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Why airlines could have unreliable service for years to come

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Why airlines could have unreliable service for years to come


FILE: A Southwest Airlines plane takes off from San Francisco International Airport on June 8, 2023.

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

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A new analysis of the commercial aviation industry in the U.S. reached the unsettling conclusion that airline schedules could continue to be unreliable for the foreseeable future. CBS News, digging into the reasons for repeated problems of flight cancellations and delays over the past couple of years, concluded that “the issues are likely to linger for as much as a decade.”

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“The aviation industry is short roughly 32,000 commercial pilots, mechanics and air traffic controllers — and the gap widens every year,” the network said, citing data from the Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Transportation and Department of Labor. It also spoke to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, whose agency is conducting its own review of airline operations. 

FILE: U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg holds a news conference about summer air travel at the department's headquarters on May 23, 2023, in Washington, D.C. 

FILE: U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg holds a news conference about summer air travel at the department’s headquarters on May 23, 2023, in Washington, D.C. 

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This is all part of an ongoing debate in the industry about where the responsibility ultimately lies for these operational difficulties, with the blame variously attributed to a worsening trend of serious storms, to the FAA’s air traffic control network and to the airlines themselves. Buttigieg told CBS: “If you look at the delays, for example, that America experienced through last year in the summer 2022, a lot of that was driven by these companies not having the staff that they needed. This is not something that’s going to be worked out overnight. It took years to get this way.”

CBS said its analysis of data on late flights found that “the number of delays caused by issues within air carriers’ control has jumped from 5.2% in 2018 to 7.6% in 2023, a rise of thousands of delayed flights.”

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The CBS report cited one four-day period in late June of this year when 31,850 flights — one-third of all scheduled flights nationwide — were delayed and 6,340 were canceled. “The number of delays during those four days was 25% higher than in the same period last year,” CBS said. “And when compared to the same period in 2019, before the pandemic, the number of cancellations was up 374%.”

FILE: JetBlue planes at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Jan. 11, 2023, in New York following an overnight systems outage that grounded departures.

FILE: JetBlue planes at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Jan. 11, 2023, in New York following an overnight systems outage that grounded departures.

Yuki Iwamura/AFP via Getty Images

The airline industry has admitted that since its ranks were depleted during the pandemic, a shortage of personnel — especially pilots — led to unprecedented operational problems last summer, and since then, airlines have embarked on major recruitment drives to bring on more trained and qualified employees. Some airlines have even opened their own flight training academies for pilots to help fill a need for an estimated 17,000 more cockpit personnel. But given the complexity of the job, that training can take a long time.

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In the meantime, airlines have tried to cope with the shortage by reducing the number of flights they operate. In the past five years, CBS found, “airlines have cut a million flights, impacting some of the nation’s busiest routes,” because “airlines don’t have enough staff to keep all those planes in the air.” The Regional Airline Association has reported that since the pandemic hit, 16 smaller airports have lost all commercial airline service and 61 have lost more than half the flights they had previously.

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When it comes to a shortage of staffing across the industry, CBS produced a key chart showing how employment has failed to keep pace with the increase in passenger traffic over the past decade. Using FAA and Bureau of Transportation Statistics data, CBS said that while the number of airline passengers increased by 16% from 2013 to 2022, the number of pilots grew by only 11%. During that same period, CBS said, the number of mechanics employed at U.S. airlines declined by 5% — and the number of air traffic controllers shrank by 11%, leaving fewer staffers in the towers to direct an increasing number of flights. “Right now, CBS News analysis shows that there is a shortage of about 3,000 fully-certified air traffic controllers to meet current demand,” the report said.

FILE: Alaska Airlines arrives in Los Angeles on Oct. 2, 2022.

FILE: Alaska Airlines arrives in Los Angeles on Oct. 2, 2022.

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Delta plans to resume seasonal service from Los Angeles International to Papeete, Tahiti, on Oct. 31, operating three weekly 767-300ER flights. It also plans to increase capacity from LAX to Sydney, boosting its schedule from seven weekly A350-900 flights to 10 effective Oct. 29 and to 14 a week starting Dec. 16. Furthermore, Delta is set to begin new LAX-Auckland service on Oct. 28, with daily A350 flights. 

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A French Bee airbus specially designed for long-haul flights before takeoff.

A French Bee airbus specially designed for long-haul flights before takeoff.

Corre S/Alpaca/Andia/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

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In other international news, the Paris-based carrier French Bee is set to trim its Paris Orly-San Francisco-Papeete, Tahiti, schedule from three flights a week to two from Nov. 23 through Dec. 14 and from Jan. 22 through Feb. 29, but on Oct. 29, it plans to increase its Paris Orly-Los Angeles schedule to five weekly flights from the current three or four. Korean Air this month boosted its U.S. schedules, increasing San Francisco-Seoul frequencies from seven a week to nine, Chicago-Seoul from five flights a week to seven, and Dallas-Seoul from four a week to five. After a month’s delay, LATAM Airlines Brasil is now due to launch a new route from Los Angeles to Sao Paulo on Aug. 1, operating three weekly flights with a 777-300ER. Alaska Airlines just expanded its code-sharing operation with Qatar Airways, putting its AS code on the latter’s flights beyond its Doha hub to a dozen destinations in Africa and Asia, such as Nairobi, Singapore, Jakarta and Addis Ababa. The low-cost European carrier Norse Atlantic is converting its Boston-London Gatwick route to a summer seasonal operation, with the service now suspended from Oct. 29 through March 30.  

The European Union has created a website to educate the international traveling public about new pre-entry rules visitors will have to meet starting next year that will require filling out online forms and paying a small fee. The European Travel Information and Authorization System, or ETIAS, will affect visitors to 30 EU member nations, even travelers coming from the dozens of countries — like the U.S. — that are exempt from EU visa requirements. 

The English language version of the website says the new system will begin in 2024 but doesn’t list a specific date. To apply, travelers must have a travel document like a passport that will not expire in less than three months and is not older than 10 years. They’ll have to fill out an online application that requires personal data like name, date and place of birth, home address, parents’ first names, email address and phone number. They’ll also have to provide information about their travel document, level of education, occupation and intended travel plans; provide “details about any criminal convictions, any past travels to war or conflict zones”; and state whether they have recently been kicked out of any country. A fee of 7 euros (about $7.76) must accompany each application.

The EU said travelers heading to Europe should apply for their ETIAS authorization before buying tickets and booking hotels. Applications will generally be processed “within minutes,” or at most within 96 hours, but if the applicant is asked to provide more information, approval could take up to 30 days. Applicants will be notified by email once their applications are processed.

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FILE: An air traffic control tower at JFK airport on Jan. 11, 2023, in New York City. 

FILE: An air traffic control tower at JFK airport on Jan. 11, 2023, in New York City. 

Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Members of Delta’s Sky Club airport lounge program who fly out of the carrier’s busy New York JFK hub should get some relief from the crowding now that Delta has opened a second lounge there. The new Sky Club is at Gate A7 in Delta’s Terminal 4, near its existing Concourse B club. At 14,000 square feet, the new club seats 250 persons and features a covered sky deck. Together, Delta’s two T4 clubs can accommodate more than 800. At the heart of the new club is a 360-degree bar, and the food service will provide New York City specialties from local chefs. The new club has a fireplace lounge and floor-to-ceiling windows with airfield views. 

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Also at New York JFK, American Airlines has unveiled plans for a $125 million “commercial redevelopment” of its transatlantic hub in Terminal 8. The terminal also accommodates flights of AA Oneworld partners British Airways, Iberia, Japan Airlines and Qantas. American said the terminal will get a new “Great Hall” and the renovation will bring 60 new retail and dining concessions to the facility. “The commercial redevelopment will further enhance the customer experience at the terminal with a complete redesign and expansion of the concessions program, including dining, retail, duty-free shopping, performance space and new digitally enabled experiences for American’s customers,” American said. 



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Ridership Lulls and Autonomous Vehicles: How San Francisco Transit Fared the Last Five Years

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Ridership Lulls and Autonomous Vehicles: How San Francisco Transit Fared the Last Five Years


Editor’s note: This story is part of Governing’s ongoing Q&A series “In the Weeds.” The series features experts whose knowledge can provide new insights and solutions for state and local government officials across the country. Have an expert you think should be featured? Email Web Editor Natalie Delgadillo at ndelgadillo@governing.com.

San Francisco’s fortunes have shifted dramatically in the last half-decade, pinballing between a citywide affordability crisis and acute concerns about public safety and vacancy in the downtown area brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. It’s also been a tumultuous time for mobility in the Bay Area, with big ridership losses and fiscal crises at the region’s public transit agencies and the advent of autonomous taxis in San Francisco.

Jeffrey Tumlin, the outgoing director of transportation at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), has had a front-row seat for the churn. The SFMTA operates buses and subways within San Francisco — a transit operation known locally as Muni — while also overseeing city streets and planning for walking, biking and driving infrastructure.


Tumlin is a longtime San Francisco resident and former director of strategy at NelsonNygaard Consulting Associates, an international planning firm. He took on the job at SFMTA after starting and leading the Oakland Department of Transportation. He started the job just a few months before the pandemic began, and completed his five-year contract at the end of last year. Before leaving the job, Tumlin spoke with Governing about managing a dense city transportation network, handling new transportation technology, and rebuilding the finances of public transit. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

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Governing: You started in this role at SFMTA right before the pandemic started. What did you think you were going to be able to do at this post prior to the onset of the pandemic? 

First of all, I didn’t want this job. In order to recover from the experience at Oakland DOT I made the mistake of going on an intensive, 10-day meditation retreat. At some point during which I realized I love consulting, and I was very good at it, but you don’t have responsibility when you’re consulting. I realized that it was time for me to serve in a deeper capacity. So I told the SFMTA board members, fine, I will take this job, and they didn’t believe me. They made me promise out loud, twice, that if I took the job that I would commit to staying for the full five years of the contract. And of course, this was three months before lockdown. There were times during some of the worst days of COVID where I had to remind myself that I had made a promise to serve for five full years.

SFMTA is sort of unique in that it’s public transit, but it’s also streets and parking and some other things. What does that combination of responsibilities allow someone in your post to do? 

Well, it meant that during COVID we could strike over 20 miles of streets and do transit-only lanes. Being responsible for all mobility and managing the entire right of way means that it’s a lot easier for us to think through the trade-offs necessary to make the entire transportation system work. Because we manage cars and bikes and buses and trains and pedestrians, we can sort out the tensions, for example, between the bikeway network and the transit-priority streets.

We can also very skillfully plan for the future. A lot of the challenge of being in a transportation job is you have to simultaneously manage the transportation system for today while also building out the transportation system necessary to accommodate the future. Here in San Francisco that means our commitment to 82,000 new housing units. One of our challenges is how do we make sure that people can continue to drive when they need to drive? Ironically, that often means reprioritizing existing space on our roads to prioritize the most space-efficient modes of transportation. I need to make sure that for everyone who doesn’t need to drive, transit is faster, more frequent, more reliable, cleaner and safer. And I need to make sure that walking and biking are safer and more joyful for people of all ages and abilities. And that is because when I walk or bike or take the bus, I take up one-tenth of the roadway space that I do when I drive a car or take an Uber or a Waymo. Planning for the complex geometry of the city is a big part of our jobs. The tradeoffs that we have to deal with are inevitably controversial.

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Your counterparts in other cities are often asking society at large to make those tradeoffs. 

Yeah. And that’s why despite the fact that Muni has one of the worst financial impacts coming out of COVID, we are stronger than almost any of our other counterparts because we were able to quickly adapt during COVID particularly around transit speed, reliability, cleanliness and safety.

I do want to ask about the pandemic’s effect on revenue. Do you think SFMTA is going to be able to manage the fiscal cliff? 

Yes, we are going to be able to rebuild the financial base of SFMTA. SFMTA, we’re an enterprise organization, and historically our main revenue sources have been transit fares, parking fees and fines. We get a fixed chunk of the city general fund. And then we get a bunch of state operating assistance. All four of those funding categories have been in decline. Parking revenue is far more important to us than transit fare revenue and our downtown parking garages have been in long-term decline largely due to Uber and Lyft. Business travelers don’t rent a car at [San Francisco International Airport] SFO to come to a convention in downtown San Francisco. Our parking garage revenue, and we have a 25 percent sales tax on private commercial parking, those revenues were steadily dropping pre-COVID, and then COVID tanked them when the downtown office core emptied out as a result of work-from-home. So we have to replace those parking revenues.

Setting aside the fiscal crises that have resulted from revenue losses, how else did the pandemic change the way you think about what public transit is going to be like in the future? 

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We pivoted very quickly during COVID. I think the lasting impacts will show up in a couple ways. One is culture. During the pandemic we all realized a few things. One is that working in a municipal government is deeply meaningful work. If you want to make a difference in climate or equity or safety or economic recovery, there’s no better place to do that than in a municipal transportation agency. So people were able to see just how meaningful our work is and that has helped a lot with morale. They also realized that we needed to adjust far more quickly than government agencies are designed to and fortunately, the emergency directive here in San Francisco effectively suspended all of the bureaucratic rules. So it trained staff in being phenomenally innovative and nimble and in taking risks, including making mistakes and then recovering from mistakes, and teaching others what you learned. Those are big, big cultural changes.

Jeffrey Tumlin.

Jeffrey Tumlin, former transportation director of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

Courtesy of SFMTA

On the mechanical side, having what may well be the densest network of transit priority treatments — I don’t know this for sure but we have not been able to find another city of our tiny size that has matched us — the transit system is just so much faster and more reliable than it has been in anyone’s lifetime. That has changed travel patterns all over the city. In a city where our downtown subway station is at around 40-45 percent of pre-COVID ridership recovery, we have lines that are over 120 percent of pre-COVID ridership. The improvement in speed and reliability has changed the way San Franciscans think about transit, and it has meant that our public approval rating is the highest that it’s been since we started collecting data in 2001.

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It wasn’t just COVID that changed things. You had Waymo and Cruise, the advent of autonomous taxis in the city. Can you talk a little bit about your perspective on the arrival of those things? You were very skeptical that they were ready for prime time. 

Well that is a very long story. We started off with two autonomous vehicle operators. One of them we worked really hard to try to get them to do well in San Francisco, largely by trying to get performance data so that we can track their trends and try to establish a level playing field to allow the best autonomous vehicle providers to thrive in San Francisco and minimize the harm on the city of what still is a rapidly evolving technology. We’ve watched performance for Waymo continue to improve. Although obviously they still have challenges. They just drove into wet concrete two days ago. But in other ways they’ve made enormous strides in being able to operate safely in the complex streets of San Francisco, while minimizing unintended negative consequences. Their competitor, Cruise, really struggled and was taking greater and greater risks until ultimately the state regulators found them withholding critical reporting information around a specific safety incident that resulted in their suspension in California. That is disappointing to me. Cruise, which was founded here in San Francisco, should have had a path to success, if they had figured out how to be a better partner with cities and with safety regulators.

These types of services will eventually be in other places too, the way Uber and Lyft came from your neck of the woods to other parts of the country. What do you hope people learn from the rollout of these services in the Bay Area? 

I wouldn’t recommend that anyone be the beta test site. What you want to do is let somebody else be the beta test site and then be a rapid follower so that you can take advantage of the upside of new technology while minimizing the downside. Our early experience with autonomous vehicles found a lot of downside. Particularly when vehicles would get confused, they would simply become immobilized wherever they happened to be and require a human to come rescue them. They would tend to get confused in the most critical bottlenecks in our transportation system — complex intersections with a lot of traffic, on our train tracks. The early experimentation with autonomous vehicles here in San Francisco significantly worsened the performance of the overall transportation system.

But that corner has been turned a little bit? 

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It has. The streets in San Francisco can handle a fair amount of chaos, and as a municipal partner what we want to do is make sure that new technology scales within a certain tolerance of chaos. Waymo has been fairly effective at scaling when they are ready. Again, we expect problems. It’s the transportation system. There are always problems and we can handle problems at a certain pace. But beyond that, it becomes disruptive to the transportation system and disruptive to the understaffed and underfunded municipal transportation department itself.

What we’re also seeing is that Uber and Lyft, both of which were founded in San Francisco, made an awful lot of promises around helping to reduce congestion, improve the efficiency of the roadway system, improve safety, and in actuality we’ve found the opposite. The thing we hope that mobility technology providers do is to not overstate their case. For many new mobility technologies, in order for them to make money, what they need to do is appeal to the convenience of the privileged, and oftentimes that comes at the expense of the efficiency of the transportation system as a whole. We remain concerned that autonomous vehicle companies will have the same negative impact on the overall transportation system performance as we saw from Uber and Lyft. Granted, I use all of these modes of transportation, because they are convenient. But if too many people avoid taking the bus, which can move 10 times as many people per square foot of road, then you end up in a situation where you have a lot of Ubers and autonomous vehicles that are stuck in traffic with nobody moving. There’s always this tension between user convenience and system efficiency, which is something we need to manage.

I heard you once say that San Francisco was the most conservative city you’d ever worked in. Obviously that’s not its reputation in most of the country. What kind of conservatism is it? 

San Francisco is a beautiful city that is precious to all of us who live here, and for those of us who’ve lived here for any length of time, we’ve seen a lot of change. Most of that change was not necessarily for the better. So San Franciscans tend to be afraid of change and reluctant to accommodate change, even though working to preserve the status quo creates real problems. So that’s what I meant. We are progressive in our social values and very conservative when it comes to the city itself.

The broader cultural idea of San Francisco is kind of up for grabs too. How do things feel there at the moment?

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I love being in San Francisco at the cusp between a bust and the next boom. This is always the best time to be in San Francisco. I’ve lived here for 35 years, so I’ve been through three boom-bust cycles. This is the best time to be in San Francisco, as it struggles to reinvent itself. And oftentimes in its boom cycle it invents what’s next for cities.

A good example of the split in San Francisco politics has to do with housing policy. There’s widespread agreement that protecting the people who live here, particularly the most vulnerable — low-income people, immigrants, seniors — we want to make sure that people are not evicted from their homes. But at the same time our reluctance to accommodate new housing production for so many decades is contributing to making the city deeply unaffordable. Our fear is that San Francisco is no longer a welcoming place to immigrants, to the next generation of weirdos and misfits that drive San Francisco culture. If it’s only affordable to the very wealthy or to people who win the affordable-housing lottery, then it just becomes a museum of itself. I think San Francisco is finally finding its way into a way of producing housing again that also protects vulnerable populations who are currently here.

I think we’ve also turned the corner a little bit in the transportation debates, where there’s been very little change in transportation for decades, and always a debate over the degree to which we should accommodate the convenience of motorists versus other users and versus roadway safety. We’re in the midst of what still feels like a cultural war in transportation where people assume that it’s zero-sum because our streets are not getting any wider, and we’re having to make choices and tradeoffs within the existing street right of way. That’s where this tension comes between accommodating the people who are here now versus accommodating the next generation of folks who are coming in, where we know we need to allow more people to move in streets of a fixed width. Again, the laws of geometry require that we do a better job investing in making transit fast and reliable and making walking and biking safe and joyful. That is the challenge.

Do you know what you’re doing next? 

I’m taking a long break. My goal is at least six months.

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Why New San Francisco Giants Superstar May Bounce Back This Season

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Why New San Francisco Giants Superstar May Bounce Back This Season


The San Francisco Giants made two major additions this offseason in free agency and both moves have garnered some underwhelming reactions.

To address their need at shortstop, the team signed Willy Adames to a seven-year, $182 million deal, the largest in franchise history. He will be a huge upgrade for the team offensively and gives them one of the best left sides of the infield in baseball.

But, there are some concerns about how long he will be able to stick at shortstop.

On the mound, they made a splash by signing veteran Justin Verlander away from the Houston Astros.

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There was a clear need in the rotation with Blake Snell departing and agreeing to a deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers and it is hard to imagine Verlander filling that void on his own at this stage of his career.

Entering his age-42 campaign, which is cause for concern enough, he is also coming off the worst season of his career in 2024.

Verlander made only 17 starts, going 5-6 with an unsightly 5.48 ERA across 90.1 innings with only 74 strikeouts. However, when taking a deeper look into his performance, it is easy to see where things went awry.

Before his neck injury, his performance was in line with what he provided down the stretch in 2023. However, things went off the rails after the neck injury and while he was trying to make a return for a playoff run.

If the future Hall of Famer can stay healthy, the Giants are going to receive some solid contributions from him because the worries of his pitching ability no longer being serviceable have been blown out of proportions.

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Staying healthy is a challenge for any professional player, let alone someone with the wear and tear that Verlander has, preparing for Year 20 in the MLB.

But, there was another thing that hurt him last year that was outside of his control at times; bad luck.

As shared by Grant Brisbee of The Athletic, a lot of his numbers stuff-wise didn’t experience a drastic enough dip to hint that he won’t be able to pitch at an at least average level in 2025.

His expected ERA in 2023 was 3.63 and 3.88 in 2024. The expected slash line was .229/.284/.392 and .234/.337/.389 in 2023 and 2024 respectively as well.

Where the biggest gap existed was in batting average on balls in play.

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In 2023, his BABIP was .265, which is well below the MLB average of .297. In 2024, that number jumped to .303; not too high above the league average but a massive jump compared to his previous number.

There was some bad luck involved in his career-worst season, as he remains elite in limiting hard-hit balls against him.

A solid defensive effort from the San Francisco position players would go a long way to helping improve that statistic. Some better luck would also aid in his numbers returning closer to the levels we have become accustomed to seeing him produce at even late in his career.



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Lunar New Year festivities kick off in San Francisco’s Chinatown

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Lunar New Year festivities kick off in San Francisco’s Chinatown


The annual flower market street fair kicked off in San Francisco’s Chinatown on Saturday. About 100 vendors, along with residents and tourists gathered along Grant Avenue to celebrate ringing in the Lunar New Year. 

“It’s really cool to see all the Chinese culture. We were born over here but it’s really cool to learn about it,” Zachary Ho, who is from San Francisco, told CBS News Bay Area. 

“It’s so cool just to be out in Chinatown and be a part of this cultural fair,” Amber McCullough, another resident, said. 

The fair kicked off with a grand procession Saturday morning, where San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie and other city officials joined in on the festive celebration to kick off the Year of the Snake. 

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“You prepare for Chinese New Year. You buy fruits, flowers, candy, you prepare for the welcoming of the year of the snake, and we have a lot of great food. And the restaurants in Chinatown are always welcoming the tourists to come by,” Wayne Chan, the manager of the San Francisco Street Fair, told CBS News Bay Area. 

He said there are about 100 vendors at the street fair this year. 

“These are the lucky bamboo for Lunar New Year so it’s auspicious to bring in luck,” Cathy Pham, who owns Freedom Florals, said.  “Very exciting, very refreshing. I love the festivities, to see everybody back out here and enjoying the community events.” 

Visitors are also able to check out the first-ever pop-up ‘Art and Culture Zone’ along Grant Avenue. There are two inflatable cats and a blossoming bridge where you can write your wish on a note and hang it up. 

“We have panda structures that are around the street fair, great exhibit please come by,” Chan said. 

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He also added that security is always their number one priority, and they are actively working with San Francisco police to ensure that everyone can celebrate safely.

We welcome the tourists, the city needs it and we’re here to take care of all the tourists and the local people around,” Chan said. 

 “It feels great to see everyone out and about,” John McCullough, who lives in San Francisco, said. 

 Day two of the market fair continues on Sunday, starting at 9 a.m. until 6 p.m. 

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