Staff and students over at Sunnyside Elementary School are struggling with the loss of 60-year-old Becky Lee, a popular custodian who was known as “Ms. Becky” to the kids at school.

Lee was walking in a crosswalk when she was hit by a pickup truck last Wednesday at the intersection of Judson Avenue and Edna Street, just a few blocks away from where she worked at Sunnyside Elementary.

She was rushed to San Francisco General Hospital where she was pronounced dead.

The 42-year-old woman who was driving the truck wasn’t arrested and remained on the scene where she cooperated with the cops. Police are still trying to determine how the collision occurred.

sfweekly, 17.04.13.

In the hours after the bombings, Hubway bicycles all but vanished from the stations surrounding Copley Square and Boston Common as runners and spectators fled the scene. Taxis were difficult to flag and stretches of the T closed down, so some found the bikes the quickest way to weave through the throngs of ambulances and barricades and gridlocked traffic, and put distance between themselves and the explosion site as fast as they could.

Bryan Hogan, a Malden resident, left work in the Financial District Monday evening but grew anxious at the thought of taking the T home. Cabs seemed impossible to flag. So he called Hubway. An employee said they would not charge him to keep the bike overnight, since there were no stations in his hometown.

bostonglobe, 16.04.13.
via copenhagenize: “Bikeshare played a role in allowing people to leave Boston on Monday.”

The Combe Down Tunnel is a key section of the Two Tunnels Greenway, a four-mile stretch of disused railway between Bath and the village of Midford in Somerset. It forms part of a longer cycling loop that takes in other striking engineering accomplishments, including the already reopened but shorter Devonshire Tunnel, the Dundas Aqueduct and Tucking Mill Viaduct…

The launch date marks 50 years since the Beeching report condemned thousand of miles of UK railway to dereliction. To date, Sustrans claim they have resurrected 1,500 miles of disused lines as cycle and pedestrian paths around the country.

To celebrate the tunnel’s opening on 6 April there will be a festival at Bloomfield Road Open Space. From 12.30-4pm there will be a 13-mile family bike ride on the loop through the Combe Down and Devonshire tunnels, and along the Tucking Mill Viaduct and Dundas Aqueduct. Sustrans will be taking donations of £5 from individuals and £10 from families.

bikeradar, 25.03.13

San Diego, 741 F Street, demolition continues on this historic warehouse to make room for surface parking. Until recently, the building was being used by International Male and Braun Clothing. It was a key component of the low key retail district “Behind the Post Office” (name of several alternative clothing stores that occupied the neighborhood in the nineties) around F St. and 8th through 7th Avenues.

The demolished building is one of several downtown buildings owned by the late Morris Slayen, who attractively remodeled warehouse and other historic properties downtown as office and retail. He was not only a pioneer of downtown redevelopment but also a pioneer of co-workings spaces, creating such notable co-working incubator office spaces as the Carriage Works in the Gaslamp Quarter. His heirs have shown little regard for their father’s building legacy. Moreover, the demolition was approved in a faulty process in which the City ignored several key requirements in removing the historic designation, notifying the public, and allowing a parking lot to take the place of the buildings. The demolition as spawned a Petition Against Demolition for Parking Lots in San Diego. 

urbdezine, 18.03.13.

oh, san diego. sunny yet so sad.

An allegedly drunk driver was arrested for hitting and killing 17-year-old Hanren Chang on Sloat Boulevard near Vale Avenue on Saturday night. According to CBS 5, 29-year-old Keiran Brewer was driving westbound on Sloat at about 11:20 p.m. when he hit Chang, who was crossing the street in the northbound direction, and dragged her “a short distance.” Update: According to ABC 7, Chang was a student at Lowell High School and had just got off a Muni bus on her way home after celebrating her birthday.

sf.streetsblog, 04.03.13.

please sign this petition to add stop signs or traffic lights at this intersection where many high school students cross, although it still can’t prevent drunk driving killings.