A car was struck by an Amtrak train #527 in Santa Clara County, California around 10 AM today on Friday morning and killed one person in the car. The train 45 passengers onboard were okay and not injured during the accident, and Amtrak spokesperson was not aware if anyone else was in the car. The train passengers were transported to San Jose by bus and clean-up crews were clearing train tracks around 12:30 PM.

The bad weather conditions during this week created many transportation problems within San Francisco Bay Area, and great seeing the sunny day today on Friday. The bad weather caused trees to fall onto local roadways and power lines creating power outages in various Bay Area locations. The 24th Street Mission BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) station in San Francisco was impacted by the power outage and creating BART delays throughout other local stations. The San Francisco Bay ferry services were also impacted by bad weather conditions preventing boats from docking at terminals.

The Tesla Motors have hired new staffing to upgrade the autopilot feature in Tesla cars, and newly hired another person from Apple as Tesla Senior Director of Engineering. Matt Casebolt was working for Apple computer giant company in Cupertino, California and hired by Tesla to help with designing cars. Many other Apple former employees have moved to Tesla including former software directors, and possibly because Apple may have changed their direction on autonomous vehicles.

The City of San Francisco is awarded $11 million from U.S. Department of Transportation to help with local traffic congestion. The funding will assist with local transportation improvement projects and SFMTA (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) will implement and operate improvement traffic projects. The traffic improvement projects will include creating more high-occupancy vehicle lanes for transit buses, and carpools with smart traffic signal systems within local areas.

The California Governor Jerry Brown is proposing more taxes from people and new $65 car fees to help transportation projects in San Francisco Bay Area and statewide. The governor proposed a $122.5 billion state budget including a $1.6 billion deficit, and requesting higher gasoline taxes with revenues from cab-and-trade fees. The governor is hoping to raise $43 billion within 10 years from new taxes and fees to assist with public transportation projects. The governor has repeatedly requested therein proposals at both state legislative levels and hopeful it will not have any problems.

The Alaska Airlines is offering free onboard chatting services for passengers so they can stay connected with families and friends. The airplanes are equipped with Gogo internet services to send and receive messages for passengers through Apple's iMessages. Facebook, and Whatsapp. These free services are provided thereafter Alaska Airlines merging approach and purchased Virgin America, a California based airlines in San Francisco Bay Area. Traveling passengers have to sign into their Gogo Wi-Fi accounts and follow steps on how to begin chatting on their devices.

The California lawmakers are considering a legislation to charge $25,000 penalties for companies with self-driving cars operating without permits in San Francisco Bay Area and statewide. Assemblyman Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) introduced legislation AB87 to increase penalties for such companies with the means of removing illegal vehicles on state roads. The legislation will give state DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles) the authority to charge penalties for companies with self-driving cars, operating without permits on California roads when it becomes state law.

The Waymo company self-driving cars owned by Google is moving forward with ways and means of increasing the speed developmental process. The Waymo CEO (Chief Executive Officer) shared at Detroit Auto Show of building hardware and software packages. These in-house packages will expedite and increase the developmental timeline for mostly autonomous cars. The black Lidar units on top of self-driving vehicles to help the computer build a detailed dimensional map, of the road environment to react accordingly in real-time of what is happening.

The SFCTA (San Francisco County Transportation Authority) has approved an EIR (Environmental Impact Report) presentation for the BRT (Bus Rapid Transit) project along Geary Boulevard in San Francisco. The next improvement project steps will have SFMTA (San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency) construct designs approved for the project. The SFCTA Board finally approved the "Hybrid Design" project thereafter modifications aligned with the EIR as presented.

The Caltrain transit data reports decreasing ridership in San Francisco Bay Area from San Jose to San Francisco during daily activities. This will be interesting because Caltrain reported consistently increasing ridership for six years, and changes occurred in August with 2.7% ridership decrease from the same month in 2015. The month of September ridership decreased at 3.3%, October 3.5%, and November 1.8% compared to previous yearly periods. The Caltrain officials are looking at various elements because "increasing ridership" was part of the main points of electrifying train cars.