San Francisco Enlists Bus Cameras For Traffic Law Enforcement

Re:N/A by ZackSchil · 2012-02-11 03:45 · Score: 3, Funny

Someone isn't ready for their closeup!

Peterbilt parking by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · 2012-02-11 03:46 · Score: 4, Interesting

Drivers are parking in bus lanes? Man, but these people are desperate. I always thought a solution to the parking nightmare in SF and elsewhere would be to modify those car carrier semi trailers so they could be used as mobile mass parking in some fashion; build upwards, in other words. Might block the view from somebody's Queen Anne though, so scratch that.

Re:Peterbilt parking by drinkypoo · 2012-02-11 04:01 · Score: 5, Interesting

The solution to car problems in SF is to get rid of cars. That moves the problem domain but I can't think of how many times I've thought of how fucking great SF would be without all those damned cars everywhere. Maybe just push them out of the city center, don't allow people to drive in the marina either, et cetera. As it is, it's just another noisy collection of imbeciles that it takes ages to get across at traffic time.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Peterbilt parking by eyenot · 2012-02-11 04:21 · Score: 1

There are numerous problems with that idea. For instance, you can't just load and unload cars freely. The car hauler has to park the cars onto the carrier furthest-in first, and drive them off in reverse order. There's no way to get a car out from behind the other cars without moving them all. You end up with (albeit periodic and momentary) a need for enough space to accommodate almost all the cars, after all.
You could modify the car carrier, but how? You can't have some ramp poking out from the side, it would potentially obstruct traffic. I don't see how it would work.

--
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
Re:Peterbilt parking by sco08y · 2012-02-11 04:51 · Score: 4, Insightful

The solution to car problems in SF is to get rid of cars.
But that leads to the real problem, which as it turns out, is that people who own cars get to vote, too.
Yeah, even in San Francisco! They actually think they've got "rights" or something like that. Nuts, isn't it?
Re:Peterbilt parking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 05:01 · Score: 1

This is such a real problem that one person created http://www.iamabutthole.com/
Re:Peterbilt parking by cis4 · 2012-02-11 05:26 · Score: 1

That wouldn't be a problem if Muni worked well most of the time. It's possible that getting rid of cars may make Muni work a little better, but then the system would be flooded by users, and Muni most likely does not have the capacity.
Re:Peterbilt parking by adenied · 2012-02-11 05:30 · Score: 4, Informative

Not having a car in SF is great if you live near the Market St. tunnel and need to get somewhere on that stretch of the city. Otherwise it's pretty horrible. Sure there's buses and Muni Metro trains that will get you most places, but due to the layout of the city it will generally take you 3x longer to get somewhere via mass transit than driving. As long as this is the case people will keep their cars, even when there's horrible traffic.
That and in many cases Muni buses will be extremely late or bunched up. It's not rare to see Nextbus saying 30+ minutes and this during what are peak travel times. For me it's often faster to walk if the distance is less than 2 miles. This is not an option for a lot of people unfortunately.
Also, what do you do if you live in SF but regularly leave the city? Mass transit is OK for specific things, but Caltrain and BART can only get you so far. I work in Mountain View but will soon need to commute to Campbell a day or two a week. To take mass transit I'd have to take multiple Muni buses or trains or take one and walk a mile, take Caltrain, and then get on VTA somewhere in South Bay. At best my commute will be 2 hours one way and if there's any hiccup and I miss the 5 minute transfer window between Caltrain and VTA it's closer to 2 1/2 to 3 hours. When I can drive down 280 in an hour or so this becomes unacceptable as much as I would prefer to be on a train.
As long as the transit options in the Bay Area are as poor as they are cars will be a necessity for many people. SF would be awesome without them but I just don't see it as feasible. Makes me envy everyone I know who lives in London and NYC.
If we had transit like NYC or London then I'd be all about getting rid of cars.
Re:Peterbilt parking by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · 2012-02-11 05:33 · Score: 1

Maybe the cars could park on tables that would slide out to free up those that are in the middle. Somehow. Doesn't address the problem of freeing up those on a 2nd tier...maybe a forklift? We're getting really complex and hence expensive, but it seems people are ready to pay whatever it takes to get a spot. Whenever I've been in SF I've always been quite horrified at the lengths drivers have to go to get around or park.
I suppose they're maxed out on parking garages. In her novel the Lathe of Heaven Ursula LeGuin passingly remarked on how downtown Portland OR was chockablock with PGs, even in the alternate reality the book was set in. Seems businesses there accounted for a glut of traffic in the area, which is very compact; it's basically just a small region on the west bank of the Willamette river that can't expand in any direction. Perhaps SF missed out on maxing out on vertical parking structures, for whatever reason.
Re:Peterbilt parking by the+eric+conspiracy · 2012-02-11 05:57 · Score: 4, Insightful

Kick out the cars and I bet the citizens will vote in proper transit funding right quick.
Re:Peterbilt parking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 06:09 · Score: 0

I'm inclined to agree with you, but I don't really think SF is ready for it yet. The buses is SF are a disaster compared to what I'm now experiencing in a much smaller town. I only had to commute by bus for four months in SF, and I saw everything from people getting drunk at noon to unremarked on blood -- thank god I just happened to notice it before I sat down -- to once having the bus driver refuse to move the bus because a guy on it smelled so awful (the rest of us yelled at the bus driver enough that we eventually got him to realize the smelly guy wasn't leaving any time soon). And even with the buses, public transportation seemed pretty shitty once you go west past the eastern border of Golden Gate Park. And this isn't to mention the wonderful bus arrival times located at most stops, which screw you over because buses simply disappear one or two minutes before they're supposed to arrive and then you have another 15 or 20 minute wait.

The day I moved to SF was the last day I ever drove a car, but if I hadn't lived in exactly the right spot -- literally across the street from both the J and the 22 -- or my friends hadn't lived in exactly the right spot, or I hadn't been working at home (and taking classes at Cal) it would have been awful.
Re:Peterbilt parking by superdude72 · 2012-02-11 06:10 · Score: 1

Also, what do you do if you live in SF but regularly leave the city? Mass transit is OK for specific things, but Caltrain and BART can only get you so far. I work in Mountain View but will soon need to commute to Campbell a day or two a week. To take mass transit I'd have to take multiple Muni buses or trains or take one and walk a mile, take Caltrain, and then get on VTA somewhere in South Bay. At best my commute will be 2 hours one way and if there's any hiccup and I miss the 5 minute transfer window between Caltrain and VTA it's closer to 2 1/2 to 3 hours. When I can drive down 280 in an hour or so this becomes unacceptable as much as I would prefer to be on a train.
Take transit 4 days a week and drive on the day you commute to Campbell?
Although maybe a better idea would be for the cities on the Peninsula to become livable enough so that people don't feel a need to live in SF and commute an hour to two hours a day.
FWIW, I lived in SF and commuted 3 days a week to San Jose for a couple years. Most of the time I drove, but I also was able to get there on Muni -> Caltrain -> Free employer shuttle. It's a pain in the ass, but it can be done. Which is remarkable when you consider what a sprawling mess most of the Peninsula is.
Re:Peterbilt parking by adenied · 2012-02-11 06:16 · Score: 2

With what funding though? They'd be more likely to vote cars back in than raise the necessary tax revenue fund the amount of change that would be necessary in San Francisco alone. That and if it was underground stuff being built it would take forever. They're building a two mile or so extension to the underground trains that will be done in like 2018 or something. And I still have no idea who's actually going to use it.
And look at the BART extension around the bay that was funded. I have no idea when that will be done. 2030?
You could add more surface transportation but you still need access for trucks and other commercial vehicles so it would still be horrible.
The Muni Metro trains that run underground are using control software from the early 1990s that only allows them to run two car trains when the system was designed for three car trains. This is all pathetic compared to NYC's subway. All of the transit agencies are strapped for cash. I don't see banning cars to make people want to fund it more a really viable solution.
Re:Peterbilt parking by adenied · 2012-02-11 06:24 · Score: 1

Take transit 4 days a week and drive on the day you commute to Campbell?
It'll actually be work from home 3-4 days a week and drive to Campbell the other days. But yeah that's looking like the most viable option. To the point of the OP though, that would be difficult if I couldn't have my car in the city.
Although maybe a better idea would be for the cities on the Peninsula to become livable enough so that people don't feel a need to live in SF and commute an hour to two hours a day.
I lived in Cupertino for a long time, but my wife is a graduate student at Berkeley. When we decided to move in together after we got engaged Cupertino was right out. And Berkeley was a pretty bad solution for me. So our options were basically Fremont or San Francisco. We're both young and relatively social so the idea of living in Fremont was pretty repugnant to both of us.
Re:Peterbilt parking by adenied · 2012-02-11 06:25 · Score: 1

I forgot to close my HTML italic tag. Oh well.
Re:Peterbilt parking by dbc · 2012-02-11 07:23 · Score: 2

Although maybe a better idea would be for the cities on the Peninsula to become livable enough so that people don't feel a need to live in SF and commute an hour to two hours a day
Um.... typing this from Sunnyvale. Personally, for me living in SF would be Hell on Earth. Different people have different definitions of 'livable'. Not that Sunnyvale is Nirvana, I'd rather live some place like Mariposa. But at least in Sunnyvale I have easy access to places liked Halted and Weird Stuff Warehouse and life's other fundamental necessities.
Re:Peterbilt parking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 07:51 · Score: 3, Insightful

But that leads to the real problem, which as it turns out, is that people who own cars get to vote, too.
Even further, people with cars often have jobs, significant income, pay taxes and have influence with elected officials.
Re:Peterbilt parking by swalve · 2012-02-11 07:53 · Score: 2

I have to say, for as much I have paid in parking violations, upping enforcement and charging higher rates has made parking better in my city. It used to be a nightmare- you couldn't find street parking anywhere, because people would monopolize spots all day. I'd have to park in a garage, with their ridiculous rate structures ($10 for the first 10 minutes, $26 for 10-60 minutes and $32 for all day) just to run a quick errand. Now I can plunk my $3.50 into a meter and go on with my life.

I remember when I was a kid, there was a parking garage in the city that did sort of what you talk about. You'd pull up, hand the keys to the valet and he'd drive it onto an elevator and store it somewhere. (They also had a terrifying man-lift, where there was a vertical ski-lift kind of thing, with foot and hand pegs on a cable that circulated constantly, and the valets would just jump on to go to the floors they wanted.)

And I think a Dutch company had a computerized version of that system, where you'd pull into a garage, park on a pallet thing, and the computers would store the car-pallet above and below grade. I think you could put in an expected ETA so the computer could store the car efficiently. It's a good solution for areas with high real estate costs, because you aren't wasting half your space on access ramps.
Re:Peterbilt parking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 08:18 · Score: 2, Informative

And so speaks some utterly clueless twenty something hipster. A life style tourist who spends 5 or 10 years here going to college, partying, "working" at some non-profit non-job but who then discovers that when they actually want to grow up and get a real life that all the politically trendy bien pensant policies they have been pushing so hard while living in the City means that there are no real jobs, housing is ludicrously expensive due to no growth policies and the public schools and services are worthless due to massive one party institutional corruption. And so they clear out of SF back to whatever podunk town they came from leaving SF a complete shambles due to their self-indulgent hypocrisy.
There is no car problem in SF. The recent recession has cleared out enough of the waste of space hipster types (just like it did in the early 90's) so that parking is no longer a problem in most parts of SF. In fact I have not seen so much parking in almost 30 years. Of course if you have actually lived in SF for decades and had to make a living here you would know that. Because the real locals actually know where all the good parking spots are no matter where you are in the City. I've never had any problems getting around or finding parking.
The latest insanity in SF is that the 3% of the city population who cycle regularly (70% in SF drive) , who are overwhelming young, white and middle class short term residents, have forced through a huge bike lane program where around 90% of the lanes are in areas where the weekly usage would be in the single / low double digit range. They have removed full road lanes on busy arterial routes for these unused bike lanes causing peak hour back ups on routes where there had never been any previous hold ups. Typical of these arrogant people. Demanding huge public subsides so that they can indulge in their sanctimonious "lifestyle" posturing while other people who are just trying to make a living have even more of their time wasted by these follies.
Re:Peterbilt parking by drinkypoo · 2012-02-11 08:35 · Score: 1

I hear what you're saying, I lived in Bernal Heights and worked at the foot of Potrero Hill and it took an hour and a half to get there on MUNI, about an hour and a quarter to walk it, or fifteen minutes to drive including parking. But I really don't think you could make MUNI useful without getting all the cars off the street.
I love driving, I really do, but I just don't think cars have a place in cities, especially city centers. I'd like to see them replaced with typical public transportation options immediately (Since they run on existing roads) and with elevated PRT over time, to reclaim the road area for other purposes. Electric golf-cart sized vehicles can be used to make deliveries quietly, cleanly, and using a fraction of the road surface, freeing up space for biomass — hopefully trees, and not just more hapless humans stuffed into a space that doesn't permit stretching out one's arms unless one is quite well-off by any standard.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Peterbilt parking by frosty_tsm · 2012-02-11 09:10 · Score: 1

And I think a Dutch company had a computerized version of that system, where you'd pull into a garage, park on a pallet thing, and the computers would store the car-pallet above and below grade. I think you could put in an expected ETA so the computer could store the car efficiently. It's a good solution for areas with high real estate costs, because you aren't wasting half your space on access ramps.
The Japanese have something like this throughout the country for over a decade. It's best described as a Ferris-wheel for cars (but inside a building and I'm sure there are variants).

Considering their weird zoning / building laws, if these work in Japan they would definitely work for San Francisco.
Re:Peterbilt parking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 09:32 · Score: 0

And I still have no idea who's actually going to use it.
It makes sense to Rose Pak's friends.
Who's Rose Pak?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/09/19/MN391FF0DP.DTL&ao=all
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/12/us/rose-pak-a-chinatown-power-broker-savors-mayor-edwin-lees-victory.html?pagewanted=all
Re:Peterbilt parking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 09:58 · Score: 0

Most outdoor parking lots in Manhattan have done this for 30 or 40 years. They stack them 5 or 6 high. Very compact and efficient.
Still charge you $10 for half an hour, though.
Re:Peterbilt parking by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 15:49 · Score: 1

Or if they're sane, they'll vote the cars back in.
Re:Peterbilt parking by AHuxley · 2012-02-11 16:15 · Score: 1

But think of all the car workers, the supply chain workers and the awesomer feeling of having your own Trans-Am.
Thats the trade most parts of the world made -car jobs vs quality of life.
Now comes the cash flow to rebuild the cities with bus lanes, trams, light rail, underpasses... at wonderful private sector rates from tax payers.
As for the camera push, expect real time registration plate OCR with a nice data stream building up a massive profile of everyday traffic.

--
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Re:Peterbilt parking by drinkypoo · 2012-02-12 06:11 · Score: 1

But think of all the car workers, the supply chain workers and the awesomer feeling of having your own Trans-Am.

I had the even awesomer feeling of having my own lowered IROC until it was stolen from under my window with the alarm set. Probably should've had it installed out of the city, I guess. You get what you pay for.
Thing is, driving around the city is shit, even when it's faster than MUNI. Parking is difficult and/or expensive. Pedestrians behave more randomly than psuedorandomly. The roads are crap, which is OK in the country where there's room to dodge (I'm not happy about it out here in the boonies either, but at least I can manage — besides, I have a 4x4 and a diesel S-Class) but which works very poorly in the city where everyone's close together. It's just really not an enjoyable experience.
Add to that that the feeling of freedom granted by a car is largely illusory. Even though it can't go a lot of places, you can't drive it most of the places it can go. It can be taken away from you temporarily without provocation and permanently with any number of excuses, as can your legal "privilege" to drive.
And finally, we more than have the technology to replace cars with a suitable alternative. It's even feasible that people should have their own private vehicles which operate on a public transportation network and yet which they do not drive; for example, if we instituted a PRT system there's no reason why people couldn't pay for a private spur line if they are sufficiently moneyed.
Mind you, I'm also in favor of the right to roam, so in the end I'm just a big commie to many Americans. But then, I'm also a believer, unlike the ACLU, in the bill of rights. Regardless, I wouldn't take cars away from people in bumfuck without an alternative, but it would make a lot of sense to stop people from driving in city centers. Likewise I in fact believe it makes sense to take cars out of most large cities altogether, where an alternative can reasonably be provided due to population density, and where it would make a substantial difference in quality of life for the maximum number of people. Where they make sense it makes no sense to take them away.

--
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Re:Peterbilt parking by SvnLyrBrto · 2012-02-12 06:11 · Score: 1

Great idea.
Once city hall fixes MUNI so that:
1) They actually bother to follow their published schedule.
2) Said schedule is structured in such a way that it takes no longer than 20% longer to get anywhere I need to go, any time I need to get there, than it does now by car.
3) They're scheduled with such frequency that there will always be room to comfortably get on board with two bags of groceries.
4) They get rid of all of the graffiti, mysterious liquids and smells, and the general trouble causing riffraff. ... I'll be happy to give up my car.
Actually, I do mostly believe in the transit-first concept. And I'd like to not have to own or drive a car. And I do commute to and from work daily on MUNI. But the sacks of lazy and incompetent crap that populate both the ranks of its administration and drivers/operators make it more or useless for anything in the evenings or on the weekends. So when what would be an easy 15-minute drive is no longer an hour-long expedition on MUNI, I'll get back to the notion of giving up my car. Until then, it fills a need for which there is simply not a viable replacement.

--
Imagine all the people...
Re:Peterbilt parking by OrangeTide · 2012-02-12 11:55 · Score: 1

"is that people who own cars get to vote"
You must be new to SF politics, it's not operated as a democracy.

--
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Re:Peterbilt parking by eyenot · 2012-02-13 10:29 · Score: 1

I recall seeing something a few years ago about a forklift-like system attached to a stack of cargo-ship containers that took up a couple of parking spots and parked two or three cars to a stack. In Japan. Or I have a manufactured memory. I guess there are numerous ways to do it.
So many cities barely utilize their underground space for anything. The first so many feet have pipes and conduits, stuff like sewer systems, some old cities with steam pipes (which are really, really interesting,) gas and electricity, etc. But you could tear up a street and build a ramp underneath if for dozens of cars, and just pick some out-of-the-way place at either end with lots of space to build the side ramps for exit and entrance.
I think an even greater idea is to elevate any of roadspace, pedestrian space, or parking. I worked with a friend on a design for the Capitol area of downtown Lansing, Michigan that was sort of a modern "hanging gardens". A large structure supported by arches would span over several blocks of streets and support shopping, elevated walkways, and greenspace. The streets below would be able to take up more space in width, and so could allow for far more parking, and for the ramps to access underground parking as well, by doing away with the streetside pedestrian paths.
Granted, it's a somewhat "baroque", gargantuan monstrosity of an idea, but if you take it just a step further you can have all your traffic underground and your city completely camouflaged by a green hillside that follows the contours of the buildings.
Okay now I forgot wtf I am even trying to talk about.

--
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee

Re:N/A by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 03:47 · Score: 0

Cecil B. Demille

The power of Google/Wikipedia is not strong in this one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_B._DeMille

Re:IMportant announcement: by Goaway · 2012-02-11 03:52 · Score: 3

Seriously, what the hell? What is that flag button?

Did Slashdot actually give up on its stance about censorship, and its moderation system?

Re:N/A by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 03:53 · Score: 0

Damn youngsters. Don't know anything.

Now get off my lawn!

Temptation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 03:57 · Score: 5, Insightful

One can certainly understand the need to enforce the policy - if they created dedicated transit lanes to make public transit more efficient and attractive, then the system collapses if those lanes aren't kept clear and the buses have to travel through the same traffic as everybody.

Taking a step back, though, one wonders if dedicated bus lanes are really the best use of the land. An entire extra 10' lane comes to about 1 acre per mile paved. If the buses are five minutes apart, that's a lot of potential street going almost entirely unused. Worse if they're longer apart. (60 -- 90 minutes in my community. We're "rural" though, so the busses are just there to tease us, not to actually provide a viable transportation option)

That mostly empty lane sure would be tempting to a lot of drivers stuck in traffic.

Perhaps a compromise would be to sell a limited number of license to use that lane. Just enough so that it's sparsely occupied, but not so much that it disrupts the flow of buses. Taxis would be obvious potential customers. Pricing could be auction-style and done periodically. And with bus cameras for enforcement, I see no reason why it couldn't work to everyone's benefit.

Re:Temptation by Ihmhi · 2012-02-11 04:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

Some cultures are heading more towards a 1984 style of control and some go for the Brave New World approach. San Francisco seems to enjoy taking the worst elements from both books and just running with it.

--
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Re:Temptation by Dupple · 2012-02-11 04:07 · Score: 5, Informative

There is a similar system in place in London. Taxi's and motorcycles are able to share bus lanes.
This report from 2007 show's the enforcement cameras are improving things in London
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/static/corporate/media/newscentre/archive/6042.html
After that it get's more complicated because congestion charging at peak times has come into effect for traffic entering the centre of the city

--
Watch those corners
Re:Temptation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 04:24 · Score: 0

You are correct; special lanes for small demographics are stupid and a waste. Especially these silly "carpool" or "high occupancy" lanes. Any other infrastructure that basically removed resources during the time of peak need would be "fixed" right away (Enron did this with electricity causing rolling blackouts in California - see where they ended up). Could you imagine if the water district made it so only recycling companies could have water between certain high use hours? But yet this failed experiment in social engineering called the HOV lane still exists. Why I can drive in it when flow rate is minimal and then must sit in terrible traffic - polluting like crazy - while that lane sits empty during rush hour makes no sense. I'm pretty sure that driving my car for 1.5 hours slowly pollutes more than driving it for .75 of an hour quickly. This poor use of lanes for buses is just more of the same. People with a social agenda or just feeble minds...
Re:Temptation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 05:11 · Score: 1

Durh! You realize that your suffering is part of the incentive for using the public transportation.
It's like you're ignoring the point of it.
I don't get it, do you think there's some pretension that there is no agenda involved? It's blatant on the surface of it, unlike the recent debacle with birth control mandates. That's disguising an attempt by a bunch of old men to tell women how to live.
Re:Temptation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 05:12 · Score: 4, Informative

At least where I live, the public bus only runs between certain operating hours during the day. Normal traffic is allowed to drive in a bus lane outside of those hours, and those hours are posted on signs by that lane every 10ish miles or so.
The lanes are only "exclusive" for 1/3rd of the day, and so not as large of a waste as you imply.
If they wanted the lane to be 100% exclusive, they should have put in train tracks, and instead of normal road safe buses, just use trolleys.
Most people do not argue the right-of-way between cars and trains. Likewise, most people do not attempt to drive up on train tracks. (For the record however, I've seen both happen. The first more so than the second, as people feel being 5 feet closer to the red light will somehow aid their situation)
In fact it would be pretty hilarious if they installed cow-catchers on the front of the buses! Not too helpful against other vehicles, but none the less hilarious to see the attempt!
On my normal work-home commute, there is a particular intersection with traffic light, that has a rail road crossing across it. There is room for exactly three cars between the intersection line, and the rail road line.
If you are the 4th car waiting to go that way, you are supposed to stay behind the tracks.
Apparently tons of people seem to think "Well if a train comes before the light turns green, I'll have to wait even longer... I know, I'll stop on the tracks, that will greatly improve my situation!" and proceed to do just that.
I wish there was a way for these idiots to experience the end results of their logic, without risking other peoples lives in a train derailment.
I have however seen one pickup truck hit by a train stopped over the tracks, totally destroyed, and no derailment happened.
He did fuck up traffic there pretty bad for a few hours.
I have no doubt in my mind that he blamed/blames the train for that too.
Unfortunately he made it out of his vehicle before the train hit it too :/
If there was any sanity left in the system, not only should he have permanently lost his driving license, but should have been opened to lawsuits from all the rest of us around there who he put at risk. Had the train derailed, many more people would have been killed due to his stupidity.
Hell he should have been charged with attempted manslaughter once for each other car within 100 feet of that track, plus anyone on the train.
When I caught the story on the news, all they mentioned was suspended license (implying he can and will get it back eventually) and points on his insurance :/
Re:Temptation by cis4 · 2012-02-11 05:32 · Score: 1

Taxis are granted access to most, if not all, bus lanes in SF.
Re:Temptation by sunderland56 · 2012-02-11 06:13 · Score: 1

It would be interesting to know whether the insurance paid for a new truck, or not. They should not have, since he was violating several laws when hit.
Re:Temptation by Y-Crate · 2012-02-11 07:04 · Score: 2

Your argument is flawed in that you're applying your own rural area's poor level of service to infrastructure that is not designed for the sticks.
The average car driver commutes alone. The average bus holds 50 to 100 commuters. Rush hour headways in many major American cities are 8 to 15 min, with buses running at full capacity.
This is why they deserve their own lanes, and signal priority. That bus waiting to cross an intersection is likely moving more people than all of the cars waiting at the light combined.
This post in picture form: http://consumerist.com/2010/06/how-much-street-space-car-vs-bus-vs-bicycle.html
Re:Temptation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 07:52 · Score: 0

If there was any sanity left in the system, not only should he have permanently lost his driving license, but should have been opened to lawsuits from all the rest of us around there who he put at risk. Had the train derailed, many more people would have been killed due to his stupidity.
The principle point of civil suits is to rectify the harm done to plaintiffs -- that paying damages hurts the defendant and thus deters future harm is secondary. If you didn't get hit by debris, there's no harm done -- how can you justify that you deserve a payout for being "lucky" enough to be near that moron and escaping unscathed, and still have your actual damages paid in full if there is harm done?

Hell he should have been charged with attempted manslaughter once for each other car within 100 feet of that track, plus anyone on the train.
I'm not sure attempted manslaughter is even a thing (presuming you're from the US -- it's certainly not under English law), perhaps you were looking for "reckless endangerment".
Anyway, this is more on the right track. Criminal law is about preventing, by some mixture of punishment/deterrent and reformation, behavior harmful to society at large and/or beyond the ability to make whole (e.g. taking life) -- which fits this situation perfectly.
Re:Temptation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 09:09 · Score: 0

There is a similar system in place in London. Taxi's and motorcycles are able to share bus lanes.
This report from 2007 show's the enforcement cameras are improving things in London
http://www.tfl.gov.uk/static/corporate/media/newscentre/archive/6042.html
After that it get's more complicated because congestion charging at peak times has come into effect for traffic entering the centre of the city
An apostrophe doesn’t mean, “Watch out, here comes an S!”
An apostrophe actually means something in a word: it indicates missing letters (as in “can’t” for “cannot” or “it’s” for “it is”), indicates possessive case (“the woman's penchant for proper usage”)
Re:Temptation by andymadigan · 2012-02-11 10:22 · Score: 1

There's another reason the bus lanes are useful: pedestrians.

I live in downtown San Jose, near the corner of Santa Clara and 2nd. Most of the north/south streets here are one-way, with one bus lane and one car lane. As a result, even during rush hour there are very few cars, and so most of the time the road is clear. This makes it very convenient to simply walk across the road (nowhere near a corsswalk). I do it every day to get back and forth from the tram (light rail) stop.

It's not dangerous, as I said most of the time the road is clear for the entire block, the traffic lights make sure of that.

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Re:Temptation by EotB · 2012-02-11 11:01 · Score: 1

Same deal in NZ. Taxis, motorcycles etc. Could be a good idea to allow High-Occupancy-Vehicles, too. Between free parking and faster travel, I now use a motorbike for most of my daily transit. One less car.
Re:Temptation by Dupple · 2012-02-11 11:21 · Score: 1

Yeah, sorry about that. You are quite right

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Watch those corners
Re:Temptation by thegarbz · 2012-02-11 11:59 · Score: 1

In my city bus lanes are only used on major arterial roads. We have entire tunnels dedicated to buses as well as their only bus only express way down next to the highway. The buses aren't 5 minutes apart in these areas, nor are they in our city centre. It's more like 5-10 buses a minute.
It can be the result of two things. Firstly either good / bad planning to either waste or make excellent use of a bus lane, or it could be a chicken and egg problem of how we going to get another 100 buses on the road if we have no where to put them.
Re:Temptation by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 16:21 · Score: 0

A misinformed choice of words on my part then.
I do not deserve any sort of payout, and isn't what I meant.
I feel he should be punished for the risk he put those of us around him in.
So the second point you raise regarding reckless endangerment sounds much more fitting to what I intended.
Thankfully I've been fortunate enough to never have been involved in a court case, from either direction!
Re:Temptation by xenobyte · 2012-02-11 21:54 · Score: 1

The primary problem in Copenhagen (and London) was delivery vans/trucks parking for a few minutes in bus lanes. If this happens while the other lanes are full, the busses encountering these parked vans/trucks will become (even more) delayed.
For some reason these guy driving these vans/trucks seem to be severely retarded and unable to fathom what their action is doing, and a system like TFA talks about is necessary.
An example of just how stupid they can be is this I personally experienced about 10 years ago in Store Kongensgade in central Copenhagen. It is a one-way street with three lanes where this happened, one (leftmost) used for short term curb parking outside rush hours (as this was), one (rightmost) is a bus lane with a bus stop and the last (center) is available for through traffic. Now, outside rush hours there's a lot of deliveries and the curb lane is full almost all the time. Now, along comes two separate deliveries, one uses the bus lane, the other actually stops in the middle of the center lane and starts unloading goods. All traffic is halted. Now, this would be bad enough, but as incredible as it sounds, these delivery guy completely missed (or ignored) the sirens of emergency vehicles. Two cars behind them was an ambulance with a police escort, siren going, lights flashing and everything. The police went to them and ordered them away in very harsh words, and they started arguing with the police! - One of the delivery guys (the one in the bus lane) actually moved his wan quickly, but the backed up traffic prevented this from allowing the ambulance through. So they need the one in the center to move. But he still refuses while continuing to unload goods. The police finally have had enough and arrested the guy, then proceed to move the truck about 10 meters around a corner which wouldn't have been much of a problem for the delivery guy to do himself. But for some reason he felt that he had a right to make his delivery as close to the recipient as physically possible, no matter what, completely oblivious to everything else. Hopefully he got a proper punishment. Double parking is illegal. Blocking traffic is illegal. Blocking emergency vehicles with sirens and lights even more illegal. Not following police orders illegal too. So there should be be a nice hefty fine for him so he can learn from it.

--
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Re:Temptation by jonbryce · 2012-02-12 03:09 · Score: 1

In London, taxis are allowed to use the bus lanes. The buses there have had cameras to issue fines for quite a few years now.
The idea of having bus lanes is that one bus can take about 60 cars[1] off the road, and takes the same space as about 4 cars. If you can encourage more people to take the bus by making journeys faster, that reduces congestion for everyone.
[1] Based on the capacity of the Enviro 400 bus a pretty common choice of bus in London.

Re:N/A by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 04:01 · Score: 0

I think he meant he felt like "Cecil B. O'brien"

Points on your license? by rsilvergun · 2012-02-11 04:03 · Score: 3, Interesting

without that it's just another regressive tax on the working poor. And before a bunch of /.er's chime in with 'How can you be poor & live in San Francisco', don't forget the rich hire maids, gardeners, bus boys and other low income workers that still have to get to work at their wealthy boss' house. I always found it odd there was always a ghetto nearby every rich community until I realized this.

Maybe it's different in San Francisco and they can get around on the bus system quickly and conveniently. Aw, who the heck am I kidding. Why spend good tax money on public transportation when you can just make the poor get up 2 hours early to ride the bus in.

Now, if they're putting points on your license then I like. Here in Arizona we learned from California's mistake and stopped putting red light cameras in rich neighborhoods where the stay-at-home moms could organize a vote to ban them. We keep 'em in the poor neighborhoods where everyone works two jobs. Unlike a cop a camera doesn't know not to ticket a late model BMW or Mercedes.

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Re:Points on your license? by Afforess · 2012-02-11 04:09 · Score: 3, Interesting

Lol what? I visited San Francisco over Christmas and rented a home inside the city center, the bus system was great! The waits at any station was never > 7 minutes, and usually 2-3 minutes. Almost everyone there used the bus systems, and you can also use BART to get outside of the Bay area if you need to. I wish the public transportation in my area (Grand Rapids Michigan) was half as good as San Francisco.

I think commentators should stick to topics they are familiar with instead of making wild, false claims.

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Re:Points on your license? by adenied · 2012-02-11 05:35 · Score: 2, Interesting

I live in SF and this is true for a very small portion of the city. If you want to get many places be prepared for a 45 minute bus ride for something that would take half as long or better to drive. I'm sure it's better than Grand Rapids. But Grand Rapids is about the same land area as SF with about 1/8 the population. For things as spread out as that mass transit is difficult.
There are many times where Muni buses only show up every 30 minutes or so and many cases where you need to take two buses or a bus and a Muni Metro train where you're going to wait 15+ minutes at the transfer. I try and use mass transit as much as I can and I'm luck to live near the Castro so I have a lot of options. But in many cases I'll just say screw it and drive because it'll be so much faster.
Re:Points on your license? by FooAtWFU · 2012-02-11 05:52 · Score: 1

I've lived in San Francisco and visited for more than just "over Christmas" when traffic is reduced and ridership is depressed. Muni actually kind of sucks. Worlds ahead of the rest of the US, mind you, but pretty bad. Its reliability is legendary... legendarily bad.
It's not like it couldn't be better, but the government agency and the union are both pretty dysfunctional. You'd think that a bunch of professional tree-huggers who hate cars, like they purport to elect in these parts, would actually care about pulling off a decent transit system, but at the end of the day it seems they care more about talking the talk and sending more money to the transit union (who are, of course, highly involved in politics as well). And don't even get me started on the pissing contest of San Jose vs San Francisco, Caltrain/VTA vs BART, that's apparently been going on for decades.

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Re:Points on your license? by sunderland56 · 2012-02-11 06:15 · Score: 2

The bus has a picture of a vehicle violating the law, not of the driver. To put points on a license you would need to prove who was driving.
Re:Points on your license? by superdude72 · 2012-02-11 06:28 · Score: 1

There are plenty of poor and middle class people who commute into San Francisco every day on BART, AC Transit, or Caltrain. A car is absolutely not necessary. And you'd be crazy to drive into work in the Financial District every day. It costs like $20 to park.
And as much as people like to gripe about Muni, it is one of the most comprehensive public transportation systems in the country. Nowhere in the city is more than two blocks from a bus stop, and some of the lines run 24/7. Is it slow and overcrowded? Yeah. Can you manage to get around on it if you can't afford a car? Sure.
Re:Points on your license? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 06:30 · Score: 1

Not if it is treated like a parking ticket. The Registered owner of the vehicle gets sent a ticket.
Re:Points on your license? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 06:37 · Score: 0

And of course we can rely on your expert opinion....more than likely you're an AGW reality deviant. I, for one, don't care about the opinions of such people.
Re:Points on your license? by AK+Marc · 2012-02-11 06:44 · Score: 2

If you want to get many places be prepared for a 45 minute bus ride for something that would take half as long or better to drive.
I'd kill for that. When I lived in Dallas, I had the choice of a 15 minute drive or a 3+ hour bus trip. I could bike (and probably walk) the 10 miles faster than take a bus, if only most of the roads weren't car-only (the direct route was Interstate). Only twice as long for a bus trip? I was looking at 12 times or worse in Dallas. The one time in high school my car broke down and I took the bus, it took me about 3 hours from home to school to replace the 20 minute drive. Only twice as long? That's great. What, are you expecting buses to be faster than driving?

--
Learn to love Alaska
Re:Points on your license? by superdude72 · 2012-02-11 06:45 · Score: 1

Rules of thumb:
The East-West bus routes are reliable, frequent, and overcrowded. At rush hour, you might not be able to get on and will have to wait for the next one, which hopefully will be there within 8 minutes. If there are too many people crammed in at the front, it is perfectly acceptable to board the 38 Geary from the rear door, no matter what any dumb newspaper columnist tells you. (This newspaper columnist lives in the suburbs and telecommutes. What does he know?)
The North-South bus routes are unreliable, infrequent, and uncrowded. Count your lucky stars if the 43 bus comes within 20 minutes. Maybe consider hailing a taxi?
There is probably more than one bus you can take. The 38 isn't here yet? The 1 and the 2 will probably get you there also, or within a couple blocks.
If you are in the small part of the city where you can take BART (E.g., from the Ferry Building to the Mission) for God's sake take it. Also, the subway Muni (light rail) cars around Market Street. You can actually get around Market Street pretty quickly this way. Unless you need to transport more stuff than you can carry, there is no reason to bring a car around this area.
Re:Points on your license? by ciurana · 2012-02-11 06:45 · Score: 4, Informative

Howdy!
I split my time between my homes in San Francisco and Moscow, and more than 50% of my time I'm traveling around major cities in Europe and Asia. I seldom use cars in Moscow, London, Paris, Tokyo, or pretty much anywhere else where trains, metro, buses, trolley cars, etc. are available. I never owned a car or motorcycle anywhere in Europe or in Tokyo because I just don't need to. If necessary, I rent a car for a day or two, then it's back to the metro.
Public transportation in San Francisco just *sucks* in comparison to other cities, both in the US and worldwide. My beloved city (SF!) doesn't have the flexibility of underground trains like NYC or DC do. MUNI is a joke -- they have lots of buses that have the most inefficient passenger pickup areas in the world -- never have I seen a bus line with bus stops at almost every flipping corner along the route, like in San Francisco. Taxis? More suckiness. Trains? Forget it. San Francisco without your own wheels becomes a pain in the ass very fast.
"The bus system was great!" - try planning your trip by bus, and being on time without having to leave too early, from any point in San Francisco to your destination within the city. You often have to wait for 20-30 minutes without a bus in sight, then four or five come together, in a bunch, because the MUNI drivers decided to take a smoke or lunch break and end it at the same time. This is a far cry from a place like say, Zurich or Oslo, cities of the same approximate area and with a high automobile density, where the bus schedule is met at exact times (e.g."next bus will be a 10:43" and it shows up at exactly that time).
I love San Francisco more than any place in the world. Hearing someone praise its public transportation, though, is like hearing someone praise my mentally handicapped kid brother's arithmetic ability as if he were solving differential equations.
Cheers!

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Re:Points on your license? by AK+Marc · 2012-02-11 06:47 · Score: 3, Interesting

I've found that greens pushing public transport prefer to punish cars with parking fees and changing light timings to cause traffic problems to encourage bus riding, rather than admitting that public transport sucks and working to improve it.

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Learn to love Alaska
Re:Points on your license? by sunderland56 · 2012-02-11 07:15 · Score: 1

Which is precisely my point. A parking ticket does not add points to your license.
Re:Points on your license? by swalve · 2012-02-11 08:05 · Score: 1

Don't forget the price of taking public transit. That still leaves you paying more to drive, but the other costs like increased commute times and having to carry your stuff everywhere and lacking the flexibility to stop somewhere on the way home starts to make it closer to break-even.
Re:Points on your license? by superdana · 2012-02-11 08:08 · Score: 1, Insightful

I'd kill for that.
Try riding it every day and then come back and tell us what you'd kill for. :-\
Re:Points on your license? by adenied · 2012-02-11 08:20 · Score: 0

What, are you expecting buses to be faster than driving?
No, not at all. I hate buses. If I can take an underground train I will go for that every time. I think part of my problem is I come across a lot of people who live in SF who think that they're the greatest thing in the world. Go somewhere like NYC or London and you'll see that mass transit really can work, can be faster than driving, and is a lot nicer. It's an attitude issue here.
Also, I don't know the specifics of your Dallas issues, but dude, that city is huge. 340.5 sq. miles according to Wikipedia. SF is less than 50. It's literally a 7 mile by 7 mile square. And when I'm talking about a trip taking 45 minutes on buses, that's to go about 3.5 miles if I drove directly. That's horrible by any measure.
Re:Points on your license? by superdude72 · 2012-02-11 09:22 · Score: 2

I lived in SF for 5 years without a car, commuting to locations in the city, in Berkeley, and in Daly City. I'm not aware of having lacked flexibility to stop somewhere. In a lot of ways I had more flexibility. If I needed to go shopping, for instance, the place where I transferred from BART to Muni was underneath the largest shopping mall west of the Mall of America. There were at least 3 grocery stores on my route home. All I had to do was pick one and get off the bus there. Getting back on the bus, not a problem. Just a 5-10 minute wait usually. A small sacrifice to make compared to all the inconvenience and expense of owning a car.
Re:Points on your license? by artor3 · 2012-02-11 14:00 · Score: 1

I've found that assholes who double park and run red lights like to shift responsibility away from themselves by claiming that an evil left-wing conspiracy is intentionally screwing with light timings.
Re:Points on your license? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 15:47 · Score: 0

Sorry, but this is BS all the way around. Considering that getting a fine from a red light camera is completely options, the socioeconomic status of the person breaking the law is irrelevant. Don't want a ticket? DONT RUN THE RED LIGHT!
Re:Points on your license? by AK+Marc · 2012-02-11 16:10 · Score: 1

I've taken public transport in DC, NYC and Boston, in addition to living in Dallas and other places. Dallas isn't spectacularly poor compared to random places (Atlanta, Phoenix), but yes, much worse than the concentrated island/peninsula places. And yes, Dallas is huge, but a good bit of it is essentially unserved. Try to find a bus in Seagoville... The best served areas are the most populated ones (and I was, in all cases, going from a major area to another, so not that good, but at least with service of some kind).

--
Learn to love Alaska
Re:Points on your license? by AK+Marc · 2012-02-11 16:27 · Score: 1

I've spoken with people who claimed to be green and sabotaged a new road (with protests and organized complaint campaigns) because they wanted to punish people who drove, even if it meant worse traffic (which harms the environment, with idling and stop-and-go traffic). So I know for a fact there is a conspiracy. You are the one that added "left-wing" to it. Why are you accusing the left-wing of it? Most of the staunchest environmentalists I know are right wing. OF course, they want to preserve the environment so they can go out and kill and eat it, but environmentalist non the less, just don't call them that or they'll shoot you.

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Learn to love Alaska

so by unity100 · 2012-02-11 04:04 · Score: 1, Interesting

best use of public land would be to stuff more people, each one of them occupying some 10 m2 area with their cars to transport their single person, instead of fitting bus lanes in there, which will provide transportation rate of 1 m2 space occupied per person ?

excuse me, but engineering-wise, that would fail you an exam.

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Re:so by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 05:42 · Score: 1

I think you've failed the engineering exam MISERABLY.
When you take into account that the dedicated bus lane is COMPLETELY EMPTY the vast majority of the time, and always will be, the car taking up 10 m2 per person is a FAR more efficient use of space.
If you completely clear the lane, the bus takes up THOUSANDS of square meters of space per person transported, not 1.
Re:so by Richy_T · 2012-02-11 06:23 · Score: 1

Is it really 1m2 area though? If the bus lane is empty otherwise, you also have to add all the space between the bus and the bus in front of it.
The true measure is probably mean velocity per person (though parking may play into the equation too). That likely means not having the bus lanes be exclusively for buses. Maybe for taxis (though they are typically single passenger so not so useful), motorcycles and full occupancy vehicles or have a light system that helps ensure the bus lane is empty when a bus is going to use it but allow traffic to use it when not.
Re:so by sessamoid · 2012-02-11 08:46 · Score: 1

SF "bus lanes" are also usable by taxis and bicycles. They actually stay pretty well used.

--
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Re:so by dr2chase · 2012-02-11 09:00 · Score: 1

If the enforcement cameras are on the busses, sounds like de facto the cars get to use the lane, except when a bus needs it, so the use of the lane is somewhat flexible. Another thing to note is the "official" capacity rule which is 1500 cars per hour per lane (learned this from a friend who was a traffic engineer years ago). Busses in SF, at least the last time I used one, tend to run full, so that's about 50 people, more on those articulated long busses. A full bus every 2 minutes moves the same number of people as if the lane was jam-packed with cars. I suspect, but I'm not sure, that urban streets carry fewer cars per hour (because of all the start-stop, lights, crosswalks, and random obstructions).

Re:N/A by epedersen · 2012-02-11 04:05 · Score: 2

Who the f*** is "Cecil B. Demille"? Are we supposed to know that name, or what?

He is a movie director: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cecil_B._DeMille

Re:Damn youngsters. by TaoPhoenix · 2012-02-11 04:07 · Score: 2

It's worse than that Jim, not only do they not know anything, they get more fun out of posting "Who is X" rather than looking it up.

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Re:IMportant announcement: by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 04:08 · Score: 2, Informative

Apparently.

From the FAQ:

How do I report abuse?
Below and to the right of each comment is a small "Anti"[looks like a flag to me -AC] symbol; click on this, and (optionally) explain why you consider the comment abusive. (Slashdot discussions are and should be robust; only cry "Abuse!" for comments that are utterly without redeeming value -- spam, racist ranting, etc. For everything else, use the other moderation options.) Reported comments will be reviewed and moderated by the editors, if appropriate.

Re:Flag Button by TaoPhoenix · 2012-02-11 04:14 · Score: 5, Interesting

Wow, that's right.

We've had 10 years of crappy First Posts but it was in the name of freedom of speech, and NOW we get a "Flag" button? And that actually leads to potentially having the comment *totally disappear*?

When did THAT arrive?

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dangerous idea by eyenot · 2012-02-11 04:16 · Score: 1

unlike an automated and autonomous traffic camera, a camera fixed to a bus with a human driver behind the wheel can be seen as an extension of the driver the same way the bus can. the camera hanging from the power lines over the intersection doesn't invite reprisal, but knowing what bus number was on that route at the time the picture was taken and therefore knowing what driver was present when you got busted does invite reprisal. i think it's a bad idea.

--
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Re:dangerous idea by ArcCoyote · 2012-02-11 04:49 · Score: 3, Insightful

Revenge? For what, a parking ticket?
If nothing else, I'm more OK with these cameras because there is a human behind them. This isn't an automated system, just an easier way for the bus driver to report offenders (much like that new flag button...)
The driver could always snap a picture with his phone if the bus didn't have a camera.
Re:dangerous idea by iggymanz · 2012-02-11 15:08 · Score: 1

more like revenge on a system using technology to control and harass. It's coming, and it'll be huge. frank herbert had a notion of such a thing and called it the butlerian jihad. you are going to see old mild mannered "pillar of the community" types snap. very, very soon

people park in bus stops valet as well by Joe_Dragon · 2012-02-11 04:21 · Score: 1

people park in bus stops valet as well

"feel a bit like Cecil B. Demille.' by swschrad · 2012-02-11 04:25 · Score: 2

said the Ram pickup, rustily, "I'm ready for my close-up."

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if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?

Re:IMportant announcement: by eyenot · 2012-02-11 04:25 · Score: 2

*shrug* In the approximations of many users, slashdot isn't even any longer "news for nerds" nor "stuff that matters". Would it be surprising if they are now so desperate for quality content that they've resorted to attempting to get rid of the "bad" in the hopes that what remains looks like the "good"?

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"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee

Tape? by mcgrew · 2012-02-11 04:29 · Score: 5, Funny

15 months from now, all of Muni's 819 buses will be equipped with the cameras: drivers caught on tape violating the bus lanes will be subject to fines of up to $115.

Tape? How quaint.

--
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Re:Tape? by Radworker · 2012-02-13 10:56 · Score: 1

It is a bit hard to tell from the photo in the article but if I am not mistaken, they are using the Apollo video system. It is a dvr so therefore we are talking about a hard drive. Likely the driver is just hitting the event button to mark the time of the offense. Later back at the depo the video will be automatically downloaded to a central server (by default grabs 1 minute each side of the event button).

Re:N/A by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 04:40 · Score: 1

Who the f*** is "Cecil B. Demille"? Are we supposed to know that name, or what?

Yes, yes you are. This is Slashdot, intended for geeks.
That means it is expected you know "How to operate a computer", which includes both actions of "copy/paste" and "google"

You are expected to know how to look up ANY name.
If you are unable to, perhaps this is not the website for you (Nor any of the people who modded you up)
Then again if you can't operate Google, perhaps NO website will be the website for you.

Re:IMportant announcement: by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 04:41 · Score: 0

Thankfully /. isn't French, otherwise that flag button would mean surrender. ;)

Or let the bus drivers handle it. by ArcCoyote · 2012-02-11 04:46 · Score: 3, Informative

I might be mistaken, but I do believe in Baltimore, bus drivers have the authority to issue citations. I once parked in a bus stop and didn't realize it, I'm pretty sure the ticket was written by the driver.

Re:Or let the bus drivers handle it. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 16:02 · Score: 0

> I once parked in a bus stop and didn't realize it, I'm pretty sure the ticket was written by the driver.
But you're not quite sure, because the next thing you remember is spasming on ground from a 50 kV electric shock?
Re:Or let the bus drivers handle it. by Paintballparrot · 2012-02-11 16:11 · Score: 2

The bus drivers do not but the Maryland Transit Authority has its own police department and most of those cops ride around on buses and trains all day to curb the massive problem Baltimore has with violence on public transit. You most likely had your ticket written by one of them.

Re:N/A by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 04:48 · Score: 0

Do you have any idea how long it takes me to type on this dinky phone? I'm not gonna waste time googling Cecil B. Demille when I could waste thrice as much time complaining about the lack of a link in TFS (and about 10 times as much time complaining about your lack of a link)!

Re:N/A by sco08y · 2012-02-11 04:49 · Score: 1

Who the f*** is "Cecil B. Demille"? Are we supposed to know that name, or what?

You don't know the name of a celebrity? What's wrong with you?

After looking him up, it seems that the reference is nothing more than "I've got cameras and I feel like I'm a movie director," which seems so witless that it's probably right.

Re:N/A by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 05:05 · Score: 0

If you're at all educated about the evolution of western popular culture, you know who Cecil B. DeMille was. It's like never having heard of George Gershwin or Chuck Berry or Norman Rockwell.

On another note... by WSOGMM · 2012-02-11 05:10 · Score: 2

Improving San Francisco's MUNI system is pretty important to me. It's been considerably annoying to see cars parked in the bus lane, and it's almost annoying as seeing cars park in the middle of the right lane with their emergency lights on because there's no parking, which more buses would help with! ... As a side note, it's almost impossible to live in San Francisco for an extended period of time with a vehicle and not get a parking ticket. They're ruthless!!

It's funny though, I've lived in Germany for the last half year, and I've found that their transportation system is ten times better than San Francisco's. Don't get me wrong, BART is amazing, but I live in a small town at the moment and its transportation system runs more often than San Francisco's. Paris and Berlin have both train systems that run late, and night trains, while San Francisco's train system stops around 11 pm (then buses run sparsely after that).

Re:On another note... by pauljlucas · 2012-02-11 14:28 · Score: 1

Paris and Berlin have both train systems that run late, and night trains, while San Francisco's train system stops around 11 pm (then buses run sparsely after that).

Most of San Francisco's system (Muni) stops around 1am, actually. They do shut down the Metro (rail) then, but it is replaced by surface bus "Owl" service from 1-5am. BART (a separate, bay-area-wide system) stops around midnight.

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Re:Flag Button by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 05:23 · Score: 3, Informative

Seems like it changed around Feb. 9th. Here's Google's cache of the old moderation page of the FAQ:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:KMxelxNspVkJ:http://slashdot.org/faq/com-mod.shtml+slashdot+institutes+new+flag+abuse+comment+system&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Mxw&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&gbv=1&prmd=imvns&strip=1

Here's Slashdot's previous policy on comments and moderation:

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This is a rather huge change in comment policy that wasn't preceded by any announcement on the site that I can find (honestly, I didn't look very hard, though). Were subscribed Slashdot users notified by this change?

Local county here uses them on school buses by Shivetya · 2012-02-11 05:23 · Score: 2

http://www.georgiainjurylawblog.com/archives/bus-accidents-cobb-county-uses-school-bus-cameras-to-catch-errant-drivers-prevent-accidents.html

Cobb County has the second largest fleet of school buses in Georgia. The mere thought that nearly a thousand people don't obey the lights on a school bus each day is hard to believe. Hopefully they will release statistics to show how many people they are photographing.

Second story, reported two violations per day under manual system
http://mdjonline.com/pages/full_story/push?article-School+officials+still+having+issues+with+bus+stop+cameras%20&id=15410211

Cobb County bus stats
Transportation Department
at a glance...

913 Bus Drivers
148 Bus Monitors
845 Conventional Buses
275 Special Needs Buses
813 Routes per day
41,978 Bus Stops per day
72,181 Miles Traveled per day
75,642 Students Transported each day

so you figure, if people won't respect school buses I betcha that San Fran certainly has problems with parking or violating bus lanes

--
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.

Re:N/A by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 05:26 · Score: 0

Fiddling with your phone ... that's why you don't already know who he is. People today: if it didn't happen right in front of your face, it never happened.

Go even futher by koan · 2012-02-11 05:28 · Score: 1

Every vehicle must be retrofitted with a beacon that relays an UID, speed, status of registration, cellphone usage, and any other important information for the vehicle to cell towers, and set up receivers in rural areas where cell reception is poor, if you speed it's transmitted instantly and you get a ticket, if you aren't registered you get a ticket, if you're on your phone while moving you get a ticket, just make it too expensive for idiots to drive.
It's not a right it's a privilege and it's been abused for too long.

You may now mod this out of existence.

--
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."

Re:Go even futher by kobaz · 2012-02-11 05:52 · Score: 1

And what about passengers on the phone?

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The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Re:Go even futher by the+eric+conspiracy · 2012-02-11 06:00 · Score: 1

This is America. One person per SUV please.
Re:Go even futher by kobaz · 2012-02-11 06:16 · Score: 1

Ah yes, of course.
Speaking of SUVs... my business partner has a nice new land rover with built in gps-nav. It creates insanity to no end that I, as a passenger, cannot operate the gps while the car is in motion. The insanity!
Very often when driving I'll get a tech support call and I'll stop, have my brother take over the driving (we do lots of stuff together) and I'll work on my tethered laptop to work. I have a feeling that very many people across the country, from techies to kids of soccor moms would go batshit insane and probably become violent if all cell use while in a car-in-motion was automatically fined. Either that or it would become basically a tax and cost-of-doing-business. I wonder if it would be tax-deductible.

--

The goal of computer science is to build something that will last at least until we've finished building it.
Re:Go even futher by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 07:36 · Score: 0

And all that stupidity in the last 15 years, you being the stupid one.
Re:Go even futher by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 07:45 · Score: 1

First off, why is it not a right? Because you say so? Talk about the 'repeat a lie often enough and people will believe it' theory. This one's been around so long it'll take generations to get rid of.
Everybody pay attention: children get 'priveleges'. Adults HAVE RIGHTS, and one of them is to go from place to place when one damn well feels like it. Believing in this kind of illogic gets us things like the TSA, where the argument is that flying isn't a right therefore they can do whatever they want.
Reasonable regulation is of course necessary, after all my rights do end where they infringe on yours, but enough of believing this bullshit. "But...but...there's no right to drive or fly in the Constitution". You mean the same document that explicitly SAYS RIGHT IN IT that just because a specific right isn't listed there it still exists? Some of the founders were opposed to the Bill of Rights for just this reason--they correctly feared that idiots would take it as the be all and end all list of rights.
Something else: remember everything starts innocently. In this case, license plates, which came into being as proof one paid one's vehicle taxes. Now look what's happened. If people fought the notion of publicly visible identity tags for cars way back, crap like automated ticketing machines (like red light cameras) would be a lot harder to shove down our throats. Small freedom grabs need to be fought early and hard.
BTW, I'm not saying parking in bus lanes should go unpunished. It is a selfish intrusion into others' lives and an uncivil act. I'm just tired of automated money grabs.
Re:Go even futher by swalve · 2012-02-11 08:10 · Score: 1

That would be preferable to the current system where the laws don't apply if there aren't any cops around, and where if you DO get pulled over, your chances of getting a big ticket or a warning depend on how much the cop likes you (or your kind) that day. Added bonus: when the privileged classes start getting their automatic tickets the same way us proles do, maybe some of the more ridiculous laws might get changed?
Re:Go even futher by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-12 05:09 · Score: 0

There's rights, there's privileges, and THERE'S EVERYTHING ELSE.
You make it sound like everything you do fits into either a right or a privilege.
I have the right to vote (I'm Canadian, it's listed in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which IIRC, is a different legal basis than what the US system is based on). I have the privilege of being able to legally drive on public roads (I have a driver's license). I can make myself a ham sandwich for lunch, or walk to the coffee shop (neither is a right nor a privilege).

Re:IMportant announcement: by GaryOlson · 2012-02-11 05:33 · Score: 1

Search for Timothy's postings on the Scottevest slashvertisement and other places report those comments .

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Every mans' island needs an ocean; choose your ocean carefully.

Long Time in the Making by cis4 · 2012-02-11 05:37 · Score: 1

This has been in the works for a while. And people have been improperly ticketed.

Re:IMportant announcement: by genkernel · 2012-02-11 05:52 · Score: 1

That is a good question.

Here is a submission for ontopic discussion (if that indeed matters): http://slashdot.org/submission/1939389/slashdot-institutes-abuse-reporting-for-comments

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Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.

Re:IMportant announcement: by rotorbudd · 2012-02-11 06:13 · Score: 1

Contact their advertising or PR department and say, " I was trying to say online how great your products were, but Slashdot's censorship system prevented others from seeing my comment. " Flood their advertisers with those comments until those awful flag icons disappear entirely and Slashdot releases a statement regretting the use of flags.

What ads?

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A bullet may have your name on it, but artillery is addressed to " Whom It May concern"

Re:Damn youngsters. by spire3661 · 2012-02-11 06:23 · Score: 0

slashdot=stagnated

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Good-bye

Re:IMportant announcement: by Soulskill · 2012-02-11 06:28 · Score: 5, Informative

There's no automation. Flagged comments will be sent to the editors to review. Our two options once we see them will be to ignore the report or to downmod the comment.

The comments will still be readable for anyone who wants to browse at -1. The purpose is simply to more quickly find and downmod spam and things like the racist copypastas.

If you're curious, there were about 60 reported comments when I pulled up the page this afternoon (including the one I'm responding to). I've gone through half so far, and haven't downmodding any yet today.

Like in London by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 06:31 · Score: 0

The solution to car problems in SF is to get rid of cars. That moves the problem domain but I can't think of how many times I've thought of how fucking great SF would be without all those damned cars everywhere. Maybe just push them out of the city center, don't allow people to drive in the marina either, et cetera. As it is, it's just another noisy collection of imbeciles that it takes ages to get across at traffic time.

Maybe it's possible to introduce a London-style congestion charge which makes you pay either a hefty monthly fee to be able to drive in the centre and have single day permits be worth $10 or so. You can imagine how quickly people will stop driving through the centre if it costs them more money than to take public transport, which would be improved by the sudden influx of money.

Re:IMportant announcement: by Goaway · 2012-02-11 06:39 · Score: 2

Look, you really want to run these things by the community before implementing them. Just quietly sneaking that in there does not inspire much confidence. Slashdot has a pretty strong tradition against that sort of thing, and if you're going to change things, really, explain it clearly first.

Easy to abuse by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 07:49 · Score: 0

Cars are permitted to enter the bus lane if they intend to turn right at the next corner. Granted, a lot of drivers greedily interpret this as license to immediately enter the bus lane as soon as possible for a quick trip down the block to the corner, but it's easy to imagine bus drivers just snapping away at anybody who happens to be in their way--even legitimately--out of annoyance. In fact, I imagine that bus drivers will be encouraged to do so, as this just reeks of yet another city fund-raising scheme. I bike to work in San Francisco every day, and while you do sometimes see drivers trying to jockey for position in the bus lanes, these are usually either a) tourists who don't know better, or b) seasoned veterans who know to watch for buses.

Re:N/A by Sulphur · 2012-02-11 07:56 · Score: 1

Who the f*** is "Cecil B. Demille"? Are we supposed to know that name, or what?

www.cecilbdemille.com/

Re:N/A by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 07:57 · Score: 0

'A celebrity'. Haha. The 'not knowing the name of a celebrity' snark about shallowness has backfired a little bit here, I think :)

The point about this is not knowing who Cecil B. DeMille was, but knowing that his name has become the best for use in setting up a joke about movie directors, largely due to the (enormously famous, regularly quoted even now) line in Sunset Boulevard: "All right, Mr DeMille, I'm ready for my closeup".

Re:IMportant announcement: by poetmatt · 2012-02-11 08:05 · Score: 1

I like this, a lot - as long as it isn't abused. I suppose that is the nature of moderation anyway though.

Much ado about nothing, nice feature change, etc.

Re:government = leech by swalve · 2012-02-11 08:06 · Score: 1

How is enforcing the law socialist?

Re:IMportant announcement: by poetmatt · 2012-02-11 08:06 · Score: 1

It's not even a change. You could already flag comments as "needing moderation" via email, this is just an easier and more public way.

So yeah it's been run by the community for....at least 3 years, if not more - just that now it's public.

Re:IMportant announcement: by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2012-02-11 08:26 · Score: 1

If you're curious, there were about 60 reported comments when I pulled up the page this afternoon (including the one I'm responding to). I've gone through half so far, and haven't downmodding any yet today.

That might work if the volume of flags never gets to the point where it gets outsourced to low-paid labor. I've seen other sites, IMDB comes to mind, where nearly any post will be deleted if someone complains about it no matter how inoccous and that's despite their own posted guidelines saying that making bogus reports may get your own account deleted.

Personally I'm fine with the crap posts taking a while to get down-modded. I normally browse at 3 and up and haven't seen a crap post at that level in probably over a decade. If anyone is so thin skinned that they can't deal with seeing the seemy underside of humanity once and a while then they should do the same.

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When information is power, privacy is freedom.

Re:IMportant announcement: by Jah-Wren+Ryel · 2012-02-11 08:32 · Score: 2

While the difference between email and a simple mouse click may just be a difference of degree and not kind, it is such a large difference in degree as to make the question of kind moot.

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When information is power, privacy is freedom.

Not even close to MUNI's biggest problem by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 08:34 · Score: 0

Everyone ins SF knows that this isn't the biggest problem with Muni. The SFMTA which runs MUNI and has been given control things like traffic lights, parking tickets, parking meters, etc. It exists first as a political organization and second, distant second, exists to get people around town. So following it's prime mandate they will continue to extract more and more money from things like parking meters on Sunday and in Golden Gate Park, then spend it on fantastic boondoggles like the Chinatown Subway ($1 billion per mile!) and now cameras on buses.

They like to pin the poor service on things like cars in bus lanes, but how does that explain all the delays of Muni Metros (light rail) when they are in the subway?! No traffic there. I am willing to bet all the money in my pocket that Muni's on-time rate and customer satisfaction do not improve at all as a result of cameras on buses, but they might squeeze an extra couple million from the populace.

FWIW I ride my bike to work nearly every day now and it's fantastic.

Re:IMportant announcement: by Soulskill · 2012-02-11 08:40 · Score: 1

That might work if the volume of flags never gets to the point where it gets outsourced to low-paid labor.

There's no conceivable circumstance in which this would ever happen. Heck, right now there are a few people trying to flood us with reports, but it only takes a few seconds to mass-ignore all their effort.

It's basically just an easier avenue for people without mod points to get spam downmodded more quickly.

Good idea by Animats · 2012-02-11 08:48 · Score: 2

This seems like a good idea. I live near SF, and see bus lanes blocked occasionally, usually by double-parked delivery trucks.

SF Muni operates more than typical buses. They have long, articulated buses. They have trolley buses powered from overhead lines. They have street cars running on rails. None of those are very maneuverable. So blocked transit lanes are a big deal, more so than in most cities.

Re:Good idea by TubeSteak · 2012-02-11 17:37 · Score: 2

This seems like a good idea. I live near SF, and see bus lanes blocked occasionally, usually by double-parked delivery trucks.
Delivery services consider those tickets just a cost of doing business.
Here's a nice article from 2007 about SF, delivery trucks, and parking tickets
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/24/MNGMPOAK521.DTL

"This is part of the price of doing business," said Jim McCluskey, a spokesman for FedEx, which paid San Francisco $434,046 for 7,711 tickets [in 2006]. "We encourage our operators to park legally, but we also need to meet the needs of our customers who want reliable, on-time service."
Because of the sheer number of tickets, most big cities have special programs for the largest corporate offenders.
This keeps the court system from getting clogged up and streamlines collections.

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[Fuck Beta]
o0t!

Bus lanes confusing by JoeCommodore · 2012-02-11 09:00 · Score: 3, Informative

last time the wife and I visited San Francisco we unknowingly got caught in a bus lane and had to go a block or so to get out. Hope there is some leeway for us idiot drivers who don't understand San Francisco bus lanes.

--
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield

Re:IMportant announcement: by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 10:21 · Score: 0

I imagine you knew there'd be griping. Though for the more rational among us, a quick way to tag those weird, bot-esque, racist speeches is pretty handy. And I have to imagine it makes things for the editors much faster and easier, not having to deal with those reports via email.

Tracking the Bus drivers too. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 11:12 · Score: 0

Will they be using those same cameras to make sure the drivers are on time, especially on the weekends?

Now if they'd use them to ticket cyclists by greggman · 2012-02-11 15:47 · Score: 1

If they used them to ticket cyclists they'd be rich. Stand at any intersection in San Francisco, count the percentage of cars that violate traffic laws vs cyclists that violate traffic laws.

I'm just guessing here but

cars 80%

Subtract taxis and cars is probably under 5%

Re:Now if they'd use them to ticket cyclists by greggman · 2012-02-11 15:49 · Score: 1

slashdot ate my greater than and less than
cars under 20%
cyclists over 80%

It's all we can do... by rsilvergun · 2012-02-11 16:54 · Score: 1

what with the car companies actively campaigning against public transportation. I remember how shocked I was to find the plot to Who Framed Roger Rabbit was based on a true story.

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Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/

Re:IMportant announcement: by DigiShaman · 2012-02-11 18:55 · Score: 1

Why even get involved at all? There will always be trolling on any public forum. So why not let the community deal with as we've always have in the past through moderation? Honestly, I think you are giving yourselves too much of an unneeded burden by policing slashdot.

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Life is not for the lazy.

MUNI is awesome by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 18:55 · Score: 0

O.k., if you have a car in San Francisco, it's easy to complain about municipal transpo. $2 one way on the bus seems a little expensive, but whatever, divide the cost of car (payment), gas, upkeep, insurance, and tickets and your little jaunt to the Marina to buy secondhand designer baby clothes probably costs you 15 bucks.

It's hard to switch mindset to "slow travel". If I chose to have a car I'd probably use it for most trips over a mile. But everyone who lives in SF physically could not have a car. There's just not enough room. It's a dense city.

.

Inevitable... by Cybersonic · 2012-02-11 19:11 · Score: 1

I am not a fan of this enforcement, but I have a feeling this is inevitable. Sf is quickly putting sensors in all of the parking meters that report back when the parking meter expires. This will make sf a LOT of money. ($55 per violation). Now another $115 for automating the bus zone violations. They are also putting up the traffic light cams that snap pics and issue tickets if a vehicle passing through a red light. (which at times, cannot be avoided)

I live in an RV that I park in San Francisco, and it can be challenging at times... As long as I move it a couple blocks every 3 days, it works out well :D

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Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell

Re:Inevitable... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-12 05:19 · Score: 0

At least the red light cameras around here show timestamped pictures of when the light went amber, and when the light went red. To my knowledge, you only get fined if you weren't in the intersection already at Amber Time, but were when the light went Red.
*That* is entirely avoidable.

1984. by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-11 21:26 · Score: 0

1984.

Re:government = leech by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-12 01:05 · Score: 0

How is enforcing the law socialist?

San Francisco has a bunch of socialists. Socialists like socialist laws. All laws enforced in San Francisco are socialist enforcements.
Capeesh?

Cameras for giving buses tickets? by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-12 13:11 · Score: 0

I'm all for this as long as there are cameras watching the buses and they get ticketed for breaking the law too.
Muni drivers are some of the worst offenders on the road, but it will be a cold day in hell when the SF police give a Muni driver a ticket.

cameras & computers by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-12 16:29 · Score: 0

The number one cause of accidents is tailgating.

Yet far fewer tickets are issued for this than speeding. Why? Because we have an easily operated and reliable way to determine speed, but nothing similar to prove tailgating.

However, a video camera looking backwards, a computer linked to the vehicles engine monitors (which record speed, acceleration, deceleration and other information,) can determine EXACTLY how close the vehicle behind is following, provide photographic proof and images of the driver & the license plate.

Such devices can be built en mass for a relatively cheap cost.

Speed enforcement is an example of regulation because of the ability to cheaply measure, instead of pursuing the actual causes of the problem.

Equipping a vehicle with environmental recording devices has become inexpensive, and processing the data is also inexpensive. Recordings greatly reduce trial times and costs, facilitating the promise of a fair and speedy trial, simplify insurance and accident investigation.

Re:IMportant announcement: by coolmadsi · 2012-02-13 03:00 · Score: 1

It's basically just an easier avenue for people without mod points to get spam downmodded more quickly.

How quickly, on average, will flagged posts get responded to? The moderation guidelines say to focus more on promoting rather than demoting, is the flagging system a way to allow mods to flag something without needing to downmod it themselves (so they have more points for promoting)? Or should things still be downmoded (troll, flamebait) when mods come across them?

Also, can we use the flag to report potentially bad moderations (somone moderating troll on an insightful comment, or the other way around, for example)?

The Real issue here... by Anonymous Coward · 2012-02-13 03:38 · Score: 0

Why aren't people asking the important question here: When will this all of this Big Brother crap stop? How intrusive will we allow the State to become before we act? Why doesn't Anonymous point their resources at something constructive? Sure, attacking traffic cameras and the like is a small, token step, but the system as it is must come down. Why are they only attacking one half of the parties (Corporations) complicit in the Corporate/State Fascist partnership?

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San Francisco Enlists Bus Cameras For Traffic Law Enforcement

151 comments