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Feinstein : Will She Or Won't She?
Hey did you know that sometimes Muni makes mistakes? It's totally true! For example, you might not know this, but the launch of the T line was not without the occasional snafu. We refer, of course, to the confusion with the 54-Felton: according to a source at Muni, speaking on condition on anonymity, the 54 was re-routed onto Newhall to make room for the Third -- but nobody noticed that the new streets weren't wide enough for buses.
In the end, our source says, the route was quietly returned to Third Street on May 12th. But you'd be hard-pressed to find any evidence of that; tracking Muni's route changes is an exercise in outdated memos and record-keeping that's so spotty you might as well call it "record-losing."
So what's the current situation with the 54-Felton? We're not asking that rhetorically, we really want you, readers, to clue us in. In your experience, is it running on Third street, like our informant says it's supposed to? Or is it bypassing Third for Newhall, like Muni claims? Gee whiz, it sure would be nice if we could trust the routes that Muni has posted on its site ... but we can't.
"Re-routed via Newhall (until further notice)" says Muni's April 7 Major Permanent Service Change about the 54. In fact, Muni's own description of the route still indicates that it runs along Newhall. Meanwhile the nearly-always-incorrect 511.org shows the route running along Third, like it did before; and it has a confusing schedule that seems to describe a different route altogether -- in fact, 511 has no record that the "Major Permanent Change" ever even happened. Muni's service alerts, meanwhile, aren't organized by date or by line -- as far as we can tell, they're not organized by anything, and are arbitrarily removed from the site with no rhyme or reason.
After the jump: our anonymous tipster's report!
Here's the email that we got from a Muni employee whose name must remain veiled in secrecy (although they did request the pseudonym "M.L" -- not their real initials).
As San Francisco government’s delivery of public transportation continues to implode in the dawning of the Age of the T, word comes to us of another bit of the brilliance that has marked the Municipal Transportation Agency’s oversight of Muni.The 54 Felton bus line wends its way each day from Hudson and 3rd Streets in the Bayview through the Hunters Point, Silver Terrace, University Mound, Excelsior and Oceanview districts of southern San Francisco to the end of the line at BART’s Daly City station. As with other hopeful Muni passengers throughout San Francisco, the people of these communities hope that the 54 will make it to its appointed rounds to get them to where they need to go.
The pre-T 54 route took the bus along Third Street from Hudson to Revere. But during the course of the T’s two-month weekend trial run, MTA’s finest decided that a re-route of the 54 was in order. According to the MTA’s “Major permanent service changes effective April 7, 2007” update provided to the public on its website, the MTA announced that the 54 would be rerouted off of Third Street and onto Newhall Street. In order to maintain the integrity of the 54’s service, however, the MTA also advised that that the 54 would cross Third Street at four intersections.
So April 7 dawned and the T line began its on again, off again full service. Away from the glare of the spotlights, the noble 54 and its drivers embarked on their new route—for less than one day. You see, nobody at MTA or Muni had bothered to drive the Muni busses along Newhall from Hudson to Palou, on Palou to Newhall and Lane and on Lane to Revere to determine if the streets and their intersections could handle the bulk of the busses. Lo and behold! the new route was not up to the task. The “Major permanent service change” for the 54 effective on April 7, 2007 was superseded by a “Major permanent service change” effective five weeks later, on May 12, which returned the 54 Felton back to its previous Third Street run.
With friends like the MTA, who needs a public transportation system anyway???
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That's the 54 Felton, not the 5 Fulton.
I'll bet it had more to do with SFPD's not cracking down on drugs sales on Newhall, than the size of the streets. Newhall is BVHP's highest rated place to score crack - er, so I've heard.
If the street was 2 lanes wider, then the buses could certainly pass the double-parked drug buyers. But the street is not more narrow than other neighborhood streets that buses run through all over the city. Muni planners were not familiar with the local illegal sales-driven traffic trends.
So what is a hapless planner to do? Force the police to do a better job fighting crack in the inner city, or change the frickin' route back...
After all, SF is not a transit first city - It is a drug first city.
511.org's transit planner doesn't work very well ever since it started. The damn thing bitches at you when you put in a specific address like the Hall of Justice at 850 Bryant. The system would say to choose the option 800-900 Bryant before continuing.
Also, the folks at 311 are REAL SLOW when it comes to getting help with Muni routes. Ironically, they don't like to punch in information to 511.org for "sorta accurate" results.
The 311 call center is just a large group of people with head-sets that know how to google things. They don't have any information that we don't - their entire training consists of memorizing phrases to google search.
Hey did you know that the LOLCATS meme was never funny, especially not now? It's totally true!
obvious tip of the day: turn off bold for guests