You think Hallwoeen on the Castro is a nightmare of douche-baggie proportions? Try the Oracle Open World 2007 convention, which is happening this Sunday, November 11 through Thursday, November 15. And it sucks for us plebeians. Imagine nerds and sales tools infused with a false sense of power. (Except for any Oracle SFist reader; you're all golden.) Imagine nasty Oracle PR bitches who hangup on local media outlets trying to get a modicum of......

That idea of congestion pricing in San Francisco, meaning charging people to drive in certain places around the city, has moved from crazy pipe dream stage to crazy pipe dream planning stage. Recently, the city was awarded $180 million to study the idea and there are already two potential places being mapped out by the people mapping it out. Instead of charging cars to go downtown, the idea would be to take it to the bridge as it were. The first place would be on Doyle Drive, one of the roads that takes you to the Golden Gate Bridge . In fact, one of the conditions of all this money is that the city would just have to do such a thing. Another spot being considered is right outside of Treasure Island. They're thinking up the idea of maybe charging $1 or $2 a car and it could work by having people use the FastTrak system, or at least we hope so as being from the East Coast, having to stop constantly for tolls gets kind of tedious. Also a bad place to be if you've just started a mob war against the Tattaglia and Sollozzo families. ...

-- San Mateo Bridge shuts down, then opens. Ta-da. [Examiner] -- Dan Noyes on Jerry Lucas, the sanity-estranged man who followed a then-pregnant Jill Rabinowitz into her garage, severely beating her with a can of paint. He might soon get sprung from the funny farm. [ABC7] -- Streets such as "Van Ness Avenue, Broadway...Harrison Street" and more could turn into toll roads under a proposed city plan to ease traffic congestion. [Chron] -- Viggo......

As anyone trying to get onto the Golden Gate Bridge knows, the onramp of Doyle Drive is in terrible shape -- it's too narrow, there's no shoulder, lanes merge and swerve around with no rhyme or reason, and there's those weird white poles in the middle of the street to visually break up the two lanes of traffic but are just begging to be hit. Apparently it's really unsafe in an earthquake too. That's just......

This week ended with the launch of the seventh and final Harry Potter installation. But while the world was consumed with Pottermania, it's important to remember that there were more serious things going on in the world, too - two of them in -Ist cities. Sampaist was shocked when a passenger jet crashed into the center of Sao Paulo, killing at least 200 people. The airplane, an Airbus A320, skidded off the runway at the......

A lot of weird car accidents in the news yesterday: an impatient guy trying to pass around congestion on the road killed a pedestrian on 19th Avenue in San Francisco, a drunk off-duty cop killed a pedestrian on Solano Avenue in Berkeley, and a man was killed in Sausalito by a garbage truck backing up, a truck filled with hay tipped over and jammed up I-80 this morning. The Examiner Blotter -- always a good......

This week we'd like to congratulate the -ist network's Mother Hen, Gothamist's Jen Chung, who found herself a recipient of Wired Magazine's Wired Rave Award. If that doesn't sound terribly exciting, keep in mind another recipient was J.K. Rowling. Yep, that's right, the -ist network and Harry Potter now have something in common. Go us. ...

You know that crazy idea Jake McGoldrick had for instituting tolls in downtown San Francisco as a way of easing congestion? And you know how it was quickly dismissed as yet another string of things that makes San Francisco what it is-- completely nutty? Well, New York's Mayor Mike Bloomberg just came up with the same proposal to ease congestion in New York. ...

With all that went down this week, we thought we thought we'd cheer everyone up by giving everyone a double dose of dogs. It was a rollercoaster ride of emotions this week at DCist. Like the rest of country, we were floored by the news of so many dead coming out of Virginia Tech, and with so many of the victims and their relatives from the D.C. area, we felt it important to pay......

People who ride the bus to work every day have nothing better to do than take a very long lunch -- twice -- and head over to SPUR's office to talk at length about public transit policy. Sounds like fun! There's two Muni-related and parking-related meetings coming up and open to the public (no snacks provided, but "feel free to bring a lunch"), so pencil them into your iCal now. If you're the kind......

There's a lot of transporation stories today, so here's your compendium, if you will, of stories....

Hey, it looks like today's theme is MUNI. But who doesn't love stories about MUNI? Anyways, the Chron did a story and discovered that MUNI has a lot of problems right now, mainly that it's on time only 70% of the time. That's 15% lower than mandated by Prop E. In fact, only three lines approach the 85% mark....

Now that the T-Third is up and running, we can all start focusing on the next big MUNI project, the central subway. This is a proposed underground that would go from near the ballpark to Chinatown. After Pelosi was able to secure us funding for it, everything seemed honky dory. But not so fast-- problems have been raised. We'll give you three guess as to what sort of problem came up: a Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dweller? A protest by the San Franciscans for Mole People (actually, they prefer the term Surface Challenged)? Brutal mob war shutting down the labor unions? Nope, you're wrong. The correct answer would be money. There's problems over money. ...

-Judge rules lethal injection in California a not very nice thing to do. -$1 billion bucks to go to easing congestion through Interstate 580 between Alameda County and the Altamont Pass....

The latest new fangled idea being dangled out there is for so called HOT Lanes. HOT Lanes is short for High occupancy/toll lanes and for once has nothing to do with Paris Hilton for which we thank the Good Lord. ...

Okay, here's today’s team on a move recap:...

-You know how Gavin said we needed more money to fund all the new police work we're asking the police to do? He was only punking Chris Daly. ...

And for those people feeling smug about all those people who were stranded on BART this morning (not that it would be us, of course), here's something to make you feel smug back. According to a new study, traffic congestion increased by 9% over the past year, the biggest jump in congestion since 2000. Traffic congestion had decreased over the past few years due to the sucky economy, but now that the economy is somewhat (somewhat) better, it's getting worse again. It's still not as bad as it was back in the day, when it took us days to get from the city to the Peninsula and the smog from the exhaust fumes caused darkness to fall sometime in the mid afternoon and acid rain burned our skins, but it's getting there. ...

Isn't it ironic? Don't you think? Our press-loving governor thought it'd be a fun stunt to sign a bill to reduce congestion at the always-jammed Caldecott Tunnel. Isn't it ironic, then, that as motorists drove by the scene, they slowed down, honked, and shouted "Arnold!" out their windows -- causing a massive traffic jam. You know, it kind of is like ten million spoons, when what you need is a knife. The Dede Wilsey war......

Yesterday, the Board of Supes took up the question of closing Kennedy Drive on Saturday's again and voted again by a 7-4 margin to close it on a temporary basis. No, we don't understand why all these votes are necessary when it's the same vote every time. ...

When we lived on the East Coast, Amtrak was totally where it was at -- pick up an Au Bon Pain raspberry cheese croissant at Boston's South Station, emerge in Penn Station and pick up a Village Voice. So we're crushed to see that the California version of the Acela bullet train has run into some snags. Legislators are now balking at putting up a bond measure to fund the 220-mph SF-to-LA-in-2.5 hours rail program, saying they'd rather focus on transportation measures that could relieve vehicular congestion instead. Sure, it would take about $33 billion to build over a 10-20 year period (and we'd need to raise $1 billion in seed money now), but it would be so rad! We can't wait to get to these parties LAist is always talking about! Plus, if we don't get a high-speed rail, we'll just have to spend comparable amounts of money to expand highways and airports to accommodate intrastate travel anyways, right? And you know how we're getting the money to expand those highways? Bridge fare hikes. In 2007, all bridges are going up by another dollar. We saw some excellent interviews on the local news of stoically disgruntled commuters hearing the news. "Sure I'm unhappy, but -- well, how else you gonna get into the city?" one Emeryville driver grumbled, eyes squinting in repressed rage. ....So you spend all that money to get on the bridge in the first place, and then what? Yesterday afternoon, a truck heading into the city caught on fire. This morning, when you drove into SF over the weird new Fastrak lanes, you then promptly got stuck in traffic because Mission Street's closed down after a water main broke yesterday on Mission and Fremont. And if you were heading to City Hall, you got stuck in a bomb scare. (no, not at Starbucks this time, but the cops did shout "Fire in the hole!" before blowing it up, which is always cool.) ...

Here at SFist Labs, we love it when readers suggest stuff for us to investigate/write about/inquire of/look askance at. Not only that, but we love it when readers show off stuff that they've created -- sure, we're happy to help you brag about something cool that you did. It's just that, well, if you do ask us to show off something cool that you did, don't have it be really obviously plagiarized. We got......

We've all thought about it -- but who knew someone had the Easter Eggs to actually go and do it? CHP arrested a Petaluma man Wednesday on 101 in Marin for dressing up a dummy and putting it in the front seat of his car so he could use the carpool lane. The solo commuter had dressed up a kickboxing dummy in a Miami Dolphins jersey and baseball cap and reclined the front seat back so it looked like the Marino fan was just taking a quick nap on the way to work. A cop, who often checks in windows as cars whiz by in the HOV lane, thought it looked funny and pulled the guy over. Cops say they don't usually catch folks with the full-on dummy, but it's fairly common to find people with dolls strapped into car seats. It's a $351 fine -- but hey, who knows how long this guy had been pulling this? If you amortize that over like a year, that's just a buck a day! (Maybe it's time to revisit that highway toll lane proposals after all!) ...

What did we tell you? Bay Bridge traffic was a nightmare today with the new reconfiguration of the SF offramps. Making matters worse, one of the contractors got a little delayed this morning and took an hour longer to get the cones taken down than he should have, which further backed things up. On the MUNI side, no one knows what the effect of the fare hike's going to be. The fare strikers released numbers that showed no real effect in money earned for the first three days of the month. The strikers take the position that this shows that the strike has had an effect (since numbers should have gone up), whereas MUNI takes the position that you have to wait until the end of the month to tell, because more people may have bought FastPasses instead. We're impressed that people can read so much into so little data -- but we will say, though, that for the first time ever, our usual FastPass vendors were reporting that they'd sold out of passes by Thursday the 1st. And hey -- they're finally opening the new Central Freeway! Ribbon-cutting ceremony today, new Octavia Street offramp opening Saturday, congestion back shortly after. Hey, did they take down that Webster Street temple yet? ...

News flash! Traffic is really bad around here! The Examiner is starting a six-part series this week and next, looking at specific traffic jam spots, what's wrong with them from a civil engineering perspective, and what we can do to fix them (answer: nothing). Today's piece: number one traffic congestion spot the maze (cheerily titled, "Interstate 80: Where East Bay Drivers Come To A Halt" and even more sunnily subtitled, "Poor design, lack of metering lights cause bottlenecks"). The article lovingly details that unique feeling of left-blinker Emeryville 80/580/880 merger panic (!!!), and provides a long explanation of why they can't get metering lights along the route. Meanwhile, drivers continue to lose an average of 6570 hours per day waiting to get to the toll booth. Mad props to the Examiner -- this series is going to rule. As a former Silicon Valley reverse-commuter, we're totally looking forward to Wednesday's "101: Why, Dear Lord, Why?" And we're even more totally looking forward to reading it on the BART! (Hey, Mr. Anschutz, have you considered releasing this series in mp3 format so people can listen to it on the road?) Maze from MazeMaker...

We have that cold that's going around (sniffle), so maybe that's why we find this decongesting plan so intriguing -- but Jake McGoldrick, chair of the SF Transportation Authority (and Chris Daly confrontation survivor), has proposed that San Francisco, like London and Singapore, start charging people tolls to drive into downtown during rush hour. Under McGoldrick's plan, drivers would buy a one-day pass to drive on the busiest streets downtown, and the money would go to MUNI. (Though it does seem like BART and Caltrain should get some cash too, if we're cutting down on East and South Bay drivers as well.) Congestion charging, say its advocates, clears the streets, keeps the smog levels down, makes public transportation more efficient, makes certain areas more pedestrian-friendly, and lets people prioritize how they want to get to work. We'd be the first city in the country to adopt such a plan if we actually decide to do it. Of course, AAA says they think it's a terrible idea, and the chamber of commerce worries that no one would come downtown anymore. But, and maybe this is our bias showing, but honestly, who'd drive anywhere if they didn't have to? Additional bonus: more missed connections to read on Craigslist! We honestly can't see anything bad about this proposal (but welcome enlightenment in the comments). Londonists, we'd love to hear what you guys think of the system too! ...