Mayor Rides Public Transit

No, not our short-termed former Mayor, who famously never took a bus without a newsmedia photographer there to document it.

MYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg actually rides the Subway every day.  So maybe it shouldn't come as a surprise that he rode BART on the way in from SFO to meet our interim mayor Ed Lee (who, it seems, met him at the BART station - Civic Center, I presume).

I'd love to hear his thoughts on the ride.

UPDATE BART TV has a little video of the ride:

Everybody Drives

I'm occasionally reminded of how lucky we are to live in a city like San Francisco that has sidewalks, inadequate though many may be, on pretty much every street:

Pulte Homes, one of the nation's largest builders, says sidewalks aren't a given in all communities, although it has seen an uptick in localities requiring them to be. Active communities for the over-55 set and "move-up" buyers, meaning growing families, will very likely get sidewalks, says Pulte spokeswoman Valerie Dolenga. "Where you won't see it is in multifamily and entry-level buyers," she says.

Read the full article at the Wall Street Journal online.

Temporarily Stairs

Broken escalator at the Van Ness Muni station

Has anybody ever been on an escalator when it breaks?  BART and Muni escalators are old and live outside, so it's not too surprising that they're broken fairly often.  But given how common it is, why isn't it so common to see one in the act of breaking?  Or to be on one when it breaks?  Do they only break at odd hours, or when station agents go to turn them on first thing in the morning?

Has this happened to you?

An escalator can never break--it can only become stairs. You would never see an "Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order" sign, just "Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience. We apologize for the fact that you can still get up there."  -Mitch Hedberg, RIP