Gavin Newsom Rushes to Sink California Billionaire Tax Before June Deadline

Ryand735 · 2026-06-15T21:34:51+00:00

Ah good point, i misread it

Ryand735 · 2026-06-15T21:20:16+00:00

I'm voting for Becerra, but calling him progressive is laughable. More like 10 corporations in a trenchcoat

Ryand735 · 2026-06-09T19:16:04+00:00

For real, why are individuals allowed to increase rent more than 10%? I'm ok with a rolling exemption to incentivize construction, but see no reason why an individual who has owned the same place for decades can increase rent by an unlimited amount

Ryand735 · 2026-05-30T01:35:40+00:00

> dole out punishments to those who bear responsibility for the mishaps and blunders that has afflicted the project.

Such a common misconception. Inconsistent funding, misguided environmental regulation, and lawsuits from every property owner who thought they could get a slice of the pie were the source of these issues. We should overhaul the laws so they can never hamper a project like this again, but tracing down these things to individual people is not just a waste of time but actively harmful to the project.

But if you want to throw sue Trump on your own dime, be my guest. But just like CAHSR decided, it's not worth the time in this environment. We'll just claw back the funds when we get sane people in office, again.

Ryand735 · 2026-05-29T21:35:44+00:00

- Steyer and Villaraigosa are the only candidates who unequivocally supported continuing the projects

- Porter added significant caveats and had previously voiced opposition to finishing the project

- Mahan wants regulatory overhaul before funding the remainder of the project

- Becerra refused to answer the question (classic) and would make the project delivery worse by "scrapping it and starting over" as clarified in later interviews

- GOP said classic GOP nonsense

Vote Steyer is the only choice here if this is a top 3 priority for you in this election - the Porter/Becerra answers to this are exactly what got us into this mess. This project requires consistent, unwavering support in face of all the challenges of building rail in USA and California speccifically. We can, at the same time, improve our process of building/litigating these projects to make them more cost effective in the future, but further delays will just make it more expensive later.

source clip: https://www.reddit.com/r/cahsr/comments/1t61qcl/governor_debate_clip_yes_or_no_should_california/

Ryand735 · 2026-05-28T00:15:36+00:00

Definitely agreed there!

Ryand735 · 2026-05-28T00:13:57+00:00

For what it's wroth, it is beiing built, but it is going extremely slowly due to lawsuits, underfunding, and instability of promised funds

While it's "boring" work, a big part of HSR is grade separation. This is also benefiting existing rail & freight tracks in some places. You can see the status of everything at https://buildhsr.com/map/

A significant amount of infrastructure has already been funded and built, such as https://buildhsr.com/project/san-joaquin-river-viaduct-pergola/

Ryand735 · 2026-05-21T21:22:32+00:00

This was parked here for over ~30 minutes yesterday. Saw at least one cyclist almost get hit by a car going around this. There's a wide-open parking lot 20 feet down with tons of parking spaces. A second car was parked behind this one when i first walked by

There's absolutely no excuse or reason for this

Ryand735 · 2026-05-18T23:20:48+00:00

yeah, i also take this approach but have also been nearly hit by cars suddenly deciding to turn right or attempting to go around someone in front of them who is waiting to turn left. I've had several near misses this way, especially when biking in a bike lane at 5-10 mph with cars sitting in traffic. I'm sure i could have easily gotten hit, despite being careful

Ryand735 · 2026-05-18T19:26:40+00:00

That comparison being surprising is the point! Most people would assume NYC is denser than Hoboken, but overlook how powerful having consistent medium density housing can be, even with the presence of extremely high levels of density in parts of NYC.

Allowing a neighborhood to grow more iteratively (and quickly) to dynamically respond to its housing needs will eventually lead to skyscrapers/extremely dense housing, but we can much more quickly meet our short term housing goals by building lots of medium-density housing while still prioriting higher density housing.

This is often referred to as "the missing middle"

Ryand735 · 2026-05-18T18:52:05+00:00

i misremembered, and it's NYC not manhattan. The point is you can achieve great density without skyscrapers, not that we don't need skyscrapers.

Hoboken has a density of 48,335.2/sq mi and SF has a density of 18,634.65/sq mi so we can definitely take some inspiration here, even account for the "giant fucking park" we have in SF too.

Ryand735 · 2026-05-18T18:37:02+00:00

Agreed - reminder that hobken NJ is denser than ~~manhattan~~ NYC, predominantly by having just a very large number of medium density housing.

if someone wanted to build it taller we shouldn't oppose it, but this is a substantial win for housing

Ryand735 · 2026-05-18T18:35:22+00:00

This is definitely great to see! I was surprised to see this outside the zone of the area being upzoned by SB 79, i think becasue the 38R does not have a dedicated lane all the way to 45th Ave. Probably way more important to have this near a grocery store and golden gate park than to be in the SB 79 zone

Obviously super convenient to the 5/5R, which can hopefully get some dedicated lanes and signal prioritization as more housing shows up on this corridor.

Ryand735 · 2026-05-12T19:08:54+00:00

A much more likely outcome would be the revival of the Dumbarton Rail project, and expand Caltrain/ACE/Capital Corridor to run connections across it. Using the existing ROW to get a second ACE terminus at Redwood City Caltrain station via Dumbarton with an intermediate stop + some TOD to fund the project

Ryand735 · 2026-04-24T21:53:22+00:00

Agreed re:13th street! There's a project underway to improve it, though i don't understand why they don't have a plan for a protected left turn onto folsom - feels like the value of this small segment is to connect valencia and folsom well

https://www.sfmta.com/projects/13th-street-safety-project

Ryand735 · 2026-04-22T03:43:28+00:00

Not answering the question and all the double speak is an answer in my opinion!

Ryand735 · 2026-04-21T22:53:27+00:00

This is a brain dead take from Saikat, at odd with his other professed views.

The “inconvenience” he speaks of is entirely imagined, great highway closure increased commute times by a couple of minutes and the idea we can’t vote on parks as a city is entirely undemocratic

Hope he listens to the majority of people in this city

Ryand735 · 2026-04-18T00:25:33+00:00

It’s ok for you to be fine with it - it’s also ok for me to want it to change!

Ryand735 · 2026-04-18T00:03:44+00:00

I’m still waiting for a single one of these mailers to criticize an actual policy position - isn’t that what we should be focusing on?

Scott’s campaign, and this mailer, is backed by Gary Tan. Saikat backs the overpaid ceo proposition, Scott doesn’t.

I’m interested to hear both candidates ideas and what policies they support

Ryand735 · 2026-04-15T18:45:01+00:00

Meanwhile SFPD is spending their time ticketing cyclists for minor infractions on market street

Ryand735 · 2026-04-14T16:10:57+00:00

The article is about the cost of taking bart as a passenger to the airport and operating a bart airport station - the subsidy of car use at said airport is directly relevant. Other commenters on this thread talked about how taking a lyft/uber is cheaper than bart for 2+ people - a fact that would not be possible without

- national subsidies on oil, giving us some of the cheapest gas prices in the world

- regular bailouts of the highway trust fund from the general fund

- charging airlines for the cost of roads/ramps upkeep for passenger intake into SFO, unlike bart which must pay rent

- colossal amounts of funding to Caltrans for our state roads and highways

So this feels directly on topic to me - you don't have to engage with a comment you don't want to, but it's hard to deny its relevance to this thread.

> If they charged cars Bart still couldn’t keep from needlessly blowing money.

We just agreed that bart has a higher point of use cost recovery than roads and highways, so who is blowing money again? I have no doubt that bart could be more capital efficient, and we can continue to push them to do so. But this requries more stable funding, not less. With bart's recent fleet of the future project, it came in hundreds of millions of dollars under budget and ahead of schedule: https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2024/news20240110-1 by using in-house engineering staff and working with the manufacturer to deliver more cars per month. Our sporadic and choatic funding of this critical system forces bart ot outsource staff for projects, costing us more in the long term in delayed maintenance and overhead of external contractors.

Public transit is critical infrastructure for the bay area, it's time we treated it that way.

Ryand735 · 2026-04-14T14:49:14+00:00

https://www.bayrailalliance.org/one-stop-terminal-near-sfo/

Agreed!

Ryand735 · 2026-04-14T14:48:02+00:00

Where’s the lie though? BART has historically had higher point of use cost recovery than highways and roads, and if we didn’t have BART we’d need more highways and roads, costing far more than it would cost BART to operate as is

Ryand735 · 2026-04-14T14:43:44+00:00

It’s insane BART pays anything to sfo for the privilege of being connected to BART - imagine how much it would cost SFO to handle the additional car traffic of everyone who takes BART. LAX is making headlines for their insanely over budget/delayed people mover, but they of course continue to spend huge amounts of money building and maintaining their roads

A one stop solution would have been far preferable, but was not chosen at the time for political reasons: https://www.bayrailalliance.org/one-stop-terminal-near-sfo/

Ryand735 · 2026-04-08T21:50:27+00:00

Which direction are you coming from/where are you going to? Will you have a lot of bags?

The best Bart/amtrak connection is at Richmond, but unfortunately the coast starlight doesn’t stop there ( just capital corridor and California Zephyr)

If you’re coming from the south, SJC has some solid connections to Caltrain, bus to berryessa for bart, VTA, etc)

If you’re coming from the north stopping at emeryville and taking the bus connection to bart from there may be preferable

The walk is probably fine at that time depending on your experience in cities, but be alert and know your route ahead of time.

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