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Yesterday evening we had one of San Francisco's primary rules illustrated to us in vivid detail. You all know it: if you want to get somewhere on time, don't take MUNI. We were headed to Noe Valley to meet a friend and cadge a ride to Oakland, and we'd told her that we would be there at 5:25.
"5:25?" she said. " You're pushing your MUNI karma by saying such a specific time."
After the jump: what happens when you push your MUNI karma, and video goodness!
How right she was. When we got to 18th and Church, the train stopped. After about five minutes, the driver told us that the train ahead of us was having a door problem, maintenance had been called, and we'd have to wait for a few minutes. Some people who were smarter than us immediately took off. We waited.
Five minutes later, the driver told us that we had to exit because our train was going to push the broken train out of service, but the train behind us would be happy to pick us up. So we all went out to the stop, where several dozen people were waiting. And waiting. The drivers mated up the trains, moved an inch or two, and...
The second train died. So, they got everyone off the third train and mated that one with the first two, creating a traffic mass of three mated MUNI trains and a couple of hundred frustrated commuters. Most people took off at this point, trying to find a cab or hoofing it up the big hill at Dolores Park:
Eventually, the three trains started to move...backwards, probably to head to the N tracks and out of the way. Some poor folks kept waiting at the stop, looking bewildered.
We're not blaming the drivers here - those trains probably conked due to MUNI's ongoing inability to maintain their trains, which break down all the time. We do blame MUNI because we never heard an announcement as to how they were going to get to where they wanted to go. Another train? Shuttle busses? Why wasn't that information given to the drivers, who could then have told the people waiting?
That so many just up and left is a testament to what San Franciscans expect from MUNI these days - when our bus or train breaks down, we start to walk because we don't have faith in the ability of the system to actually fix the problem and get us where we want to go. What scares us is that the J is the line with all of the big on-time guns aimed at it this month. Even with all that attention, a one-car breakdown killed the line for nearly an hour and nobody was able to tell us if anything was coming to pick us up. Come on, MUNI. Just tell us what's happening - that way we'll be able to figure out best how to get where we want to go. Just tell us...please?
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you can blame the maintenance workers from muni for all of that. they often sleep out of sight from the cameras on the job. it's quite common.
Even when running fine the J is the joke of a "metro" system that is itself a joke
Between 30th and downtown I can't even count the number of stop signs, traffic light, slows to a crawl.
A big reason why the doors are always broken on MUNI is because stupid passengers pull the doors back when they are closing, which not only pulls the doors off track and creates broken door nightmares like the one just described, but it also inflicts the most horrendous screeching noise on all the other passengers.
MUNI can solve this by:
1) make it more difficult to open closing doors (you don't see people doing that on BART)
2) tell the MUNI operators to keep the doors open longer when they see people trying to board (this slows down time, of course, but you know.. what they're doing now is ultimately even slower)
3) turn off that f-ing noise - it's one of 3,000 reasons why I no longer ride MUNI and instead only bike.
Maybe set up a spray paint system that "tags" people that pull back the doors. Only problem is that folks in wheel chairs or walkers would get the paintworks when they're really just, well, slow ... aging baby boomer and/or disabled and all.
Muni Metro works great for me... but then, I rarely go past Castro.
Vespa...the anti Muni.
I was on the J that broke down. The driver mentioned it was a propulsion problem. I don't remember anything about the doors being broken. Figures, I normally take BART to 24th and walk home. The one day I take the J to run an errand on Church street, I end up having to hoof it over the hill. What a joke.
There was a lot of strangeness on MUNI yesterday...from the J follies to the increase in "Balboa Park to Ocean Beach" trains, to the running of buses on the N line, to a ton of delays on the T, etc etc. It's as if that .001" of rain caused all sorts of drama.
we have done a great job of balancing budgets for MUNI by cutting maintenance and training....every year the politcos say "yay us we balanced the budget" not realizing that the way they've been doing it, deferring maintenance and the like, they're just setting up MUNI for bigger problems later.
then again, the People of SF buy this nonsense and don't seem to mind bad MUNI service, so why should anyone at MUNI care? Everyone accepts that MUNI has to suck, and don't demand any accountablity. Instead they go to Burning Man or wine country or grumble, but let's face it it is not like anyone complaining will DO something to change things. Hence the MUNI misery for us all.
i've run out of fingers and toes to count the number of times inbound or outbound that the j-church has broken down or the times i've waited at a downtown station for a j to go home only to have n after n and m after m and otehr lines go out, but j takes forever. truly the bastard step-child of the rail lines.
"cadge a ride"?
greg, what do you propose that people do? i report problems to the muni site... but i certainly don't have the power to fire people at muni, don't have access to their systems and data to analyze and/or reroute schedules, nor do i have any control over their budget or the budget in sf. the supervisor i voted for ostensibly listed muni improvements as his platform but obviously that hasn't worked out either. so i just grumble for now, like most of the other muni riders that are in the same boat. i'd be pleased to hear suggestions..
About the doors:
1.) The doors themselves are of a problematic design. Boeing couldn't get them right, and Boston ditched them with their Boeing LRVs. MUNI's inability to standardize on high (or low floor) platform is why we have these junky doors.
2.) Door problems are pretty easy to solve. First of all, the driver can operate the train with the door open just fine. Second, if a door is being rude, it's generally a matter of forcing it closed, and locking it out. This is generally a GOOD idea when the door won't close completely on its own. For whatever reason, I've been on a few trains where the operator in question is completely unwilling to do something, and the operator of the train behind comes on board and locks the doors to get everyone moving.
3.) Crunching people in the doors is not the solution. Providing a superior method of allowing the doors to re-open is. When a driver "locks" the doors, you have no other way to re-open them except for physically preventing them from closing properly. The doors SHOULD NOT "lock" until they're completely closed.
A propulsion problem seems much, much more likely. However, at the Church yard there are a couple of mothballed trains (including one really, really rusted Boeing piece of shit). Why they couldn't retrofit it with the proper decoupler and just use THAT as a tow vehicle is a whole mother matter. Both the Boeing and Breda cars are absolute trash and should never have been bought in the first place. For the Bredas, at least, we have Slick Willey and BAH to thank. Why we got hoodwinked into buying from a completely inexperienced LRV maker is beyond me.
But, yeah, people who are complaining about MUNI's complete inability to communicate have hit the nail on the head. These failings would be a lot more tolerable if MUNI would just announce "dead train, get off and find some more reliable way to get home". Communication is the one thing that is completely lacking across the board. It doesn't take a multi-million dollar ATCS, it doesn't take fucking NextBus, it doesn't take much. Just ensure that MUNI employees (be they media whores, operators, dispatch, or people providing info to 311) put out useful, accurate, consistent, and timely information.
hmm...i guess, all i can say is that there should be proper maintenance to the MUNI. perhaps some people usually got angry when MUNI had breakdowns..but atleast somehow it can be minimized through such proper maintenance..just like checking for their train parts..my dad usually did regular car inspections, car maintenance (ex: ">bmw engine parts)..these kind of routine, i would say, can help avoid MUNI breakdown..
$#%@ing thing broke down again at 9:00 this morning at 15th and Church. Yeesh...
Good Lord. Well...as mattymatt says, complain, complain, complain!
okay, here's a modest proposal. By referendum, have SF dispose of all city cars except police and fire forcing, building inspectors et all to use Muni getting around to their appointments. Same for mayor, supes, ALL of them. Save the city huge reg, insurance maintenance cost.
As I've often said the best way to get real change at Muni is to force the people in charge of the system to use it exclusively. I could be wrong, but I seriously doubt any of them ever bother to actually try and use it and thus never have any idea of the problems or any incentive to fix them.