If you haven’t read the CalMatters article about how the DMV is complicit in keeping killer drivers on the road after multiple collisions and even after multiple deaths caused by those collisions, you may want to give it a read.
https://calmatters.org/investigation/2025/04/license-to-kill/
It’s horrifying how we fail to punish people who clearly need to be removed from our roads.
Prepare to be angry.
There’s a wonderful “what if” scenario piece over at https://ai-2027.com. It paints a picture of the paths future AI development might take. It feels very much like science fiction, but it might be right about timelines.
While a bit outlandish, but it combines international politics, competition, and compute capacity with the risks of AI misalignment to put together two plausible futures we should pay close attention to.
I enjoyed reading it.
Yes. Do this. Encourage building more housing in SF.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/article/lurie-housing-rezoning-plan-20255343.php
This is good news. There will be a new protected bikeway built next to the Panhandle on Oak Street in the eastbound direction (on the left side this time) to mirror the one that was put in on Fell Street (westbound).
Read the article here: https://www.sfmta.com/blog/improving-safety-and-access-panhandle-oak-street-quick-build-approved-board
An important statistic from the article is “With the Fell Street Quick-Build Project, a mirror image of the Oak proposal, there was a 38% drop in total collisions and a 50% drop in pedestrian collisions over a five-year period, and vehicle travel time increased by only 8–17 seconds.”
What this means is that this sort of infrastructure makes it much harder for drivers to hurt cyclists and pedestrians.
This is something to celebrate.
Signups are now OPEN for Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition’s 5th Annual El Camino Real
Ride!
Please sign up today to join us on Saturday, May 17th for our annual ride for a safer and more vibrant El Camino Real.
This is your chance to ride safely and comfortably along this direct, convenient arterial road connecting the hearts of our South Bay and Peninsula cities.
Join us at the Santa Clara Transit Center at 9 AM, or meet us along the way at one of our rest stops destinations, where we will feature free refreshments from highlighted local businesses along El Camino.
DC released a sneak peek for the upcoming Superman movie. It’s amusing.
Check it out:
I don’t play a huge amount of video games, but I have to really recommend this one. Ravenswatch is a rogue-like game with 9 different characters you can play (currently) with up to 4 people. It’s highly social and engaging.
Each of the characters plays very differently from the others and during each run with your group (and you can solo run), you can build different talents and objects to have a different flavor of play for your own character and it affects the other characters in the group as well.
It’s a really well-balanced and thoughtful design and it continues to hold the attention of my little gaming group week after week. We try out the different combinations of characters and give each other advice about how to best play as we figure out which things work.
The game scales with the number of players as well as through the various chapters of a run. It’s hard, but the right amount hard, seemingly all the way along.
It’s remarkably fun.
Here’s another one. Senator Ashby has introduced a bill to make it easier for cities to combat red light violations. SB 720 would establish an opt-in red light camera program for local jurisdictions.
Full text of SB270 is here.
It aims to shift the violations from driver liability to owner liability and change it from a criminal penalty to a civil penalty (more like a parking violation). It also reduces the fine down to $100 (or lower if you’re low income).
This might seem to be a weakening of the law governing running a red light, but I think it might actually do better at suppressing the behavior by allowing more ubiquitous automation.
Instead of getting a criminal violation with a huge $500 fine that requires a photo of the driver’s face to be valid, you get a smaller fine that is against the vehicle’s owner, has no requirement that the owner respond in court, and is $100 per violation. Appeals also shift out of the court system and into an administrative hearing. It might work better.
Revenues from this have to be invested back into traffic-calming infrastructure like bike lanes, speed tables, raised crosswalks, and curb extensions.
We’ll see.
There is a new California Senate Bill: SB 63 to create a more permanent funding source for Bay Area regional transportation. It’s a half-cent sales tax to keep public transit alive, especially transit agencies that are having financial trouble, like Caltrain, BART, and SF Muni.
The bill currently just targets San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties, but has the option to include San Mateo and Santa Clara if they sign on before July 31.
People use public transportation when it’s good. Good means safe, reliable, quick, accessible, and broad. Good takes funding. Supporting this bill means supporting people who choose not to drive everywhere. Those wonderful people are helping drivers every time they don’t drive. It reduces traffic by getting people out of their cars and into busses and trains.
The reason places like Paris and Amsterdam are so lovely is because there are multiple options for how people get around. San Francisco is doing pretty well for the US, but it’s not going to be improved by slashing funding for transit agencies.
Adina Levin (Green Caltrain) writes about it more here.
If you’re wondering what sort of postings will happen here, so am I. I imagine it’ll consist mainly of things I’ve encountered in and around San Francisco as I explore with Anne. I’m sure there will also be a smattering of cycling advocacy or some bits from my other hobbies and activities. I may post about some of my side-projects as I struggle to get them done. I’m going to try to avoid macro-level politics because that’s a horrible shit-show, but that may creep in. I will keep a carve out for political advocacy dealing with cycling, pedestrian, transit, and housing issues. Hopefully, I’m going to be taking some good pictures both in SF and on my travels, so those may show up here as well. Time will tell.
