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S.F. Supervisors’ Deal Would Extend Tech Shuttle Bus Program

02.09.2016
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By Ted Goldberg, KQED News Fix
A deal hammered out between three members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors and tech shuttle operators will allow the giant buses that carry thousands of workers to and from Silicon Valley to keep using the city’s Muni stops — for now. Supervisors London Breed, David Campos and Norman Yee reached the agreement late Monday to extend a Municipal Transportation Agency program that allows shuttles for Google, Apple, Facebook and other firms to use the Muni stops in return for a fee. Critics of the program, including affordable housing advocates, say the shuttles have accelerated the pace of gentrification in the city and have added to traffic congestion and air pollution. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix. 
 

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Black Lives Matter Co-Founder’s Plan to Reduce Law Enforcement Violence

02.08.2016
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By Adizah Eghan, KQED News Fix/The California Report
From Silicon Valley to Hollywood, Californians lead the world with big ideas. For the latest installment of our “Big Think” series, we meet Patrisse Cullors. She is the director of truth and reinvestment at the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights in Oakland and one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter. Her Big Think? “Build a national network of communities to respond to law enforcement violence.”
Read the complete story at KQED News Fix/The California Report. 

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BART Tries Removing Some Seats to Ease Crowding on Trains

02.04.2016
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By Dan Brekke, KQED News Fix
If you ride BART, you’ve noticed the crowds, right? With trains at capacity during every rush hour — who knew so many people could become such close friends? — BART is testing a new seating layout that will allow more passengers to board each car. “New seating layout” is a little bit of a euphemism, actually. What BART is doing is replacing seven double seats with seven single seats on a group of test cars.

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Tempers Rise Over Satirical Homeless Encampment Tracking App

02.03.2016
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By Laura Waxmann, Mission Local
The minds behind an app to track and flag homeless encampments in San Francisco that has been attracting the ire of Twitter users who say that the app does not exist and was in fact intended as a commentary on tech culture. SnapCamp’s purported premise was “cleaning up” San Francisco’s communities by encouraging its residents to take pictures of homeless encampments and noting “problem areas” at a safe distance. “SnapCamp is art,” wrote one of the website’s creators in an email to Mission Local, declining to identify themselves due to the “rancor” that the project has inspired. The project serves as a satire of tech culture, according to the anonymous emailer, who is a self-described owner of a small software company and “deeply embedded” in tech. Read the complete story at Mission Local. 

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San Francisco Joins the Water Trail

02.02.2016
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By Melanie Hess, Bay Nature
Islais Creek Park sits on a small creekside beach just off Highway 280, on the outskirts of San Francisco’s Dogpatch neighborhood. A small patch of sand and marshy shrubbery that slopes gently to the water, the beach is surrounded on all sides by signs of industrial development: an abandoned five-story copra crane, warehouses and a heavy metal drawbridge that hardly ever has a need to rise. Islais Creek, a once-thriving waterway bottled into a dead-end channel, has served many needs through San Francisco’s history — transport during the Gold Rush, a channel for industrial and wartime trade during World War II. Now, though, the creek has added a new designation: in September, it became the first official San Francisco site on the San Francisco Bay Area Water Trail. The Water Trail is meant to serve as a kind of marine parallel to the well-established Bay Trail, and when completed would offer paddlers and recreational boaters sites to launch boats or haul out, as well as bathrooms and other facilities, to enable longer trips around the bay.

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Super Bowl Week Puts Spotlight on Increased Human Trafficking

02.01.2016
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By Tara Siler, KQED News Fix/The California Report
Up to 1 million revelers are expected to flood the Bay Area this week leading up to Sunday’s Super Bowl in Santa Clara. Officials have repeatedly alerted the public to looming traffic nightmares — but law enforcement officials have been issuing another alert. They say apart from the crowds and frenzied fun, something darker will be going on: Sex traffickers will be trying to cash in on the annual bash. Read the complete story at KQED News Fix/The California Report. For more information on the issue of human trafficking, read the 2012 San Francisco Public Press Special Report Force, Fraud and Coercion, Human Trafficking in the Bay Area.