A Muni power grab, ferries headed to Foster City, and kindergartners losing their tablets — Tuesday in SF is already doing the most. This is San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily — I'm Cassidy. Today: a charter amendment fight that could change how Muni answers to City Hall, a ferry expansion list that's getting very specific, and a school screen debate that's already past LAUSD. And all three of those are asking the same thing: does reform actually move the machine, or just give it a fresh coat of paint? Let's start with Muni and the six supervisors pushing this thing. This one's from Bus Emergency News Archive:
The ink has barely dried on the first public draft of a charter amendment that could bring sweeping changes to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), but supporters and critics are already digging in for a battle that could once again redefine the city's transit system.
Six supervisors are in, the Mayor's office is against it, and the operators' union still hasn't signed on because the current draft would remove the charter guarantee that Muni drivers get the second-highest transit operator salary in the country. That's a lot of heat for something that isn't even final yet. Daniel Murphy at the Citizens' Advisory Council says this is really about moving power from the Mayor to the Board of Supervisors — and yeah, that part matters. We’ve seen charter amendments used to capture agencies before. What I keep wondering is whether six progressive supervisors and a few non-transit coalitions make a reform coalition, or just a new set of hands on the same broken lever. And Rescue Muni is against it, which is telling — they're not some Mayor's-office front group. When the people who've fought for better bus service for decades are skeptical, you don't just wave that away. It's the same pattern I've been watching all week: reform language on top, capture underneath. CEQA abuse killed two thousand housing units by weaponizing the shadow-study process; if the amendment process gets captured the same way, you end up with a charter that protects salary floors and supervisor prerogatives while the 33 Stanyan still takes forty minutes to go a mile. r/sanfrancisco (56 upvotes), weighing in:
Gonna paste my comment from the removed thread: “Always be moving” is great advice. I only really take the bus on rainy days, but I gave up on taking the 33 to directly to work from the first stop on Potrero to Stanyan because it was so unreliable and so incredibly slow once you get on. It’s easier for me to walk up to Mission and hop on the 14/14R/49 and take that to 16th and then grab a 22 if it’s there or coming soon (or walk the route until it comes) then get off at Church/Duboce and take…
That Reddit comment is basically a live reliability report — starts in Potrero, strings together the 14R and the 22, then walks the gap to make it work. That's not a commute, that's a workaround puzzle. And no charter amendment fixes that unless somebody is actually accountable for headways on the 33. Salary guarantees and board power transfers do not make buses show up. This one's from r/bayarea (16 pts, 18 comments):
Currently the Bay Ferry is working on beginning regular service between the East Bay and Pier 48.5 in Mission Bay, SF. They are also in the early planning stages of a Berkeley Ferry Terminal and a Redwood City Ferry Terminal. They are also looking to build a Foster City Terminal.
Bay Area ferry expansion is having a real moment. Mission Bay service is in active development, Berkeley and Redwood City are in early planning, Foster City is on the board, and SF Bay Ferry and Golden Gate Ferry are both looking at battery-electric fleet modernization. We talked about the 'Say Hey' ferries last Sunday — the first high-speed zero-emission vessels in the country — and now we're seeing what that looks like at scale: Mission Bay, Berkeley, Redwood City, Foster City. That's not a tech-commuter perk; that's a working-class transit spine connecting the South Bay peninsula to the East Bay without touching the 92 bridge gridlock. The Reddit thread goes even further: Hercules terminal, Marin-to-East Bay cross-bay routes, a Sausalito-Tiburon water taxi, Richmond-Larkspur as a 580 bypass. Some of that's confirmed long-term planning, some of it's pure fan fiction, and the post doesn't really separate the two. The Hercules piece is actually real — there's a confirmed transit center plan there, and the post says it should be expedited for west Contra Costa County access. That's exactly the kind of connection that doesn't get built because it doesn't serve somebody with a Salesforce badge, and it's exactly where ferry advocates should be pushing hardest. From r/bayarea (235 pts, 80 comments):
We have the chance to influence school board policy at the local level. The more Bay Area districts that take a hard look at screen use in elementary schools, the more it will spread locally. If you're in Sunnyvale, Mountain View, or Los Altos, please join us as there are relevant upcoming board meeting topics and getting organized gives us the best chance at having our voice heard.
A Reddit thread out of r/bayarea is picking up steam — 235 points, 80 comments — and it wants Sunnyvale, Mountain View, and Los Altos school boards to follow LAUSD's lead and pull iPads out of classrooms for the youngest kids, TK through first grade. I'm for it, but let's be clear about what this is: a screen ban is the easiest curriculum call a school board will make all year. You're not touching reading programs, you're not touching math tracking, you're not touching any of the fights that actually move outcomes. It's the reform that costs almost nothing politically. To be fair, LAUSD went through an actual policy process on this — the LA Times covered it last month. Bay Area districts haven't acted yet, which is why the Facebook organizing push is aimed at upcoming board meeting agendas. And that's the moment to ask the GrowSF crowd and every reform-aligned board member in those districts: if you'll show up to pull an iPad from a five-year-old's hands, will you show up to fight for algebra placement policy or a real phonics curriculum? Because I haven't seen those Facebook groups. If you follow San Francisco politics closely, you may also like California Governor's Race — daily 2026 race coverage on candidates, polling, debates, fundraising, and policy for voters who want more than horse-race takes. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.
You'll find links to everything we talked about today in the show notes. If a story stuck with you, that's the place to dig a little deeper.
That's San Francisco Politics and Urbanism Daily for today. This is a Lantern Podcast.