Here is cool video from Nick of a human-powered railcar they are building for the Handcar Regatta:

Needs blinkies!

Filed under: transportation, video | 1 Comment
Tagged: railcar

We saw this via reddit a few days ago and haven’t stopped laughing since.

At first, you see a highway, with lanes painted on it, and drivers are even attempting to stay in the lanes! Pretty tame for India you think.. no animals in the road, no randomly stopped vehicles, no one going the wrong way… and then….

Filed under: transportation, video | 3 Comments
Tagged: india , motorcycle

Last year a small crew showed up at Vermont St. after the official races ended, and we had an absolute blast. This year, the official races were on Vermont St., and it was awesome:

(click play to start) (link to other sizes)

Filed under: san francisco, transportation | 0 Comments
Tagged: byobw

SF has a public transit problem. Muni has great coverage, but travel times across the city are unbearably long. BART and CalTrain are OK for getting to the burbs, but what if you want to go to the beach? Taxis are only for the incredibly wealthy, and they won’t come to my neighborhood on weekend evenings.

That’s why I created the San Francisco Subway. Completely underground, the SF Subway never gets held up in traffic. I can get from my house to the gym in one stop, or to the datacenter in two. Dogs are allowed, and Fort Funston is only a 12 minute ride from Bernal. Instead of traveling at Muni speeds (5.3 mph!), the SF Subway reaches speeds of 75mph between stops!

I drew the map in Gliffy, so let me know if you want to add a stop or a line, and I’ll send you the edit link.

Filed under: cartography, san francisco, transportation | 1 Comment
Tagged: map , subway

Here is a map of the places the TR crew went in 2007! Let me know which cities I missed!

Filed under: cartography, excursions, transportation | 7 Comments
Tagged: map , subway

In a bid to bring the Bay Area up-to-date with last century’s technology, Muni, Bart, and CalTrain will start accepting TransLink in the spring. The TransLink readers have already been installed on Muni lines for testing, and interestingly, they are installed on all doors, not just in the front. This should help loading times for crowded buses. Here is a pic of a TransLink reader in the back of the 9 San Bruno:

I’m glad I don’t have to commute on CalTrain anymore, but CalTrain riders will probably appreciate TransLink the most. CalTrain currently uses ancient technology to timestamp 10-ride tickets, similar to old-school time cards found in 1950’s office buildings. The timestamp machines are frequently broken, and the CalTrain conductors are assholes. Hopefully with TransLink, caltrain riders will never have to talk to a conductor again.

Filed under: bay area, san francisco, transportation | 2 Comments
Tagged: bart , CalTrain , muni , TransLink

Zero to 85 mpg in 4.6 seconds with no carbon emissions!?? The Z-Line is even awesomer than the Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel and even the Golden Gate Tunnel, which has a donut court with NINE different donut vendors.

The Z-Line is one of the Wish You Were Here! Postcards From Our Awesome Future posters, designed for the Art on Market Street Project by Steve Lambert and Packard Jennings.

Also, since this is one of those Eyebeam projects, a lot of the art from these posters is up on openclipart.org. Check out the F-line:

via LaughingSquid

Filed under: transportation | 0 Comments
Tagged: public art

Tomorrow!…Sunday!…at 1!

(more info here)

Filed under: bay area, transportation, upcoming | 0 Comments

This actually happened last weekend but I unfortunately missed it. My friend Jesse and some friends of his decided that Austin needed an ice cream festival, so they put one together! Here’s a video of the making of the ice cream truck (he’s the one driving it)…and a linkie to the website.

Ice cream is my all-time-favorite-food-group and drug of choice (all my attempts to OD on it have failed miserably though) so I wish we had an ice cream festival here too!

Filed under: transportation | 5 Comments
Tagged: neat

So, what happens when you stick a bunch of Star Wars stamps on a beach ball, write an address crossword-style, and drop in it the mail? Unbelievably, the post office will deliver it.

Sometime I’ll have to tell you about the Presidio post office, which is something straight out of Office Space. Their vending machine still only has 39 cent stamps, even though the first class rate went up to 41 cents three months ago. Who knows how many people walk in, buy “first class” stamps, and then have their mail returned for insufficent postage… The guy who works there is a dead ringer for Milton, and whenever I mention the vending machine, he tells me “we’ve had disscussions about putting in 41 cent stamps”. Um…. what?

Filed under: transportation | 1 Comment

We showed up at the 7th Annual BYO Big Wheel Race on Lombard St, just in time to see the cops shutting down the race, but we still managed to have a blast! Since we couldn’t race big wheels, Dodger, Clara, and Herve decided to race jellybeans instead. Red won, of course, but then he got squished by a SUV. We got some silly video of the jellybean race (see below).

With the cops around and the jellybeans smashed, we decided to take the races to Vermont Street, the real crookedest street in the world. Some guy with a megaphone announced that Vermont St was too dangerous, but we still got enough people to show up to Potrero Hill to have our own Renegade BYOBW races! The Vermont Street neighbors were really cool about us taking over their quiet hill, and our event was a total success. Check out some more pics, and some videos of us rocketing down Vermont St. on Big Wheels!

Filed under: san francisco, transportation, video | 3 Comments
Tagged: byobw , toys

Chicken John and friends are working on a coffee-ground powered pickup truck!

Right now the truck runs off hydrogen gas (Wood Gas) produced by gassifying wood pellets, but when Chicken John gets $5000 for a pelletizer, it will run off coffee grounds. Check out the pics!

We also shot a couple videos of us driving from Dolores Park to Ritual. After we get started on gas, Chicken shuts off the fuel pump and we start running on wood. The second video has a few details of how the engine works..

Filed under: san francisco, transportation, tronix, video | 1 Comment
Tagged: coffee

We know that domain squatters are scummy, but I never knew they were this scummy. The squatters who picked up http://goldengatetunnel.com/ are specifically blocking the Wayback Machine. Their robots.txt file not only prevents any new crawls, but since the Wayback Machine applies robots.txt retroactively, we can’t even see the previoiusly-archived (pre-squatter) web site :(

Anyway, Dodger pointed me to this awesome bumper sticker.. Those who know, go below!

Filed under: archive, san francisco, transportation | 1 Comment

I’ve been spending many hours criss-crossing the city on public transit lately, and I’ve decided I don’t like those MUNI buses shrinkwrapped in gigantic ad banners. They’re like billboards on wheels, except even larger, and somehow even more lame.

We’re doomed to live with both billboard and advertising-wrapped buses, right? Well, maybe not.

What if San Francisco banned billboards, like some other communities do? The cost of putting giant ads on the side of a bus would go up, and MUNI would get more money, and maybe they would use the extra money to make their service suck less. And we would have no billboards, expect the ones on wheels. What do you think?

Note that in real life, I don’t think banning stuff is a good idea, even if the stuff is lame, like billboards. I also don’t think MUNI would actually use the extra money to help me get around the city any faster.

Filed under: all talk, san francisco, transportation | 1 Comment
Tagged: muni

The Camel Bookmobile in Kenya is the best thing I’ve seen all day! Check out the pictures, video, donation info, and amazon wishlist. They need donations of books in English and Swahili. You can ship eleven pounds of your old books to them for $11.55. (via boingboing)

Filed under: bobslobster, books, transportation | 0 Comments
Tagged: library

La Contessa was destroyed by arson in December. Here are some videos of her wake I shot on a tiny digicam.

She was a great ship, and shall be missed!

Filed under: transportation, video | 1 Comment
Tagged: bigotry

Service started last Saturday on the officially named Muni Thunderbird, also sometimes referred to informally as the T - Third. From January to April the Thunderbird will run free service, weekends only, starting at 10am. April 7 full service will begin.

I gave it a shot today and it was great. The ‘bird is right in front of my building. I took along my camera and did some timelapse sequences. This first one is shot vertically and ends up looking pretty dumb on YouTube since they apparently don’t know how to deal with 320×480 video.

I did about five sequences today of various durations. My favorite is a five second loop of 280 in the early evening. Once again this is pretty boring on YouTube since they don’t loop the clip.

Link to tbird sunset, vertical (h264, YouTube)
Link to 280 overpass (h264, YouTube)

Filed under: excursions, transportation, video | 2 Comments

Apparently it was arson…

Filed under: transportation | 2 Comments

Waking up early ….

Finding your way ….

Sliding down scree slopes ….

Rappelling dry (and wet) falls ….

Getting creative ….

Locking off mid-rappel and ….

…. taking a picture of yourself ….

…. and your lifeline overhead

“Ghosting”

Traversing green and yellow leaves ….

Link to Hastings Canyon Slide Show
Link to Supercloud Canyon Slide Show

Filed under: excursions, transportation | 2 Comments
Tagged: LA

Isn’t it funny how sometimes people have strangely work-appropriate names? This is from a newsletter by Laura Locker of the UCSF gym. I think it’s a fake name but it’s still funny.

Here’s the latest scoop from MUNI regarding the Third Street Light Rail which will serve the Mission Bay campus. Phase I (introductory service) begins January 12, 2007 with daytime weekend service only (probably 9 am-6 pm) and will run from the Sunnydale Station to the Castro Station. No fares will be collected, and there will be no changes to the surface bus (15-Third).

Phase II (full service) begins April 7, 2007. Service will be 7 days a week, 20 hours a day. Regular fares will be collected and changes to various bus lines will take place at that time, including the discontinuance of the 15-Third bus line, and changes to the 9X San Bruno line to fill in for the 15-Third at the north and south ends of the line.

I also found this in the Third Street Light Rail FAQ on the MUNI website.

What service will be provided on the Third Street Corridor?
The K-Ingleside Line will be extended out the Embarcadero and south along Third Street and Bayshore Boulevard to Sunnydale Avenue. Along Third Street and Bayshore Boulevard it will be called the T-Third. The N-Judah will continue to serve the 4th Street CalTrain Station, as is the case today. In the future, development in the Mission Bay area will require the extension of the N-Judah down Third Street to a loop at 18th Street, to provide additional service in that area. Additional light rail vehicles are being acquired by Muni to serve the new corridor.

Sweetness! This means at some unspecified but nevertheless exciting date, I will be able to walk outside, hop on the train, and get off right in front of Burger Meister at Carl and Cole.

Update! A Declaration …. the official TikiRobot! name for this rail line is “the Thunderbird” ;-)

Filed under: bay area, transportation | 1 Comment
Tagged: muni

I found this at TheFunniest.info, which is a xkcd project.

Filed under: transportation | 1 Comment

I can’t make out the name of the ship …. I expect our guest is visiting for Fleet Week

Filed under: bay area, transportation | 3 Comments

May beat me to the post! Here are some photos of the PARK(ing) spots that I rolled by this morning on my bike

Link to “parking” on Flickr
Link to Rebar

Filed under: bay area, transportation | 1 Comment
Tagged: muni

Today is Park(ing) Day here in SF - a day to temporarily transform a metered parking spot into a PARK.…at least until the meter runs out! Here’s an email Arena sent about it

Today I will be volunteering to help deploy the “Temporally Displaced Open Space” in the downtown area of San Francisco — part of PARK(ing) Day. Or, to put it more succinctly, I’ll be hauling dirt with my bicycle trailer.

If you get time today (Thursday), check out some of the installations all around downtown (one near Axis Cafe in front of CCA(c) and one in front of Ritual Roasters on Valencia). This is a one day art installation to visualize the potential of parking spaces as green spaces.

Consult the map:
http://communitywalk.com/map/19478

or the website:
http://rebargroup.org/projects/parkingday/index.html

and please pass those links on to anybody that you think would be interested …or make a PARK(ing) space of your own, it’s an open-source project.

Filed under: bay area, cycling, design, transportation, upcoming | 2 Comments

Get Your Own! | View Slideshow

We made it through to the end (like we had a choice?), but got back after dark, super tired…. We lost two out of four cameras. Not pictured here:

• 120 foot rappel *inside* this waterfall
• Random 15-30 foot jumps into cold Kings River H2O
• Scrambling up, over, around and through boulders the size of a nice apartment
• Swimming through huge pools of gorgeous blue water
• Final 20 foot hand-over-hand rappel into the Power Station’s backyard
• Walking through the glow of sodium vapor lamps past massive, buzzing power transformers.

Link to DMM Truscrew Screwgate Carabiner on REI.com

Filed under: excursions, transportation | 4 Comments