What better way to celebrate the new BART fare hikes than a 30 minute train delay on the first official day of work in 2008? It kind of threw the new train schedule a little out of whack too. We haven't been able to find anything officially reported on the delay yet, but from what we gleaned from the PA system, it sounded like a train got stuck at 24th Street with a jammed door.......

From the moment you first plugged it in, your home telephone has been waiting for the moment when its existence would be justified. And now! At last! The Gavin Newsom '08 Phone Bank is ACTIVATING! Six days a week, starting this weekend and running until November, the phone bank will will be harassing San Franciscans all over San Francisco: vote for Gav! As we know, he's got a pretty extensive collection of phone numbers,......

We don't have anything funny to say about this one -- we're simply at a loss. Rumor had it yesterday that Gavin picked Stuart Sunshine to be his new Deputy Chief of Staff, and now the mayor's Director of Communications Peter Ragone (not to be confused with houseguest John Nelson) has confirmed it. Stuart will be leaving the MTA and moving to the mayor's administration, where he'll be "focusing on infrastructure and transportation." That's......

"We're very sorry about everything," a MUNI spokesman announced today while bowing his head to the floor in a gesture of submission, "please tell the proletariat to stop the fare strike. It frightens us." One month after a refuse-to-pay campaign was launched in protest of fare hikes and service cuts, SF's transit agency has been brought utterly to its knees. As is completely obvious to anyone who's ridden a bus in the past few......

According to Bay Area Transit News, the Board of Supes voted a 7-to-4 thumbs down to Hunter Stern last Tuesday. (Oddly, the vote was observed in the Examiner and SJ Merc, but not on the Supes' website ... WTF?) Gavin Newsom nominated Hunter for a seat on the MTA board, which oversees MUNI, San Francisco's self-declared transit agency. Hunter's qualifications? Well, er, that's the sticky point. He's never worked in the transit field before......

Hey MUNI riders, that time we've all been dreading is finally here. Yep, starting Thursday, September 1st, those long rumored, oft-talked about fare hikes will start kicking in. That means it'll cost you an extra quarter to take a super-crowded, freak-filled, hour-long bus ride through the city. The cost to get on the bus? $1.50. Fast passes, however, will still remain at $45 a month and discounted tickets for seniors and kids will only be raised fifteen cents. The reason for the fare increase is to make up for huge budget shortfalls. ...

....and waiting.... and waiting.... and there's still no word on whether we're having a BART strike or not. Even we're getting bored of hitting "refresh" on the sfgate.com window, and as you guys have probably guessed, that's our time-wasting activity of choice these days! ABC 7 is reporting that the workers are now distributing flyers warning commuters to find another way to work tomorrow, while everyone else reports nothing more than "continuing talks." Seems like management's playing hardball -- the BART website announces that you can use BART parking lots for carpools if a strike is called, they're setting up BART charter buses from West Oakland to the Embarcadero, and -- get this -- it also lists vacation packages they've negotiated for you if you decide just to take the week off. In any event, public sentiment seems to be vaguely resentful of the fairly-well-paid BART workers, which is notable in a town that's usually very union-friendly. Must've been the fare hikes. Meanwhile, the Chron continues its cutting-edge journalism with the article: "If BART strikes, gridlock will follow." Mind like a steel trap over there! ...

Last Friday, San Francisco Municipal Railway Chief Michael "Montgomery" Burns announced that he was leaving MUNI to take over as the head of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority. Although everyone is claiming that Burns is leaving for the benjamins (if you're wondering what running a public transportation department gets you, in SF, it's $280,000 a year and in Santa Clara it's $10,000 more a year), some say it's mainly nothing more than your basic,......

This shhhhh really is bananas! Just like Gwen Stefani, Supervisor Chris Daly stuck it to the student teachers (stomp stomp), getting ev'ryone riled up (stomp stomp). He ain't no hollaback supe -- he ain't no hollaback supe! So what's the hollering about? What's it always about? MUNI! So Daly, who's been on the forefront of protesting the MUNI fare hikes, made a routine motion to put off discussing the rollback in the parking fees so it could be discussed at the same time as the other MUNI budget objections he and the transit advocates wanted to make. Supervisor McGoldrick then said he wouldn't vote for the motion. "Are you kidding me?," our peroxide-blonde cheerleader ska-punk-pop princess said. Sandoval then said he wouldn't either. Response? "F*** that!" Bring it, Chris! Chanting, gavel-banging, and the cops get called, after the jump. Yeah!...

First MUNI announced they wanted to raise fares. Then Caltrain hopped on board the fare raising train (ha! we made a pun). And now BART. Why, raising fares is the new black. Thanks to the usual assortment of reasons- budget shortfalls, rising employee benefits, mismanagement- BART is now facing a budget deficit of $53 million dollars. Unlike MUNI, the BART Board doesn't want to cut service, but is proposing a combination fare hikes, cutting discounts to children and seniors, staff layoffs, and raising parking fees. Oh, and introducing valet service at some of the more popular parking lots. Yes, valet services and no, that doesn't sound elitist at all. At a meeting last week, BART directors heard from the horde of angry commuters who raised the fairly decent point that with gas prices so high, raising fares to make BART prohibitively more expensive might not be the smartest thing to do (maybe it's because we only got a C in economics, but if there's a belief that lowering prices can increase profits by making it cheaper for people to buy things and crack dealers often sell their crack at a low cost to get more people hooked, wouldn't that also be true of public transportation? Like if you lower fares, maybe more people would ride and more money would be brought in? But what do we know?) The Board of Directors pretty much shrugged their shoulders in response. ...

If you love parades, you'll love this weekend. We got the St. Stupid's Day Parade on Friday, the Cesar Chavez Parade on Sunday, and on Saturday, there’s the Reclaim the Street Party. What's the Reclaim the Street Party? It's a Community Mutiny! The organizers are calling for everyone to get dressed up in costume, bring noise-makers and/or puppets, plus any method of transportation that doesn’t involve fossil fuels, and to meet at Dolores Park by 1 PM this Saturday. From there, everyone will march on down to some some undisclosed spot where a costume ball and party will be held. Quelle fun. ...

BeyondChron.org is reporting that a group of advocates and union leaders are thinking about taking the whole Muni fare hike battle to the voters. Yep, another proposition. The proposed proposition would call for a five-year freeze on fare hikes and lay-offs. One of things to be considered on the proposal would be if the BoS votes for the fare increases, whether or not the freeze will be retroactive, meaning will the increased fares be decreased as it were. ...

As expected, the Municipal Transit Authorities proposal to increase fares by $.25 went over as well as Tara Reid's attempt to play a brainy archeologist in her new movie. So far, it's led to a protest, a rowdy committee hearing and some waffling on the part of the Gavster. Not to mention some spirited debate on SFist. The proposed fare increases are in an attempt to try and close a projected deficit of over $50 million for the upcoming year. ...

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