Good things are always happening.

Even if they are somewhat outweighed at the moment.

I brought ~50 little 5x8 inch flags on sticks (they only cost like 50 cents / flag!) to a protest today in San Jose and just handed them out to anyone that wanted one. It was great! We had like half the protest holding/wearing/whatever an American flag.

President Musk, welcome to the war on cars.

Also, my general opinion is that on more local routes biking is generally going to beat riding the bus on time anyways, and that in practice most crowded routes are in the same boat (longer-distance, non-articulated buses like you get in Marin are the exceptional case there, I guess).

Yeah, I once caught a non-articulated bus on the 22 early in the morning on the weekend and it was my first time using a front rack instead of bringing my bike inside; fun...

I mean, it's a somewhat "reject the premise" answer but the VTA routes 22/522 (and maybe a few other routes) allow you to bring your bike onboard (if the inside spaces are full then you are supposed to use the front racks, and some people do so out of habit).

(i.e., once COVID hit, getting and keeping the ped mall was no problem and faced no serious opposition; it was going to be a slog otherwise, however)

Actually, that's not quite accurate; the vocal minority was the reason that Castro Street was not *already* a pedestrian mall. There was a study on the books at the start of COVID, but it only covered the 100 block. The *existence* of that study did help significantly.

Same story in Santa Clara County.

That area is so much more accessible now that there is a proper path under 101 there.