June 18, 2007
Another Driverless Muni
A three-minute wait isn't a big deal, at least not in a geological time-frame. But in transit, it can make or break a schedule. Take, for example, the 33 route this past Saturday, where a driver decided to park in the middle of the route and run some errands at Walgreen's. They're not supposed to do that, y'know.
Now obviously, it's not the end of the world. A delay of three minutes isn't going to dramatically affect the schedule, especially on a day when wait times are up around seventy minutes. Wait, what? Seventy minutes!? Good lord.
Now, what on Earth could cause such ridiculous bunching and delay? Hmm. It's almost as if some Muni employees aren't entirely invested in providing the highest possible quality of service.
Oh hey! Due to the constraints of our Movable Type rebuild queue, SFist can't offer an RSS feed of all of our Muni-related posts; but that's OK because The Armchair Dispatcher made one for us! Thanks, AD!
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"Another Headless Muni Driver"
I think there are pretty much always phantom buses running the 33 route - I caught one on Sunday (while trying to hail a cab since nextmuni was telling me a 40+ minute wait.
And if you look at the google maps there's only ever three buses on the whole route - there's no way they can keep to the schedule with only three vehicles.
what version of MT are you using these days?
personally I'm holding off upgrading until 4 comes out without too many bugs...looks good...
And while I'm griping about the 33, it's a route that would benefit having better evening and weekend service given that it connects the Haight, Castro and Mission. Probably not many people commute on it, but it's great if you're going out at night.
Reminds me of the the very first Muni I ever took. It was a hot traffic-filled day on the 49 in the late 1990's. After an hour in which we went maybe a mile on Van Ness, the driver started cursing, then pulled the bus over to the curb yelling "they don't f***ing pay me for overtime". He then got out and walked away, leaving the doors open for us to eventually figure out we were on our own.
The weirdest thing about that story is that they DO pay for overtime -- it's a huge expense, since Muni can't hire enough drivers.
I rode the 33 repeatedly this weekend, and I can promise that many of those long waits were for real. Even with one or two phantom buses, you're still stranded for long periods.
The rebuild queue issue isn't MT-related; it's a shortage of resources on the server.
Hey Matt,
My transit blog is actually called Headway, and "The Armchair Dispatcher" was the title of my post, but thanks for the shoutout anyway. (Come to think of it, that would make a decent blog name for someone.)
For convenience, here's a direct link to the MUNI category RSS feed that I put together:
SFist MUNI Category RSS feed
BTW, did you see this thing about the Prius in the Sunset tunnel on Saturday? My ride home was cut short by this joker, but at least we got an entertaining video out of it...
Maybe he had to pee. If I had to pee and couldn't stop oh man that would suck.
Are you kidding me: in the 10+ years in SF I have seen several bus drivers get off a bus and do some of the most outrageous things while the passengers are still sitting on the bus, for example:
- a driver got off and walked into a pizza shop and actually sat down out front and ate the slice with a full bus waiting, he just sat there while every screamed at him.
- several drivers who drive through the Fillmore, Lower Haight, Duboce Triangle and the Mission have stopped the bus mid-block and got off the bus to say hello to someone. Most conversations lasted between 5-8 minutes.
- A driver who got off the bus and ran into a walgreens, I can count that incident on two hands. I've seen them go into banks, book stores, coffee shops (starbucks on van ness), restaurants and my personal favorite, liquor stores!!!! the favorite stops is D&M in the Fillmore, P&S on 24th street, H&W on Hayes Street and Royal Liquors on Polk.
- how about a driver who got off a bus in front of the DMV on the 16X line and actually walked into the DMV for his appointment, someone walked in the DMV and asked him to actually continue driving and the driver told him off and we sat there for 10 minutes waiting for the bus to drive - a police officer even drove up and walked in and out of the DMV and the drive came out 5 minutes later. The cops can't even get them on the bus! He actually cussed back at us that he had every right to go in because it was his break!
incidents such as these are the reason why I stopped riding the muni system both underground and aboveground, your always late! ......even after I stopped, friends and coworkers continued to share their horror stories!
I have witnessed as a passenger on the J an operator stop at the donunt shop at 24th and Church step out of the train (it was still running) for a smoke (Kool menthol), coffee and twist. No one said a word -including myself I was so disgusted that I walked home.