The last time we heard about BART teaming up with local libraries to dispense reading material through vending machines was three years ago. Back then, the world was an entirely different place. George W. Bush was still president, iPhones didn't have apps for anything, and Justin Bieber's YouTube channel only had like a dozen views. Now it's 2011, Osama bin Laden is dead, your grandmother is downloading eBooks on her 3G Kindle, and Millbrae is still that place you end up when you accidentally take the wrong train out of SFO. But as of today, should you find yourself there without something to read, the Examiner reports that you can check out books from a crisp new Library-a-Go-Go machine. (Sidenote: Really? We're still calling them that?) All you need is a library card from the Peninsula. A much smarter move would be to put one in SFO so we could pick up trashy novels on our way to Cabo, but nobody consulted us on it. Their loss! [SFEx] by way of [CurbedSF] more ›

Early this morning, a Caltrain killed a pedestrian in San Mateo. "Train No. 198 left San Francisco station at 12:01 a.m. and hit the pedestrian on the tracks about 100 yards north of 25th Avenue at around 1 a.m.," reports KTVU. Caltrain officials do not anticipate the death to cause any delays during the morning rush hour. more ›

As expected, the fury-inducing plan to charge up to $6 to vehicularly commute into certain parts of San Francisco was nixed yesterday. "The San Francisco Board of Supervisors, acting as the city's transportation authority, have voted 9-2 to scrap a controversial proposal to charge a toll to motorists entering San Francisco from the south during peak commute hours." more ›

The cities of Palo Alto, Menlo Park, and Atherton, along with five environmental and citizens groups, filed suit Monday to stop the proposed high-speed rail that will rip through their quiet enclaves, if and when its built. The towns have banded together to call bullshit on an environmental impact report produced by the California High-Speed Rail Authority, claiming that the report shows inflated ridership numbers. In legalese, here's what they said in the suit, "The defective and inaccurate ridership and revenue information ... resulted in the [Authority] not being able to make accurate and informed choices among various project alternatives and in not being able to properly or accurately determine the financial feasibility of various project alternatives and mitigation measures." more ›

Due to this storm thing that's happening outside, about 26,000 PG&E customers lost power between last night and this morning. Of those, the majority are on the peninsula and in the South Bay, with only about 500 customers powerless in the East Bay and 100 or so in SF proper. Also, as ABC 7 reports, the storm(s) and high surf are causing erosion concerns along several bluffs in the Bay Area, and there have been a bunch of traffic accidents and various reports of flooding as well. Welcome back to winter, everyone! more ›

by Chris Jones more ›