The Pleasant Hill BART station will have some unusual four-legged visitors Monday night: search and rescue dogs practicing their skills in a drill. Read the rest of this entry »

BART Director Bob Franklin announced he’s running for Oakland City Council in November - a decision forcing him not to defend his BART seat in the same fall election.

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AC Transit is holding three youth Clipper Card sign-up events this week  – including one at Richmond BART from 4 to 7 p.m. Tuesday (today). People between 5 and 18 need Clipper Cards to ride for the discounted rate of $20 per month. Read the rest of this entry »

More Californians are traveling for the Christmas and New Year’s holidays than last year, AAA reports. It is the second consecutive major holiday that travel is up, reversing a trend of reduced travel during a slow economy. Read the rest of this entry »

A week after a state senator announced plans for a bill to block further work on the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s planned move from Oakland to San Francisco, the agency is calling a special meeting for Wednesday to hire an architectural firm to remodel the new headquarters building in San Francisco. The $1 million architectural contract is the latest source of conflict over the move. Read the rest of this entry »

BART Director John McPartland of Castro Valley was elected the BART Board president Thursday. He will hold the rotating position for a year. Read the rest of this entry »

A public meeting on a proposal for  bike and pedestrian lanes on the Bay Bridge western span will be held by Caltrans and the Bay Area Toll Authority at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday (tonight) in San Francisco. The site is the  the San Francisco County Transportation Authority, 100 Van Ness Ave., 26th floor. Read the rest of this entry »

Just two weeks after disclosures that a Caltrans technician had falsified inspection data on agency construction projects, a federal report says that the worker and his boss stole goverment construction materials for a project at the supervisor’s personal property. The new report, disclosed by the Sacramento Bee, is fueling an East Bay lawmaker’s suspicions that there is a problem in the culture of a Caltrans section that does tests to assure the structural integrity of foundations of new bridges, walls and other projects. Read the rest of this entry »

A state Senate transportation committee on Tuesday offered an unusual forum to question whether Caltrans did enough quickly enough when it discovered one of its technicians had falsified inspection data on construction projects. State Sen. Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, asked whether the Caltrans culture built around hard data and orderly procedures was prepared to deal with a case when a renegade worker acted outside the norm. Read the rest of this entry »

Johannes Mehserle, the former BART police officer convicted of involuntary manslaughter for killing Oscar Grant in 2009, is back in the news as a federal civil trial begins Monday in San Francisco into allegations that he and four other BART police officers used excessive force in roughing up a train rider. The confrontation occurred at the BART Coliseum station in November 2008, seven weeks before Mehserle’s shooting of an unarmed Grant was caught on video and sent around the world via the Internet. Read the rest of this entry »