The Return of Dear Mr. Ford
A reader writes in to ask one of the biggest questions there is about MUNI:
I've attached a screenshot of the J Church train on a Friday night, according to Next Muni's site.Yep, that is five trains arriving within one ten-minute period, for a train that's supposed to go every ten minutes. This is at a stop that is five stops from the terminus, where (in theory) someone should be sitting there saying "A J left ten minutes ago, now it's your turn to go."
Um, what the hell is this? If five are arriving this quickly, that means I'll probably have to wait forty for the next one. This really isn't that hard. What's going on, MUNI?
Good question. We remember being at the Montgomery Station and watching like four or five M,L, and K trains go by, each holding less and less riders in them before we saw our N Judah pass. Shouldn't somebody sit there and go: "gosh, maybe we shouldn't have the same train run over and over again when other trains are late?" How frakin' difficult is it to do something like that?
Dan from Burritophile continues on after the jump. And remember folks, send your Dear Mr. Ford cards and letters to us
I can follow up. I live about a ten minute walk from the J stop at Castro/Market. I went into El Castillito to get a couple of burritos to go..... There were two people in front of me, and while I waited for them, ordered and paid, three J trains went by. I timed it at about eight minutes total, from entry to payment. Three trains. The first was relatively full, the last nearly empty. I walked down to the shelter, and Nextbus read:J church
9 minutes
43 minutesThis wasn't Nextbus screwing up, this was...
Well, it's exactly what we expect from MUNI, isn't it?
If the train is supposed to show up every ten minutes, having each train leave every ten minutes from the terminus should be a pretty good place to start. Why don't they do this?
All we can say is reverand.