Frisco Vista

Most people would probably take BART and the Oakland International Airport connector shuttle. (The trip takes about 45 minutes and costs around $10.) But Delta Airlines offers a new option. Their “Weekly Fare Specials” newsletters alerts travelers to the special fare of $69 from SFO to OAK. You will go through Salt Lake City, where [...]

I am hereby calling for a criminal investigation of CalTrans and the Bay Bridge repair contractor, C.C. Myers Inc. It’s a miracle the failure of the bridge repair did not kill several people, less than two months after the original repair work. Blaming yesterday’s moderate breeze — in the 20-30 mph range around the bridge [...]

Maybe it’s just because I’m familiar with it, but the freeway system in the Bay Area seems a lot more sensible than in DC, where I have been visiting. To go left in the nation’s capital you usually have to start off to the right. Generally, to get anywhere at all you have to go [...]

And it’s not even built yet. Remember these transbay terminal designs? It turns out, according to “state transportation officials,” the terminal would be inadequate to serve projected travelers, and it would also pose engineering problems. “Three sets of engineers met and they concurred that the design for the station was inadequate and useless for high-speed [...]

Did you know the cable cars have their own website (separate from the rest of MUNI)? Besides route maps it offers cable car history, interactive demos, even guidelines for hopping on and off. B in the D, when I lived in Cow Hollow near the Marina, I commuted by cable car for a while. Back [...]

Biking the San Francisco coast is a great idea (in the dry season), and Suite101 published an article about the subject a few years ago. It’s not a bad little piece, although the title, “Cycling the Coast in San Francisco,” is not very accurate. The author, Jill Florio, doesn’t bike the coast at all, but [...]

The Alameda / Oakland Ferry is a good way to get into the city from the East Bay, though a bit more expensive than BART at $11.00 round trip for adults. A full service beverage and snack bar is included. Bicycles can be brought along. The ferry’s ports of call include Jack London Square, Alameda, [...]

The Transbay Joint Powers Authority board approved the proposal of the Houston-based Pelli Clark Pelli / Hines group for the design of the new Transbay Terminal. (See photos of the three finalists here.) The tower envisioned in the group’s design soars to 120 stories high. The PCP/H proposal had previously won the favor of by [...]

Again this year the Bay Area is ranked second in the nation for traffic congestion by the Texas Transportation Institute. And highway 80 is the worst of a bad lot. Do you think maybe BART should expand in that direction? How do you pass the time in traffic? BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger gets pay [...]

BART leadership has announced a change of strategy that will see it abandoning the expansions of recent decades in favor of running more trains more closely together and adding more stops on existing lines. There is talk of adding an earlier train to the airport (though just a train or two scarcely sounds enough to [...]

Plans are in the works to fix the “antiquated and unsafe viaduct” known as Doyle Drive. Doyle Drive is the scary, narrow strip of road that leads from the Marina through the Presidio to Golden Gate Bridge. It serves as a handy drag racing roadway for top-heavy extrawide trucks barreling hellbent for Marin. As part [...]

I got over to City Hall yesterday to see the models and visualizations of the new Transbay Terminal (on view for that one day only). The general outlines of this have been reported elsewhere, although we still seem to be waiting for a full and careful consideration of the plans. The plans were commissioned by [...]

VA’s new domestic airline is based in San Francisco. Right now they’re only flying to LA and NYC, but more destinations will be added. Introductory one-way fares are $44 to LA and $139 to NYC; Jet Blue has said it will match Virgin’s fares. I flew Virgin nonstop to London from San Francisco once, and [...]

Want to know how much your ride will set you back? At taxiwiz you can get an estimate by entering your starting and destination addresses, or even just by clicking the map.

Bay City Guide has posted a selection of useful Bay Area maps in pdf format. Included are: San Francisco street map San Francisco MUNI map Bay Area / Northern California map Golden Gate Park / Union Square map (interesting concept) Fisherman’s Wharf map BART map Ferry map

SF MUNI (Municipal Railway) opened the “T-Third,” its new Third Street light rail line (on weekends only for now, with full service beginning in April) on January 13. (The new service is about a year behind schedule and $120 million over budget.) In the early 20th century this was a busy streetcar route, so the [...]

If you’re driving in San Francisco be aware that the city issues some two million parking tickets a year, contributing something like $85 million to the municipal coffers. When I was editor-in-chief of Mercury House in its Sansome Street location I had on my wall a prayer to Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, the patron saint [...]