Frisco Vista

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 [...]

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 raise [...]

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 it [...]

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 new [...]

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 of [...]