San Francisco, CA
San Francisco could vote again on whether to allow cars on the Great Highway
In San Francisco’s Sunset District, controversy continues over what to do with the Great Highway.
Friday, the newly-appointed supervisor for that district, Alan Wong, confirmed he is running to keep his job. He also shared that he would support a ballot measure that would bring cars back to the now-closed stretch of road. Some residents in the district already said they would be prepared to fight back against that ballot measure if it came to fruition.
This has been a politically tumultuous year for the Sunset District. In November of 2024, San Francisco voters narrowly approved Proposition K, which moved to close the highway along Ocean Beach to cars and to transform it into a park. In March of 2025, the stretch of road was permanently closed to cars, and in April, the area was officially reopened as Sunset Dunes Park. In September, voters recalled then-Supervisor Joel Engardio, with many in the campaign against Engardio expressing frustration with his support for turning the Great Highway into a park. In November, Mayor Daniel Lurie appointed Isabella “Beya” Alcaraz as the new supervisor for District 4, only to have her resign a week later amid growing questions about her actions as a small business owner.
At the start of December, Mayor Lurie swore in Alan Wong as his new appointee to serve as supervisor in District 4. Wong grew up in the Sunset, attended Lincoln High School, and has served as both an elected member of the San Francisco City College Board of Trustees and as a legislative aid to former supervisor Gordon Mar.
In an interview with NBC Bay Area on Friday, Wong shared that he has not hidden the fact that he voted no on Prop. K in the 2024 election. However, in his first three weeks in office, Wong said he set out to “have conversations with different constituent groups and listen to them” about the issues.
“After three weeks of listening and having these conversations, I believe that my values and how I voted before align with the majority of the district,” Wong said.
San Francisco Supervisor Alan Wong supports a ballot measure that calls for cars to return to the Great Highway.
“And as the district supervisor, I need to take a leadership role in representing the district that I am here to serve,” he continued.
Wong said he is now prepared to be one of the four supervisors supporting a ballot initiative to reopen the Great Highway to cars on weekdays.
Molly Rose, with Sunset Parent Advocates, worries that when Wong was listening to community voices over the past three weeks, some voices may have been left out.
“If he talked to the Sunset residents, he didn’t talk to me, and he didn’t talk to us– the family groups I am a part of,” Rose said.
“We are all very pro-park, we use it very heavily as a park,” she continued.
Rose said there are several hundred parents involved with her group. As a parent, Rose said her children love going to the park there.
“Sunset Dunes is the place where I take my kids to have a safe place to play,” she said.
Rose said that she has been asking for Wong to meet with her group, but has been waiting to hear back from his scheduling team.
Wong’s office confirmed that Rose is in touch with their office and that Wong’s scheduler is “actively coordinating a time” for them to meet.
“While I do think there is a very loud, anti-park contingent of people in the Sunset, I don’t think they’re the majority,” Rose emphasized.
A fire at a Pacific Gas & Electric substation in SoMa knocked out power to as many as 130,000 customers starting Saturday, leaving thousands in the dark heading into the holiday season and a week of intense storms. Here’s what we know about the outage and state of restoration.
What happened?
The fire began shortly before 1:10 p.m. Saturday at PG&E’s Mission substation at Eighth and Mission streets, initially affecting 40,000 customers. As firefighters worked to suppress the blaze, crews de-energized additional portions of the electric system for safety, causing outages to peak at approximately 130,000 customers.
The fire damaged critical equipment, including a circuit breaker — a safety switch designed to de-energize the system when problems are detected. Firefighters faced unusual complexities suppressing the fire in the multilevel building, including ventilating carbon monoxide before crews could safely enter.
When did power come back?
Firefighters made the building safe for PG&E crews to enter by 6:15 p.m. Saturday. Restoration efforts began immediately. Nearly 32,000 customers were reconnected by 8:45 p.m. Saturday, and about 100,000 — roughly 75% of those affected — were up by 9:30 p.m.
By noon Sunday, 90% of affected customers had power restored. PG&E initially projected full restoration by 2 p.m. Monday; however, a spokesperson said the utility was extending restoration times (opens in new tab) for the remaining 4,400 customers without power. No time frame has been announced.
What sparked the fire?
PG&E says it doesn’t know. COO Sumeet Singh said Monday that the extensive equipment damage makes it difficult to determine a root cause. The utility has hired Exponent, a Bay Area-based engineering firm, to conduct an independent investigation.
“We will determine what occurred to ensure it never happens again,” Singh said at a press conference outside the damaged substation.
Was the equipment properly maintained?
PG&E completed preventative maintenance at the Mission substation in October and conducted its most recent bimonthly inspection Dec. 5. Singh said neither inspection identified any problems.
Why were the estimated restoration times wrong?
Many customers were irate as they were repeatedly given estimated restoration times that came and went. Singh acknowledged the failure and said PG&E’s estimation systems typically perform well, with more than 91% accuracy systemwide.
“It obviously did not work effectively in the circumstance over this weekend,” Singh said. “We are committed to understanding exactly what happened, why it happened, and owning the fixes.”
Were other substations damaged?
Residents have observed a large presence of workers at a substation at 24th Avenue and Balboa Street since Sunday, but the utility has not shared details on what is being done there.
Six hulking diesel generators, which one worker said cost $600,000 to operate daily, were parked outside the substation Monday afternoon. The generators are needed to feed power to the grid while both substations are not fully operational. Crews said they are expected to run for at least two to three days.
Two workers said the substation is undamaged and still online, but its output is diminished because it is fed power by the much larger substation at Eighth and Mission.
However, another said one of the substation’s transformers blew out after a power surge following the fire, and the generators are needed to compensate while workers “update the system” of the west-side substation.
How will customers be compensated?
PG&E plans to offer an expedited claims process for affected customers to seek compensation for losses, including spoiled food, lost business revenue, and hotel costs. Singh said details will be available soon on the utility’s website and through customer service.
He declined to specify compensation limits or provide immediate financial relief, saying customers would need to file claims that PG&E would process quickly. The utility opened a community resource center in the Richmond and partnered with 211 to provide hotel accommodations and food vouchers for vulnerable customers.
Could this happen again?
Singh said PG&E has identified no vulnerabilities at other substations and has made significant upgrades systemwide. Two strong storms forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday (opens in new tab) could bring 4 to 10 inches of rain to Northern California; he said more than 5,500 PG&E workers and contractors are positioned to respond.
The outage occurred 22 years to the day (opens in new tab) after a mass blackout at the same substation in 2003, raising questions about aging infrastructure that Singh did not directly address.
Good morning. Extremely lean and mean (well, merry, really) for the rest of this week as we head into our annual winter break.
We’ll hang things up for the year on Dec. 24 and pick things back up on Jan. 5.
Happy holidays. (Yippee-Ki-Yay.) —AN
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
What happened when Waymo robotaxis met a San Francisco blackout
Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu/Getty Images
An extraordinary experiment happened over the weekend in San Francisco.
What would a fleet of autonomous vehicles do when a widespread power outage knocked out traffic lights across one-third of the city?
We quickly found out—and the results were plastered all over social media.
On Saturday afternoon, Waymo vehicles throughout SF opted to stop where they were or pull over and throw on their hazard lights—“blocking intersections” and “compounding gridlock,” observed the San Francisco Standard—leading the Alphabet-owned robotaxi operator to suspend service throughout the city. (It resumed Sunday evening.)
In a statement, Waymo said that its vehicles are “designed to treat non-functional signals as four-way stops” but “the sheer scale of the outage led to instances where vehicles remained stationary longer than usual.”
As locals worked through the outage, a moderate debate about the robotaxi fleet continued online. Was it so wrong to expect Waymo’s vehicles to play it safe when infrastructure stopped working? After all, aren’t human drivers predictably chaotic when things go sideways? What exactly should robotaxis optimize for: traffic flow or citizen safety?
And: Just how safe is stopping if you prompt traffic to go around you?
Waymo resumed service Sunday evening, no doubt grappling with these questions (and what city officials might have to say about them). “We are already learning and improving from this event,” it said. —AN
More tech
—Pirates scrape Spotify. Activists Anna’s Archive release hundreds of terabytes of music and metadata via torrent files.
—Shield AI: Sitting at a global inflection point for fully autonomous warfighting.
—SoftBank cashes out to back OpenAI. The Japanese conglomerate is looking under every rock to fulfill its “all in” OpenAI funding promise.
—Chaos at CISA. A failed, unsanctioned polygraph by its acting director has the U.S. cybersecurity agency in disarray.
—PE firms acquire Clearwater Analytics for $8.4 billion. Permira and Warburg Pincus lead the investor group seeking to buy the fintech firm.
—Uber goes to London. A robotaxi trial in partnership with Baidu will begin in the first half of next year.
—Data center deals reach $61 billion worldwide in 2025, according to S&P Global.
—Chatbots’ uncanny valley. Making AI agents more human-like creates cognitive dissonance and trust issues, researchers say.
—Daylight between David Sacks and tech lobbyists. Tech reps say the AI czar’s push to use Trump’s executive order to suppress state AI regulation is the right idea, wrong execution.
SAN FRANCISCO – About 21,000 homes and businesses in San Francisco were still without power Sunday morning, a day after a massive outage darkened much of the city during one of the busiest shopping weekends before Christmas, according to PG&E.
What we know:
The utility said the outage began shortly after noon Saturday in the western part of the city before spreading to several neighborhoods, including most of downtown.
At one point, PG&E estimated that roughly one-third of all San Francisco customers were without electricity.
Investigators are now working to determine whether the outage is connected to a fire Saturday at a PG&E substation near Eighth and Mission streets.
What they’re saying:
“We do not know exactly which happened first, meaning if the fire caused the outage or not,” said San Francisco Fire Department Lt. Mariano Elias. “It’s too early to tell at this time, but in order for us to work there in a safe operation, we need the power off.”
The outage created widespread transportation disruptions throughout the city. With traffic signals dark at major intersections, drivers faced significant congestion in multiple neighborhoods. BART also temporarily closed its Powell Street and Civic Center stations due to the power failure.
The blackout also affected autonomous vehicle service in San Francisco. Waymo temporarily suspended its robotaxi operations, citing safety concerns. Video recorded during the outage showed several of the company’s vehicles stalled in intersections, at times blocking traffic and nearly causing collisions.
In a statement, Waymo said it was “focused on keeping our riders safe and ensuring emergency personnel have the clear access they need to do their work,” adding that it plans to resume service in San Francisco “soon” but did not give a specific time.
The Source: Original reporting by Allie Rasmus of KTVU
Commentary: Notre Dame’s leaders are cowards for backing out of USC football rivalry
Exclusive: Former MEP Kaili doubles down on ‘Belgiangate’
‘Music makes everything better’: A Texas doctor spins vinyl to give patients relief
Controversy grows as California forces schools to switch to athletics league that lets males in girls sports
Gun jams as shoplifting suspect tries to shoot Ohio police officer at point-blank range in wild bodycam video
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Video: ‘It Didn’t Have to Happen This Way:’ U.Va. Faculty Call for Review of Police Response to Protests
Exclusive: Former MEP Kaili doubles down on ‘Belgiangate’
‘Music makes everything better’: A Texas doctor spins vinyl to give patients relief
Video: Who Is Trying to Replace Planned Parenthood?
Comer summons Minnesota officials as House probes massive social services fraud
Germany charges ex-Syrian prison guard over Assad-era abuses
-
Iowa1 week agoAddy Brown motivated to step up in Audi Crooks’ absence vs. UNI
-
Iowa1 week agoHow much snow did Iowa get? See Iowa’s latest snowfall totals
-
Maine6 days agoElementary-aged student killed in school bus crash in southern Maine
-
Maryland1 week agoFrigid temperatures to start the week in Maryland
-
New Mexico6 days agoFamily clarifies why they believe missing New Mexico man is dead
-
South Dakota1 week agoNature: Snow in South Dakota
-
Detroit, MI1 week ago‘Love being a pedo’: Metro Detroit doctor, attorney, therapist accused in web of child porn chats
-
Maine6 days agoFamily in Maine host food pantry for deer | Hand Off