The City of Oakland, California is planning to invest more money for transportation to help fix local roadway potholes and transit improvement projects. The city is also creating a new department to spearhead transportation matters within the city jurisdiction, and planning to hire Ryan Russo as new administrator to oversee the operation. The new transportation department will be called OakDOT (Oakland Department of Transportation) aligned with the mayor's vision for equity, safety, sound infrastructure, and governance responsibility.

The latest 2015 federal legislation for local education agencies to help foster kids with local transportation as necessary. This ESSA (Every Student Succeeds Act) federal legislation requires the local child welfare system and education agencies to implement transportation for vulnerable foster kids. The focus of therein legislation is to keep foster kids within their school of origin to avoid them from moving to different schools. Unfortunately, some of local schools are not upholding therein legislation to assist foster kids with transportation needs as necessary.

The muni transit corridor improvement project along Van Ness Avenue is underway thereafter groundbreaking last week. The development project is aiming to finish by 2019 for muni bus services to be quicker for passengers. Students who attend Galileo Academy should no longer have tardiness problems when the bus rapid transit system is completed. The improvement project will also include sidewalk extensions with visible crosswalk signals for pedestrian protection.

The BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) transportation system in San Francisco Bay Area is being sued by a mother for her son's attacking situation at a BART location. The mother of a 12 year old boy, who wants to be unidentified at this time, said her son was robbed at gunpoint thereafter walking off the train. The mother received a call from her son and she immediately called BART for assistance and investigation. The BART assigned an investigator for the case situation, and shared her son helped with a sketch of the attacker.

The San Francisco Controller's Office released are report last month with therein muni transportation findings. The report was compared with 16 other cities, and showing the average 8.1 miles per hour for muni buses. The muni railway trolley buses speed at 6.3 miles per hour, and 10.8 miles per hour for light rail trains. The average muni coach buses bench-marking rank around 8 miles per hour during 2014.

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors is not sure about releasing funding to assist HSR (High Speed Rail) project in downtown. The FTA (Federal Transit Administration) is putting Caltrain electrification project funding on hold, and therein electrifying project can help bring trains to downtown San Francisco. The Transbay Transit Center in downtown is planning terminals for HSR train systems, and Caltrain electrification project can be helpful. The San Francisco Transportation Authority is scheduled to allocate approximately $6.7 million local sales tax to assist with HSR project.

The AC Transit agency is zeroing-in to operate their buses using zero-emission hydrogen fuel cell electric systems to save our natural environment. Therein approach is because of CCI (California Climate Investments) funding grant received by AC Transit through the statewide program. Their goal is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and local tailpipe emissions, to improve the environment and healthy issues for mostly disadvantaged communities. The CTE (Center for Transportation and Environment) will provide oversight review and management elements for the project.

The Palo Alto city council is advocating for Caltrain federal funding and requesting Stanford University administrators to join them in Washington D.C. The $647 million federal grant for Caltrain transit agency is on hold by FTA (Federal Transit Administration) and Palo Alto council members are planning a lobbying team. The city council members shared their remarks during the council meeting last night, and Stanford University was sharing updating information on use permits.

The nationwide governors are having a conference in Washington D.C. and California Governor Brown sent a letter to President Trump regarding transportation infrastructure projects. The letter requests 10 infrastructure improvement projects in San Francisco Bay Area and throughout the State of California. Including San Jose to San Joaquin Valley railway stretch for HSR (High Speed Rail) and traffic lanes along Highway-101 within San Mateo County. The traffic lanes along Highway-101 will help relief traffic congestion and will be managed to direct traffic accordingly.

The Caltrain transit agency has released the engineering contractor scheduled to work on an improvement project. The PTG (Parsons Transportation Group) contractor was hired to install PTC (Positive Train Control) systems on Caltrain transit cars, and is fired because of further project delays since 2015. The Caltrain PTC safety systems were supposed to be installed and operating in 2015, and delayed to 2016 and rescheduled to 2017 for completion. The Caltrain administrators are hoping to have the improvement project completed by December 31, 2018 deadline.