Car Lite San Mateo

The Bay Area does 1.3% of America's driving but pays 5.2% of the income taxes Congress now uses to bail out the federal highway fund. On Nov. 3, the same 5 counties vote on a transit tax that would raise less than their share of that bailout. 1/

Warnings start Dec 11. Two contrasting quotes from the article: "Speeding is the No. 1 cause of traffic accidents and fatalities in San José" "Every vehicle gets one courtesy warning for its first violation" 🤔 Someone going >11 mph over shouldn't get any courtesy. www.kqed.org/news/1210578...

Now that both parts are up, here's a short 🧵on my deep dive into why American roads are a sea of SUVs and trucks – and no, it's not just "consumer demand." 🙄 First: the light truck loophole — which was closed recently! But not in a way people are celebrating ...

I made a post in March about centerline hardening at a different intersection and now San Mateo deploys it in a recent quick-build near a school. Coincidence or is this an example of the posting-to-infrastructure-pipeline? www.carlitesanmateo.com/blog/ecr-cen...

People who think speed or red light cameras are a “money grab” or some effort to raise revenues believe that speeding is just, like, an unavoidable necessity? It’s not! If you simply drive the speed limit (or less) you won’t get tickets! If everybody did that, the city revenue would be zero!

Citations don't start until February but it's good to see San Jose making progress on street safety. "San Jose has recorded 41 traffic fatalities this year. City leaders hope the cameras will reduce speeding and the crashes associated with it." abc7news.com/post/san-jos...

Who can say if new neighbors or data centers are worse?

Did not expect this result in an entirely unscientific San Mateo Daily Journal poll. Let's go Measure RTM!

And if you're outside of the Bay Area and want to help on THE BIGGEST TRANSIT ballot measure this election, you can help remotely by phone banking. Sign up here luma.com/connectbayar... Most people just need a quick, polite reminder that this is happening, so phone banking is easy, fun & impactful

A driver shoots a man over a fender-bender, with three kids in their car: “possible road rage” www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco...

Slowly making progress in San Mateo on quick builds. Great to see the city taking action quickly after a student was hit. Next step is to get more proactive action near schools so students don't need to be hit before change happens. www.smdailyjournal.com/news/local/n...

"Speed camera shocker: 100,000 violators seen in nine days on Pacific Coast Highway in Malibu" Eye-popping and maddening numbers from preliminary data before speed cameras begin issuing tickets on the PCH in November:

A used car only beats a $999 e-bike if you earn over $28/hr

I wish I could expand this investigation into the SMC Event Center to include why they use their power to make our streets less safe and increase GHG emissions. hoodline.com/2026/10/san-...

Curb space is public. Price it like it matters, and the "reliable parking" everyone wants shows up on its own. Give it away and you get waitlists, spillover, and a TDM program working against its own stated goal. /end

This post is talking only about cars/trucks but one of the maddening parts of the e-bike moral panic is that teenagers will be pushed from e-bikes to much bigger and less safe cars.

If they expect 100% of the parking spots to fill up early in the day at the $45/day price they’re charging, they should be charging even more and using the revenue to fund extra transit service.

Long Beach is the latest city to activate their speed cameras. I will be interesting to see how the results look compared to the successes in other CA cities. www.nbclosangeles.com/news/local/l...

Yes on RTM. Passing RTM is essential to avoid severely slashing Bay Area transit – including, potentially, the complete collapse of BART. Without transit, traffic & pollution will increase, our economy will be hurt, and vulnerable groups will bear the brunt of the pain. www.spur.org/voter-guide/...

it is very cool (read: very not cool) that "What if the entire regional economy immediately exploded?" is a ballot measure in the bay area because we are in the 'touching the hot stove' era of american history. if you live in the bay area you should vote for the regional transit measure.

Love these new @caltrain.com ads educating riders on the clean energy that makes Caltrain go. Vote YES on RTM and support this awesome and clean option in the Bay Area.

Will be very curious how this plays out. Love the concept and I hope it gains traction. “How much driver discomfort are we willing to absorb in order to do something positive that could have an impact on lower fatalities and serious injuries?”

Just walked to CVS for my yearly vaccines and passed the sites of two planned housing developments on the way. Exciting to see San Mateo putting new homes where you can walk to the pharmacy and grocery store and hop on transit. Next step is to figure out how to get them to unbundle all the parking.

Our built infrastructure robs kids of their freedom of independent mobility. Streets are dominated by oversized vehicles, piloted by aggressive and distracted drivers where one mistake can turn lethal. We sacrificed child development to subsidize the auto industry.

Good news: Governor Newsom signed SB 1167! Authored by Senator Catherine Blakespear and co-sponsored by CalBike, the new law draws a clear line between legal e-bikes and high-powered electric devices too often marketed as e-bikes.

This bill was just signed by the Governor! "Expanding the Speed Safety System Pilot to include PCH in Long Beach is a commonsense way to improve road safety on a corridor that represents an outsized number of serious crashes but was not included in the pilot." sd33.senate.ca.gov/news/senator...

The first protected intersection I know of in San Mateo is out to bid this morning! It connects to unprotected lanes and sharrows for now, but it's a good step. The intersection has a stop sign today, so it's promising to see the city use a signal upgrade project to add quality bike infrastructure.

Breaking news: SB 1167 has been signed into law! 🎉 This bill draws a clear line between legal e-bikes and faster, more powerful motor vehicles, and makes it harder for companies to market motorcycles and mopeds as “e-bikes.”

The case for the 76ers forcing LeBron to take the train is pretty strong. 165x the fatal crash risk to save ~20 minutes a trip. Not sure if these commute times are perfect, lots of assumptions here. Still, it's wild how unsafe helicopters are yet they seem common for ultra-wealthy folks.

As I was writing this blogpost, I was thinking about how drastically I am underestimating the average American's experience with traffic violence--I knew several dead by the time I was 18: maxmautner.com/2026/09/28/w...

Walk to your local post office, you might see a new mail truck!

@samtrans.com these would help a bunch in speeding up the ECR!

this is a bit of an obsession of mine especially here in charlottesville. the cost of commercial real estate is prohibitive if you want to experiment and the city seems categorically opposed to small lots and small units that could allow people to start businesses without a huge capital investment

This year legislators introduced a slate of 17 bills intended to close California’s “license to kill” system of loopholes for dangerous driving and repeat offenders. Almost all of them failed: calmatters.org/tag/license-... @calmatters.org

The story: maxmautner.com/2026/09/17/s...

There was a San Mateo grand jury report calling this type of behavior out specifically and the City of San Mateo responded that it wasn’t an issue. It’s super frustrating when this plays out and the police refuse to report anything 🤬

Great example of the effectiveness of raised crosswalks. Wish this was a more common solution in California. I do see them around but they need to be more common with how effective they are.