Running a public transit system is dependent on the labor of many workers, but what happens when one of those workers goes rogue.

 Read about a San Francisco Muni worker allegedly punching a teenage girl in San Francisco, and misdemeanor charges being filed against a BART train operator for allegedly making lewd advances to a female passenger he invited into his cab on a moving train. Read the rest of this entry »

You can’t put a price on the aggravation of being stuck in traffic. That comment from a Bay Area transportation official become the theme of my story today about the toll on the region from a six-day closure of the Bay Bridge for emergency repairs.

And much as that statement is true, we at the newspaper tried to take an admittedly crude stab at the cost of that aggravation. Our estimate: $7.5 million. This was based on an assumption that motorists who cross the Bay Bridge were delayed an hour a day in their commuting. Read how we made the estimate.

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People who take car pools across seven Bay Area bridges may be in for an unpleasant change next year: the end of free rides for car pools during rush-hour periods. And on the Bay Bridge, regular drivers not in car pools also may in for a shock: higher tolls during peak commute periods than at other times.

Proposed options to make those major changes in July were unveiled Monday by the Bay Area Toll Authority, which plans to hold hearings in November. I’m betting both changes are going to come under fire from some angry drivers. Read the rest of this entry »

In the saga of BART’s response to the police shooting of unarmed train rider Oscar Grant III, a few things seemed destined to happen.

First, the transit board members said publicy they were sorry about the shooting. This was in early January during the board’s first meeting after passenger-shot videos showed a transit officer shooting Grant in the back as he lay prone on a station platform. The office has since resigned and been charged with murder.

Then yesterday the board promised to fix the transit police department. Read the rest of this entry »

BART  must wait for state lawmakers’ approval  for setting up a program for citizen review of the BART police force.

Before the Legislature adjourned last weekend, its leaders decided not to attempt a rush job to approve a bill that BART needs to carry ahead with its plan to hire an auditor and appoint a citizens board to monitor transit police. Read the rest of this entry »

BART officials were thinking that Tuesday might attract the largest crowds ever to the train system because Caltrans had announced plans late Monday to extend the Bay Bridge closure by one day until 5 a.m. Wednesday.

It never happened, though. Of course, the extended bridge closure didn’t last long either. Caltrans opened the Bay Bridge 7 a.m. Tuesday after crews finished bridge repairs earlier than expected. Read the rest of this entry »

How will you change your travel plans when the Bay Bridge is closed for four days, starting 8 p.m. Thursday? We at the Capricious Commuter invite you to drop us a line.

Tell us about your advance plans and then tell us how it actually turns out over the long weekend. With our common dependence on bridges in the Bay Area, it’s a big deal – practically and psychologically - when our busiest bridge has a 300-foot-long  gap sliced open and a giant filling rolled in to replace it and create a new bridge detour. Read the rest of this entry »

Negotiations between BART and its second biggest union will resume at 1 p.m today in an effort to avert a planned strike Monday morning, Jesse Hunt, president of the Amalgamated Transit Union announced this morning.

This will be the first face to face negotiations since the union for station agents and train operators announced Thursday that they plan a strike in response to the BART board’s decision to unilaterally impose a contract on the union. Read the rest of this entry »

The risk of a BART strike is on the verge of increasing significantly later today.

The BART board appears poised to impose contract conditions on a union for train operators and station agents later today after the employee group’s leaders late Wednesday night rejected what BART management called its last and final offer. Leaders of the union have threatened to strike if their pay and work rules were imposed on them, and two other BART unions have said they would respect the picket lines even though they have ratified BART’s contract offer.

The BART board will take up the contract issue in a special meeting 11 a.m. today on the third floor of the Kaiser Center 20th Street Mall, 344 20th St., Oakland. Read the rest of this entry »

A strike threat hanging over BART like a dark cloud for weeks has lifted mostly with a tentative contract settlement reached Friday. But the deal needs to clear an important hurdle: ratification by three different employee unions in separate votes.

If that doesn’t happen, then riders may need to dust off those contingency plans for commuting. As Yoga Berra said, “It ain’t over til it’s over.”  Read the rest of this entry »