Posts

San Diego's Crown Jewel Held Hostage

Image
Balboa Park governance forum sparks calls for change – NBC 7 San Diego San Diego | March 2026 | Civic Governance & Public Space  Investigation How a century of dysfunctional city governance turned San Diego's Balboa Park into a budget ATM — and why a community revolt may finally force a better way. Analysis  |  San Diego Community Coalition Forum  |  March 28–29, 2026 San Diego's Balboa Park — a 1,200-acre National Historic Landmark, home to 17 museums and 13 million annual visitors — has been chronically starved of maintenance funding for decades, generating a deferred maintenance backlog now estimated at over $500 million. The city's structural response has been political opportunism rather than governance reform: treating the park as a revenue extraction target to patch general fund deficits rather than as a civic asset deserving dedicated stewardship. A January 2026 paid parking rollout — projected to extrac...
Post a Comment
Read more

Waymo Comes to San Diego: What the Safety Record and the Economics Really Show

Image
As Waymo expands to San Diego, rideshare drivers say they’re concerned about safety – NBC 7 San Diego Transportation & Technology Report March 2026  ·  Special Report Autonomous Vehicles   BLUF:   Waymo is launching driverless robotaxi service in San Diego in mid-2026, starting downtown and in adjacent neighborhoods. Its safety record is statistically strong — roughly 90% fewer serious crashes than human drivers — but local transit authorities, rideshare drivers, and labor groups are pushing back over job displacement, behavioral edge cases, and the absence of any local government oversight authority under current California law. Pricing runs 10–27% above Uber/Lyft with slightly longer wait times. The core unresolved tension is not safety performance but democratic accountability: cities have no legal tools to regulate fleet size, operating zones, or data sharing, and the state legislation that would change that (SB 1246) remains in commi...
Post a Comment
Read more