A large power outage left almost 40,000 PG&E customers without electricity in San Francisco Saturday, according to the company.

The PG&E Outage Center first reported the outage was affecting 24,842 customers, but a few minutes later, PG&E told NBC Bay Area the outage was affecting 39,520 households in the areas of Richmond, Sunset, Presidio, Golden Gate Park and parts of downtown.

Officials warned traffic lights in these areas might be impacted and advise that if the traffic signal has gone dark, to treat it as a four-way stop.

According to the website, the outage was first reported at 10:10 a.m. and is expected to be restored at around 3:40 p.m., but PG&E told NBC Bay Area the outage started at around 1:10 p.m. and the estimated time of restoration is unknown.

This is a developing story. Details may change as more information becomes available. Stay tuned for updates.

More than halfway into his first term, Mayor Mike Johnston finally met with his own Bicycle Advisory Committee and reiterated a familiar promise: Denver can increase road safety without taking any convenience away from drivers. “We want this to be a city where it is safe and easy to get around by bike or by foot,” Johnston told Westword after the meeting. “We want to build infrastructure and a culture that makes that easier, and we think we can do that without making it more difficult for drivers.”

The mayor is wrong. If Denver is serious about making our streets safer for everyone — people driving as well as people walking, biking, rolling or taking transit — then we have to be honest about what that requires. Real safety improvements will sometimes mean slowing cars down, reallocating space or asking drivers to take a slightly longer route. In other words, we must be willing to trade a bit of convenience for a lot of safety.

We already make this trade-off all the time. Parking in front of the fire hydrant across from my house would be extremely convenient, but I don’t do it because it would put my neighbors at risk if a fire broke out. I don’t enjoy going through security screening every time I attend a Denver City Council meeting, but I accept it because it keeps a critical public forum safe. These small inconveniences are simply part of living in a community where everyone’s well-being matters.

So why is the idea of asking drivers to accept minimal inconvenience — a few extra minutes, a block or two of walking from their parking spot to their final destination — treated as politically impossible, even when it could prevent deaths and life-altering injuries?

Denver committed to Vision Zero nearly a decade ago, pledging to eliminate traffic fatalities. Yet year after year, the death toll remains stubbornly high, topping eighty lives lost annually since the pandemic. The reason is not mysterious: City leaders have consistently prioritized driver convenience over safety, even as people continue to die on our streets.

For generations, Denver’s street designs have catered not just to driving, but to driving dangerously. The majority of streets on the city’s High Injury Network — just 5 percent of streets where half of all traffic deaths occur — are major arterials like Colfax, Federal, Colorado, Speer and Alameda. These corridors are engineered to move as many vehicles as quickly as possible. People walking and biking are left to navigate speeding traffic with minimal protection, crossing up to eight lanes just to reach the other side.

We know what works. The data is unequivocal: On streets like these, the most effective safety improvements reduce the space available for fast-moving vehicles. Road diets, narrower lanes, shorter crossings and dedicated space for sidewalks, bike lanes and bus lanes all make streets safer for everyone — including drivers — by bringing speeds down to survivable levels.

And yet, Mayor Johnston’s recent decision to abandon the planned road diet on Alameda Avenue is only the latest example of the city retreating from proven safety measures because they might inconvenience drivers. The city noted that its revised plan for Alameda would save drivers an extra sixty seconds of driving time, compared to the original road diet.

The mayor must confront a hard truth: We cannot keep people safe without changing the status quo, and the status quo is built on prioritizing speed and convenience over human life. Denver cannot have it both ways.

So the real question for Mayor Johnston is this: How many lives is Denver willing to sacrifice to preserve driver convenience?

So far in 2025, we have lost 87 people — and counting.

(Photos courtesy Brenda Hatley)

By Hayden Yu Andersen
Reporting for West Seattle Blog

Dozens of youth robotics teams from elementary and middle schools across the district gathered on December 6 at Robert Eagle Staff Middle School for this year’s FIRST Lego League qualifier. By the end of the day, three teams from West Seattle – Madison Middle School, Lafayette Elementary School, and Alki Elementary School – emerged triumphant, with their sights set on the next round of the tournament.

Of the schools who competed that day, nine were from West Seattle, including Genesee Hill Elementary, Fairmount Park Elementary, Gatewood Elementary, Arbor Heights Elementary, West Seattle Elementary, and the aforementioned teams that are moving up to the next round.

A local parent tipped us about the students’ achievement, so we set out to get details. We spoke with Brenda Hatley, a coach for Madison Middle School, the only West Seattle middle-school team to advance to the next round, and she says the turnout at the qualifiers was impressive. Hatley first became a coach for her son’s 4th-grade team and was one of the founding parents for Lafayette Elementary’s Lego Robotics team.

She says the program, which pairs engineering with LEGO, coding, and real-world projects, is a fantastic program for students who are less interested in athletics but still want to capture the excitement of a pep rally.

“It’s not a sports team, but they’re still getting so hyped up. The kids were cheering for each other, and the pressure was there; coaching through that was an incredible experience,” Hatley said.

Madison’s team, the Madbots, will play their next match on December 26th, at a to-be-determined location. The teams that do well this month will move on to the city-wide competition in Downtown Seattle, before moving to the regionals at Washington State University, and beyond to the international finals. Regardless of how they perform, Hatley says she and the other parents are planning to travel with their team to the city-wide and regional competitions.

“I’m really proud of the team,” Hatley said. “Last year, the fifth graders didn’t move on, and we had lower expectations; we just went in to learn more and get better. This year, we get to move on and see what the next level looks like.”