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It’s about to get a little easier for cyclists to use BART, as the transit system will allow bicycles on escalators as well as on more cars, starting Jan. 1. It is the first time BART has updated its bike policies in the past 10 years. The transit agency currently doesn’t allow bikes on escalators or in the first three cars during commuting hours. The change will make it not only easier but safer for cyclists, who no longer will…
After a 4-year-old’s death in August, the push to develop protected bike lanes under Oakland’s Safe Oakland Streets citywide initiative has grown. But funding constraints and low personnel are preventing their construction. Maia Correia was in a seat behind her father’s bicycle on Lakeshore Avenue on Aug. 6 when a vehicle door opened in front of them. Maia hit her head on the street and died six days later. Since then, residents and traffic safety advocates have called for more protected…
Every Sunday for the last six weeks, Craig Morris has walked through Oakland streets populated by drug users to St. Mary’s Center, the shelter, soup kitchen and transitional housing provider that pulled him from the brink. There, Morris, who is 60 years old, painted a canvas as part of the Sacred Storytelling Art Project, a program created by St. Mary’s and the Center for ArtEsteem to uplift older Oaklanders. Morris and 11 others worked on self-portraits depicting some difficult aspect…
Aboard the Mare Island vessel en route to Oakland, it’s easy to sit back, relax and enjoy a jaunt across the bay. Yet the journey of ferry transportation in the Bay Area hasn’t always been so smooth, and the COVID-19 pandemic reversed strides made in recent years. To recoup riders, the service, which is administered by the San Francisco Bay Area Water Emergency Transportation Authority, cut fares by 30%, reworked schedules to address new commuting trends and weekend demand, and…
Oakland’s two soccer teams moved closer Tuesday to getting a temporary stadium. The Oakland City Council voted unanimously to enter into an exclusive negotiating agreement with Oakland Pro Soccer LLC, the company that owns the Roots and Soul teams, for the Malibu property, a lot near the Coliseum in East Oakland. Oakland Pro Soccer LLC will now negotiate with the city and the county, the joint owners of the lot, over the next six months to build a temporary stadium…
Andrew Guzman was late for work nearly every other day last winter. During the monthslong deluge that soaked the Bay Area, his train to the downtown Berkeley BART station was often delayed. Frustrated, he clocked in late to work shift after shift.
The biggest problem last winter was that wet weather led to wheel spots or wheel flats, which can occur during braking and force a car out of service. Though wheel spots occurred more frequently on the newer Fleet of the Future cars, the root cause of last season’s problems wasn’t the cars themselves, but the complexity of BART’s control system, Allison said. BART has corrected the control system errors which caused wheel spots.
However, BART‘s project to replace the 50-year-old, unpredictable control system software is still a decade off. BART and its riders are depending on the transit system’s short-term fixes to avoid another chaotic season. Riders need reliable service just as BART, after years of declining ridership and revenue, needs to keep those riders scanning their clipper cards this winter.
About 130 people showed up at International Community School Thursday for an Oakland Unified School District career fair, where recruiters were trying to fill 97 teaching vacancies, particularly for bilingual and special education teachers and paraeducators. “We have strong dual language programs, especially in Spanish and English. We want our students to be multilingual and we want to honor their multilingual backgrounds,” said Sarah Glasband, director of OUSD’s recruitment and retention team. “So we really want to cultivate multilingual educators…
Record rainfall last winter mitigated California’s severe drought and brought a slow start to fire season. But the wet weather hasn’t reduced the threat. The heavy downpours that bombarded the Bay Area and the relatively cool weather that followed kept vegetation from drying out in the spring and early summer. But as the summer wears on, that vegetation will become fuel for fires, said Ranyee Chiang, director of the Meteorology and Measurement Division at Bay Area Air Quality Management District. …
Oakland City Council passed an ordinance Tuesday making it a crime to organize, facilitate or promote sideshows. The ordinance passed with six votes — councilmembers Kevin Jenkins and Janani Ramachandran were absent. Councilmember Noel Gallo originally proposed a stricter ordinance in December that would also have made it a crime to watch a sideshow, but that proposal was rejected and revised. The revisions remove any mention of spectators and “bystander participants.” The city has sought to deter people from participating…