SFgo Still Going, Probably

Attention conspiracy buffs: There's a secret project underway to seize control all of San Francisco's traffic lights, just like how the terrorists did in Live Free or Die Hard. Well, okay, the civic initiative (called "SFgo") isn't TECHNICALLY a secret; while it's true that nobody talks about it and current information is hard to come by, that's just because the project is really really boring. But here's something to spice it up: President Bush just gave it a half million bucks in the FY2008 Omnibus Appropriations. (Along with $12 million for the next phase of the Third Street line, and the impending Central Subway disaster.)

The idea behind SFgo is that all of the lights in the city should be monitored and controlled by a central hub, so they can deal more effectively with traffic woes. It's a neat idea, and according to Muni, the work should be completed by 2004. As in, threeish years ago. Or possibly fourish [PDF].

So obviously, the project's PR hasn't been updated in quite some time. We tried emailing them for some more info -- and surprise, no response! This is what we mean by "secret project": it's not intentionally secret, just weirdly undocumented, at least for the public. How'd they ever manage to get $500K from the feds?

And check out the attached image, which we stole from the SFgo website. Looks pretty impressive, right? Like an awesome setup for monitoring the city's traffic lights? Yup. But hey, doesn't it sort of look exactly identical to the traffic monitoring room in Walnut Creek?