One hundred years ago, the United States had a public transportation system that was the envy of the world. Today, outside a few major urban centers, it is barely on life support. Even in New York City, subway ridership is well below its 1946 peak. Annual per capita transit trips in the U.S. plummeted from […]
RT ridership peaked more than a decade ago, before the recession, at more than 30 million boardings annually. That dropped to 24 million by 2016, when the agency increased fares. Ridership this year declined to 21 million. RT officials attributed much of the initial ridership decline to several years of dramatic service cuts during the […]
Labor Day is a chance to take a break from our routines and honor the contributions of those who have built America. But as we relax and reflect, we also ought to recognize that our celebrations may be short-lived: The U.S. is running out of workers. Baby boomers, who built the modern economic engine, are […]
Recently, California homebuilders delivered to the state Legislature a healthy dose of reality. At a special hearing of the Assembly’s Select Committee on Housing Affordability (the Committee), representatives of the California Building Industry Association (CBIA) illustrated why housing in the state is so expensive. In fact, CBIA may have made a case at the mid-August […]
8. California 5 yr. GDP annual growth rate: +2.9% (2nd largest increase) 2017 GDP: $2.4 trillion (the largest) June 2018 Unemployment: 4.2% (tied — 18th highest) 5 yr. annual employment growth: +2.2% (8th largest increase) California’s economy grew at an annual rate of 2.9% from 2012 through 2017, the second fastest pace of any state.
SB100 requires utilities to receive 50 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by the end of 2026. By Dec. 31, 2030, utilities would need to up that target to 60 percent. The bill passed the Senate 25-13 on Wednesday and the Assembly 44 to 33 on Tuesday. Achieving the bill’s goals, however, won’t be […]
San Francisco has 900 housing units stuck in the approval pipeline, and Mayor London Breed plans to do something about that Thursday. Breed is set to hand down an executive order to dramatically accelerate the city’s process for assessing and approving accessory dwelling units — starting with clearing the big backlog mired in various stages […]
While the next crop of luxury condo towers like 160 Folsom, which developer Tishman Speyer has branded as Mira, continue to rise in the fast-growing eastern end of South of Market, other approved housing projects across the city, like 2675 Folsom St., are stalled and on the market because of soaring construction costs and fees, […]
When Ajay Royan of Mithril Capital, an investment fund, asks rhetorically “How are you supposed to have a startup in a garage if the garage costs millions of dollars?”, he is barely exaggerating the problem. The immense success of its tech industry means that the San Francisco Bay Area in which Silicon Valley sits has […]
Even one of the most iconic figures of Bay Area business, Charles Schwab founder and Chairman Chuck Schwab, sees more people leaving California as a result of the tax changes, and not just at the upper end of the income scale. “A lot of companies will be moving their people out of here, unless something […]
Just more than half of U.S. workers—51%—said they were satisfied with their jobs in 2017, the highest level since 2005, according to a new report from The Conference Board, a business-research group. Over the past seven years, Americans report feeling better about their pay along with a greater sense of job security, both features of […]
A key measure of inflation accelerated last month to the fastest annual clip since 2012, as robust spending by consumers and businesses steadily pushed up prices for goods and services across the economy. The personal-consumption-expenditures price index, a broad inflation gauge closely watched by the Federal Reserve, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% in July from […]
Americans’ consumer confidence rose in August to the highest level in nearly 18 years as their assessment of current conditions improved further and their expectations about the future rebounded. The Conference Board reported Tuesday that its consumer confidence index rose to 133.4 in August, up from a reading 127.9 in July. It was the highest […]
Economic growth was stronger during the second quarter than earlier estimated, although growth in a key measure of U.S. corporate profits moderated from the first quarter. Gross domestic product—the value of all goods and services produced across the economy—rose at a 4.2% annual rate in the second quarter, adjusted for seasonality and inflation, the Commerce […]
The Trump administration is accelerating efforts to pump more of Northern California’s water to farmers in the San Joaquin Valley, setting up a bruising conflict with state officials and environmentalists. As farmers and others prepared for a water rally Monday on the steps of the Capitol in Sacramento, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke sent a memo […]