Parents Petition Caltrain to Reduce Train Speed In Palo Alto
Gavin Newsom's Mariah Carey-like Interview Demand
Asm. Tom Ammiano On Glass Breaking BART Cop
Don't Dump Unwanted Stuff On City Sidewalks
How to Keep Your Car Windows Safe In the Tenderloin
You don't happen to have any opinions about the level of service on the J-Church, do you? Oh, you do? Why, that's marvelous. Muni wants to enlist you as their secret agent.
During May, June, and July, Muni's going to be throwing every tool in their arsenal directly at the J. As one of the worst-performing lines, they're experimenting to see what it takes to turn things around. What works? What doesn't? "Oh Lord, do we have the strength to carry out this mighty task in one night? Or are we just jerking off?"
So the Transit Effectiveness Project is looking for regular J-riders (people who ride at least four times per week) to submit daily reports about how things are working out. Be Muni's eyes and ears! Email Jennifer.Ulbrich at sfmta d0t c0m if you'd like to volunteer. Here's what they'll ask of you, with results available around August:
* date/time you rode
* boarding/alighting stops
* how many minutes you waited for the train
* how many minutes the ride took
* whether or not you observed train bunching (e.g., two trains arriving close together)
* your perceptions of how crowded the train was (light, moderate, heavy, extreme)
* other comments/observations you have
Sounds like fun, right? And we have a sneaky suspicion that riders of the J have quite a few comments/observations to make after last week.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Don't Muni know themselves where their trains are, how long they take, whether they are bunched?
They could just look at the nextmuni maps and get all this info.
I don't know whether this is true on the J, but for me the NextBus data is pretty useless during the morning commute; it doesn't tell you when buses are full and have to start skipping stops.
Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks
Duh: Auditor's report finds Muni dissatisfaction growing (SF Gate)
www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/17/BAGAAPA8BM23.DTL
Thank you. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks Muni sucks
Haha... oh boy. I bet most MUNI riders have an earfull or two. Just ask the people inconvenienced by the crash(es) and breakdowns. I know I got an earfull on my way home tonight about the lack of K, L, and M trains.
Off this topic, but does anyone notice that the 15 still exists at its former northern terminal in Muni's new downtown map.
hxxp://transit.511.org/providers/maps/SF_411200720355.gif
Muni nostalgia.
You know, I'd totally be willing to do this if I was stuck using the J, but since the BART is an option for me as well -- and so darn quick -- I just don't think I can take the extra time to help out Muni. It'd add 30-40 minutes to my commute, minimum.
First the TEP does a test run of efficiencies on the 1 California, which happens to serve Newsom's base of D2 as well as link swing districts 1 and 3.
Now the TEP is doing another efficiency test on the J Church line, which happens to run through D8, which Newsom lost in 2003.
One has to wonder of Newsom and Harrington got together early last year, acknowledging that MUNI was going down the toilet, and decided to spring a process designed to ripen as the election drew near so as to demonstrate to the voters that Newsom really was doing something about MUNI...
Add to the misapprehension of Nat Ford that as the chief executive of an independent agency, he works for Gavin Newsom to the almost lily whiteness of the TEP-PAG and TEP-CAC as compared to the diversity of MUNI customers, and you have a recipe for a planning process that is all but guaranteed to produce inaccurate results.
Didn't someone say that MUNI did better the further away that politicians were from it? With Ford seeing himself as Newsom's beotch, we are going to see typical Newsom standards of quality--fresh off the press release yet decaying into absurdity upon closer inspection--applied to MUNI.
Many on the TEP-CAC are of the nonprofit bent, whose legitimacy as "community leaders" is predicated on their level of access to senior MUNI/MTA staff. Don't count on the tamed pets to bite the hand that feeds them and nurtures Newsom's reelection.
Planthold suggested that we on the TEP-CAC are merely patsies for Newsom and Ford.
I'm glad I ride a bike.
I lived near 24th/Noe for 4 years and had a Fast Pass for most of that and I probably took the J less than 30% of the time. If it wasn't in sight from the 24th St. platform, it was BART for me. The J sucks. Nice to know they're going to at least look at the situation, but I wouldn't hold my breath that it'll do any good.
There you go again, Marc. Why is everything about race to you?
"Why is everything about race to you?"
That post was all about the politics of the TEP.
Are you trying to say that there is no racism in San Francisco politics?
Planthold makes the case in beyondchron.com today that the PAG is comprised almost exclusively of people who see themselves as too important not to drive. Would on expect that motorists are best poised to reform MUNI?
The PAG and CAC are comprised mostly of middle class educated white people. We middle class educated white people are as qualified to represent the MUNI riding public as the motorists on the PAG are to represent riders.
In order for representative government to work, it has to actually be representative.
Race, class, mobility are all factors.
-marc
First the TEP does a test run of efficiencies on the 1 California, which happens to serve Newsom's base of D2 as well as link swing districts 1 and 3.
Now the TEP is doing another efficiency test on the J Church line, which happens to run through D8, which Newsom lost in 2003.
Ah yes, that dastardly TEP. Doing a study on a district that Gavin won, and on the swing districts, and on a district he lost!! A pattern of nefarious evil-doing if I ever saw one. Clearly there is a conspiracy at work here.
Given that the transit starved neighborhoods are in Districts 6, 9, 10 and 11, yeah, focusing on D1,2,3 and D8 are pretty politically motivated.
Given that Newsom has tied his reelections strategy to appearing to fix MUNI, would you expect that Stuart ($240K) Sunshine was not put into place expressly to fix things like this?
-marc
Marc, you seem to have this obsession with racism that just doesn't make sense in this case. Sure, there are problems with racism (and 10000 other isms, which I'm sure you would be glad to list), but your skin color doesn't matter when you're stuck in the subway, or waiting for a bus that doesn't show up.
(Which raises the question: if you don't like the fact that "middle class educated white people" are on the TEP CAC, why are you on it? To defend Muni riders from people like you?)
On the actual subject at hand: this J Church measurement is a good idea, I think. It certainly makes sense to do some analysis of a light rail line to figure out how to make it run more efficiently. The J has relatively more of its line in mixed traffic than do some other lines (M, N), and it hasn't been through a major upgrade recently (K) or built from scratch with a vast expense of taxpayer dollars (T).
And compared to the other remaining line (L), it has a constituency that is more supportive of mass transit and more likely to accept transit priority measures (and actually LESS likely to vote for Newsom in a competitive election). So it stands to reason that J improvements would actually have a better chance of being accepted by the ever-powerful Neighborhoods. No David Heller or Ed Jew on this line.
Finally, the J is used for pull-outs and pull-ins from Green Division, so significant speed improvements would help EVERY line a little bit.
So I would urge people to participate in this project if at all possible.
Andrew, there are those white people who acknowledge that we only bring part of the perspective to the table and those of us who think that we know it all.
Race is a seminal issue in San Francisco for most people of color and some white folks. You are free to dismiss those concerns. It is brave of you to do so in public.
Let me remind you that SF is more than 50% people of color. Are you suggesting that accurate representation could happen if there were a handful of women on the TEP CAC?
I assume you sit with me on the TEP-CAC. Not that we vote on anything, but did MUNI bring the J Church project to the TEP for our thoughts? Or was it decided by management behind the scenes? If we are to take time to serve on a CAC, then what is the point of a CAC if early demonstration projects are not even discussed in open session?
Next time I should just bring a potted plant to the TEP-CAC meeting, set it on the table, because that seems to be the extent that TEP-CAC input is considered.
Remember when most all of us consensed to an early demonstration project of POP systemwide? That would surely speed up vehicles, but, like fare free MUNI, is not on the agenda for a downtown dominated TEP.
-marc
One need only view the position of the moderate/conservative political quarters to the predominantly black TWU compared to their view of the POA.
Person for person, the TWU does a much better job of delivering MUNI services, all things considered, than the POA does of delivering policing services.
Does anyone think that if the Controller surveyed public opinion on the SFPD that they'd score any higher than a D+? Of course, there would be no political percentage in Harrington releasing such numbers.
Yet the TWU, for all of its faults, is regularly used as a scapegoat to distract attention from MUNI's structural deficiencies.
Do we need labor reform at the SFPD and MTA? Of course. But the only way we can see significant labor reform is for it to originate from the left, rather than from the right, as in the proposed Charter Amendment by Peskin and Daly.
-marc
The J has the worst ontime performance of any MUNI streetcar line, by far. Between that and its new role shuttling passengers to the Caltrain station, that's why it was chosen for the efficiency improvement program.
Race and class have nothing to do with it, despite the insinuations of certain hypersensitive, self-defeating leftists.
The J Church line's timeliness is arguably less important than the pathetically underserviced neighborhood feeder routes.
Of course, the CAC was not asked about any of this.
Once the Board of Supervisors unfunds Stuart Sunshine's position, count on the Mayor's office to resume its drift on MUNI reform.
If the people making the reforms don't look like the people who are going to have to live with the reforms, then democratic theory implies that one is going to get reforms that don't conform with the needs of transit users.
And so it goes when we elect a village idiot as our philosopher king.
-marc
I really don't know marc, my impression from having gone to one TEP CAC meeting is that it was pretty racially diverse. Next time I will bring a scorecard and rate each of you and report back to sfist with the results. If the board is not 50% people of color, it is pretty darn close.
The people you should be upset at about the lack of diversity on the CAC is the city council, since each city council member appoints one board member, right? I am not quite sure why you rant about Newsom on this topic. How many appointees does he have?
As for class, poor people tend not to get involved in the political process, for reasons that are far too long and complex to get into on this blog. I am happy to talk in length about it in person after a CAC meeting if you would like. I am actually qualified to have an opinion on this, since I grew up poor and am middle class now.
Someone keeps disrupting MTA facilitator when she keeps trying to present factual information everyone on the board needs to be able to make good decisions later. If you paid any attention to the process, you would know that right now we are in the information gathering phase of the project. Hopefully you can help keep the project on track.
Anecdotal stories and individual complaints about Muni's service are not really part of the CAC's mission scope, at least not as I understand it, but I am not a member of that august body, so perhaps I am confused about this.
Well, if Marc brings his potted plant, it would be less likely to disrupt the proceedings!
I thought the TEP CAC was supposed to provide advice from the community to the process?
Is the advisory committee a just passive body with a misnomer?
Can passive bodies advise?
Why did TEP CAC members learn of the J Church project in the news?
Why call a passive body an advisory committee if its role is to sit back and watch the proceedings proceed as decided by political fixers like Stuart Sunshine?
NoeValleyJim:
'If the board is not 50% people of color, it is pretty darn close.'
That should dbe fun to watch.
'The people you should be upset at about the lack of diversity on the CAC is the city council, since each city council member appoints one board member, right? I am not quite sure why you rant about Newsom on this topic. How many appointees does he have?'
The Controllers Office determined the makeup of the TEP-CAC in coordination with the MTA.
Supervisors did not appoint members to my knowledge.
Newsom comes into play because in spite of Prop E which makes the MTA an independent agency, Nat Ford feels like he works for Gavin Newsom instead of his Board of Directors. Newsom and Sunshine have leveraged this misapprehension towards bolstering Newsom's reelection campaign with the TEP.
From that perspective, it makes sense that the project would have political predetermined outcomes and that the CAC is merely an appendage to a done deal process. 18 months is not enough time to do the work to effectively study the MUNI network and external connections.
-marc
Jobless idiot trying to use big words to impress us. You dont even use Muni so go back to running people over in critical mass.
How long are we going to let these professional activists boss us around? These people dont work, they suck from our tax tit, and they wouldnt know a non-white person if he bit them on the ass. Hipster punks telling us about diversity! How many black people at Zeitgiest?? Are they even allowed in?
Muni sucks so fix it. No one fucking cares about your stupid acronyms and your poser organizations. Your the problem not the solution. I know! Blame Israel!! Thats sure to get Gonzalez 100 votes, which is what this is really about.
Perhaps the above unintelligible exchange illustrates a key problem with MUNI: too many people having pissing matches and not enough attention being paid to fixing the freaking train schedules.
SEC. 8A.111. CITIZENS' ADVISORY COUNCIL.
The Agency shall establish a Citizens' Advisory Council of fifteen members which shall consist of one person appointed by each member of the Board of Supervisors and four members appointed by the Mayor. Each member must be a resident of the City and County. No fewer than ten members of the Council must be regular riders of the Municipal Rail-way. At least two members must use the Municipal Railway's paratransit system, and at least three of the members must be senior citizens over the age of 60. The membership of the Council shall be reflective of the diversity and neighborhoods of the City and County. The Council may provide recommendations to the Agency with respect to any matter within the jurisdiction of the Agency and shall be allowed to present reports to the Agency's board of directors. The members of the Council shall be appointed to four-year terms and shall serve at the pleasure of their appointing power. Staggered terms for the initial appointees to the Council shall be determined by lot.
Commenters, we do ask that you endeavor to submit remarks that are both funny and polite. A combination thereof is preferable, but we'll settle for one or the other if their union eludes you.
Sorry, the Municipal Code is pretty dry reading. I will try to spice it up a bit.
Marc, I assume that there is going to be a point in the process where the CAC brainstorms solutions to the problems that become evident in the earlier, information gathering phase of the process. Perhaps I am wrong in that assumption. I actually hope you can help research this and let us know what the schedule is. I hope we are not there just to listen to a bunch of presentations that the MTA intends to show us. I remember seeing a schedule for future meetings, but I don't see one on the TEP website.
http://www.sfgov.org/site/uploadedfiles/controller/csa/TEP_BRF.pdf
Is a high level overview of the process and it says that we are supposed to be doing "planning" right now, so I can see your frustration.
Jim, you are confusing the CACs, and that's the City Charter, not the code.
Section 8A.109 is my favorite MTA-related chapter. Hopefully Peskin and Daly will finally do their job under the charter and aggressively pursue funding sources to call the Mayor's hand on fare free MUNI.
As far as transit CAC land goes, there is a MTA-CAC which advises the MTA (MUNI, DPT).
There is a MUNI-CAC which advises the MUNI.
The topic of this thread is none of those.
And there is a MTA/MUNI TEP-CAC, which along with the Policy Advisory Group and the Technical Advisory Group, advises staff on the Transportation Effectiveness Project.
Visit sftep /dot/ com for details.
BTW, my husband and I just cut a big fat property tax check to Phil Ting, so back off with the tax taker talk.
And as far as the project timeline for the TEP goes, there really is not one. To the best of my knowledge, the TEP is being made up as it goes along, not without a substantial dollop of political considerations on the part of our supposedly apolitical Controller at the behest of our troubled Mayor.
What was it said about keeping politicos out of running MUNI? Perhaps that only applies to progressives who are under the misapprehension that MUNI should move San Franciscans around in our day to day lives instead of just bringing workers from 48th Avenue to the Embarcadero in 33 minutes of less.
-marc
One correction, Marc, the MTA CAC is the same as the Muni CAC.
Details: www.sfmta.com/cms/ccac/cacindx.htm
Can someone point me to the part of the City Code that authorizes the creation of the TEP CAC then? Or is this an entirely internal-to-MTA thing?
There is also a SFCTA, which has it's own CAC. This is the thing that oversees the disbursement of the 1/2 cent sales tax. It is unfortunate that there are all these committees with overlapping responsibility.