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Hey check out these totally sweet NextBus thingies from Melbourne! Man, those rock. Anyway, how was your subway ride this morning? Awesome? Was it awesome? We bet it was awesome. Awesomely MELTY!
"It should reduce the delays,'' says Muni about some software switches they made this morning, in response to complaints from people who don't live here. But uh-oh, our informants tell us that the clogging was worse than ever during today's commute.
Reader Michael writes, "This time it was described as a 'software problem' at Embarcadero. I boarded a 2-car inbound L at Castro just after 6:20 am. ... Finally at 6:50 am I gave up and started walking so I could catch the 8:11 am train. [The driver] was obviously frustrated because she was being told that things would move inbound slowly, but we never got a chance to move at all. I did make the 8:11 train, but I normally wouldn't need to get up at 5:30 am and walk most of the way to do so."
How was your trainride, readers? We were getting text messages this morning from our friends saying things like, "ARGH GRR NEXTBUS SEZ 42 MIN WAIT." When you see bullshit like that, take pictures and tag them on Flickr with Muni and NextBus and SFist so we can post them!
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At the beginning of the month, I volunteered to be a spy on the J line for Muni's transit effectiveness project. I figured that this would be a good way to put my frustrations to good use. But my frustrations with the poor service on the line have forced me to give up monitoring in favor of getting to work on time. Missing trains, packed trains, hot trains, and those wacky NextBus signs (where does the train go when the sign says it's arriving, but nothing shows up?) have made a 10-15 minute walk to the nearest BART station preferable.
dunno if it's relevant but I waited from 7:25 to 7:50 at Duboce park for an inbound N that never showed up. But there were like 6 outbound N trains in that time span. I walked to Market & caught the F.
Good old F trains, they are always on time. Note to readers: take the F. If there is a traffic jam, the driver gets out of the F and raises hell with the autos. The F is where it's at. Central SF's best kept transit secret.
I like taking the F because I get a seat, but it easily doubles my commute time due to all the stops between Van Ness and Montgomery Street. Better than walking though.
I'm more of a leisure rider so I don't get too bent out of shape about MUNI's lack of reliability ... however, I have to laugh when I watched 3 N-Judah trains in a row launch Outbound from The Embarcadero. This is after waiting about 8 minutes for the first of the three N-Judah's to appear. What were the three N-Judah's followed by? Why of course they were followed a packed to the gills, passengers molesting each other, too close for comfort 1-car T-Third train.
Love it.
I've got big gripes about the MUNI Fake-Effectiveness project! The J-Church line is being spotlighted ... so just change the K & M lines to "J" and voila! Instant improvement and effectiveness!
To illustrate: on Tuesday evening, me and other passengers waiting for outbound N-Judahs - or we WOULD be passengers if we could ever get on a train! - were counting the number of J-Churches (not just going to 30th/Church but all the way to Balboa Park)relative to other lines. Every third arrival was a J .. the topper being when two J's in a row came and went and when next train got to Civic Center -- a K -- everyone on-board that had to disembark. The route was being changed to ... a J! Instant Fake Improvement for the J-line!
But wait, the next train was a J too! 42 minutes since the last N-Judah and one rolls in .. but too packed for any additional passengers to board.
I bet they schedule the next neighborhood Question Time in Noe Valley so everyone can crow about the transformation of MUNI Metro.
while it might make us jealous to look at melbourne's public transportation system, they are not to be envied. their trains cost AU$3 per ride, and there's no transferring. they offer poor service, if at all, to neighborhoods that aren't within a 3-5km circle of the city center, and crime is high at train stations even in the toniest suburbs.
i'm a native san franciscan, and muni hasn't gotten much better since i started taking it school in the early 90s, but it hasn't gotten much worse, either. it just sort of sits there, and jumps a quarter or so every five years.
the situation with the T sucks, there's no doubt about that. but the solution seems to invariably point to mismanagement, so until people agitate for somebody with the will and budget to reform Muni, we're stuck with what we've got.
Yeah, my T-Third magically changed to a K metro train somewhere down the line from Embarcadero.
If they need to hire more folks to get these things to run on schedule, it seems like folks should be willing (maybe not - I don't know) to pay up for the sake of saving time. For the sake of having more free time courtesy more reliable MUNI schedules, I'd pay $60 a month for a Muni Fast pass. $2 for a bus ride (keep it around 50 cents for the kids/seniors/disabled) is pretty fair too considering what the alternatives cost. In today's dollars and in this City, heck, $2 isn't much.
I attempted to board a two-car N at about 8:10AM (a packed NN had just passed moments ago) only to be greeted by a pack of angry metro riders trying to get on a packed two-car N.
I checked my phone to find it would be 15 more minutes until another N! I took the timely 6, which I seem to be doing more and more often, which took a good 35 minutes because of traffic and someone vomiting on the bus. At least I got a seat!
Oh, I was late for work too. Can I sue Muni for lost wages?
I think today was just messed up in a sort of karmic way. I'm the Michael cited above, and the Caltrain I took home this evening sped through San Bruno station without even slowing down. They decided to continue to South San Francisco and make everyone who wanted San Bruno get out and wait 10 minutes for the next southbound train. "Sorry folks!" What a fun day to take transit!
At least my 47-Van Ness driver tonight was a courteous driver. She even thanked me for helping put up the seat for a wheelchair.
Of course, it was Bike to Work day, don't you know? The Bicycle Messenger Gods cursed all forms of motorized transportation today.
Except BART of course, because BART allows bicycles on board.