Latest news with #Muni
San Francisco Chronicle
14 hours ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Letters: Instead of cutting Muni service, here's what S.F. can do to balance agency's budget
Regarding 'Muni is cutting service on five S.F. bus lines. Here's when the changes go live' (San Francisco, June 18): If Muni service cuts will save only $7.2 million, how many more cuts will we have to stomach to cover the projected $322 million deficit? Muni is an essential service for thousands of San Franciscans, including me. I take Muni every single day, including on the 5 and the 31 lines, which are among the cuts. Cutting or reducing service on these lines sets a terrible precedent; how many cuts will billionaire Mayor Daniel Lurie, who's probably never had to take Muni in his life, think are acceptable to balance the budget? The new budget shows Lurie's priorities: preserving tax breaks for billionaires and corporations while cutting the essential services working people need. Increasing taxes for billionaires and corporations by just a small fraction would easily fund all Muni lines. We must not let Mayor Lurie privatize public transit and sell it back to us at a steep price. The people need affordable and reliable public transit, and we will accept nothing less. Rhys Hedges, San Francisco Suisun City forever At a time when headlines often paint California as stagnant and dysfunctional, Suisun City is showing true leadership by advancing a reimbursement agreement tied to the possible annexation of the California Forever project. This bold move signals a commitment to tackling the state's housing crisis and reviving a core California value: the ability to build. California once led the nation in dreaming big, from aerospace to Silicon Valley, and built homes to match that ambition. But in recent decades, growth has slowed due to regulatory barriers, soaring costs and resistance to change. Suisun City's decision represents more than local planning; it is a vision for a future that includes homes and space for industries like advanced manufacturing, keys to restoring the middle class and keeping young Californians close to home. The City Council acted decisively and transparently, modeling the leadership that California needs. At the California Building Industry Association, we believe this is the path forward: communities that welcome innovation, embrace responsibility and reignite the California Dream. Suisun City just showed us what real leadership looks like. Bravo. Dan Dunmoyer, president and CEO, California Building Industry Association College preference unfair AB7, which has passed the California Assembly and is being debated in the state Senate, allows college admission preference in the state to descendants of slavery in the United States. The idea of favoring African American students for college admissions over others, when California was a free state, is an affront to the rest of us who have felt the sting of discrimination, too. Yes, California upheld the Fugitive Slave Act and practiced discrimination in everything else, from housing to equal education. However, if we are being fair, we need to consider those other groups that suffered discrimination but do not represent 'America's original sin' when applying to California universities. Thousands of Japanese Americans in California were imprisoned during World War II. Mexicans had their land stolen from 1848 and the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo up to modern times in places like Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles, where a neighborhood was razed to make way for Dodger Stadium. Jews were once kept out of universities and subjected to repressive quotas at places like the USC. AB7 is a travesty and an affront to all of us who also suffered, and it needs to die in the state Senate. President for all President Donald Trump wants immigration enforcement to focus on Democratic cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and, I'm sure, San Francisco. Perhaps he needs to be reminded that he is the president of the United States, not just the states that voted for him, but all of them.
San Francisco Chronicle
2 days ago
- Business
- San Francisco Chronicle
Muni is cutting service on five S.F. bus lines. Here's when the changes go live
Beginning Saturday, transportation officials in San Francisco will cut service along five bus lines, consolidating two of them and ending the other three routes at Market Street. Once the changes take effect, the 6-Haight-Parnassus and 21-Hayes buses will combine to form the 6-Hayes-Parnassus. Buses on this new route will loop back at the Market and Hyde Street stop near Civic Center. On weekdays, the 5-Fulton and 9-San Bruno will also turn around at Market, an adjustment Muni made because each of them have parallel lines that are largely redundant. Additionally, Muni will pare back the 31-Balboa route so that it runs from Cabrillo and La Playa streets near Ocean Beach to Fifth and Market streets downtown. These austerity measures will save $7.2 million, a small piece of the transit system's budget deficit that's expected to balloon to $322 million next fiscal year. If the city doesn't find new sources of revenue to patch that hole, Muni's next round of cuts could be crippling, warned SFMTA director of transportation Julie Kirschbaum. 'We are making small changes now to avoid devastating long-term cuts and changes,' Kirschbaum said. She and others are confronting worst-case scenarios in which the city drastically slashes transit service, leaving commuters stranded and causing nightmare traffic jams. Yet, even a relatively cautious reduction to bus service faced pushback in San Francisco. The new turnarounds will force some commuters to make transfers to reach their destinations, an inconvenience that could stymie people with mobility issues. Critics often note that transfers also create a psychological barrier that dissuades people from riding transit. During an April 15 public hearing at which the SFMTA Board of Directors approved the new service plan, transit advocates warned that it sent a grim message to the public. Many people would perceive the cuts as a sign of weakness, and intuit that 'public transit is not in the ascendancy, it is in the decline,' advocate Cyrus Hall said. He urged the board to postpone any claw-backs to service as city and state leaders rally public support for tax measures to bolster Muni and other transit systems. Kirschbaum said her agency is being pragmatic and minimizing pain for riders. For example, Muni will preserve resources by merging the 6-Haight-Parnassus and 21-Hayes routes, as both individual lines have underperformed since the pandemic. Data from SFMTA shows a 21% ridership recovery for the 21 when comparing April this year to the same month in 2019. The 6 recouped 56% of ridership across the same period. Transfers 'are really the only trade-off that customers are making at this point,' Kirschbaum said, noting that the current plan cuts costs while maintaining all bus connections and frequency. 'Making this small 2% change today will help fortify us as we face this larger challenge,' Kirschbaum said. Meanwhile, SFMTA staff are scrounging up money in other ways, such as raising the price of metered parking, pausing some capital projects and ending certain contracts. As budget officials trim around the edges, politicians aim to put multiple transit tax measures on the ballot next year, imploring voters for help.
San Francisco Chronicle
6 days ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco is full of surprises, some good, some bad
I was thinking of a June day in the mountains and a long pull through some rough country. We'd stopped at a small creek, tired, out of breath. We could see the way ahead in the distance, a high pass miles away. Very discouraging. 'Relax,' my hiking companion said, 'We're halfway there.' That's where we all are just now. It's mid-June and the summer solstice comes on Friday. It's the longest day of the year, a time the ancients celebrated the turn of the season. You can mark it yourself — 7:42 p.m., not long before sunset. Halfway there. It's been an interesting year, history swirling like storm clouds. Presidents, protests, flags, riots. Sometimes, though, you have to turn off the television news, put down the newspaper and just go for a walk. Live your life. See how things are halfway there. We had mild expectations for 2025 when the year began, a new administration in City Hall and hope for San Francisco's recovery from the doldrums of the last couple of years. So I looked around town a bit and I was surprised; things are looking up. But still a ways to go at the halfway point. The biggest surprise was a weekend visit downtown for a Sunday errand. I headed for Union Square on a slow Muni ride. Typical long wait for the weekend streetcar and then lots of stops and starts. Downtown seemed a bit empty, but everyone expects that. We've all heard the sad stories about vacant stores, seen the homeless in the shadows, heard the rumors. But I was surprised to discover Union Square full of life — full of children on a Sunday afternoon. The San Francisco Recreation and Park Department and a business group had set up a kids' playground in the heart of the city. There was a kids' reading room with an assortment of books, a 'recess stand' offering crayons and paper to draw pictures, and kid-size tables and chairs. There were hula hoops and pingpong sets. It was a bit of a shock to a seasoned San Franciscan. Union Square had always been a bit solemn, a formal kind of place, important. That was the ideal, but in recent years Union Square had slipped, had developed an air of vague unease, the kind of urban space one walked through quickly. There were always people hanging out, watching. You know the kind. Don't make eye contact. But it had changed this spring. It was different, better. I went back a few days after my Sunday visit. It was midweek and people were sitting at small tables with blue and yellow umbrellas taking the sun. A small café on the Powell Street side, offering coffee and light snacks. Not many kids around but adults playing pingpong and other games next to the Dewey monument. It was a mix: tourists and locals on their lunch break. The park was clean, too. In a way, Union Square is classic San Francisco in the heart of the city: cable cars, shops, the grand old St. Francis Hotel. And now it has a European flavor that wasn't there before. The real life in the city is not downtown, of course. It's in the neighborhoods, up and down the hills, out in the Sunset, in Chinatown and all the way out on Third Street, where the downtown towers are off in the distance, like a separate city. No matter how well you think you know it, San Francisco is full of surprises. An afternoon walk took me up the local hill. There was a surprise there, too: Neighbors had seeded the hillside in early spring, and now the hill was alive with flowers. There was a knot of people at the top of a set of stairs watching something. That can't be good, I thought. What is it? I asked. 'Owls,' a woman said. 'Great horned owls, four of them. They've made a home in these trees.' The woman had binoculars and there they were, big birds, sitting on a broken branch, as solemn as judges. I've seen seals in the bay, raccoons in the backyard, coyotes down the street, but never before urban owls. Halfway there. I felt good about the city; good vibes and good omens. But after my visit to Union Square I rode a taxi up Market Street. We stopped for traffic halfway up Market, almost to the Castro, and out the window I saw a man writhing on the ground, on a Wednesday afternoon in broad daylight. An overdose, maybe. A woman with a dog walked by. A man walking by himself glanced at the man rolling on the street and walked by. Nobody did anything. We may be halfway toward building a better city, but there is a long way to go.
San Francisco Chronicle
13-06-2025
- San Francisco Chronicle
Man convicted of 2020 Mission District hit-and-run
A San Francisco man was convicted of a 2020 hit-and-run incident in the Mission District that left two men seriously injured, including one who lost his legs, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announced Friday. Stephen Kernan, 68, was convicted by a jury for reckless driving and fleeing the scene after hitting two people with his Toyota Prius, prosecutors said. 'This verdict delivers justice to the victims after five long years and hopefully sends a message to all drivers to slow down and obey all laws or risk tragedy,' Jenkins said in a statement. On the afternoon of Feb. 12, 2020, a pedestrian was walking across 23rd Street at the intersection with Mission Street when Kernan 'suddenly accelerated' his burgundy Prius into the man, 'slamming him' into a passing Muni 14R bus, prosecutors said. The collision with the man — who had the right of way — caused the front bumper and license plate to fall off the car, Jenkins' office said. Kernan stopped for a few seconds following the crash, but then sped away from the scene, side swiping the same bus the pedestrian had been thrown into, prosecutors said, and hitting two Muni passengers, one of whom was pulling someone else out of the car's path just in time. The man's femur was broken in the collision, prosecutors said. Police at the time of the crash said Kernan continued speeding away along the sidewalk. The men who were struck remained hospitalized in critical condition for days after the crash, while the third victim was treated for minor injuries at the scene, police said. The district attorney's office said the two men Kernan hit were seriously injured. Bystanders stepped in after the crash to save both men's lives, Jenkins' office said, by applying tourniquets and doing CPR on both victims until first responders arrived at the scene. 'Although one victim suffered the catastrophic loss of both his legs, both men were able to survive because of the heroic acts of strangers,' the district attorney's office said in a statement. Prosecutors said Kernan returned to the scene of the collisions eight and a half minutes later. Kernan, who is not currently in custody, is set to be sentenced on July 16, prosecutors said.
San Francisco Chronicle
29-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
Letters: What the Yosemite reservation system tells us about our dependency on cars and traffic
Regarding 'Here's how it went on the first day of Yosemite's controversial reservation system' (Outdoors, May 24): The Yosemite reservation system should be a nonstory but, unfortunately, it has become one. I am an annual-ish visitor to Yosemite National Park and have visited multiple times during the COVID-era reservation system. I've been before and after that iteration of the reservation system. It was significantly easier to enjoy the park without having to deal with delays and traffic. Going back to the reservation system seems like a no-brainer. I hoped that the reservation system and the ease of transport in Yosemite Valley could have translated into some moving opinions about our over-reliance on automobiles in San Francisco and elsewhere. With BART, Muni and other public transportation agencies facing financial uncertainty, a system that is already over-reliant on private automobiles will face the traffic and lack of parking that Yosemite had without reservations. We must rethink the place cars have in our society. Brian Hoang, San Francisco Photos too graphic But the pictures of a tattooed shirtless male kneeling over a depressed woman on the street and a tent with a woman surrounded by three San Francisco police officers are troubling. Other photos are of two guys smoking fentanyl and a couple out of a Dickens novel on the street. This hardly invites sympathetic appreciation. The story talks about a woman defecating at a bus stop and rendering it unusable. Another woman is quoted as saying she wished she had never started fentanyl and details how she spends most of her days trying to score the drug with her husband. How is the average reader to see these individuals as worthy of care and treatment? Treatment is available, and I commend Mayor Daniel Lurie for his focus on the problem. These are real and needy people. Mel Blaustein, San Francisco Bill discriminates Regarding 'California anti-discrimination bill faces blowback' (Politics, May 21): The story underrepresents the opposition to AB715 and fails to recognize the fallacies in the arguments about antisemitism in our schools. At the Assembly's Education Committee's hearing, over 140 people opposed the bill to 70 in support. Many organizations not listed also filed letters in opposition. AB715 was rushed, requiring a waiver of legislative rules — an abrogation of the democratic process. The voices of BIPOC communities were never included in the process, and that constitutes racism. The bill would allow for anonymous complaints against teachers accused of antisemitism. It is important to allow time for teachers and the California Teachers Union to discuss the bill. Studying Palestine and the politics of Israel has led to the censorship and reprimanding of teachers. This creates an environment of fear and silencing. Criticism of Israel, studying and critiquing the genocide against Palestinians — as it has been named by several human rights organizations — should not be conflated with antisemitism. If AB715 passes, it will set a dangerous precedent for attacking teachers for curriculum that only a small and specific group of parents don't like. Carla Schick, Oakland No free lunch But I have to respond to her comment, 'Everyone in this country deserves to live a life of ease, and so do we.' Sorry, Carolyn, but no one deserves a life of ease. Here in the U.S., you have to earn it. Give the people of East Oakland the opportunity of education, good jobs and affordable housing, and your mission will succeed. Kevin Hangman, Yountville
