Your Commute

A cabbie at Laguna and California on Tuesday at 3:30 a.m. driving someone home was unpleasantly surprised to look up from his driver's seat to see a SUV flying through a red light right at him. The SUV hit the cab, and the cab burst into flame. Amazingly, no one was injured, and even more amazingly, the cops managed to catch the driver of the SUV (who had fled the scene) shortly later. Turns out there were three bullet holes in the roof of the SUV, and the driver admitted he was previously around Lombard Street, where the police had received reports of gunshots being fired.

South Bay commuters, better go download some audiobooks for the drive home -- two lanes of 85 N in Sunnyvale, near 280 S, are blocked after an accident and hazmat spill after a van carrying motor parts flipped over and landed on an embankment. The spill appears to involve boxes that were labeled "explosive." That's no good.

...with all this, is it any wonder that BART ridership is soaring? Even with those perennial switching problems, BART's announced that they're going to be extending its cars during rush hour, so you won't be moving to the center of the platform to squeeze onto that Dublin/Pleasanton train. (All Dublin/Pleasanton trains will now be nine cars long. Nine! We'll practically be stretching out in the aisles with that much space!) BART notes that ridership is at 326,500, which is 11,000 more than projected, and 16,500 more than last year. It would take seven fully-loaded 10-car trains to accommodate 11,000 riders. (Dividing that out, a fully-loaded individual car can accomodate 157.142857 repeating people).

Picture of cab on fire from KTVU