In addition to a proposed $1 toll increase, fares for drivers crossing the Golden Gate Bridge during peak traffic times would receive an additional boost under a separate motion before bridge officials today.
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An unidentified man who jumped from the Golden Gate Bridge in a suicide attempt on Sunday is in serious but stable condition at John Muir Medical Center, according to officials from the California Highway Patrol.The man jumped off the east railing of the expanse approximately 10:30 a.m. on Sunday, before alerted rescue authorities could prevent him from plunging, CHP spokesman Mark Bunger said.
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Living in Rwanda in the early 1990s as a missionary, Wilkens witnessed the genocide that killed 500,000 Tutsis, the nation’s ethnic minority. He stayed in Rwanda during the uprising — the only American to do so — and provided support to orphanages in the capital, Kigali.
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It has been five years, and Chris Gray still doesn’t know what went wrong. He remembers hustling to enter the door of an underground Muni train at the Van Ness Station late in the evening of Jan. 15, 2003, when, in an instant, something went terribly awry.Instead of boarding the train, Gray, who has been blind since birth, mistakenly stepped in between the gap of the two-car train and tumbled off the platform, resulting in a broken femur and a harrowing near-death experience.
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More families applied to San Francisco public schools this year than last, a welcome improvement for a district that has struggled for years with declining enrollment. With more competition for preferred schools, however, a smaller percentage of parents received one of their application choices, according to data released by the district Friday.A total of 13,250 applications were submitted for the 2008-09 school year, a 308-person increase from the first-round applications submitted in 2007-08, San Francisco Unified School District spokeswoman Gentle Blythe said.
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A three-day music festival at Golden Gate Park in August is expected to draw an estimated 160,000 attendees — as well as the usual neighborhood concerns about noise levels and traffic congestion.The Outside Lands Festival, organized by Bay Area promotion group Another Planet Entertainment, will feature headlining acts Radiohead, Tom Petty and Jack Johnson over the course of three nights on Aug. 22-24.
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Faced with a budget deficit that could balloon to $66 million by 2010, Muni is considering raising the price of the $45 monthly Fast Pass to as high as $60 within the next two years.
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A plan to bring a new day-laborer center to Bayshore Boulevard, touted by city officials as a way to alleviate the growing number of workers on César Chávez Street, has been met with a series of logistical obstacles, leaving its future in doubt.
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For the past five years, Pierre Barolette has kept a guarded eye on his two young boys while they played on the Balboa Park playground, an aging edifice rife with splinters, rust spots and loose chains."The structure is so rickety," Barolette said. "It’s hard to relax when you see your children climbing around on such an old playground."Barolette’s safety concerns — and those of the rest of the Mission Terrace community that neighbors the Balboa Park playground on San Jose Avenue — will be put to rest in a single day.
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A $21 million settlement for the death of a 4-year-old girl who was fatally struck by a Muni maintenance truck in 2003 will be discussed Tuesday in a closed-door session by board members of the Municipal Transportation Agency.
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As a way to combat rising truancy rates in San Francisco’s public schools, city officials have created a new program in Bayview-Hunters Point to help foundering students stay on the road to academic recovery.
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With his legs trembling and his voice shaking, David Smith, a 94-year-old veteran of the International Brigade that fought in the Spanish Civil War, made a frank admission on Thursday morning. "I never cried the entire time I was in Spain," said Smith, who was deployed in the war from 1937 to 1939. "But I am crying now."
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Two incidents on opposite ends of Caltrain’s service route left evening commuters saddled with delays Thursday.
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A little-publicized pilot program by BART that provides a permanent card that riders can add money to electronically has signed up an estimated 22,000 passengers in its first 16 months. Launched in October 2006, the EZ Rider pass is electronically scanned by sensors at all BART gates, and is available for any commuter willing to make $45 payments — for which they’ll receive $48 in value — that are automatically culled from a credit card. Anytime the value of an EZ Rider card dips below $10, the card is refilled with a $45 payment.
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An excessive speed limit, dangerous intersections and an overall lack of pedestrian safety are some of the concerns community residents have raised about Masonic Avenue, an arterial pathway in San Francisco that is home to a Muni line and a city-sanctioned bike-path route.
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