day, but still be able to get everything done work-wise and after-work-wise.

Back into the car Monday for the BART strike.

Provocative, yes — too much so for the sponsor, San Francisco Women Against Rape. A few hours later, Yelp sent out this corrected version:

Nevertheless, even the corrected email is full of references to cute boys and double entendres like “Rachel L likes to strap hers on knowing “there isn’t another person out there” with the exact same one” — messenger bags, that is. Well, if the email didn’t get attention the first time, it is now.

Have bike? Have some pre-Valentines’ Day fun tonight at the SF Bike Coalition’s “Love on Wheels.” This is a great opportunity to meet fellow bicyclists and maybe even ride away hand in hand.

What better way to take all that aggression bubbling in you out on the entire city at Pillow Fight! Bring your pillow to Justin Herman Plaza at 6pm and be prepared to whack a few moles.

Fancy some tea and crumpets? Crown & Crumpet have a menu full of l’amour and a it’s a great excuse to dress-up like you did as a kid for tea parties.

Had a hard week? How about a full day of massage? Yes please! You and your playmate can spend an entire day learning how to massage each other at The Center For Healing and Expression. Sounds better than a box of chocolates!

Have you ever attended a “no pants party?” Trust me when I say everyone should do it at least once. The Knockout is hosting the “5th Annual Underwear Party.” You don’t even have to fret over what to wear! Be sure to check your undies for holes!

For a list of other fun events on Love Day, check out SF Station and Upcoming

Thanks for the link to Richard Walker via FriendFeed

When I was in Bangalore in 2007, I was struck by the utility of the ubiquitous motorized rickshaws, known locally as autocabs or just autos:

Any visitor to Asia has seen these things, since they’re in every Asian city. And they are cheap and they are everywhere. When I mentioned them to one of the panjandrums of the Bay Area public transportation scene, the executive director of one of the NGOs that lobbies for transportation policy, he was dismissive. “Oh, the tuk-tuks,” he said. “They clog up the streets, and they pollute. That’s not what we need. We need commuter rail that goes everywhere.”

Oh, fine, Mr. Bay Area Transit Boss! So I’m on my way to work in the morning. Never mind how I get to the BART station; I take a train across the bay to, say, Ashby. Now that I have alighted at your gigantor 1970s-era concrete monster BART station, I need to get to work, 2.3 miles away. It’s too far to walk. I could wait 20 minutes for a bus, and then that bus would take 20 minutes to poke along for the two miles, making my trip to work take over an hour… And that’s why I drive every day instead.

 
Yes, we need rail. It would be great, for example, if there were another BART line running through Oakland and Berkeley, with stops at the Grand Lake cinema, College and Telegraph, Sather Gate, North Gate, and the Gourmet Ghetto — call it the Yuppie line, and color it pink. It will be great when we have electrified CalTrain (target: 2015), and a bullet train from L.A. to downtown S.F. (target: 2018), and the Central Subway (target: 2016).

But then what do you do when you get to your stop? What if you have three heavy bags of groceries and live eight blocks up a hill? What if you just live three blocks from a bus line and you’re old, or injured — how do you shop? Sure, you could call a taxicab, and wait for twenty minutes, spend five dollars, and have to deal with a pissed-off driver who is mad at you because the short trip hardly registers on the meter and he’s having enough trouble today making his gate fee — if he shows up at all — and who, because he’s pissed off, won’t help you with your bags.

And why does it take twenty minutes? Because we’ll never have enough taxicabs in San Francisco — the whole issue is too political, and no mayor or public transportation commission has had the political will to fix the broken system. We have to have an alternative that works, goes door-to-door (or door-to-transit hub), won’t take two decades to put in place, and — extra benefit! — employs hundreds or thousands of people.

Take the worst part of autorickshaws: they’re smelly and noisy. Get rid of the smoky two-stroke engine, and electrify the things. On a battery, they’ve got enough juice to go 35 mph, and that’s more than enough for city driving. Maybe the driver will have to switch out the batteries once or twice during the day — fine, put battery switch-out stations all around the city in any of the hundreds of parking lots and vacant storefronts. (You’ll need the infrastructure eventually for the day when cars have the same system.)

Now, the other objection: that by being small enough to squeeze between larger vehicles, the autorickshaws contribute to traffic congestion rather than solve it. No — they’re going to be replacing cars on the road. Have you ever been to Rainbow Grocery on a busy day or evening? There are cars stretching in a line out of the parking lot, down 13th St., and sometimes around the corner onto Folsom. Since most of the people who shop at Rainbow are hippies or former hippies who would like nothing better than to grasp a green alternative, I’m betting they’d jump at the chance to take a less-polluting form of transport to shop. Multiply that by the thousands of shopping trips city residents take every day. Shit, just two days ago I drove one mile from my house in Bernal Heights to 23rd and Mission to pick up fish tacos at La Corneta. I was extremely lucky to find a parking place within a hundred yards, but if I take an autocab, there’s no need to find a parking place, no need to run my car for the two-mile trip, and now the Mission St. buses can get on their way without my car in the way. Yes, the thousands of autorickshaws would take up space on the roads. But a lot less than the taxis we have now, and a lot less than the cars they’d replace.

They’d also get cars off the road by increasing the attractiveness of large public transit systems like BART, because they allow me to get to and from transit hubs easily.

Oh, yes — I could ride a bicycle to and from BART too. But BART famously hates bicycles, banning them from the system during commute hours. I mean, hello!? CalTrain is better; they devote a car to bicycles on many trains, though the car often fills up. And I did ride a bike when I worked at that company 2.3 miles from Ashby BART — ten years ago. I’m now 52 years old; frankly, a bicycle is no longer an option for my commute.

So — I wish we had autorickshaws.

Market and Octavia is a dangerous intersection for bicyclists and it’s confusing as to why they would remove it when the Upper Market Community Plan proposal from 2008 recommends safety improvements like raised bike lanes, colored pavement, and an extension of the concrete safety barrier.

San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and its supporters are holding a rally to save the bike lane on Friday, January 16th at 9am at Octavia and Market.