August 25, 2008
Up With Muni
As incredible as it sounds," says the regally named Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr., SFMTA's Executive Director, in this morning's glowing press release, "preliminary ridership reports show that Muni had over 117,000 additional boardings this weekend, which included three Giants games at AT&T Park and the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in Golden Gate Park on opposite ends of The City."
Over 117,000 additional boardings? Oh my.
Anyway, Muni is patting itself on the back for the allegedly stupendous job they did over the weekend. The Muni love, you see, started on Friday when baseball and music fans were whisked away to their respective areas of concern, culminating on Sunday when drivers performed fellatio on each and every passenger. Or something like that.
But we're thrilled to hear that Muni is stepping up efforts - especially since no one, except a Getty, can afford a cab these days. But what say you readers, did Muni do a bang up job this weekend?
The full press release, for those of you who simply must, is after the jump.
***PRESS RELEASE***MUNI RIDERSHIP UP FOR WEEKEND EVENTS
Taking their cue from The City's Transit First policy, people rode the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's (SFMTA) Muni system this weekend as The City by the Bay became the locus of mega events drawing more than 100,000 fans. "As incredible as it sounds," said Nathaniel P. Ford, Sr., SFMTA Executive Director, "preliminary ridership reports show that Muni had over 117,000 additional boardings this weekend, which included three Giants games at AT&T Park and the Outside Lands Music and Arts Festival in Golden Gate Park on opposite ends of The City."
The avalanche of Muni customers began Friday afternoon as baseball and festival fans headed to their respective venues as regular commuters were boarding Muni for the ride home from work. "The weekend was a confluence of green-conscious travelers," Ford said, noting that the Giants hosted San Diego Padres Friday evening and Saturday and Sunday afternoons, "at the same time that more than 100,000 music revelers were heading for the three-day music festival at Golden Gate Park."
The SFMTA dispatched extra buses and trains serving both Giants stadium and Golden Gate Park throughout the weekend. A cadre of 162 Parking Control Officers, Transit Fare Inspectors and other enforcement staff was fielded to assist with pedestrian safety, traffic flow and parking. SFMTA revenue staff were also on hand to sell round-trip tickets to speed boarding on Muni vehicles.
"Legions of SFMTA employees worked the weekend to get people to these events—and home again," Ford said, "and I want to acknowledge their tireless efforts. While the buses and trains were crowded and traffic conditions after the concerts slowed service, we kept sending the buses and trains back to Golden Gate Park until the crowds were cleared."
SFMTA also coordinated with other transit agencies in the Bay Area, most notably BART and Caltrain, to ensure connections to Muni for customers traveling into The City from the East Bay and The Peninsula.
"San Francisco is one of the greenest cities on the planet," Ford said, "and we congratulate the people who chose transit, and other green modes such as walking and bicycles, to enjoy the offerings of this world class city rather than fill the air we breathe with emissions. It was our privilege to be the mode of choice."
###
Established by voter proposition in 1999, the SFMTA, a department of the City and County of San Francisco, oversees both the Municipal Railway (Muni) and the Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT). With five modes of transit, Muni has nearly 700,000 passenger boardings each day. Over 35,000 extra vehicles enter San Francisco on any given business day, and rely on DPT to keep the flow of cars, transit vehicles, delivery trucks, pedestrians, and bicycles moving smoothly through the streets.
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Fire. Them. All.
All of 117,000? That number is what percentage of the possible capacity of all the additional units employed, driver's, traffic control officers and all associated expenses and overtime? I'm betting the number represents only as high as 10% of total capacity and their efforts were seriously inefficient and drastically in the red.
Every extra N I saw, every 71, for three days were almost completely empty except during expected fill times, at the end of major sections of the concert which, of course, have a somewhat predictable schedule.
SFMTA: I want to see real numbers, bitches. Not some feel good number you expect nobody to question because it sounds so incredibly impressive.
I've yet to meet a muni driver that I would want to perfom fellatio on me.
The sheer amount of chutzpah it takes to put out a press release like that shows what happens when you pay too much money to upper management and let the drivers not show up for work whenever they want.
Now, can you imagine the same kind of mentality running your electricity? Scary!
on kgo this morning they mentioned an n-judah collision with a bicyclist at 27th avenue. haven't been able to find anything online - anyone else?
no.
Every saturday morning I have to wait an hour outside of Booger-loos to eat breakfast. You would think they would have gotten their act together by now, its a very "predictable schedule".
Sometimes there is something such as maximum capacity, especially when a whole day's (entire system) worth of riders wants to take 3 lines and arrive and leave at about the same time.
Ford should resign, and so should Lum (the union head). The public doesn't want these scumbags running Muni.
boogaloos = fixed capacity
muni = scalable capacity
I didn't know that muni was infinitely scalable I guess it must have a infinitely scalable budget as well.
Is Nat Ford still here?
Every extra N I saw, every 71, for three days were almost completely empty except during expected fill times, at the end of major sections of the concert which, of course, have a somewhat predictable schedule.
Yeah, worked out well for me as a Sunset resident just running errands around town during the day or headed out early Saturday evening, but if I lived somewhere else and was just trying to get to or from the show, I'd have a much different perspective.
It appears to me that they ignored pretty much anyone who wasn't at that overpriced concert (and even then MUNI didn't work so well from what I've heard) - I had the lovely pleasure of walking all the way from Fillmore and Geary back to the Outer Richmond around 2am because the NextBus display would say 1 minute, then 30 minutes, and when I gave up and started walking, the next one I saw at Divis said 40 minutes. I thought about taking a taxi, but gee willikers, those were all taken!
Yay, involuntary exercise, woo hoo! :|
I've literally had to get off and walk the last four times I've been on the N because something broke. grrrr
Sucks they mis-printed a bus that had probably just passed, but 2:00 AM is Owl Service, which is a bus every 30 minutes. (and they time the transfers)
I called 311 and was told the 5 was running slow. I ended up walking 15 blocks and beat the sardine-packed bus to my transfer point. People _not_ attending the concert were screwed out of their ride all afternoon.
@mushmouth: True, but from about 1:30 until I got home a little after 3am, I didn't see any outbound 38s, which I've never seen happen before (and nearly every display I saw going home said 30 or 40 minutes). I did see one going inbound however.
@travin I was in Duboce Park saturday afternoon and saw plenty of jam packed N-Judah trains. It was the second, third or even fourth closely bunched train that was empty. After the 10-15 minute gap, the cycle repeated.
I rode the J-Church to Chinatown Sunday and it was packed until Duboce, where about half the car got off.
I went back and forth on the 1-California to Alta Park and it was great, running about twice as often as your normal Sunday schedule.
No real problems whatsover, though the J was crowded for a Sunday morning and a little slow accordingly. No worse than rush hour though.
obviously the solution is to quadruple muni fare so they can add a ton of excess capacity, only to be pulled out once a year when some event draws a crowd that is greater than 15% of the population of the city itself.
also, they should demo half the city so they can widen streets and build some freeways, so next time a massive extraordinary event goes down, it will run perfectly smoothly.
or perhaps, they can just not do special events.
or perhaps, you can just relax. accept the fact that shit happens once in a while. and be glad that muni sucks, because if it didn't, you probably wouldn't be able to afford to live in the city or use it.
As someone who just waited an hour and half for the fucking Metro, I have this to say:
You assholes are patting yourself on the back while kicking us in the face at the same time. Up yours, Muni.
Xenu: trying to take an M were you? An LRV took out the overhead wiring at Holloway this P.M. What a mess.
Dear Muni,
knowing full well that no one with any responsibilty is ever to read this would you consider this plan.
1) designate Civic Center and Daly City bart as the official loading zones for mega events.
2) to avoid all the backdoor boarding and fare evasion get a mobile kiosk for fare collection.
3) consider say...$5 r/t wristbands.
4)make ocean beach the a post event loading zone.
5) try not to forget that folks that remain in the city wouls also like to continue on with life and get places also.
Sincerely-
Someone who actually would like to see real commmitment to improvement.
Very true. Weekends service just slows down to a crawl because apparently Muni only seems to believe that it's used by people who want to take it to work downtown. Of course on weekends people just sit at home all day and never go anywhere. Totally OK to just cut back service when the majority of people are off work and able to ride around going places.
Last Saturday I was waiting about 20 minutes for an M at Powell and when it finally arrived it was so packed (a single car of course) that we could just barely cram everyone onto the car. Of course, with TEP they want to screw with the M line even further and stop it at SF State because who gives a shit about anyone who lives further out than that. Just make them ride all the way over the surface through Noe Valley on the J, they won't mind. Only poor people live over there and they clearly don't matter.
Also, rather than taking trains and buses out of service at, say, the end of the line, feel free to take them out of service whenever you feel like it. It's totally cool to just shove everyone off the train at West Portal station and tell them to wait for another train instead. Or, you know, wherever really. A random street stop on a bus works just as well. I remember one time being dropped off at SF State by a train going out of service. Thankfully there was another train across the platform that the drivers informed us about. Of course, as soon as we started unloading the other train must have noticed and sped out the station as fast as possible. I swear, as soon as we started filing out and towards the train it just took off. Our original driver, when I mentioned this to him didn't bother to call it in to central or anything, but just shrugged his shoulders like it wasn't his problem and he couldn't be bothered. The extra 20 minutes wait at night in the cold was just fine.
As always one of our biggest problems is the lack of a proper subway networking the entire city. It's the only way that any other densely populated city is able to manage and there's a good reason why they all do it. Ours is completely half-assed and on par with LA.
Also, do people actually drive in the city? Where in the hell are these people parking?!? No matter how bad Muni currently is it's never going to be as bad as driving is.