January 29, 2007
Your Commute: Onwards and Upwards to Phase II
Today is an exciting day in the world of San Francisco transit as we move from Phase I of the Metro Overhead Line Replacement Project (MOLRP) and start Phase II. Woo hoo! We hear there was a celebration in honor of the start of Phase II which largely consisted of Nathaniel Ford breaking a champagne bottle on the first delayed run of the J Church.
MOLRP is a two-year project to replace the overhead electrical lines in the subways. Phase I fixed the electrical lines in the underground from the Embarcadero to the Church Station and Phase 2 will replace the electrical lines from Church Station to West Portal.
How will this affect you, the commuter? Well, for those of you riding the M,L, or K lines, it'll mean having to take MUNI buses at night to get you from the Van Ness station to West Portal or vice versa. So, if you are going from the Embarcadero to wherever the M,L, or K train takes you to, you'll be going from the Embarcadero to the Van Ness Station as you normally would, but then you'll have to hop on a bus that will take you from Van Ness to West Portal and from West Portal you'll hop back on the Metro. Same thing in the opposite direction
Sucks to be you.
This all starts tonight and will affect riders riding from 9 PM til 7 AM. A shuttle bus is expected to run every six minutes.
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A normal, competent, gives-a-shit-about riders transit system (ie any of them in Europe of Asia)
would have and could have and have completed this sort of very small project in about a quarter of the time, with zero service interruption.
Not only that, but the replacement for the old, tired, unreliable overhead would have been a
system (rigid overhead conductor bars, for all those who care, as used in all the Madrid Metro
lines just for one example) which won't require exactly the same Muni contractor make-work to
happen again in another decade. Instead we get more of the same, at great cost, and
considerable inconvenience.
We're in the third world here, folks.
And that's just the way we like it, apparently.
Well, at least the N Judah's running downtown until 1:00 again.
Death to Muni,
Please move your fantasy world to Europe or Asia.
I've heard that it's really nice there.
How come there aren't any stories about this in the local press? On the MUNI webstite, there is no information on this project. Seems like looking at the contracting process would be a perfect muckracking opportunity. I don't really understand why it takes a year to replace these wires. An explanation by MUNI could go a long way towards being a responsible civic partner, but of course MUNI has zero outreach.
I hate to be a greater shill for the man, but you may want to actually look at the Muni website before you get all pantywadish.
And what a pretty pretty website it is.
How come there aren't any stories about this in the local press?
Because the Chronic pretends like it's a national paper, so issues affecting 300,000 Muni riders are small potatoes and "of local interest only"? This is a common problem with big city dailies and a major way they've lost touch with their customers.
The Examiner is a right-wing tabloid farce, but at least they cover transit.
I hope Phil Bronstein gets his other foot bitten by a Komodo dragon, and is forced to commute on the N Judah during his recovery.
Yeah, I already looked at this website, and it doesn't explain WHY it will take so long. A lot can be accomplished in a year, so why is this project taking so long to complete?