TEPping Out With My Baby

It turns out part of that Transit Effectiveness Project was taken out for a spin and tried out. For the past couple of months, MUNI has been testing out the 1 California to see if they could make things go smoother and have the bus line actually run on time. The good news is that they were able to do it-- from 81% on time to 88% on time. Now, not exactly an "A" but you could call it an "A" if you were talking about MUNI and deciding to grade everything on a curve. The bad news? It's a little bit more expensive to make everything run on time, about three quarters of a million more. And that’s just for one line.

In order to get the buses to run on time, MUNI tried out all sorts of whacky things like having supervisors monitor the buses, have people work overtime to make up for absent drivers, and more traffic cops to make sure the roads were clear enough for the busses to ride. And all that means more money. Unfortunately, part of the TEP makes it so that extra money for the line will come from traffic tickets but in just the little test run that they did, they discovered that they weren't even going to come close to making enough money to cover it all.

The 1 California line was chosen because while it's the third most used line, it's not one of the worst lines. We wonder what people who ride the 1 think about that. Anyways, there's no mention of what this all means other than the fact none of htis is going to be that easy.