e clean. cerave hydrating cleanser. hi, can i help you? - maybe. i'd like to look at dolce & gabbana, versace, burberry, ray-ban, persol, oakley, costa, michael kors, coach and ralph lauren? ♪ regular or polarized? sunglass hut. find every shade of you. kristen: hi, welcome to "getting answers." we are going to update your first on a major story we are following. a day after this cruise ship was supposed to leave the bay area,

the ruby princess remains docked in san francisco. here's the reason -- significant damage to the ship's hull after it ran into pier 27 while docking yesterday morning. princess cruise line described the collision as damaged the pier. crews have been working on the damage ever since. meanwhile, more than 3300 passengers and 1100 crew members are on board waiting to leave on a 10-day cruise to alaska, it's not clear when that will actually happen. princess issued the statement, the safety of our guests and crew remain our top priority, and ruby princess will depart once the ship is deemed by the u.s. coast guard as fit to sail. let's take you back to our life picture. from what we understand, the passengers have been told to stay on the ship.

you can see some people walking on the deck. we are following the situation closely. we will have an update for you live at 4:00 and throughout the evening. meantime, thanks for joining us for "getting answers" at 3:00 p.m. every day at this time, we talk with experts about issues important to the bay area and get answers in real time. today, we know the bay area is a unique place full of interesting history, but do you know what it would take to make lake marin safe to swim in or if el camino real was once the road of royalty? there are fascinatingries in the new book "nick kyrgios -- "bay curious" by olivia allen price. tolls going up to pay

transportation. the golden gate bridge is managed separately and would not be part of that proposed toll hike, but it faces its own dire problems. joining us live now to discuss the challenges faced by our region's most iconic bridge and the transit district is t spokesperson for the golden gate bridge highway and transportation district. thanks for your time. >> happy to be with you. thank you. kristen: how low is ridership or daily car crossings? >> overall, bridge down about 15% compared to pre-pandemic. that's about 100,000 cars crossing the bridge every day today, whereas before the pandemic, we saw 100 15,000, 100 20,000 crossing daily. his it's important to remember, rewind back to march 2020 when

the bay area shelter in place orders first went into effect. golden gate bridge traffic dropped by nearly 70% nearly overnight. we have come a long way to gain nearly all of that traffic -- to gain adventure that traffic back. we have not come all the way, but we have long -- we have come at long way. lags? >> when you dig into the traffic numbers, some interesting stories come out. one is that weekend, recreational, and tourism travel off-peak is almost all the way back. where we really find the gap is in commute traffic. 5:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. monday through friday. overall, while we are down 15%, that commute traffic is down 80%, and that is reflected in some of the stats you see in downtown san francisco. there are 150,000 fewer people

in downtown san francisco on any given day today than there were during the pandemic. the people that used to drive across the bridge, that used to take our buses and used to take our fairies or were on muni ac transit, our fates are tied very much to the fates of downtown san francisco. kristen: why is this a particular problem for public transportation? i think a lot of people don't understand how the tolls from the golden gate bridge fund buses and fairies, right? >> yes, and users may be interested in learning how bridge tolls are spent. part of it goes the iconic bridge. the second part goes to bus and ferry transit system. before the pandemic, those systems took about a quarter of all vehicle traffic off the golden gate bridge, so people were in a fitting by seeing smoother flow across the bridge

and more buses and boats. however, when bridge traffic declines, we still have enough money to maintain the golden gate bridge, but we are missing some funding that we had before the pandemic to subs that i bus and ferry transit. kristen: i imagine you are about to lose that federal pandemic money, right? how long can you go before you fall off that cliff? >> we actually service to reduce expenses. we figured you might be in this for the long haul. we want to save money as much as we can, and it is not distally prudent, nor is it good for the environment nor traffic to be running empty buses. we would scale down our service dramatically. that has actually saved us money and helped us extend the federal covid relief funding. we are looking at a fiscal cliff somewhere in the 18-month to two-year time frame, but if we

continue to be prudent and don't see a huge return of our customer base, we may be able to extend that. there has also been a california budget deal that we expect to receive some money from. kristen: what might you have to do -- i don't know if this is on the table in terms of either reaching bridge tolls or perhaps affairs for fairies and buses. >> we aplidin -- we actually just implement in the first year of a five-year fair program. fares went up by $.25 and will continue to go up every year by $.25. we just completed the last total increase of a five your total program. at present, there is no plan in place for future years, but a plan could consider a date in the future that would consider the future, talk about honest trade-offs of our finances and lots of community engagement.

at the moment, there is no proposal for raising tolls, but really, we are in this together as a region. we are not the only agency facing a fiscal -- fiscal cliff. we will have to figure this out as a region and we are thankful to our state legislature and legislators are stepping up and finding some bridge funding to give us more time to figure out what a long term sustainable funding model for bay area transit looks like. kristen: i imagine you really need tourist to come back, too, because so many love to drive across that golden gate bridge, right? and i imagine you don't want to raise the toll much more. isn't it, like, $9.75? >> most of our customers are fastrak customers, so it went up from $8.45 to $8.75 last sunday. kristen: would it be bad if you will or does it make sense to cut some of the routes or perhaps service or reduce them because you have fewer people going to downtown san francisco?

>> our strategy since the beginning of the pandemic is to provide service where people need it. the service we provide today is significantly reduced from what we had before the pandemic, again because running empty buses and boats just does not make sense. in some sense, today, you are looking at what the future of golden gate transit system could look like. that said, we expect to see some gains and increases in ridership and bridge traffic, that san francisco will once again rise from the ashes as the city of the phoenix and that we will be back to some version of pre-pandemic levels of service in the future, but today, you are looking at reduced service across the north bay. our commitment is to continue to provide that service and to bring it back as soon as customers return. kristen: thank you so much for joining us today. >> my pleasure.

kristen: welcome back. let's go ahead and show you a video clip. >> kqed been puzzling over this question for years. >> there's this old wrecked car. it is all rusted out. i want to know what the deal with this car is. kristen: the bay area is full of amazing stories and factoids, and few programs capture the uniqueness of our regi bter than the podcast of "they cure -- "they -- "bay

is also the title of a new book. this is going to be so fun because i have lived in the bay area for over 20 years, and there's so many stories in your book that are totally completely new to me. how did this come about for you? was it kind of like the same thing, were you just going around going, i have questions or i hear questions, and i want answers? >> yeah, we were looking for ways to really bring the audience into our reporting. i personally was new to the bay area. i moved here only about 10 years ago. i would wander around and find so many fascinating things. i just knew there was more to be talking about as far as what we were doing with our journalism. kristen: pretty sure you know more than me even though i have 30 plus four years on you. that rusted out car on mount tam. never knew about it. what's the deal? >> that's actually the first

"they -- "bay ever did. if you have been hiking on mount tam, you have to go around this car if you are on a certain trail. we were able to determine that that car was probably kind of a junker car that somebody sent over the edge, sent it off a cliff intentionally to junk it back in the day before our environmental standards were as high as they are today and we think a little more carefully about what we do with our garbage. >> yeah, but why leave >> gosh, why they are and not somewhere else? i will say, there is cars and a lot of hiking trails around the area. i live down at the peninsula and there's one pretty close to me. after reading this story, we got many more questions from people saying there's a car in this park near my house, too. kristen: right, can you find out where this is from, who left that one. a lot of new stories i

fascinating, which city's climate is billed as best buy government test. take your guest by going to abc7news.com/mode. your choices are fremont, redwood city, pleasanton, and vibrato. right? stay right there. vote now and we will reveal the answer, and olivia will tell us the story behind it in a little bit. in the meantime, let us go to another story while we leave the choice is up for you. the bison in golden gate park -- how did they get there? >> the bison in golden gate park have really been in the park almost from the very beginning of golden gate park. if you go back to the history of the west, you know, before san francisco was a city at all, bison roamed all over the west. there were once hundreds of thousands of bison in the western part of the united

states, but over time, their numbers really dwindled. they were hunted practically into extinction, and it was actually a way that white settlers were able basically to deprive native americans of food. there was a period of time in american history where people were given rewards for killing bison because it was thought that it deprived native americans of food, so it kind of helped basically white settlers taking over the western part of the united states. as they were building golden gate park, there is this idea that golden gate park should be a vision of what the west once was. to be what the west once was, you needed bison. early on, they brought a number of bison into the park, and we have had bison in the park ever since. i believe they just actually refreshed the herd within the last couple of years, which means they brought in a couple new bison because they do die over time. one interesting thing is they

are all female now. there used to be male and a male bison, but the males what kind of be rough and a little bit rowdy, so they decided to go with an all-female her now. kristen: this ensures we will not get any more bison. do we not want any more? six seems a little lonely. >> i know, i guess they have to get them from somewhere else now. kristen: that is a fascinating story. next time the kids walk by, you can tell them that story. meantime, by the way, you can still vote, folks. which bay area city is billed best air quality by government test? so far, redwood city is winning. el camino real. i think it goes all the way down to socal, right? andy name has a meaning, which led to a myth. tell us about that. >> if you grew up here, you

probably heard this in school. this idea that el camino real was this road built by the spanish to connect the missions, and the missions were built about a day's walk from one another going up the california coast. this is something repeated widely in classrooms for a period of time that still kind of continues to be talked about a lot today. somebody had asked us because all of our questions come from our audience. somebody had submitted a question just asking, you know, what is the deal with this? i heard a little bit about it as a young person in school but have not heard much about it as a grown-up. one thing that we discovered was that the road that the settlers are believed to have built actually was a native american trail. spanish were not much for building roads. they tended to follow indigenous trails, so that part of the story is a bit of a myth. the whole idea that these were, you know, a day's walk between

each other is also a bit of a stretch. kristen: santa clara to san francisco? >> that would be a pretty long day if you think about it if you are walking. this was largely something put out by clubs at a certain time in american history when they were trying to get people to buy cars and gasoline and go on trips and other products you would need to go on a trip from mission to mission. it is this lovely story, this fantastic story, but it really has some elements of not truth to it. kristen: oh, my. my friday nights in high school spent cruising el camino, and here i was thinking i was princess diana waving from her coach or something. all right. he burst my bubble, but that is super interesting. don't go away. we will take a short break and come right back to find all things curious from olivia and

also the answer to our question. youan see the choices and continue to weigh i

kristen: we are going to show you one more piece of great clip. >> i like the lake a lot. it is? because there's that as it is -- it is there is all that poo and dirt and stuff. >> with all that, she wondered what it would -- she wondered -- >> what would it take to ma it swimmable? kristen: again, wonderful and weird true stories of the bay area that you may or may not haveno. let's go back to that question -- what would it take to make

lake merritt swimmable? lot of work.tely, it would take a lot of run to lake merritt, so it would require ripping up lots of streets and re-plumbing how a lot of the city rks to keep gross stuff thates onto our street when it rains from flowing in. economically, it seems like a pretty daunting task so i don't think we will be swimming in lake merritt any time soon. there are a couple of ideas if we were really dedicated to the cause. we could chlorinate a portion of it. we do this in other parts of the bay area, we chlorinate part of a national -- natural body of water. that comes with some downsides, though. it is not great for wildlife, and it is a wildlife refuge. lots of birds you will find. the other idea is that we actually would maybe give over a

portion of lake merritt and have it returned to marshland, so it would naturally be cleaning the water a little more than it is able to do now. that is probably the most feasible idea economically, but there's no serious plans to make it a swimming lake any time soon, so you are probably best going to a swimming pool. kristen: it is always so pretty. now to the question we posed to you in our last segment as which area had the best climate as determined by government test. here is your last chance to vote . i'm going to count to three and then we will wrap it up. 1, 2, 3 -- ok, that is it. redwood city, 59%. 17% was pleasanton. 13% thought fremont. 13% thought lovato. who was right? >> if you trust city mottos, redwood city is the city with the best test of climate, and

that is because many, many years ago, there was basically one guy who decided to take the weather, measure it in redwood cityvery day, and as he did this over many decades, heelieved this was actually one of the best climates in america. me local newspapers of the day , and ultimately, it was sort of is widely shared piecef data, and he didsome data to back it up. pe were not alwaysg meticulous records of the weather at this time, but ultimately, is ily a government testf it was kind of one guy doing it? sometimes things in history are not quite what they seem. kristen: first, you would have toave all the experts sit and agree on west, and then you would go about measuring them. all right, but still, a fun

story, and you can see gained entrance to redwood city. by the way, viewers, congrats, you did pretty well. 60% got that one right. stone walls berkeley hills. what's the curious story there? >> this is another one that goes way back. people first noticed these walls some time around the 1900s, and they were kind of mysterious. people could not figure out why they were built or who had built them. these you will find still today all throughout kind of the east bay stretching down towards san jose kind of in the east side of the bay area. a lot of times, they are about knee high, maybe go up to waste high in some places. what is most interesting about these walls is what we have said about them over the decades. because we were not able to easily explain what they were

for, people believed they were built by aliens. >> that looks like our own great wall of china! >> yeah, they believed ancient civilizations were maybe involved in building these. there was some belief that perhaps was built by native americans who lived here, but they were not really known for building stonewalls elsewhere, so that was a little out of line with what we have seen elsewhere. all sorts of almost fantastical rumors about these walls have circulated over the years. when we went out to say, ok, it is 2023, like, what is going on with these walls, we discovered there is still a little element of mystery. we kind of only have a best guess about what these walls were for. they are most likely property boundaries or were used to contain livestock. they were most likely built by european settlers because they are very similar to what you might see in ireland or something. kristen: that is as good as we

are going to get for now. thank you so much. by the we new book is "bay curious: exploring the hidden stories of t ♪ california sky ♪ ♪ todos alcanzamos las estrellas ♪ ♪ sunny state of mind ♪ ♪ flexin' all the time ♪ ♪ todo es dorado ♪ ♪ y nos gusta picante ♪ ♪ cause this place is caliente ♪ ♪ 'tamos enchilado ♪ ♪ feels so golden ♪ ♪ livin' in the golden state with you ♪ ♪ feels so golden ♪ ♪ vive en el estado dorado oooh ♪ ♪ we got that drip, drip, drip ♪ ♪ come take a sip, sip, sip ♪ ♪ feels so golden ♪ ♪ vive en el estado dorado ♪

kristen: thanks for joining us. we will be here every weekday at 3:00 to answer questions from experts around tonight, major new developments in the war in ukraine. president biden's controversial decision about a new weapons deal. the president sending cluster munitions to ukraine as part of a new military aid package to help the fight against russia.