BART riders can breath a little sigh of relief with the news late last night that BART agreed to a 9 day extension of its old labor contracts, which were due to expire midnight Tuesday. Read the rest of this entry »

A deadly train collision Monday has put the spotlight on the Washington, D.C. Metro transit system. In happier days, though, many tourists over the years are likely to have fonder memories of riding the BART-like train system in the nation’s Capitol.

If you have traveled on the Metro system, share your experiences below on what it was like.

For my part, I rode the Metro during a visit to Washington D.C. about nine years ago, and found it a clean and comfortable way to get around town and the neighboring suburbs.

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BART took nearly 36 years to meet its goal for weeknight and weekend service levels: running trains at least every 15 minutes..

Now that upgrade is about to get erased about as as quickly as you can say “recession.” In September, BART will revert back to intervals of train arrivals of up to 20 minutes on weeknights and Saturdays in order to save about $1 million a year. The more frequent service began in January, 2008, during a happier time when ridership was growing.  Read the rest of this entry »

Photo by Flickr user Tony the Misfit used under Creative Commons attribution license

Amazingly, the San Francisco Bay Area didn’t make it into a list of the rudest drivers in the country released Tuesday by marketing company Affinion Group. This dubious distinction went to New York, Dallas/Fort Worth and Detroit.

Before we get too smug, alas, we didn’t make it into the list of the mellowest drivers, either, unless you count Sacramento, which snagged a No. 4 rating for mellowness.

What about you, dear readers? Does River City live up to its Ritalin-less rating on the roadways? Share your stories about our neighboring metro area — positive or negative — below.

Read other key findings of the study, according to a press release, with one particularly interesting difference between San Francisco and Sacramento, after the jump.

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If you happen to be driving in San Francisco’s Ingleside district today, keep a sharp eye out for pedestrians in the crosswalk. According to online newspaper SF Appeal, police will be conducting pedestrian stings at the crosswalks. To be more exact, decoys who appear to be everyday citizens will step foot in the crosswalk, and if approaching drivers don’t stop for them, pow! out comes the ticket book.

The Queen is not always a fan of sting operations, but such actions seem justified when one considers the fact that the hapless pedestrian is competing with tons of steel. In case this action seems Draconian, Read the rest of this entry »

In the post before this one, the Queen ran a photo taken at a BART station and asked readers to identify it. One reader, Karen, who responded (and correctly) challenged the Queen to ask a harder question, so here it is: Who invented the stored value card? Whoever gets it right will in actual truth and reality get a BART-related object of value. (No, not a fare card. Dream on.) Seriously, though, Karen and other experts, show me some stuff!

(Photo: brandi666 on flickr.)

(Bonus question: Can you identify what’s in this photo, Transit Nerds and BART Riders?)

More people between 40 and 65 are taking BART and a tad more people are walking to BART stations, just a couple of the fascinating tidbits revealed by the transit agency’s 2008 station profile survey, which queried 50,000 riders on how they use BART. The last such survey was done ten years ago. Read the rest of this entry »