August 20, 2007
Going To Oceanview Tonight?
At three o'clock today we tried to take the M out to SF State. The overhead sign at Church Station switched from showing only "K in Seven Minutes" to "Next Trains In Subway - Delayed." We left the station in disgust.
Looks like it's not a whole lot better two hours later. That shot is from 4:45 pm today. There are now nine M trains bunched up on the east side of West Portal, and NextMuni's predictors are showing a thirty-minute service gap out in Oceanview - a gap that should hit downtown right around six! Isn't that map fun? What are those trains doing when they piggyback each other like that? Is the world ready for Breda porn?
Sigh...good luck with that commute, everyone!
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No
mmmmmaybe.
Hey nattie nattie.... wherefor art thou? By my count there've been four major MUNI cockups since Thursday. Not a ONE has made it to any of the NextBus signs at the train stops. Not ONE has made it to sfmta.com, 511.org, or the subway P.A. system. Not ONE.
At least do us the favour of letting us know when MUNI is worse than usual so we can find an alternative way home.
For the record, the fare inspector at Montgomery swore up and down (around 2:30 today) that the switching problems MUNI had been seeing since 1 were long since resolved. I called bullshit.
Going downtown this morning, it took me ~15 minutes to get thru the West Portal station. I was even careful to board an L on Taraval... cause they've been turning every other train on Taraval into outbound Ks and Ms. Maybe the M situation is karmic retribution?
Coming home this afternoon damn near took me two hours. Two fucking hours, ten minutes of which were spent either at the W.P. approach or stuck in the station proper.
Of course, I should have seen it coming that the train was going to turn around early. I think I've only made it to my intended destination once in the past seven days without being forced to transfer to another train.
I've long said that the biggest problem with MUNI is not that the service sucks (it does), but that MUNI DOES NOT COMMUNICATE. If the union lackeys that be could at least communicate that they've failed to maintain the equipment properly, I'd be just fine with finding an alternate mode of transportation. I was talking to another passenger waiting for an L today. She had returned from Italy, and was talking about how you had to check the paper daily to see which transit workers were going to be on strike. We should be so lucky to have a resource like that!
Amen to that, #3. I've often thought that the best thing Muni could do would be to have little signs at the doors of the stations with a "MUNI is/is not screwed up right now," so you know whether it's worth your while going down into the station. NextMuni is fine, but when things get messy, it fails.
Oh, the station person at Church had no idea what was going on. Couldn't they all be on IM and get blanket blasts when things are jacked up? Or just have new words appear on the little red LED things? Or something? Anything?
Oh, right. It's MUNI.
Today 4th and King I saw on NextBus "Next N downtown 28 and 32 minutes" and "Next T downtown 24 and 30 minutes".
Good thing I wasn't in a hurry.
oh guest 5 i can trump that: last friday waiting for the T at 4th and King towards 3rd street "Next T 43 and 55 minutes" and THIS was at the begining of rush hour!
Karmic retribution for what, guest number 3? Not to belittle the L riders -- that line sucks, too -- but this is far from the first time M line riders have had to wait over an hour. I can't tell you how many times I've stood at Balboa Park, where the M originates, and seen literally dozens of trains go past without picking up the lowly passengers who need to get to either Lakeview, Oceanview or SF State.
Everything else, though, right on! This is truly pathetic. Nat Ford, everybody hates you.
Van, I thought Oceanview and Lakeview were different names for the same general area.
They are, guest 8. I just figured no one else would be familiar with the area. I like to call it the forgotten ghetto, aka that stretch of the M that only commuters to SF State and residents of said area are familiar with.
Speaking of lack of communication on Muni’s part, as well as lack of safety and reliability, yesterday in the early afternoon, I believe around 1 pm, my husband was on the Muni rail, cruising along between the Church and Castro stations, when the train came to a sudden and complete stop. Several of the passengers standing were thrown down the train’s aisle, including one woman who was injured to the point of momentarily losing consciousness. No announcement was made and the train then slowly proceeded to the Castro station where paramedics arrived to assist. Not once where the passengers told anything regarding what happened, apologized to for being hurled through the train, or informed when service would resume. My husband decided to walk the remainder of the way to W.P., which is on any given day probably a quicker, safer, and more reliable form of transit anyway.
When I was a child and the school bus stopped at a train stop we would all try and rock the bus. The next time they try to make you switch trains or when it gets "stuck" and they don't tell you anything, hold a protest - rock the train - freak out or something. Ask for your money back or a new transfer at least! The government and MUNI aren't going to do anything about it so it's up to the riders.
FYI: I spent eight months looking for a home near a BART stop so that I wouldn't have to deal with MUNI anymore (I also gave up riding my bike because of the dangerous car drivers).
@[10] Sounds like that woman should be part of next month's Muni payout! Come on down!
Hey, maybe now that Bob Barker's retired we could get him to record all the Muni voices. It would make the game that is Muni more fun and convivial. "Come on down! You could be the next contestant on The Muni is Late!" We could play games like Stinko (identify just where that funny smell is coming from), One-Away (your train is always one-away from arriving), and so on.
I'd like to punch Muni right in the face