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Muni's latest shortcoming -- a Revised Transit Effectiveness Project report -- is a great example of exactly how fucked the transit agency is. You'll have to download eighty-two separate PDFs (EIGHTY-TWO!), some of which are rotated sideways for no discernible reason, if you want to see all of the maps of their proposed changes.
Or you could just jump over to our Flickr stream; we downloaded all 82 of them for you, un-rotated the sideways ones, converted them to JPEGs, and put them into a nice little slideshow. Now you can easily see, for example, how they're going to change the F or the N or the 16 or the 33. (A couple routes are missing because we hit our monthly storage quota.)
You're welcome.
So why did Muni make the maps impossibly un-browseable? Why did they hide everything in eighty-two randomly-rotated PDFs? Our best guess is that it's a reflection of the agency's total lack of concern for giving their customers -- us -- what we need. They just don't care about serving you. Okay, that's not fair; we know a couple of Muni people who, bless their hearts, somehow summon the strength to try to raise Muni's standards. But we can count those people on one hand.
Sadly, this customer-service lapse is probably the clearest indication we're ever going to get from the TEP about where Muni's greatest point of failure lies. And we bet you a billion dollars that they're just going to ignore it.
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mattymatt - please do not ever use the words "customer" AND "service" in the same sentence when referring to MUNI or whatever they decided to rename it. They do not now nor ever have given a shit about providing service to anyone. Least of all the people who pay to ride that pathetic load of shit of a transit system.
~~Ya listening Mr Ford???~~~
They are all - from the bottom up AND the top down - paycheck collecting flunkeys. Including Newsom and that retarded, cell phone yapping cart jockey who was filing her nails while crashing an F-Market into the back of another F-Market. The dumbass wasn't even trying to circle the 19 or the 49 around something difficult!!!
*Question to self - How stupid do you have to be to crash a transit vehicle that is riding on IRON RAILS??!!" Yeah, thanks for answering that one dopey smurf."*
The best thing MUNI/SFMTA could do to fix the public transit is the following.
1. Hire an impartial outsider to FIRE EVERYONE immediately and shut the entire system down for one full week
2. Spend one full week interviewing all QUALIFIED APPLICANTS & make appropriate hiring decisions.
3. TRAIN those applicants on how to run a transit system.
Gee - wasn't that easy.
I hate MUNI and anyone who has ever touched it for political purposes.
mattymatt, i dont know if you did this on your own or if there are other people who helped out (and should also thus be commended), but THANK YOU!!!!!!
seriously, i usually just come here looking for interesting and quirky news/discussions, but this is a downright GREAT use of the site to help those of us out who A. did realize these were up, and B.would surely not have had the patience to download them.
I hope brock gives you some sort of big bonus/gift/jug of hard liquor for your work, you deserve it!
Uh, last I checked there were plain text versions for each route, and one big text version for the whole system.
http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mtep/TextsummaryofTEPrecommendations.htm
as ridiculous as this is, i am pleased that they are planning more N trains during peak hours. can't complain about that.
Thanks for the heads-up mattymatt, appreciate it.
Please let us know of updates, sans hate please.
Thanks
Thank you.
Mattymatt, out of curiosity, how long did it take you to do this? (i.e. how hard would it have been for MUNI to have provided this information?)
Quick summary of the changes: could the people running the show be any more drug addled?!
F - reduce A.M. service in order to pander to commuters
S - discontinue, despite most of the metro usage being between Embarcadero and Castro... too bad our much vaunted subway is at capacity
N/L - no improvements, if we wave our hands things will get better. Ha!
J/M - turnback at 19th Ave.... what the hell? Talk about a recipe for disaster
10 - Eliminated... sucks for the rich people displaced by the T. Too bad there's still no direct replacement for the 15, and there's still no direct connection to City College
17 - No more back up connection to West Portal... cause after ensuring that the 28 and M will be less reliable, why would we need a backup?
26 - Bye bye. Suckers get to take the 14.
28 - Speed it up by making the route longer and less reliable
36 - Fuck the carless old people on Twin Peaks, they can go to the Safeway on Mission instead.
66 - No more connection from the Parkside to the inner Sunset, and hell to improve reliability they're going to run it on 19th instead of on 30th Ave. No problems there!
82X - Why does this route even exist? It carries maybe a few hundred people a day. Maybe.
Did I miss anything?
izzyizzy: more trains are great? They're currently not meeting existing headways, what makes you think that they'll have any luck meeting these improved standards?
I think what increased N service means is that instead of waiting half an hour and then having three trains show up at once, you'll wait half an hour and four trains will show up at once.
At the western end of the N Judah line, there are usually two or three trains just sitting, plus a supervisor sitting in his/her car drinking coffee, doing her nails, or whatever. Generally, there's another train stopped at the 46th Street 7-11, scoring a snack or drugs, or any of the myriad goodies to be had on that corner. Guess the increased service will just lengthen the line of idling trains.
The bus shelter at La Playa has been "restored" and turned into a private bathroom for MUNI employees, notwithstanding the public facilities 50 feet away. So, you have to wait on the street in all weather. If it's raining, the driver of the lead train won't open the doors and let you in, while you wait for the mythical departure signal to come from the supervisor who isn't supervising.
I was "randomly" selected for the TEP survey a couple of years ago. I truthfully answered that I used my car for every trip and that none of the hypothetical changes offered in the survey would ever get me to ride MUNI again.
I don't see any changes to the service that would change my mind. The posts that complain about MUNI's utter disregard for courtesy and convenience are spot on.
LOL @ Chet
Thanks to MM for doing the legwork. Yep, MUNI does suck. Yet it sucks less than it used to. For folks who don't use MUNI, I can see why not. Unfortunately, it's not going to be MUNI which encourages you to use, it's going to be the City continuing on its quest to criminalize the car. Which is too bad.
One point which jumped out at me - am I right that a couple of days after the Chron prints an article saying that the "F" is too successful and that they don't have enough of the cool old trains to alleviate crowding that TEP says "let's create TWO separate lines running from the wharf with the cool old trains"?
jcsnotes: TEP also says the 30 isn't that crowded or heavily used.
remember folks you are not a customer of muni - you OWN muni, it is OUR system and we are CITIZENS who need to remind the folks in City Hall the system is supposed to work for us OWNERS of said system.
and if they can't get a publicly owned muni right, can we trust them with our lightswitches?
what i would like to know is what the "net change" factor is.
like, lets say that today you totaled the number of miles/minutes that each bus ran and added them all together and called that factor "total-muni-time/day"
given that this is a "weekday" factor, how will these new implements change it? will we see overall reduced service across lines, or in the end, will the reduction in a few lines still be less than the increase in other lines?
I feel like for a heavily used and relied upon public transit system, the net change of total-muni-time/day should NEVER decrease until it can plateau at perfect service levels (whatever that means) relative to the population size
the City continuing on its quest to criminalize the car.
Waaaaah!
They raised my parking ticket fees by ten dollars...they're criminalizing driving!
All I'm saying is, y'all fake one percenters don't know what real car drivin' criminals are like.
zippy_monster, your review of the TEP changes isn't even close to accurate.
e.g. "TEP says the 30 isn't crowded or heavily used".
What part of they're going to run more 30-Stocktons to "RELIEVE CROWDING" don't you understand?
I checked to see if you were looking at the 30X by mistake, but they're even running more 30Xs for the same reason.
As a Tenderloin activist, I am relieved that Muni had the sense to alter their plans with the 19.
Under the TEP's original draft, the 19 was going to become a "loop" around Downtown -- so that confused tourists who get off BART at Market Street could safely get to North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf.
Trouble is, that means Tenderloin residents would lose a direct route to SF General Hospital. Many of our clients rely on SFGH, and don't have a car -- so a direct bus to get there is extremely important.
We complained to Muni about this at public meetings -- and I'm glad they listened, because they've restored that access on the 19.
zippy_monster, I really don't think you actually read these TEP proposals.
Just off the top of my head, changes you're misrepresenting:
N - actually getting more frequent service, as well as boarding enhancements and probably ticketing machines
17 - backup connection to West Portal is now going to be the 43
28 - Gets a shorter route and more buses.
28L - takes over longer route but stops less.
36 - is only losing Warren Drive, which isn't Twin Peaks, it's mostly UCSF medical students. The real "carless old people on Twin Peaks" can take the new 32 direct to the Castro Safeway. Also, if they're old, they can take paratransit. The city will even pay for their damn taxi vouchers.
Changes we can argue about:
S-Castro - Needs to go. Usually runs empty. Clogs up the Market St. subway which is near capacity at peak hour. Screws up headways because these trains have to turn back twice in the middle of the line (at Castro and Embarcadero). Redundant with 6 other trains, the FKLM and (partly) JN.
26 - Good riddance. 1 block away from the city's biggest transit corridor. Why does this bus even exist?
Thank you so much for doing this.
Not to quibble, but I only see 54 images in the Flickr set. Where are the others?
bornandraised,
Muni is currently increasing the number of trained drivers. So unless they're forced to cut service because of the economy, the total number of runs (buses, trains, vans) should increase through the TEP.
But you're missing one of the major points of the TEP, which is to increase frequency of service by speeding up runs.
If a driver can run his route faster (because it's shorter, more direct, has fewer stops, or boards faster with TransLink) then he can do, say, 10 trips a shift instead of 8. That means that the total amount of Muni service on that line would increase by 25% (and service frequency would increase by 25%).
I own MUNI?
Then why can't I fire everyone? Or at least hire someone else to fire everyone?
theo, thank you for the clarification,
as a science yet nonphysics major i believe the more proper calculation for my net factor should have been clarified as a net longest distance/shortest time comparison. given that the full day was my time factor i was looking for the longest distance performed during that day. i am glad to hear that that distance is being performed by 1 rather than many buses.
Actually, not referring to the parking fees at all, rather the congestion charges that many on the Board of Supes seem intent on exploring. Also referring to the mid-to-late 90's SF FiDi and SOMA moratorium on new buildings being able to incorporate adequate parking so as to compel workers to use public transit (as examples check out the parking "garages" at 55 and 101 Second Street some time, I've seen 2 story apt buildings in the Richmond with more garage spots). The sort of parking available at, e.g., Embarcadero Center might not be possible today.
Basic point remains the same, the City realizes that they aren't going to get people to use MUNI by improving it on the margins so they'll use more indirect means to push transit.
And, as others have said, even MUNI gets that the 30 is crowded. Interestingly, the only fix I see is that they'll use the double buses all day and on all of the route as opposed to just the short runs from Van Ness and N. Point to Caltrain. I guess this means 25% more capacity in theory? Not bad I guess.
So more clusterfucked trains on the J that now get to get snarled all the way to SFSU? This helps my commute how?
Will we still be sitting at stop signs still and are they removing stops? Do we have any relocated stops to the other side of the street or signal priority? How does this help us get into the tunnel any faster than the current 10 minutes to go 100 feet?
Will this help me get to the ballpark on the N in under an hour?
They are also planning to eliminate the 7-Haight, and then reroute the 6-Parnasus so that from Stanyan inbound it follows the old 7-Haight route, down Haight in the flats instead of up the hill and down Masonic.
This means that a whole bunch of people now have to walk a steep up hill climb each night.
I started taking the 12 when the 15 was done away with. Every morning I feel like I'm a tourist on my ride to work, with stunning views of the bay along the Embarcadero. I knew it was too good to last. Plans for the 12: "Would eliminate indirect segment along the Embarcadero"
Theo: check out the existing headways for the N. The TEP proposes to decrease them by a few minutes. Great. Awesome. Fantastic. When's the last time that the N ever ran at once every ten minutes? I can propose that the N run every 90 seconds. Will it happen?
Theo: they plan to use the articulated trolley coaches for the 30. What articulated trolley coaches? Currently the TC artics are by far the least reliable part of the MUNI fleet, and they're all being used by heavily used routes.
Don't forget the 14L, which is also supposed to use (presumably articulated) TCs now too. And the normal 14 on diesels? Laugh.
So they'll order more...
Where are they going to put more double length TCs?
Where are they going to get more? The people that made our newest TCs went out of business a long time ago.
Theo:
http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mtep/documents/SFTEP%20Service%20Evaluation%20(October%202007).pdf
Yeah.
Oh man. I wish I'd had that many muni choices going down to West Portal/SFSU when I went to high school. Lowell students will be pleased.
Well, the review has some improvements. The 35 was slated to turn around at 24th, using Jersey. Not only would that be a very difficult turnaround on a narrow street, most denizens of the 35 are taking it because it takes them up the steep slopes of Diamond Street.
Not only did they bring back the section up Diamond, but they took out the little used section on Addison and Bemis, then extended it via Diamond Heights/Diamond to Glen Park BART! Tom Radulovich is partying tonight! The 35 will now be a much quicker connection from Eureka/Noe to BART than the 48, and it will be easier to go from there to BART to downtown than there to the Castro to MUNI to downtown.
Supposedly people have requested the 35 be extended to BART before but the route would have gone past someone in MTA's top brass' house - unacceptable. This route avoids that problem by using Diamond Heights.
The TEP plan looks wonderful to me. I hope they get to execute it without much NIMBY meddling.
I think the only way MUNI could please zippy_monster is to buy him a car.
I am sure this TEP is an impovement but I am still hearing nothing about the fundemental issues around running street cars and buses on streets
Is this a seperate project or are we being set up for dissapointment?
As Zipply stated what difference does it make if you are going to run more lightrail serive if it all just bunches and is delayed?
Looking at the plan I expect my J-serice to get worse not better with the plan to run it to SFSU
I still expect to stop at stop signs and traffic lights, to run slowly down Church St, to take 10 minutes to even cross Market and line up in the tunnel, to often be delayed entering the tunnel, to often be delayed and stopped in the tunnel
But now it will be even less reliable since it has to cross the clusterfuck at Geneva
Excellent
This will definitely result in 3-4 N's being stacked up at a time instead of the 2-3 we see now.
These are just recommendations, right? It still all has to be approved?
davel: wanna make me happy? Here's how to start:
Whole system: POP NOW.
26: Leave it alone, there are valid reasons to have this "duplicate" service... unlike the 28/29/43/M.
28L: should be more frequent, and shorter. Not longer. Geary to DC BART. Going all the way to Balboa Park duplicates the 29, M, and the 43?. The 29 is a prime example of why you don't want to run all the way around the city. It's not going to be reliable.
28: Restore service levels to what they were four years ago. Geez.
36: Increase service, leave the route alone.
66: Steep hills and twice the riders of the 82X should warrant a proper bus. Don't run it on an already congested corridor (19th) and hope for an improvement.
82X: Eliminate or replace with vans.
J: Signal priority at 18th.
K,L,M,N: Stop the short runs, remove stop signs, realign the platforms as appropriate, signal priority, and fix the damn subway. Buy some streetcars from Kinki-Sharyo already so that we have enough vehicles to run two car service *constantly* on the L, M, N.
S: Fix the Castro turnback. I tend to take the L home *after* they stop running the S. Lots of people get on at Montgomery or Powell only to get off at Church + Castro.
F: Run the PCCs in two car trains, and bring back an 8 or 8X to supplement it.
To annnna, if you're still reading:
It seems like the elimination of the 17th connection to West Portal makes it worse for Lowell students. Or am I missing some other connector?
Why can't TEP just eliminate the 66 completely and put those resources into creating a useful 48 bus that runs evenings and weekends? Wasn't this the original plan?
Although it's been fun for years watching empty 66s fly down Quintara without even pausing for stop signs, for the most part it's just a waste of biodiesel.
Thumbs up to the TEP plan. NOw, can we have the buses that line up on Davis Street between Sacramento and California a little after 3pm each work day turn off their engines instead of sitting their and idling SF taxpayer and bus fare money away?
Didn't a commentor say there was an extension of the 43 that would make up for the lost 17? That would practically have shot me straight home. If not, then yeah, lots of cranky nerdy kids. I once missed the M only to walk up and miss the K and then walk back down and miss both the 17 and another M. Ugh.
So, here's how I did it, in case you're curious. It took about a half hour.
- I used DownThemAll to quickly download all of the PDFs.
- I used OSX's Automator to convert the PDFs to JPEGs and then rename them sequentially.
- I picked out the ones that needed to be un-rotated, and used Automator to fix them.
- And then Uploadr to stick them in our Flickr stream.
The most time-consuming part was downloading and uploading. The conversion and rotation was simple.
I think that extending the 14-Mission just that tiny little bit so that it now goes to the Daly City BART was one of the few really good ideas from this. It was a few blocks away up a large hill before. Now it comes down to a major transit connection. An obvious fix that makes plenty of sense.
The fuckwittery that they're doing with the M/J is ludicrous though. Especially for those of us who live below the cut-off for the M. Now you can either transfer just to get to West Portal, Ocean, or the Castro or take the overly long route along surface streets with the J where you'll be at the end of a newly extended line and don't get the benefit of going through the subway until you're already downtown.
While it's nice that they're at least vaguely trying this is still just spinning their wheels. They're not trying to address any of the deeper systemic problems of the system, just thinking that they can move a few lines around and suddenly transit will work. It won't. We need a full subway system. It's one of the only ways we'll ever get transit to work properly in this city. The fact that nobody can be bothered to push for a good, reasonable (not that Central crap) subway system (and even then it would take 5 times longer to build than anywhere else... ala the Bay Bridge and Translink) is proof that nobody is ever going to really fix our problems.
Buses just don't work in SF.
Zippy,
I agree that it's suspicious that anyone would say the 30 Stockton wasn't crowded. But a TEP slideshow from 10 months ago doesn't prove much. The current plans Mattymatt posted admit that it's crowded, and that they're going to increase service frequency.
I don't know if they're planning on buying more articulated buses, but they should -- there are ones out there now that are a hell of a lot better than the ones Muni now owns.
There's no space problem for diesel buses -- I'm assuming they would store them at Islais Creek.
http://sfmta.com/cms/rsrtp/documents/14Chapter9-FacilitiesProgramaccessibleFY08PublicDraftforMTAB10-2.pdf
When's the last time that the N ever ran at once every ten minutes? I can propose that the N run every 90 seconds.
what difference does it make if you are going to run more lightrail serive if it all just bunches and is delayed?
Zippy and Zig,
Vehicles bunch up because service isn't frequent enough to meet peak demand.
A run gets delayed because, for whatever reason, a lot of passengers show up and board slowly. Then it arrives at the next stop late only to find more people waiting, who board slowly, which delays it further. Eventually the next run, which has few passengers, catches up.
With more runs, the size of passenger groups stays smaller, and it's less likely that a single run will get multiple large passenger groups.
I'm not saying bunching can't happen with more frequent service, just that it will get better.
The one thing that would really fix bunching would be if everyone who doesn't have a monthly pass got TransLink (and used the rear doors).
But if I didn't pay that buck-fifty out of my pocket, what would I do with my pennies?
theo: you've missed my point. Look at how many runs are missing for the currently scheduled headways. Hint: it's a pretty big chunk. Simply promising tighter headways won't improve service as we're already being promised very reasonable headways. There aren't enough running LRVs and there aren't enough operators to run them.
More runs is a great idea, but with nothing to back it up it's just pie in the sky bullshit.
Theo @post #22 says:
"If a driver can run his route faster (because it's shorter, more direct, has fewer stops, or boards faster with TransLink) then he can do, say, 10 trips a shift instead of 8. That means that the total amount of Muni service on that line would increase by 25% (and service frequency would increase by 25%."
Ha Ha, Theo the troll. It would be a cold day on the N Judah (or any other route) when the drivers would increase their trips without protesting. They'd go whining to their union and either get a pay raise or overtime before they were willing to do anything more than the little they do now. And probably wouldn't improve their performance or manners in any event.
I wonder what the political temperature is in San Francisco for busting Muni's union.
About 99% of the time I am rabidly pro-union, but in this case, I think an exception needs to be made. I've been thinking this for about a decade now. I wonder how many other SF voters think the same thing.
theo: the problem is articulated trolley coaches. There are two yards to store trolleys, both need some serious upgrades tho. To use more of them for the 30 is a great idea. Where do they sleep and where do they get fixed?
Meeting the current standards would constitute more runs.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/rescuemuni/message/5598
How many runs do you think were missed on the N yesterday? Or how about any of the other evenings it took me ~30 minutes to catch an L? You really think that the current service standard is two trains (three cars) an hour?
This is a great plan and in spite of what that chronic complainers say, will definitely improve Muni service. I am going to write Dufty and tell him I support it.
Theo: While I see your point about loading in the rear door I thought we were always specifically told NOT to do that. If people would actually move to the back, board at the front, and exit at the rear we'd have faster loads in and out though. As it is people are apparently unable and unwilling to do these basic things. I try to move to the back and half the time there are people standing immobile and blocking off the rear half of the bus so I can't actually go back... and it just causes more bunching.
As for the unions I'm all in favor of busting them. I see the point of using a union for ad-hoc purposes, but long-term unions just build up power and become petty little gangs dedicated to securing and maintaining their own power at the expense of everyone else and forcing out everyone else who doesn't want to join the union. The people who inevitably end up losing are the consumers.