Will Harper

Following this morning's incident in the transbay tunnel, BART experienced long delays and crowded trains

​The fracturing of the "yoke assembly" holding two train cars together caused a BART train to split into two segments this morning in the transbay tunnel, the agency is reporting.

BART spokesman Jim Allison described the failed yoke assembly as "a pretty big piece of equipment." The spokesman said BART's chief transportation officer could not recall a failure of this sort ever occurring before. The manufacturer of the yoke assembly has been contacted, and will be assisting BART in its investigation -- though Allison was not sure what company that is.

He was also unsure how BART will proceed; whether it will investigate the yoke assemblies on all its trains; or whether the affected train was due for an inspection or had recently received a clean bill of health.

At 6:23 this morning, the failure occurred just east of Embarcadero Station; the first five cars of a nine-car train separated from the last four. The driver of the front segment motored the train out of the tunnel at 6:55 a.m. A second driver took the stranded four-car segment out at 7:05. No injuries have yet been reported; Allison notes that a failsafe mechanism automatically engaged the brakes when train became decoupled.

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According to the state's sex offender registry, Nicholas Chaykovsky has been in violation of registration requirements since Sunday. He has a decent excuse. He's dead.  

Chaykovsky died at age 61 last month after suffering a heart attack. And though the San Francisco Police Department sex offender unit explicitly informed the Department of Justice about his demise, the DOJ hasn't deleted Chaykovsky's profile from the Megan's Law Web site yet. So, as seen above, Chaykovsky is still caught up in the red tape of  the state's byzantine sex offender laws, even from the great beyond. 

Chaykovsky was featured as "Mr. C." in our December story on how Jessica's Law forces nearly all sex offenders paroled to San Francisco into homeless, since they are forbidden from having an address within 200 feet of a park or school. Last month, the California Supreme Court upheld the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation's practice of forcing all San Francisco sex offenders paroled after the law's passage in Nov. 2006 into de facto homelessness, while punting objections about the law's overall constitutionality back to the lower courts to sort out. 

The San Francisco Medical Examiner ruled Chaykovsky died from a heart attack stemming from heart disease and an infection brought about by a suicide attempt 12 years ago. (Official cause of death: "suicide.") But Chaykovsky's case managers and acquaintances say it was the constant stress of being homeless that "killed him."
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We bike commuters here at SF Weekly have eagerly awaited the launch of Google's bicycle-directions feature on its maps site. As of today, the wait is over. Along with suggested routes by car and public transit, Googlers in 150 cities can now query the best way to get from Point A to Point B under pedal power.

After taking a spin through Google biking directions this morning, we're pretty pleased. The function offers useful information on potential routes, such as whether they include dedicated bike lanes, or simply bike-friendly roads. And it doesn't seem prone to the sort of topographical blunders that might be expected in San Francisco -- no suggestion, for instance, that a trip from Civic Center to Fisherman's Wharf follow a direct but quad-crushing uphill path through Chinatown.

Still, we couldn't help but wonder how Google, which for all intents and purposes is a hometown company, managed to mess up the most famous trick there is among San Francisco bicyclists for avoiding tough up-and-down terrain. That's right: In a number of cases, Google's preferred east-west route across town is not the famous route known as The Wiggle.

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​Officials Don Casper and Stan Moy were fired today from an obscure joint powers authority overseeing financing of two state-owned buildings in the Civic Center Area. This abrupt move comes almost immediately after the two men had complicated the proposed sale of the Supreme Court building at 350 McAllister and the Public Utilities Building at 505 Van Ness Ave. 

"I want to take exception to the word 'firing,'" said Jeffrey Young, spokesman for the state Department of General Services, which is conducting the sale of 11 buildings around the state in hopes of raising money to close California's budget deficit. "Their services ceased to be required."

As reported earlier, Casper, who until Wednesday afternoon sat on the three-person San Francisco State Building Authority, earlier this week voiced objection to a plan whereby California will seek to raise $2 billion by selling the aforementioned 11 state-owned buildings. This bizarre financial practice -- in which the state would lease back its buildings from the buyers -- is akin to taking out a large loan. While California would certainly lose scads of money in the long-term, the cash-poor state would get an infusion in the short-term. 

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Joe Eskenazi

​A cyclist lay bloody and dazed on Market near Fifth Street this morning, following a run-in with the 5 Fulton bus. More disturbingly, however, eyewitnesses told SF Weekly the bus driver refused to stop, even when passengers told him he'd hit a bike rider.

"People were like, 'You hit a bike, you need to stop,'" said Mary Chancey, a passenger on the 5 Fulton bus. "He said, 'She fell by herself.'"

Chancey said around 10 bus riders implored the driver to stop following the 8:30 collision -- but he instead left the scene. When SF Weekly arrived just before 8:40, the young female cyclist was lying in the middle of the road, and police and fire soon arrived.

Multiple eyewitnesses on the street confirmed to SF Weekly that the cyclist -- whose identity we were unable to ascertain -- was hit by the bus, which continued onward. The victim, who was talking to police and appeared to be moving, was loaded onto a gurney and taken away in an ambulance.

Muni spokesman Judson True said police and a Muni investigator are on the scene. "Clearly this is a serious allegation, and we are investigating it now," he noted. True said the initial report he's received is that the cyclist fell near the bus, which subsequently made contact with her and her bike -- which the mangled cycle SF Weekly observed on the scene attests to.

Joe Eskenazi

Police moved the cycle onto the sidewalk following the accident

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All Photos | Joe Eskenazi

March Against Muni organizer Jared Roussel looks on as Muni Drivers' union boss Irwin Lum snatches away his bullhorn and addresses the crowd

​ View more photos in "March Against Muni: Anti-Muni Protest at City Hall."

"March Against Muni," the odd amalgam of largely young, hip people deeply incensed at rude Muni drivers, paper Fast Passes, and other maladies were scheduled to have their big march through downtown today. But that's not exactly what happened. Instead, an event occurred that their protest material seemed to decry as impossible: The Muni drivers showed up early.

Ten minutes before the marching portion of March Against Muni was set to commence, a far larger, louder, and more spirited contingent of Muni operators strode onto the scene, and drowned out the novice protesters' wails. For those keeping score at home, the marching Muni drivers out-marched March Against Muni. And this was no mass movement; perhaps 200 drivers showed up compared to 50 to 100 March Against Muni folks. The lot of them would have fit in an articulated bus. 

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The indictment came after three months of grand jury testimony from 77 witnesses, according to DA office spokesman Brian Buckelew. The defendants are scheduled to be arraigned at 9 a.m. tomorrow morning in Department 22 of San Francisco Superior Court.

The indictment includes charges for the 2009 murder of Delvon Fields, who was shot and killed in front of his three children, girlfriend, and mother; the 2008 murder of Gregory Chapman, a bus driver who was shot during a robbery; and the 2006 killing of Lloyd Randleston.

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Meet the new boss...

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On Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors will vote on a contract that would send tens of millions of dollars in Central Subway project funds to a firm employing the former director of the Municipal Transportation Agency. If approved, the contract will push the total amount of funds sent to companies with ties to top-level ex-Muni brass to nearly $200 million.

In political science, cycling executives from top government posts to private companies doing business with their former agencies is known as "revolving door politics," and is viewed as a source of potential conflicts of interest. Among San Francisco's tight-knit political elite, it's apparently known as business development, and is considered the most expeditious way to get things done.

Tomorrow, the Board of Supervisors will consider awarding a Central Subway contract worth $40 million for engineering and architectural design of the system's stations, to Central Subway Design Group. That firm is actually a joint venture including the company Parsons Brinckerhoff -- a civil engineering firm that features a staffer with the title Principal Consultant/Local Business Executive by the name of Stuart Sunshine.

Sunshine most recently made news as Gavin Newsom's $260,000-per-year transportation czar, a position he assumed after serving as executive director of the city's Municipal Transportation Agency.

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Seen on the J-Church

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UPDATE, 4:22 p.m. -- The San Francisco Business Times reports that the MTA board has voted not to enact rate hikes for elders, young people, and the disabled (yet), but will cut service citywide by 10 percent to alleviate its budget woes. It'll be interesting to see how the Transit Workers Union reacts, since the MTA may now be expecting labor to approve concessions that would also help balance the budget. (See below.)  

12:12 p.m. -- The San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) Board is facing some tough decisions. Confronted with a $17 million budget deficit and hamstrung by an army of pampered transit operators represented by a stubborn union, the MTA is looking at a rate hike targeted at those who need public transportation most -- elders, the disabled, and young people. (We've also heard rumors that fees could rise for puppies, the Dalai Lama, and extremely cute, helpless bunny rabbits.)

The board convened for a public hearing on this deeply unpopular proposal this morning; as we write, the contentious gathering is still going full-steam. This being San Francisco, however, many of the firebrand orators who took to the podium during the public comment period digressed from the bureaucratic nightmare at hand to other issues. Like bank and insurer bailouts. Or Barack Obama. Or the plight of Afghan transit workers.

We're not kidding. As fliers circulated in the crowd with such labor slogans as "¡Mochen desde arriba!" (Chop from the top) and "¡Cobren a los ricos!" (Tax the rich), the rafters echoed with leftist outrage against the MTA Board -- and not just against the Muni operators' union, which so far has taken plenty of lumps for its members' intransigence.

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As California seeks to raise $2 billion by selling off state-owned buildings in order to close its budget deficit, a San Francisco Republican official who sits on a key state committee says he will will seek to block investors from purchasing two Civic Center-area buildings housing the state Supreme Court, the Public Utilities Commission, and other state agencies.

LeasebackBuildings.pdf

"People who worship the market will snicker at this, but whatever arguments could be made for not selling the State Capitol can be made for not selling the headquarters of the California Supreme Court," said Don Casper, a former San Francisco Republican Central Committee Chair who is a member of the obscure San Francisco State Building Authority. That's a three-person joint powers authority that oversees the repayment of bonds issued to fund construction of California government buildings at 350 McAllister Street and 505 Van Ness Ave.

That authority could theoretically have the ability to block a sale. And Casper says he'll attempt just such a step.

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