Gawker: valleywag, transportation

San Francisco MUNI Crashes, Several Injured, World Maybe Ending

Foster Kamer — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:50:28 EDT

Jesus. Two San Francisco MUNI light rail trains collided earlier this afternoon; officials are counting over 44 to 60 injured.

It doesn't look too bad; there don't appear to be any fatal injuries. People are reporting different stories about the train's conductor, which some said were waving his hands (as if he had no control over the car), the other noting that he was slumped over. Authorities have yet to comment.

The accident occurred just before 3 p.m. Sunday afternoon when a westbound Metro line-L Taraval train slammed into the back of a Metro line-KT Ingleside/Third Street train that was stopped in the station. The front of the L car was totally smashed in, the car itself bent and its windshield shattered from the impact.

This is the third trainwreck in less than a month on fairly famous lines, one which happened in front of a bunch of families and children at Walt Disney World on the Monorail, killing an employee, the other at the DC Metro which killed nine people. There's the idiom about bad things coming in threes; hopefully, this'll be the last trainwreck we see for a while. Then again, three train crashes in a month? Really? In the recent (trainwreck of a) Nicolas Cage movie, Knowing, there's a subway crash and soon thereafter the world ends. But only one subway crash. Three: you think we're being told something?

Dozens Injured In MUNI Crash [KCBS]

TSA approves some new laptop bag designs

Jackson West — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:20:00 EDT

For those of you who always fly with a laptop and like to travel light, the Transportation Security Administration has approved guidelines for new X-ray-friendly laptop bags. Guards will let the new cases pass through the X-ray machine without having to remove the computer. They will, of course, still make you take off your shoes, jacket and won't let you through with a cup of coffee. [TSA.gov]

Honey, I shrunk the party jet

Jackson West — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:00:00 EDT

Google hosted the latest Science Foo "camp" — a conference, really, but calling it a "camp" brings out the engineers — put on by O'Reilly and Nature Publishing Group. We know traffic on 101 is terrible. Most regions would solve the problem with better public transportation — only in the Valley would anyone still hold on to the dream of private flying automobiles. Write your own caption for this post and we'll use the best one as its new title. Yesterday's winner is ThatKid for "Ten cameras, and none of them captured the real story." (Photo by Matt Brown)

New website turns unused parking spaces into cash, and vice versa

Paul Boutin — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 17:00:00 EDT

GottaPark is the site many a Bay Area resident has wished for: A meeting place where people seeking parking spots can hook up with people who have parking space to rent. What the site needs: A primer on how this would affect my income tax return.

$8 million for blimp rides from Google HQ to Napa Valley

Jackson West — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:00:00 EDT

With a parking space at the giant hangar on Moffett Field run by NASA, Airship Ventures plans to buy a blimp and run pleasure cruises from the Googleplex's back yard to Napa Valley's wine country. To that end, the startup has secured $8 million in funding from wealthy sorts, including lead investor Esther Dyson. Airship Ventures can surely count on the legions of local steampunk fetishists to keep the waiting list for seats well padded, not to mention corporate-expensed junkets from Valley tech companies. After the jump, video of a Tokyo flyover in one of the Zeppelin NT airships the startup will use. (Illustration by Martin Luechinger)

Prius drivers officially crowned with smug-emitting halos by Salon

Jackson West — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 11:40:00 EDT

In a blow to environmentally conscious socialists who espouse the frugal, sustainable sensibility of Cuban car culture, Salon's Pablo Päster has done the journalist math. It turns out that a brand-spanking-new Toyota Prius is more energy efficient over the expected lifetime of the vehicle than an old beater Mercedes from Daimler-Benz. What Päster doesn't take into account are alternative energy retrofits to classic cars, like MTV's pimping out of a Chevy Impala to run on biodiesel, like the one picture above. Because while a twee Prius might say "enviromentally conscious" to Stuff White People Like readers, Stuff White People Do readers (myself included) would much rather cruise El Camino Real in a biodiesel-fueled lowrider, mijo.

Google hates public transportation, fatties

Jackson West — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Ning designer Ernie Hsung needed to get from the Mission to the Western Addition to renew his car's registration at the San Francisco DMV. When he asked Google to suggest a route using public transportation, it told him to walk — a couple of miles and over some serious hills. Though considering Muni's problems, Google might be right that walking would prove faster.

Why the Valley should buy a high-speed rail ticket

Jackson West — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 11:00:00 EDT

A California state ballot item planned for November would secure $10 billion in bonds to begin building a high-speed rail system by 2009, with a 20-year estimated building schedule and a total price tag of $40 billion, all of it in publicly traded bonds more stable than, say, subprime mortgages. Millions have already been spent on planning — and influencing lawmakers with trips to visit Japan's shinkansen. But Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has helped derail two previous efforts to let California voters make the decision, even though 58 percent of voters statewide support the idea. A new public-private partnership amenable to the Governator's self-interest might finally break the ice. Why should the Valley care? Here are four reasons.

Japan and France both have one: If there's anything Californians love more than stuff from France and Japan, I'd like to know what it is. Hell, even China has a bullet train, and they're supposedly Communists.
Breakfast and dinner at home, meetings in LA: Woo Hollywood talent away from the studios with promises of stock options without having to abandon the family for the night. Hell, invite them down to meet you in San Diego after work.
It keeps transportation spending in California: We don't manufacture our planes or our cars, why not build trains? Like Tesla's effort to make California an electric-car hub, a bullet train here would breed engineers and contractors with experience in high-speed rail projects for an untapped North American market.
It's actual cleantech, no greenwashing necessary: No traffic idling, no planes circling, no highway-induced sprawl. Atherton residents would probably even approve a new nuclear reactor to power it. In Nevada.

The train makes all sorts of sense for the Valley, and the fact that it'll probably end in a boondoggle doesn't concern me — I just want it to end, soon, with a wicked fast train. (Photo by Clayton Parker)

Richard Branson gets a bit wet over Virgin America

Owen Thomas — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 18:36:08 EDT

We missed this the first time around: Virgin founder Richard Branson, touting the new San Francisco-based airline Virgin America, drenches Colbert Report host Stephen Colbert with a bottle of water. Whatever it takes, Sir Richard, as long as you keep provoking United and American into suicidal fare wars on the SFO-JFK route.

Virgin America kicks off service to San Francisco

Owen Thomas — Thu, 09 Aug 2007 16:23:13 EDT

There's nothing sexy about air travel today, and despite Virgin founder Richard Branson's best efforts, we really don't think Virgin America's new service is going to change that. But lower airfares between JFK and SFO? That sounds superhot to us.

What JetBlue left unfinished in its battle with United and American over the transcontinental route, Virgin is sure to finish; no wonder the dominant airlines squawked so much about Virgin's launch. Whatever it takes to make the Gotham-to-Bay Area Babylon shuffle less expensive, we're down with. And we'll give Branson this much: He throws a hell of a publicity stunt. Cheerleaders, aging chorus-line dancers, and surfer girls adorned the party he hosted for the arrival of Virgin America's inaugural flight in San Francisco. Gavin Newsom, the supernaturally handsome god-mayor of San Francisco (bow down and worship, fools!) was on hand to greet him, and a Valleywag lenser was on the scene.

–Photos by Randal Alan Smith for Valleywag