Eliyahu Kamisher

Eliyahu Kamisher is the transportation reporter for The Mercury News. He got his start in journalism covering the Israeli police and then as a foreign correspondent for the German Press Agency. Before joining The Mercury News, Eliyahu worked as a freelancer with stories across California. He is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara.

Gas prices are displayed at a Shell gas station in South San Francisco on Monday, Oct. 3, 2022. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group)

California approves nation’s first Big Oil watchdog. Here’s how it will work.

March 27, 2023 at 12:26 p.m.

"There's truly no other explanation for these historically high prices other than greed," said one assemblymember.

Visiting from Kentucky, Yong Cho goes through a gate at the Milpitas BART Station on Wednesday, Feb. 2, 2022, in Milpitas, Calif.

How many people will ride BART through San Jose? The answer could define South Bay transit, but nobody knows

March 21, 2023 at 7:43 a.m.

A newly released ridership forecast estimates a 40% nosedive in passengers from local transit planners’ previous projections for BART’s South Bay extension.

Sage Harvey, 11, (left) and his brothers, Kyan, 9 and Avery, 6, attend school virtually from their home in Big Sur on March 1, 2023.

Big storm barrels toward a Big Sur school that's already been shuttered by landslides for months

March 10, 2023 at 1:28 p.m.

Tiny school's four teachers and 15 students may be stuck with online classes for the rest of the school year.

A Caltrans worker clears a storm drain on Interstate 580 eastbound in Oakland, Calif., on Friday, March 10, 2023. The freeway was closed between High Street and 35th Avenue due to flooding. (Jane Tyska/Bay Area News Group)

Update: I-580 reopens in Oakland after storm shutdown. Why did it take so long?

March 10, 2023 at 12:19 p.m.

"We take it very seriously when it comes to this type of issue," said a Caltrans spokesperson. "We really don't know what's underneath that water."

A concept illustration of the interior and access to the underground train platforms at the BART Diridon Station in downtown San Jose on West Santa Clara Street.

Biden proposes $500 million boost to Silicon Valley BART

March 10, 2023 at 8:10 a.m.

The $9.3 billion extension is supposed to be finished by 2034, with BART trains whizzing underneath downtown San Jose and into Santa Clara

Claude Arthur Stuart Hamrick, a former Silicon Valley patent lawyer, holds his license plate, emblazoned with the word “CASH.”

A Silicon Valley lawyer kept this vanity license plate for 50 years. Now he wants to sell it for $2 million

February 21, 2023 at 6:55 a.m.

Claude Hamrick has held the rights to his flashy "CASH" vanity plate for half a century. Can he land one last SIlicon Valley payday?

A BART train at the Pleasant Hill station in Walnut Creek, Calif.

He was trapped in a door, then dragged by a train. Now BART is paying him $9.15 million

February 17, 2023 at 2:18 p.m.

A San Francisco man who was caught in the doors of a BART train and severely injured as the train sped off has received a $9.15 million settlement, the largest...

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION: The Orange County sheriff loosened requirements on February 20, 2014 for obtaining a concealed-weapons permit in light of a recent federal appellate court decision that deemed many urban counties in California to be overly restrictive in saying who can and can’t carry a concealed weapon. The 9th Circuit has now issued a stay on thr ruling. ///ADDITIONAL INFO //// JEBB HARRIS, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER – concealed.jah – shot: 2/20/14 — /// PHOTO ILLUSTRATION The Orange County sheriff loosened requirements on February 20, 2014 for obtaining a concealed-weapons permit in light of a recent federal appellate court decision that deemed many urban counties in California to be overly restrictive in saying who can and can’t carry a concealed weapon.

California aims to limit concealed weapons. This time will it stick?

February 2, 2023 at 2:06 a.m.

The U.S. Supreme Court last year ruled that gun owners do not need to show a "special need" to carry their weapons in public. A proposed California law is looking...

One of Caltrain's new electrified trains is shown off to a group of San Mateo County Sheriff's officers during a press event at Diridon Station in San Jose, Calif., Tuesday, Nov. 15, 2022.

California sending $1.17 billion to Caltrain electrification, BART and other Bay Area projects

January 31, 2023 at 4:57 p.m.

Cash infusion is meant to bring key transit projects "over the finish line," said California's transportation secretary

Traffic backs up at the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge toll plaza in Oakland, Calif.

California Supreme Court ends legal limbo for over $545 million in Bay Area bridge tolls

January 26, 2023 at 2:08 p.m.

"It's certainly something that's been a cloud over us for the past four and a half years," said a Bay Area ferry spokesperson

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