There was a CHP-involved shooting Wednesday afternoon on I-280 in San Francisco, near the Mariposa Street on-ramp, and all southbound lanes of the freeway were subsequently closed.

The shooting, which occurred on I-280 in the southbound lanes south of Mariposa Street, came after an apparent struggle between a CHP officer and a pedestrian who was possibly armed, around 4:30 pm Wednesday.

KTVU reports, via the CHP, that a knife was found at the scene that belonged to the pedestrian. The exact nature of the struggle, or how it unfolded, has not been made public.

According to KPIX, there were two vehicles by the side of the road at the time of the shooting, and there may have been some sort of collision that preceded the incident.

California Highway Patrol sent out a Sig Alert about the situation at 4:53 pm. All southbound lanes of I-280 were blocked due to the investigation.

Those lanes did not reopen until around 9 pm.

The pedestrian was reportedly hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries, and is expected to survive.

We'll update you as we learn more.

This story has been updated throughout.

If you took I-280 north to work Tuesday morning, there’s a good chance you were late. A massive pileup of crunched cars blocked several lanes of traffic and slowed movement on the freeway just south of Ocean Avenue, as photos from the San Francisco-area California Highway Patrol show.

Eleven cars in total were involved in the 7:30 a.m. crash, the CHP says. One car’s passenger side wheel was ripped clean off in the front, and its bumper on the same side hung below the car as well. Another SUV’s front end smashed so aggressively, it its own humper into the windshield.

Despite some of the damage looking fairly extreme, officers say no one was badly hurt. Only minor injuries were reported.

The CHP has also now released the cause of that crash:

“Most of the time when we talk about ‘unsafe speed for conditions,’ we’re talking about rain, or snow or wind. Today though we’re talking about sun,” the SF CHP quipped.

Investigators say people were driving too fast with the sun in their eyes, rendering them unable to react quickly and avoid an incident when the cars in front of them collided.

The CHP also says changing seasons affect driving conditions. Although you may be used to the road, you can’t predict what the drivers around you will do, and thus you still have to remain alert on the roadway.

“Daylight savings time just started, so the sun is in a different place in the sky than it was during your commute a couple of weeks ago.  Please make sure you are driving at a safe speed and that both you and your vehicle are prepared for changing conditions no matter what the weather is outside!” the CHP said.

A new study on the frequency of roadkill on California roads finds that I-280 between San Bruno and Cupertino is the “Deadliest Highway in California” for animals.

A team at UC Davis called the Road Ecology Center does all manner of studies of California roads and highways, and their effect on wildlife habitats, air quality, forest damage, and another impacts of roads and vehicular traffic. Their latest study delves into the tens of thousands of deer, birds, coyotes, mountain lions, squirrels, and even newts that are killed on California roadways, and its findings literally hit close to home. According to NBC Bay Area, I-280 on the Peninsula is what they call the “Deadliest Highway in California” for wildlife.

The center’s “roadkill report” does not refer to these animals as roadkill, instead they refer to each collision as a “wildlife-vehicle conflict” (WVC). But it’s not really a fair “conflict” given what keeps happening to the animals, and it happens most on one stretch here in the Bay Area.

“The highway with the consistently highest rate and cost of WVC in any given year in the last 5 has been I-280 on the San Francisco Peninsula, between San Bruno and Cupertino,” the report points out. “Five of the top-20 highest cost, 1-mile segments of highway in CA are on I-280.”

Their full 21-page report (Warning: Has many pictures of dead animals, including the first thing you see on your screen when you click on it) concluded that this does cost the state significant money, in terms of damage and cleanup costs. When considering incidents reported by the Highway Patrol and the U.S. Department of Transportation, they estimate these accidents have cost the government about $1 billion in damage over the last five years. Consumers have paid about $1 billion out of their own pockets during that same period, according to their assessment of insurance data.

They recommend a much lower-cost addition of fencing and wildlife-crossing structures. The deer above is seen in such a crossing structure east of Truckee, wherein the deer can simply walk safely through a passage beneath the highway.

This isn’t exactly new news. The same center put out a report in 2016 that also found the same stretch of I-280 to be California's worst for vehicular collisions with animals. That reports found "exceptionally high concentrations of deer-vehicle conflict" on that highway, and the new report adds that “fencing most of I-280 to prevent wildlife access and reduce WVC would be very cost-effective.”

Related: Report Says 280 Between SF and San Jose Is State's Deadliest Road For Animals [SFist]

Image: Google Maps

A dead body found Thursday near a a San Francisco off-ramp for 280 did not appear to be a victim from a nearby crash, a California Highway Patrol spokesperson says, as the deceased was in a state of decomposition.

CHP officers were called to the San Jose Avenue off-ramp northbound 280 at 1:49 p.m. Thursday on reports of a fatal collision, Bay City News reported at the time.

However, it appears that the crash, itself, wasn't fatal, as the body found near the scene was "decomposing," CHP spokesperson Officer Vu Williams told KRON 4 Thursday evening.

KRON reports that Williams says that "the body may have been that of homeless man, but did not necessarily appear to be related to an earlier collision."

The San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office did not have further details to release on the deceased, including gender, age, or identity, as of publication time.

Traffic Advisory: Bus fire blocks multiple southbound lanes on I-280 at Sand Hill Road pic.twitter.com/qeCB2vYtbj

— Palo Alto Weekly (@paloaltoweekly) April 6, 2016

Today started off hot for 15 southbound commuters, although perhaps not in the way they expected. According to KRON4, a shuttle bus carrying Apple employees caught fire this morning around 6:38 a.m on I-280 at the Sand Hill Road off-ramp to Menlo Park. California Highway Patrol closed two lanes of traffic, reports the Chronicle, as firefighters worked to extinguish the flames.

Thankfully no injuries were reported, and while the lanes were cleared by 8 a.m., residual traffic backups are expected. The Apple employees were apparently transferred to a different bus, and shuttled along to work.

This post has been updated to reflect that the bus is an Apple shuttle, and that no injuries were reported.

Related: Video: Netflix Tech Shuttle Bursts Into Flames

Delays I280 SB at Alemany. @CHP_GoldenGate says person in underwear crawling in roadway struck by at least 1 vehicle pic.twitter.com/q2tGC94CWi

— Christien Kafton (@CKaftonKTVU) March 28, 2016

An underwear-clad pedestrian who was killed Monday morning as she crawled on a San Francisco freeway has been identified, but the situation behind her strange death remains a mystery.

California Highway Patrol spokesperson Sergeant John Cardoso said Monday that calls reporting a pedestrian "crawling on the freeway in underwear" began to roll in at 6:18 a.m.. By 6:20, the pedestrian had been fatally struck in the southbound lanes of 280 near Alemany Boulevard, Cardoso says.

According to Bay City News, the pedestrian, who was identified Wednesday by the San Francisco Medical Examiner as 23-year-old Alexandra Stevenson, "was struck by more than one vehicle" as she crawled "in the lanes of traffic," but none of the drivers who hit her stopped at the scene.

Cardoso said Monday that it was unclear why Stevenson, who had no known address, was on the freeway. That mystery remains today, as CHP spokesperson Officer Vu Williams told Bay City News that investigators still don't know "why Stevenson was in the roadway or how she got there," but hope that toxicology reports "might shed light on whether drugs or alcohol played a role."

If you know anything about the collision or Stevenson, Williams hopes you will assist the investigation by calling CHP San Francisco at (415) 557-1094, or the CHP’s non-emergency public access number (800) TELL-CHP.

Previously: Underwear-Clad Pedestrian Killed While Crawling On San Francisco Freeway

Delays I280 SB at Alemany. @CHP_GoldenGate says person in underwear crawling in roadway struck by at least 1 vehicle pic.twitter.com/q2tGC94CWi

— Christien Kafton (@CKaftonKTVU) March 28, 2016

A pedestrian is dead this morning, after they were struck while reportedly crawling down Interstate 280 in San Francisco.

According to California Highway Patrol spokesperson Sergeant John Cardoso, calls reporting a pedestrian "crawling on the freeway in underwear" began to roll in at 6:18 this morning. By 6:20, the pedestrian had been struck and killed while in the southbound lanes of 280 near Alemany Boulevard.

It's unclear why the pedestrian was on the freeway, Cardoso says. According to CBS 5, "there were conflicting reports on whether the person killed was a woman or a man."

Police investigation of the crash closed three southbound lanes of the freeway and backed up traffic "for miles," Cardoso says. By 8 a.m. one lane had reopened, but he didn't have any information when the roadway would be completely cleared and said drivers should seek alternate routes.

There's also no word on the identity of the deceased, Cardoso says. It will require "fingerprint and dental records" to identify the dead pedestrian, Cardoso says, which "could take some time."

A man is dead after he was struck by at least one vehicle while walking on a San Francisco stretch of freeway Wednesday evening.

According to KRON4, at 10:54 p.m. Wednesday the California Highway patrol started getting calls of a man walking in the northbound lanes of 280 near the Monterey Boulevard onramp.

Moments before CHP officers arrived, the man was struck by the driver of a car. His injuries were fatal, and he was pronounced dead at the scene.

The CHP closed three lanes of 280 until concluding their investigation at 1:53 this morning.

As of publication time, the San Francisco Medical Examiner's Office had not publicly identified the man. According to a CHP spokesperson, it's still unclear why he was walking on 280.

Police say shooting on the freeway ramp exiting 280S onto 101S. Saw man carried away in ambulance. All lanes blocked. pic.twitter.com/G5TftKmvA9

— Jonathan E. Chen (@wikichen) September 20, 2015

A mid-afternoon shooting on a San Francisco freeway caused a collision and left two men injured, but police are struggling to find the gunman after the victims refused to cooperate with the investigation.

According to San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Officer Albie Esparza, it was 4:30 Saturday afternoon when occupants of one vehicle shot at occupants of another vehicle while both were traveling northbound on 280 near the split to southbound 101.

Esparza says that two males in their 20s were struck in the shooting, "one in the torso/leg and the other to the neck/head area."

The suspect or suspects fled onto the southbound 101 connector following the shooting. Described only as "black males," Esparza says that "we are working on obtaining more suspect/vehicle description," but didn't have that information at publication time.

KTVU quotes eyewitnesses as saying the suspect vehicle was "an older, white sedan" and the victims' car was a "gray Mazda hatchback."

As a result of the shooting, the victims collided with another vehicle on the freeway, the Chron reports.

“When the vehicle was shot, the driver went forward and the hit the vehicle in front of him,” California Highway Patrol Officer Vu Williams told the Chron. The occupants of the other vehicle were not injured in the collision, Williams says.

The shooting victims "were already out of the vehicle, they were sitting on the side of the freeway, I don't know how much conversation they had with officers," Williams told KTVU.

"They both definitely suffered gunshot wounds," he said. They were both transported to San Francisco General Hospital, and are expected to survive.

Unfortunately, KTVU reports, "The victims are not cooperating with investigators," which makes the suspects considerably more difficult to track down. They report that the shooting is now being looked into by SFPD's gang task force.

"Bizarre, yes," SFPD Lt. Aaron Lozada told KTVU.

It's "very unusual to have this happen on a freeway...No idea what led up to these events."

Due to the uncooperative victims and lack of clear motive, Esparza is urging "anyone who witnessed this or has information on the suspect/vehicle" to contact SFPD anonymously at 415-575-4444 or to text-a-tip to TIP411 with SFPD at the start of the message.

The big news being broken by mustache twins Matier & Ross today is a potential plan, unveiled in a closed-door meeting last week at City Hall, to drastically rethink the routing of Caltrain and the eventual hi-speed rail line so that it hugs the waterfront, passes by the Warriors Arena, and frees up the existing rail yard at 4th and King for future development. The idea would be to remove a large section of the 280 overpass as well, so that what is currently an industrial area cut through by a freeway would become a new neighborhood with big development potential.

The plan would call for a major, and extremely expensive track reroute and underground tunnel that would turn existing tracks at 22nd Street, taking them under the waterfront from there, along Third Street, past the new, 18,000 seat Warriors Arena — thereby eliminating more need for parking which is one of the arguments being levied by those shadowy opponents — and create a new joint Caltrain/Hi-Speed Rail/Muni station near AT&T Park.

The track would then go under SoMa more directly to the new Transbay Terminal at First and Mission, and this would replace the need to extend Caltrain tracks up 4th Street, which had the been the plan until now.

The map below shows the proposed new route. The section shaded in red shows where the 280 overpass and the Caltrain tracks beneath it would be demolished, making way for a more development-friendly "boulevard," like we now have along the Embarcadero and Octavia where other freeways were previously removed.

The plan won't be officially unveiled to the public for another month. And, because this is San Francisco, it will probably need a ballot measure attached to get public sign-off on whatever the eventual scheme is. And as the Business Times notes, the Mayor already suggested tearing down 280 north of Mariposa a couple years back, and the city was awarded a $1.7 million grant to study that idea.

Matier & Ross say the mayor is "moving fast" on this and that Caltrain may not be all that happy about it — especially because it means that connecting Caltrain to downtown will take that much longer than already anticipated. The tunnel they're talking about would require tunneling through landfill, not to mention underneath some expensive real estate around South Park, etc., so this won't be simple by any stretch.

Everyone agrees that this is a wildly expensive, multi-billion-dollar idea, but transit advocate Scott Wiener is saying it's "definitely worth studying," and when it comes to getting the rails into downtown, "we need to make sure ... we get it right."

Stay tuned as this gets hashed out over the next few months, and as everyone figures out if it's even remotely feasible.

If you're Caltrans, a long weekend without a closure of 280 is like Crazy Crab without the Crazy — no fun at all. At least, that's what you might think from the many holiday closures we've seen this year, as the agency works to replace and reinforce aging hinges on the interstate. The upcoming closure might be even more of a pain than usual, as this time the shutdown begins right around the time many folks are hitting the roads for an extended holiday.

In this weekend's closure, northbound 280 from the 101/280 interchange all the way up to SoMa will be cleared of traffic while, Caltrans spokesperson Steven Williams says, two sections of the roadway, each about 24 feet wide, 48 feet long and 5 feet thick, will be removed. Those sections will be replaced with reinforced pieces as well as replacement hinges intended to strengthen the overpass in the case of things like, say, an earthquake.

According to Williams, the hinges 280 is rocking these days were designed in the 1960s and have needed replacement for at least seven years. He emphasized, however, that this plan was in place long before this Sunday's quake. "The good thing is we're not doing this as a reaction to (the earthquake that) happened last weekend," he told the Chron. "This is something that we've planned to do to keep people safe."

The new hinges, Caltrans engineer Andrew Yan tells Bay City News, will allow more room for the highway to sway horizontally in the case of a quake by creating a space between the sections, which lowers the possibility that the highway will collapse during shifts caused by seismic events.

Space-age padding will also be added to the inside of the overpass to absorb shocks should parts of the road mash together during an earthquake.

The shutdown of northbound 280 will begin at 2 p.m. on Thursday and continue until 5 a.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 2. Everyone who'd be heading north on 280 at that time will be detoured to 101 instead, which should be fun.

[Chron]
[Bay City News/Appeal]

Planning on heading north into San Francisco on 280 this weekend? Well, change those plans, because starting tonight and running until Monday morning, you can't.

Tonight at 9 p.m. northbound Interstate Highway 280 (we use its full name when it's causing trouble) will close between its interchange with 101 and its Fifth Street exit. Caltrans officials say that the stretch won't reopen until 5 a.m. on Monday, July 7.

This closure, the second of three planned for 2014, is intended to allow crews to replace a damaged bridge hinge on 280 between Cesar Chavez and 24th Streets.

According to a Caltrans engineer who spoke with KCBS, four broken hinges, all of which are supposed to enable the highway to expand and contract during strong movements like earthquakes, were discovered along 280 during a regular inspection.

The on-ramps to 280 that will be closed for the next five days are Alemany Boulevard, the 101 connector to northbound 280, Indiana Street and 18th Street. (Edited to add, at the implicit request of commenter Roymeo, that obviously the northbound off-ramps at Cesar Chavez, Mariposa, 6th Street, and King Street will be closed as well.) Southbound 280 will remain open, and motorists are encouraged to use Highway 101 instead.

If this closure is like the previous one on Memorial Day weekend, expect snarled traffic and long waits in the area regardless of your route. According to ABC7, given the crowds that are drawn to San Francisco for the Fourth of July fireworks show, "for the people that do drive, it's going to be horrendous."

Things might be more than a little bit noisy for those who live in the area of the construction, too, as crews will be pulverizing concrete around the old hinge, yanking the broken hinge out, and wedging a new one into place.

According to Caltrans, we're not done after this weekend's closure: a third I-280 closure is planned for the Labor Day holiday weekend.

[KCBS]
[ABC7]

After witnessing an apparent drunk driving accident on 280 just north of Woodside, an unidentified man got out of his Jeep to help the victims. While crossing the freeway, though, a driver in an Infiniti SUV struck and killed the man.

The incident happened early Sunday morning round 2:40 a.m. when, according to The Chronicle, a "black Honda driven by a suspected drunk driver hit the rear side of a Toyota SUV. Both vehicles spun out of control, and the Toyota hit the center divider, injuring two people."

The Good Samaritan, a Redwood City man, saw the crash, parked his Jeep on the righthand shoulder, and attempted to cross the lanes. This was when he was fatally hit by the SUV.

At least one person was arrested in connection with the initial crash.

Video below:

[Chronicle]
[KPIX]

On Tuesday morning, Greens lost chef John Paul Ueber, 32, who died in car accident on the 280 in Daly City. He was killed just after dropping off his fiancee and heading into the city for a shift.

"The crash happened at about 8:15 a.m. Tuesday on northbound I-280 near state Highway 1 after Ueber lost control of his Honda SUV and struck the center divide," reports BCN/SF Appeal. "The SUV overturned and came to rest in the far left lane. Ueber, who was alone in the car, was pronounced dead at the scene."

Greens executive chef Annie Somerville went on to describe Ueber as "a very multi-talented person ... A very accomplished person. Super energetic, always moving forward."

Also, just a few weeks ago, Somerville unloaded praise on Ueber in an interview with Inside Scoop.

[Inside Scoop]
[Eater]
[SF Appeal]