A lawsuit filed in San Francisco federal court yesterday points out what any BART rider already knows: Elevators and escalators on the regional transit system are chronically broken or unusably filthy. But for transit riders with disabilities, the situation represents "systemic civil rights violations," alleges the lawsuit, which Consumerist has uploaded here.

"While BART’s non-disabled passengers may be able to avoid these unsanitary and hazardous conditions by taking a station’s stairs or escalators instead, riders with mobility disabilities that necessitate the use of an elevator do not have that option," the claim reads. "[They] must either travel to another station in the hope of finding a usable elevator, or roll through human waste in order to reach their final destination. This is an especially repugnant prospect for users of manual wheelchairs, whose hands, arms, and clothes inevitably come into contact with the wheels of their wheelchairs."

The suit, filed on behalf of two plaintiffs by two nonprofit advocacy groups, seeks no financial damages — just a court order that BART fix its problems. “My hope is that this lawsuit will finally get BART to address the needs of the disability community,” one plaintiff, Ian Smith, told the Chronicle. Smith uses a manual wheelchair: “Your hands touch your wheels, your wheels touch the floor,” he said. “A lot of people carry gloves, carry hand sanitizer. It’s not pleasant.”

The lawsuit was filed by nonprofit law firms Disability Rights Advocates and Legal Aid at Workh on behalf of Senior and Disability Action; the Independent Living Resource Center of San Francisco; Ian Smith, and Pi Ra, a 63-year-old commuter from Concord to San Francisco who teaches young activists at Senior and Disability Action.

BART faced a similar complaint to this one in 1996 in Cupolo v. Bay Area Rapid Transit, as the current lawsuit points out. A court granted the plaintiff's motion for injunction in that case, ordering BART to maintain and repair its elevators in 1997. The case was settled in 1998 and BART agreed to fix or replace escalators and elevators as needed as well as inspect and clean them regularly. But according to the current claim, “BART has since allowed the condition of its elevators and other accessibility features, as well as its policies and practices regarding access for people with mobility disabilities, to return to their pre-Cupolo conditions.”

In response, a BART representative writes that “The Disability Rights Advocates’ lawsuit filed today touches on issues that go directly to the heart of BART’s core mission statement: to provide seamless mobility for people—those with disabilities and otherwise—across the Bay Area." BART, the representative points out, is busy spending money on the problem. "Currently, the District in the midst of executing an aggressive $16.3 million escalator and elevator improvement agenda, with each project designed to address these issues common to high-traffic, urban transit systems. We agree with the call to prioritize these investments, and have earmarked an additional $190 million in access improvements for the downtown San Francisco stations as part of the recently-passed Measure RR."

But BART says the origins of its cleanliness woes are out of its control. "We’ve hired more crews and offered overtime to help keep affected areas clean and functioning, but riders and employees continue to unacceptably experience the impact of the homeless crisis. We are working with local agencies to help address the complexities involving homeless people in our stations, and are one of the only transit systems in the country with a full-time Crisis Intervention Training Coordinator and Community Outreach Liaison."

In the end, the representative for BART writes, the transit agency is "disappointed our program of capital improvement is being met with litigation."

Last fall, disability rights advocate Sunday Parker voiced many of the problems pointed to by the lawsuit in an interview with SFist. Parker's become known for tweeting images from her handle @sundaytakesbart, of the system's soiled elevators in order to draw public attention to the problem. While she values the freedom public transit like BART affords her, "Nothing has been done to alleviate the root causes," of the cleanliness problems, Parker said at the time, "[BART] just kind of throws money at the problem," she said, referring to re-flooring elevators and similar approaches. One root cause — certainly there are more than a few — is that BART's bathrooms in underground stations have been closed since 9/11.

Related: Meet Sunday Parker, The Transportation Accessibility Advocate Tweeting Pictures Of Piss In BART Elevators

The future of the Dogpatch/Potrero HIll Caltrain stop at 22nd Street is not assured, and according to Socketsite's speculation, "the odds of the existing Caltrain Station at 22nd Street surviving appear to be on the decline."

Discussion among a Citizens Working Group for the Railyard Alternatives project, a body created to assist the Planning Department, was mixed, with some members suggesting that the station “could also be eliminated, which would likely result in significant cost savings.”

Per Planning, the working group "is comprised of citizen stakeholders who represent the broad interests of the communities surrounding the Caltrain right-of-way, the Caltrain railyard, the Transbay Terminal Center (TTC) and the I-280 right-of-way." More on the makeup of the group is here.

There's also the possibility of shifting the 22nd Street Station to a nearby location, indicated in one question put to the working group. If that comes to pass, the group expressed a strong preference for tunneled tracks rather than trenched or street-level crossings, but you know, of course. Socketsite points out that there's lots of vetting ahead, and everything is fairly preliminary. The train, so to speak, hasn't left the station.

Related: With High-Speed Rail On Hold, Transbay Transit Center Daunted By Operating Budget

Oh and anther one!! But this #bluegogo isn't looking too hot 😨 pic.twitter.com/zJweXMi3mO

— girlonabike (@girl_on_bike) March 26, 2017

Chinese bike share company Bluegogo caused quite a stir when it threatened — er, offered — to drop thousands of its dockless, app-unlocked cycles on San Francisco streets earlier this year. It soon scaled back its ambitions at the behest of local regulators who feared abandoned bikes littering streets: Bluegogo bikes, unlike those of the Bay Area Bikes Share/FordGoBike system and similar traditional bike share programs, are located by GPS and unlocked via phone from wherever they're dropped.

The company eventually agreed to a reduced, soft rollout, but today will be pulling its bikes entirely after complaints of cycles strewn about streets. According to Hoodline, Bluegogo rented out 11 parking spaces from private businesses to use as stations during a soft launch. Customers were asked to return bikes to the stations, but apparently didn't comply. No stations are in the Castro, for instance where many of the bikes turned up, Hoodline writes.

A company spokesperson, Lindsay Stevens, told Hoodline that “Within two hours of learning that bikes were left in the Castro, we removed them... As of tomorrow, all of our bikes will be removed."

But a look at Bluegogo's app this morning reveals dozens of bikes still in San Francisco available to users. The Examiner clarifies that Bluegogo plans to remove the bikes by the end of today, Friday.

Stevens tells the Ex that Buegogo isn't packing up permanently: “We’re still here,” she told the paper, and the company is “prioritizing fulfilling all requests” the city has made for permits.

Prompted by the Bluegogo kerfuffle, the Board of Supervisors crafted new laws to regulate stationless bikesharing this month, including a permit and administrative fees system. A spokesperson for Supervisor Peskin, who railed against Bluegogo's heedlessness, told Hoodline that his office "continue[s] to receive almost daily complaints and photo documentation from constituents frustrated that their public realm is being turned into a private marketplace.” By April, the new law will be legally enforced by SF Public Works, his spokesperson confirms.

Related: Chastened By Regulators, Chinese Bike-Share Company Plans Scaled-Back 'Soft' Launch In SF

Chinese bike-sharing startup Bluegogo may have to backpedal on its plans to expand to San Francisco. City officials are warning the company not to proceed without permits and perhaps to the detriment of infrastructure and in violation of local law.

The Chronicle confirms speculation that Bluegogo, which is expanding aggressively with more than 100,000 bikes in four cities so far, plans to make San Francisco its next conquest. In total, Bluegogo says it hopes to add 200,000 bikes to American cities this year.

Mashable explains that Bluegogo is one in a growing crop of bike share startups. Like two other major players — Mobike, which is backed by Tencent, and ofo, supported by Xiaomi — its bikes are "stationless." Because they're GPS-connected, they're located throughout a given city, via an app, from which you can both find and unlock them. Bluegogo is also cheaper than the average bike share: In Shenzhen, for example, use of a Bluegogo bike requires a $14 deposit and just 8 cents per half hour.

Bluegogo, which is headquartered in Beijing, is the newest of the three companies and a relative latecomer to the industry, making up for lost time with grand gestures. The company's 28-year old founder Tony Li claims Bluegogo produces 10,000 bikes a day at its own plant and with eight factories through manufacturing partnerships.

In what Forbes frames as a clash of East and West customs surrounding regulation, local officials are concerned that Bluegogo thinks it can just barge in to town and drop off thousands of bikes. According to the Chronicle, some in San Francisco are exchanging photos of Chinese bike-share bikes left piled up on sidewalks and streets. SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin and Public Works Director Mohammed Nuru sent Bluegogo a letter warning the company that the city "will not tolerate any business model that results in obstruction of the public right of way or poses a safety hazard," according to Bay City News.

Meanwhile, concerned Supervisor Aaron Peskin held an emergency press conference Wednesday morning and declared that Bluegogo's plans represent "the age old tech arrogance," as he told the Examiner. “There are dozens of laws that would apply to them, from public nuisance to littering,” he added to the Chronicle. “In the end, they are going to use the public commons for their financial gain at great cost to citizens of San Francisco. They can’t use San Francisco as an experiment lab, and our citizens aren’t guinea pigs.”

A letter to the mayor from San Francisco Bicycle Coalition Executive director Brian Wiedenmeier obtained by Bay City News also urges caution. "The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition is deeply concerned about the impact of this planned launch on the accessibility of the public realm, as well as on the health and safety of all San Franciscans," Wiedenmeier writes. As opposed to the current system in San Francisco, which has specific docks for bikes and enforces safety and cleanliness standards, "Bluegogo's model would leave thousands of uninspected and unpermitted bicycles to be stored unattended for long periods of time on sidewalks, in parks and on our streets," worries Wiedenmeier.

A spokesperson for Bluegogo tells the Chronicle that reports on the company's plans so far have been “based on rumor, speculation and false facts." The tech company listing website AngelList does indicate that Bluegogo is hiring for several positions in San Francisco, and the company's vice president of US operations, Ilya Movshovich, revealed to the Chronicle that he has been in discussions with the SFMTA to get on the same page. Bluegogo only intends bikes to be placed where it is legal to park them, he says — but that's basically anywhere that isn't blocking sidewalks, driveways, or streets.

Another point of contention: San Francisco has entered into a 10-year agreement granting exclusive rights to use the public right of way for the purposes of bike sharing to our existing Bay Area Bike Share system. That launched in summer 2013 and in September 2016 the automaker Ford announced it would partner with the originators of the system, bike sharing company Motivate, to rebrand the system as Ford GoBike and expand the system's 700 bikes to 7,000 by 2018.

Related: Ford Is Buying SF-Based Shuttle Service Chariot; Also They're Taking Over Bay Area Bike Share

To ensure that tech shuttles can continue to roll along, business-as-usual, companies such as Salesforce and Y Combinator are among more than 24 contributors to a political action committee backing moderate candidates for SF's Board of Supervisor in Districts 1 and 11. The Examiner reports that such corporate donors, along with other interests like Maximus Real Estate Partners, the developer behind a proposed 330-unit project at 16th and Mission that opponents have dubbed the "Monster in the Mission," had given $1.2 million in funding to the group Progress SF by September 24, a group that's spending to pave the way for policy interests including tech shuttles and development. Other contributors to Progress SF include individuals like Ron Conway, the angel investor that critics say has too much ahold of the mayor's ear. But rather than supporting progressives as the PAC's name might suggest, Progress SF has given more than $695,000 to three political groups that instead support moderate candidates, Supervisor Marjan Philhour in District 1 and Ahsha Safai in District 11, politicians more in line with the political bloc of the board that has been willing, for example, to continue the shuttle bus system as it stands.

The 35 Bay Area bus providers that ferry more than 34,000 employees to and from work per day are currently operating under a one-year extension of a pilot program which the Board of Supervisors are expected to revisit in the coming months. Correction: SFMTA has contacted SFist to point out the following: "The pilot ended and the 1-year is just for the program, not an extension of the pilot. The program had many additional regulations/benefits than the pilot. It is also not entirely accurate to say that BOS revisits the program in a few months. The program is approved by the SFMTA Board and the BOS has a say on the program only through a CEQA appeal."

The "Google Bus" system has been a wedge issue among supervisors: First a moderate-dominated board favored permanently extending an 18-month pilot program in November, then progressives gained power, with Aaron Peskin elected to District 3, and an environmental group, the Coalition for Fair, Legal and Environmental Transit, spearheaded a legal challenge to the board's decision. In February the SFMTA began investigating the divisive idea of pursuing a new system of tech shuttle 'hubs,' assigned clusters of stops instead of the current system of 125 assigned locations in San Francisco. Later, in May, a report detailed hundreds of violations

Throughout, progressives like Supervisor Jane Kim have emphasized a distrust of the status quo. "I think the current program bends over backwards to accommodate these tech companies," Kim told NBC Bay Area in May. "Residents keep asking who is the city for, who do you represent? Do you represent all of us, or do you just represent a very small category of employers?”

After the legal challenge was mounted, Peskin observed of the shuttles that “They’ve been too big for our streets, there are pollution concerns, and impacts to the public transportation system. I have an open mind, but like many San Franciscans I have concerns about them driving on our city streets.”

The Robert F. Kennedy Democratic club is one of the three political groups that Progress SF funded, providing it $200,000: It supports Philhour in District 1 and Safai and District 11. Another beneficiary of Progress SF is San Franciscans for a City that Works, which received $195,000 from the PAC and spent $63,397 to support Philhour. San Francisco Firefighters Local 798 is the third group funded by Progress SF, receiving $300,000 from Progress SF. It spent more than $309,330 in support of Safai, for whom third-party spending totals $384,327. $365,507 in third-party money has been spent in support of Philhour.

“Early morning commuters need to know how the supervisor race will impact their lives,” Laura Clark wrote in a mass-email to supporters obtained by the Examiner. The RFK club's vice president and the president of Grow San Francisco, a group that promotes the building of housing, Clark punctuated her remarks with the call to "Help reach techies near you!” according to the Ex.

John Avalos, the current District 11 Supervisor who is supporting candidate Kimberly Alvarenga to succeed him rather than Safai, told the paper he's "not surprised that tech money is flooding into D-11 through back channels like the firefighters [independent expenditures]. The tech bros are trying to elect Safai who has demonstrated to them that he will give them the tax breaks, subsidies and favorable business conditions that will provide them at the expense of the D-11 neighborhoods.”

Related: 34,000 Passengers Per Day: Bay Area Shuttle Buses, By The Numbers

@mlroach @isaach We were doing sassy Twitter before it was a thing.

— Caltrain (@Caltrain) March 19, 2016

It being 2016, every #brand has come to the conclusion it needs to have a personality. That strategy, whereby non-human entities hawking toilet paper and toothpaste adopt snappy online slang for the purposes of social media marketing, can feel real gross and bad! But in certain cases, the disconnect between a brand and its "voice" on Twitter or Facebook can be oddly refreshing. That phenomenon was observed by some in the tone of BART's official Twitter account, which broke from its usual note of apology to essentially plead a case for BART improvement, keeping it real by expressing its own sense of frustration at the status quo. That, it seemed, was something riders found all too relatable, and the tweets were widely circulated.

Meanwhile, as Caltrain riders with Twitter habits have likely been long aware, the real Twitter laughs have been @Caltrain. It was a Reddit thread that brought the account to media attention this week, with the Chronicle quickly taking note of the "snappy" Twitter campaign. Some of the best @Caltrain tweets are so good because they take on the very culture of Caltrain, a service that can feel, especially on weekdays, like the train equivalent of a Google bus.

Other @Caltrain Tweets are so self-deprecating as to be charming, although some haters will surely point out that humor might serve as a distraction from real changes Caltrain ought to make.

Caltrain wants to perpetuate its style, or so it seems, further imbuing its brand with a personal touch by hiring another #socialmedia specialist. Do you have the chutzpah?

Finally, it should be said that not everyone is a fan of Caltrain — whether that's IRL or on Twitter. A particularly petulant disdain led someone to dedicate a whole account, @calrain_fail, which can often be seen feuding with Caltrain's official account. Though @caltrain_fail, a parody account of a sort, may be @caltrain's bête noir, perhaps the two accounts work better together: Contributing to a greater sense of accountability.

Related: Man Behind BART's Honest Tweets: 'Public Transit Has Always Been About Politics'

The section of tunnel is so consistently damp that BART maintenance crews call it “the rainforest.” As opposed to "the pricey real estate above," as BART writes, "BART’s tunnels in downtown San Francisco are below the water table," where "seawater or freshwater constantly seek to convert the section of trackway between Embarcadero and 16th Street/Mission Stations into a flume ride."

To keep that from happening, BART was originally constructed with steel plates bolted together over walls. Decades later, persistent water has made its way through caulking material, leaking through though the steel casing at the joints. That creates a number of problems — fractures in tracks caused by water damage, for example.

Draining that water further underground isn't possible, BART says — or, rather, it already does to an extent, but more drainage isn't an option: "Draining too much water from the whole downtown area could cause Market Street to sink (or possibly collapse)," they say. The most viable solution is a naturally occurring mud — bentonite. Environmentally friendly and even sometimes used as a medicine on the skin, implementing the substance into the tunnels won't be easy, or cheap, but hey, it beats taking a flume ride to work.

Actually, scratch that, a flume ride to work sounds sort of fun.

Related: BART Tests 'Enzyme Misting System' To Neutralize Persistent Elevator Pee Stank

Reactions to the plenitude of shuttle buses seen daily on the streets of San Francisco tend toward the qualitative. Convenient! Practical! Corporate! Evil! Instead, a data set submitted by local shuttle bus operators to the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, regional transit planners, and the Bay Area Council, a pro-business advocacy group, provides a more quantitative picture of the system.

The point of that, the groups write, is to "help the public and policymakers alike understand both shuttles’ impact on Bay Area transportation and the local policies and accommodations that shuttles may require for successful service." That's particularly pertinent as some providers, such as Bauer's, amp up their efforts with larger fleets, and San Francisco city officials explore changes to existing rules regulating shuttle stops.

First, defining their terms, the survey explains that shuttle buses are "regularly scheduled transportation services in large multi-passenger vehicles operating as either 'last mile' connections or serving longer routes between more distant parts of the Bay Area." The study, which the groups are calling the the Bay Area Shuttle Census, is the first of its kind, and contains data from 2012, 2013, and 2014. “This clearly is a growing phenomenon around the region that has become an important part of our transportation landscape, but it’s occupying a terrain that’s largely unmonitored," John Goodwin, a transit commission spokesperson, told the San Jose Mercury News. Not anymore!

• 35: The number of shuttle service providers in the Bay Area
• 473: The total number of shuttle buses among those providers in 2012
• 765: The total number of shuttle buses among those providers by 2014
• 804: The daily number round trips those buses made in 2014
• 6.6 million: The total number of passengers that shuttles carried in 2012
• 9.6 million: The total number of passengers that shuttles carried by 2014
• 18 thousand: The number of passengers shuttle buses carried per day in 2012
• 34 thousand: The number of passengers shuttle buses carried per day by 2014
• 16 million: The number of miles shuttle buses covered in 2012
• 25 million: The number of miles shuttle buses covered by 2014
• 2 million: An estimated number for single-passenger automobile trips avoided by shuttle use
• 7th: The rank, in terms of size in Bay Area Transit, shuttles would collectively occupy in terms of ridership — if they were treated as a single system.

Related: Shuttle Bus Operator Bauer's Adding 30 Vehicles To SF Fleet Despite Contested Muni Stop Permit

Shuttle Bus operator Bauer's Intelligent Transportation, whose black, monolithic motor coaches carry employees from clients like Cisco, Zynga, and Electronic Arts, plans to add 30 vehicles to its already sizable fleet, expanding service despite questions over its ability to use Muni bus stops going forward.

The new Bauer buses will consist of 2016 and 2017 models supplied by a Montreal-based vendor, Bauer's tells the Business Times, an addition that enlarges their army of more than 200 existing buses at an undisclosed cost estimated to be in the multi-millions.

In a statement on the expansion, CEO Gary Bauer cited the "growth potential we see in employer-provided commuter transit programs and large event transportation." Yet Bauer's move comes at a difficult time for the company's working relationship with San Francisco. The MTA opted to revoke the company's permit to use Muni stops, based in part on a history of violations Bauer's buses have purportedly made. 48 complaints were lodged against the company's vehicles between August 2015 and January 15, a preponderance of the complaints made to the MTA against such shuttles in general.

“Bauer’s continued violations of these requirements has contributed to unacceptable traffic congestion” as well as “impeded safe and efficient Muni operations by blocking access to Muni stops,” SFMTA officials reportedly informed the company. Bauer's permit was also revoked in part due to its purported anti-union tactics: Some employees in January claimed that their failed effort to unionize stemmed from the company's active discouragement and bullying tactics. By contrast, employees of bus contractor Loop Transportation, which serves Facebook and others, successfully unionized in 2015.

Bauer's has appealed the MTA's decision to pull its permits, and spokesperson Lauren Jennings tells the Business Times that "“Bauer’s is permitted to use the stops while the appeal process is pending." A hearing on the matter originally slated for last week has been rescheduled to September 23. Until then, says Jennings "There have been no interruptions to Bauer’s commuter services."

There are further wrinkles in any plans for San Francisco commuter shuttles: Those include proposed changes to the current Muni stop system, in favor of a hub system that's been floated, and an uptick in tech employees opting to commute from San Francisco to the South Bay by car.

Related: Tech Shuttle Drivers' Unionization Bid Fails Amid Claims Of Corporate Bullying

Have you heard the good word? Chariot, the San Francisco network of shuttle buses that falls somewhere between the jitneys of yesteryear and the tech commuter buses of today, wants to make certain you do. That's why, as the public transportation diarists at Muni Diaries report, they're educating potential riders about their services, hiring "brand ambassadors" to chat up Muni riders at bus stops.

Chariot has around 20 routes now, the most recent of which is a straight shot from NEMA on Market to Caltrain. But to match demand to supply, the group has "successfully deployed BA's"  — brand ambassadors, lolol — "throughout the city, at bus stops, venues with large amounts of people, and other locations where potential Chariot users can be approached with flyers or other marketing material. Tools like personal promo codes are used to measure the effectiveness of BA's for follow-up training." According to the company's website, these folks need to have "what it takes to win" including a "persistent, win-at-all-costs attitude." If you see them at a Muni stop, you have been warned of their tenacity.

As Muni Diaries writes, "creative tech solutions are well and fine, but making transportation better only for some people just makes my skin itch." While many others might have a similarly allergic reaction, clearly some welcome the options. But, if I had to guess, which I don't but will anyway, this is brand ambassador business is a mixed sign from the company. One interpretation: They've got the funds to hire walking, talking, full-time advertisements, which is good. Another: They've saturated the existing market they can reach via online ads, and now need to attract more users. If that's so, that's bad, because the folks who are going to use Chariot are the online crowd of Uber/Lyft users anyway, and probably would know by now if the option was for them.

Who knows, though. Someone with a win-at-all-costs attitude might change their mind! Get in the fucking Chariot van!

Related: Private Shuttle Chariot's Latest Route Whisks NEMA Royalty To Caltrain For Free

While individuals and companies arrive in droves to the Bay Area in search of funding, taken as a whole, the metro area is woefully behind when it comes to funding number of crucial transit undertakings. A mere three of the top 20 most-critical Bay Area transportation projects are fully funded according to a study by TRIP, which ranked them as such with Caltrans and Metropolitan Transportation Commission data in the order according to which they thought the projects had the greatest capacity to reduce congestion.

The Chronicle, who covered the TRIP study, explains that each project was assigned a rating of green, yellow, or red based on its funding level. According to that assessment, 11 have only partial or yellow funding, TRIP observed, and six don't have enough funding to begin until 2020 at the earliest, putting them in the red category.

“When you look at the most critically needed projects," TRIP spokesperson Rocky Moretti tells the Chron, "the ones that are going to keep the system moving and keep people safe, most of those don’t have the funds they need."

Among the least funded projects — you guessed it — is the Transbay Transit Center, a project now casting about for its second phase of funding.

The hold up comes from blockage at a number of levels, including the state and national level. “Giving a green light to critically needed transportation projects in the San Francisco Bay Area and throughout the state is going to require increased funding from all levels of government," read a statement from TRIP executive director Will Wilkins.

Here, the breakdown, which is also available here in greater detail.

• 1: Maintenance and improvement of local roads, streets and highways. Yellow.
• 2: Region-wide improvements to BART, Muni, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority and AC Transit. Yellow.
• 3: Seismic retrofitting of Golden Gate Bridge. Yellow.
• 4: Construction of regional express lane network. Yellow.
• 5: BART extension to downtown San Jose, Santa Clara. Yellow.
• 6: Infrastructure improvements at Port of Oakland and Oakland Army Base. Yellow.
• 7: Reconstruction and improvements to Interstate 680-Highway 4 interchange In Martinez. Red.
• 8: BART Transbay Tube seismic retrofit. Green.
• 9: Replacement and expansion of Transbay Transit Center. Green.
• 10: Region-wide maintenance of state highways and bridges. Yellow.
• 11: Interstate 80-Interstate 680-Highway 12 interchange improvements in Solano County. Red.
• 12: BART Metro program to expand capacity, service on the central core of the system. Red.
• 13: Region-wide freeway ramp metering and other technological traffic management. Yellow.
• 14: Implementing VTA express lane network throughout Santa Clara Valley. Yellow.
• 15: Construction of Caltrain rail extension to Transbay Transit Center. Red.
• 16: Central Subway. Green.
• 17: Highway 152 realignment and widening between highways 101 and 156 in Santa Clara County. Red.
• 18: Marin-Sonoma Narrows widening. Yellow.
• 19: Maintenance and operations of state toll bridge system. Yellow.
• 20: San Francisco congestion pricing program. Red.

Related:Guess What! The Transbay Terminal Project Has Run Out Of Money Again

Valencia Street cyclist-counting machine, counting cyclists on Valencia Street:https://t.co/G0XTgJeofX pic.twitter.com/gPmoNs670O

— Mission Mission (@missionmission) May 3, 2016

With the 22nd annual Bike to Work Day coming up on May 12th, how many of us will zip by Market Street's "bicycle barometer," pedaling forward to be counted?

Last year, despite some rain, the turnout was 60,000 according to the San Francisco Bike Coalition. And this year, Mission Mission writes, you'll be counted as you cycle down Valencia — that street has installed a "bike barometer," just like the one on Market Street, between 16th and 17th Streets.

For some environmental heroes, every day is bike to work day. As per the US Census Bureau, that number nationally was tiny, at 0.6 percent back in 2014. The good news: San Francisco easily topped the list that year.

2015 was even bigger for cycling in Frisco according to 15 automated SFMTA bike counters. Those concluded that weekday bike trips went up by 8.5 percent, or 200,000 rides, since 2014.

There are, however, some question about the accuracy of the "barometer," with its visible count on Market Street. According to a 2013 Examiner article, it may have been missing as many as 1,000 riders a day.

Nonetheless, Streetsblog wrote last year that the city had bought two more barometers, though at the time it wasn't clear where they would be installed, and we still seemingly don't know where the third one will go. Each barometer costs about $62,000, covered by SFMTA operating funds and Prop K sales tax funds. The first barometer was partially funded by a one-time, $20,000 grant.

Related: Mayor Vetoes 'Idaho Stop' Law As Promised

In her essay "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," an investigation of life on Haight Street published in 1968, Joan Didion referred to a "center" that would not hold. While she was naming something more metaphysical, on today's Haight Street, that center might be the massive car transit corridor. And at least according to one plan— which is, for now, more of a website with some interesting renderings — it isn't holding very well when it comes to the street's culture.

Revolutionize Haight is the name of the proposal from Grand San Francisco, a sort of "person or group with a website and a dream" operation from Reed Martin. Martin, maybe you recall, was on the ballot for mayor last year, and Ballotpedia tells us he received 2.4 percent of the popular vote, or 4,612 votes.

Anyway, the site is rather sleek and the renderings are fun even if this is perhaps a bit of a pie in the sky type of a thing. But, you know, it's not so radically different than the transformation undertaken in the Castro — though this appears to have absolutely zero parking, as is the idea.

As Martin writes in a FAQ on the site, he's not alone in his hopes, which do deviate from the city's official plans.

"We weren't happy with what the city was proposing, so we've decided to create our own," Martin says. "Everyone who has contributed to this vision lives or works in this neighborhood. Many of us aren't thrilled with a lot of the direction we're seeing in architecture and urban design in San Francisco, and we wanted to find a way to let Haight Street shine."

Related: Mission Street Changes Have Drivers Seeing Red, Could Be Revisited Before They're Finished

An unruly passenger prompted a flight heading to SFO to make an impromptu pitstop Saturday morning. Adding insult to injury, SkyWest flight 5345 had to land in Reno of all places.

According to a Skywest email sent to KRNV, "SkyWest flight 5343 operating as United Express from Calgary, Canada to San Francisco, California diverted to Reno, Nevada after a passenger failed to comply with crewmember instructions. The passenger was removed and the flight continued to San Francisco."

No word yet as to what exactly happened onboard, but Heidi Jared, spokesperson at Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority, says that the passenger in question was "a little ornery." The problematic traveler was detained in Reno and released with neither an arrest nor a citation.

Hmm.

The flight continued to SFO sans unhinged passenger. But still, one must wonder what the passenger did to divert the plane. Did they store their baby underneath their seat? Let their dog shit in the middle of the aisle? Was it Mrs. Iglesias again? We'll update as soon as we know more.

Presumably denizens of Powell Street BART, the staff of the Chronicle is officially hip to a transportation hack they're dubbing "Upstreaming." That refers to the practice of riding trains back a few stops the opposite direction of your commute in order to snag a comfy cloth or vinyl seat on a less crowded train headed in the right direction.

It makes sense: Average weekday BART ridership reached 441,000 in October and in the past two years transbay ridership has increased 12%, creating the phenomenon of upstreaming from the most crowded stops at Embarcadero and Montgomery during evening rush hour, as we noted earlier. "As BART ridership grows — but without the agency’s fleet growing in turn — so do the ranks of the upstreamers," says the Chron while admitting that "most practitioners don’t have a name for the technique," which BART usually refers to as "backriding." According to the paper, popular upstream points include Pleasanton, Fremont and Downtown SF with Civic Center a good spot to grab a mostly empty Transbay Tube-bound train.

But there's a catch, or a catch-22: "Of course, as more people ride upstream, it becomes harder for others to obtain a seat without doing the same thing," the Chron explains, "It’s a rush for the back of the line." Will, in other words, upstreamers just get one-upstreamed?

BART's an overtaxed system and, if there isn't any way to "beat" it, there are certainly ways to "game" it. So, here are a few BART hack trend pieces you can expect to see from Bay Area news outlets in the near future.

"Hoppers:" An elite group of BART pros who, due to crowdedness or unsavory activity in one car, stealthily hop to another car, via the platform, at certain stations.

"Betweeners:" The Green Berets of BART, these riders flout rules and move between cars as BART is moving!

"Bikers:" To save time during their overall commute and diminish their carbon footprint, these bicyclists also enjoy added space and something to lean on.

"Timed Transferers:" These forward-thinkers can sense that their current train will align with the train they'd like to transfer to. Then, at the right moment, they just walk across the platform.

"Sleepers:" The folks who show up early for limited BART parking and snooze in their cars for a few hours before catching their train.

"Chargers:" The brave, desperate souls who take advantage of the power outlets located under the 3rd or 4th seat in the middle of each BART car.