The Bay

BART will stop offering its 4 a.m. train service on Feb. 11 in order to retrofit the Transbay Tube to better withstand major earthquakes. Workers will install a new liner in the 3.6-mile underwater structure to prevent flooding after a big quake, a project that's expected to take three and a half years to complete. That leaves 3,000 people who ride BART during its first hour of service looking for...

East Bay rapper Keak Da Sneak is credited with pioneering the Hyphy style. This Thursday he has to turn himself in to serve a 16-month state prison sentence. Since being shot in 2017, he’s confined to a wheelchair and needs round the clock care. He can’t expect that kind of care in prison. This has started a conversation about accessibility and medical care while serving time. Guest: Nastia Voynov...

High school freshman Crista Ramos had no idea her mom was living under Temporary Protected Status, a federal humanitarian program that allows about 260,000 immigrants from El Salvador to lawfully live and work in the U.S. But when the Trump administration announced it would end the program, everything changed. Now, Crista’s the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit. Everyday high school worries...

Chico is bursting at the seams right now. The ripples of displacement from the Camp Fire, which killed at least 86 people and destroyed about 14,000 homes, are far from over as people cram into Chico to stay living close to family, jobs and schools. But the city's vacancy rate is nearly zero, and some people are being evicted to make room. Guest: Sonja Hutson, covers wildfires, emergency preparedn...

School closures. Teacher strike. Budget cuts. It hasn’t been a great week for Oakland Unified. The school board voted to close Roots International Academy and will be deciding soon whether to merge two other schools. Plus, teachers – who want more money and better working conditions – are voting by Friday whether to authorize a strike. This week feels like the district’s woes have hit an apex. Gue...

If you're a fan of The Bay, you can thank Vinnee Tong. She helped launch the podcast last year and has helped shape the shows from choosing what we cover and how we talk about it, especially around race, identity and class. Vinnee starts her new role as KQED’s new managing editor, which begins Jan. 28. Today, Erika and Devin sit down with Vinnee for her totally, unofficial exit interview. Guest: V...

Kamala Harris announced this week she’s running for president. She's certainly not the first Californian to be groomed by Bay Area politics for the national stage. Harris has had to walk a line between left-leaning politics and her status as a former prosecutor. On Sunday she'll hold a rally in Oakland, the city where she was born. Guest: Marisa Lagos, KQED politics reporter Learn more about your...

What if we looked at solving the Bay Area's housing crisis from a regional lens? Could we come up with solutions that actually work? It's often said that solving the housing crisis requires a regional approach but no one has tried to define what that looks like, until now. A proposal on its way to the state legislature could give the Bay Area its own regional housing agency with the ability to set...

The debate over whether gig workers are employees or contractors has been a slow, messy conversation. Now, California’s new governor, Gavin Newsom, is trying to help broker a deal between the two sides. But some drivers aren’t happy about where they think it's going. Guest: Sam Harnett, KQED Silicon Valley reporter The Bay wants to get to know you better. Take our survey and share your opinion abo...

PG&E says it has no choice but to enter Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and that it's going to file papers around Jan. 29. A lot of things led to this: from deregulation in the 1990's, to the fatal San Bruno explosion in 2010 that put the utility on probation to the 2017 and 2018 deadly wildfires in Northern California. And it brings up the question of who should ultimately be responsible for the...

Valero spent $200,000 in last year's Benicia city council election to help elect two candidates who were less critical of the company than others. That's created tension between the oil refiner and the city, leading people to question how much influence Valero should have in local politics. On Tuesday Benicia will discuss the possibility of new campaign finance laws that could limit corporate infl...

About 40 percent of students in the Salinas City Elementary School District are considered homeless. This can mean living in a shelter or living in an overcrowded home, like multiple families co-existing in a single place. It's a problem that hurts schoolchildren and their ability to learn and retain information. And it stems from high and growing housing prices. Guest: Vanessa Rancaño, KQED educa...

The San Mateo County district attorney is looking to reopen an investigation against a fired Burlingame police officer. The cop was accused by three women of asking them for sex in exchange for help with their alleged crimes. The case was made public this week after Bay Area reporters received police records under a new transparency law that went into effect on Jan. 1. Guest: Thomas Peele, investi...

Food says a lot about who we are. It can identify where we come from and what we like. In some cases, it may even let us know when we’re being racist. In a way, that’s a starting point for the San Francisco Chronicle's new restaurant critic Soleil Ho. The host of the podcast Racist Sandwich, Soleil tells The Bay about how food is a conduit for way more than what’s on our plates. ... Also, she like...

Getting access to police records has never been easy. Especially when the records involve allegations of police wrongdoing. A new California law - SB 1421 - introduced by a Bay Area state senator, is supposed to give the public access to documents related to police misconduct and accountability. But law enforcement is fighting to keep documents from the past, private. This week a judge rejected an...

See ya, 2018. What up, 2019! We’ve produced almost 150 episodes of The Bay covering all kinds of local news from e-scooters, to housing policies and #GrillingWhileBlack. Today, we want to pause a moment to say thanks for hanging with us. And to give you a sense of how we’re approaching the new year (hint: Erika is optimistic; Devin is pessimistic). Guests: Yours Truly Learn more about your ad choi...

Ten years ago, in the early morning hours of New Year’s Day, Oscar Grant was shot and killed by Bart police officer, Johannes Mehserle. This was one of the first police shootings caught on cell phone video and spread around the world. It began a decade of witnessing police violence in a new way that has sparked a national conversation around police accountability and racism. Guest: Sandhya Dirks,...

We jump into a stranger's car and take a ride over the Bay Bridge in the "casual carpool lane" to talk about higher bridge tolls. Our carpool driver and rider join in on a discussion about Regional Measure 3, which 55 percent of voters approved in the June 5 election that increased tolls on seven state bridges in the Bay Area. Guest: Dan Brekke, KQED transportation editor Learn more about your ad...

#WhileBlack was a popular hashtag in 2018. This year we watched several videos on social media that included white people harassing black people doing just about everything. Oakland had a couple of racist moments at Lake Merritt this year, including one woman who became known as BBQ Becky. The city had its own response too. Guest: Sandhya Dirks, KQED race and equity reporter Learn more about your...

This was a big year for people of color in lead movie roles — especially for culture, language and accents that are not English or American. One of those films was Crazy Rich Asians, which resonated with the Bay Area, and our host Devin Katayama and our editor Vinnee Tong, as we discuss Asian American identity. Guest: Ricky Yean, writer of Asian-Americans Are Cultural Orphans (aka I hope Crazy Ric...

What happens when the people most invested in trying to make the Bay Area a better place decide to LEAVE entirely? Gabriel Metcalf is the outgoing president of the Bay Area think tank SPUR, and he's moving to take a similar job in Sydney, Australia. Metcalf says the Bay Area is one of the world's centers of wealth creation, but has struggled to meet some of the most basic needs. For instance, hous...

In December 2016, Lindsay McCollum and Eddie “Tennessee” Tate were shot and killed in San Francisco’s Mission District. The two were homeless and living together. Lindsay's mother, Carrie McCollum, reached out to a KQED reporter one year after he went searching for answers himself. The case remains unresolved, but Carrie doesn’t want her daughter to be forgotten. Guest: Peter Arcuni, KQED reporter...

Mention electric scooters and people usually react with an eye roll. It's associated with the newness of the tech culture of the Bay Area. Some see scooters as a "micro-transit" tool; others simply see them as a nuisance. The city of San Jose thinks it's got the answer to managing them: geofencing. Guest: KQED Silicon Valley Senior Editor Tonya Mosley Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaph...

Oakland is considering closing 24 schools. Most of these schools are likely in East Oakland, where many of the poorest students live. A group of parents is demanding that if Oakland Unified closes their kids' schools that they be given first dibs of any other school in the district. This includes charter schools, which have been part of the reason why some of the district-run schools have experien...

Most landlords in San Jose don't take Section 8 housing vouchers. And housing advocates see the vouchers as a proxy for race, or keeping out people of color. As a possible remedy, the San Jose city council wants to tweak the law to encourage more landlords to take the vouchers. The proposal has some holes, though. Guest: Emily DeRuy, Mercury News reporter covering San Jose Learn more about your ad...