The Muni security camera site may have gotten locked away, but we can still remember those few glorious few hours of spying which we were able to enjoy. In case you missed it, a collection of Muni cameras were caught facing the internet, and a leaked password opened the site up for us all to enjoy ... until someone changed the login details. Oh well. At any rate, please enjoy the time-lapse video that we created by taking and animating a series of automated screengrabs. (Or you can also watch a slightly slower, more gradual version.) Note the train that gets stuck in the bottom middle monitor for a half hour around 10:15 -- that's the only highlight we were able to catch before the site booted us out around 1pm.

We're reading on the Chron that unspecified "police action" between 25th and 30th Avenues in the Sunset has completely blocked the N Judah. MUNI is setting up buses between 19th and Sunset Blvd, and the buses will go down Kirkham.

Any info on what's going on, readers? Is it Ed Jew again?

Update!: It was a "suspicious package" on Judah and 30th that was ultimately deemed to be safe.

Picture by awcole72 from Flickr.

Okay, so we're late on this, but this post is still well worth it. Before we start, we'd like to issue this reminder-- if you got any questions for our driver, drop us a line at editor@sfist.com. We'd also like to say that next week we got a Very Special Ask a Muni Driver and we hear at SFist are pretty darn excited about it.

Anyways, here we go, yo...

“Why do some buses turn around mid run?”

There can be several reasons why buses turn around mid-run. An important first point to make is that there are motor coaches (diesel buses) and trolley coaches (buses on wires). Motor coaches very rarely – if ever – switch back or turn around mid-run. For the most part, motor coaches will go to the end of the line and then deadhead to a specific point as instructed by Central if they’re behind and need to get back on schedule, or to pull into the barn. Some motor coaches during commute hours are pulling in or out of the barn and are instructed to do a portion of a different buses’ busy route on the way to the start point of their actual route. Of course, if there are mechanical problems the motor coach may deadhead back to the barn from any point in the run.

Since they’re on wires, trolley coaches are like trains – they’re essentially on an electric overhead track and must follow the pattern of the wires to get anywhere. Some of the newer trolleys can go off the wires in order to turn around or go off-route at need, but when they do this they are only capable of traveling a short distance at a very slow speed. The reason trolleys turn around mid-route is there are only a few spots where the wires enable turning. If the buses are stacked up, or a given bus is behind schedule, they must use one of these designated spots to turn around because there are of necessity no short-cuts and obviously trolleys cannot pass each other – they’d have to de-wire to do so, and we all know what a pain that is! Since the trolleys have to stay on the wire, when a trolley needs to pull into the barn for whatever reason, unlike motor coaches they don’t deadhead back to a particular spot. Instead they continue taking on passengers up until the point that they can use the wires to turn off-route and get back to the barn. This means that the bus only serves part of its usual route. A good example would be the 14-Mission: if the bus is scheduled to pull into the barn but is currently in-service at, say, top of the hill Daly City, the driver will continue to pick up passengers until the turn-off point around 26th & Mission and won’t finish the route all the way to downtown. By the same token, trolleys pulling out from the barn may begin the run mid-route. Good drivers – or maybe I should say drivers who possess simple courtesy skills – will notify passengers at the time of boarding if the bus isn’t going to complete the route. As I’m sure many of you know, bad drivers just throw your ass off without any explanation.

When not fending off rumors that he's been horking lines, Gavin has lately been running around proposing ideas to fix Muni, spurred on by the latest SPUR report and the Transit Effectiveness Project.

Two days ago he appeared at a hearing of the state Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss the idea of putting cameras on buses and street sweepers that face outward and would catch on camera any cars parked in illegal ways. Cars parked in transit only lanes-- we're looking at you. The whole thing is used in London and has made a noticeable difference in busting people. If you ask us, however, the idea sounds a bit Big Brother-y. There goes smoking dope in parked cars.

Gavin is also proposing that in an order to speed up bus routes, he wants to eliminate some stops. Or, as Beyond Chron would call it, declare "...War on Transit-Dependent Populations." Which stops will be eliminated will all depend on an 18 month, $2 million dollar study. The idea of eliminating stops has been proposed any number of times but usually falls apart due to protests.

We'll get right to this week's post in which our Security Guy once again asks questions that were asked in our last post, but first, we just wanted to remind you that if you have any questions you'd like our security guy to answer, send them to editor@sfist.com.

Ok, here's my question... .why would 2 fare inspectors, in uniform & orange vest, be wandering INSIDE ATT park on Tuesdya night during the game? Looking for future fare evaders? It just seemed a little ridiculous... thanks!

Fare Inspectors are out at AT&T park before the games - up to the end of the 1st inning and back by the middle of the 7th to help provide crowd management - along with DPT and track supervisors, keeping the flow going and keeping people off the tracks. We've tried to get out of doing this but MTA management won't have it.

The Fare inpsectors are supposed to take their 30 minute meal break after the 1st inning, go out and handle POP (proof of payment) enforcement and be back by the middle of the 7th. (depending on how fast the 7th inning comes up).


Did you see the News 7 story about the pick pockets on buses and the passenger who was beaten for trying to photograph vandals as they wrecked the bus? The MUNI driver seemed um, well, rather detached and not very engaged about either situation. Should we be more concerned about our personal safety on the buses? I have seen kids vandalizing buses, screaming at passengers and running amok on the bus - I thought that the bus driver would help us but he just parked and opened the door. What is the driver supposed to do? Are passengers safe? Thanks!

Operators will not get involved, for their safety. They are supposed to report to Central Control to have the police respond. The MRT (police assigned to MUNI) are a small group and have to prioritize the response for detection and enforcement. Which is why for a time, the fare inspectors and MRT were working the J line - for prevention and enforcement due to Mission High students after school.....

Bus drivers are not police and should not put themselves at risk of assault; I would hope he'd call the police and let them handle it.

Yes, they are supposed to (call Central to have the police respond). This is what we've passed on in Operator training (a program which started recently - within the past six months).

Oh now this is very cool, and will probably be totally disabled the moment we report it, so enjoy it while it lasts. SFist reader Kristopher passes along a tip that he read on Craigslist: you can tap into a couple of Muni security cameras by pointing your browser to http://mmxvideo.homeip.net/camera/servlet/MainPage. Username is muni, password is videoshop.

Who's project is this? Who's running the show? We have no idea. All we can do is glue our eyes to the screen, watching unsuspecting San Franciscans milling around at train stations. The surveillance seems to be using software called Dunne.211, which looks to have been developed by a company called Border Collie Solutions, Inc. Does all this sound extremely X-Files? Yes, we thought so.

For those of you still a few SFist obsessions back (before Ed Jew, around the same time as Jennifer Siebel, and after the District 6 election), Gavin Newsom's Fake Question Time neighborhood lecture series is still plodding along. Even the chickens aren't bothering to show up anymore!

Anyhow, chickens or no, they've just announced this month's session (.pdf), in Aaron Peskin's District 3, and it's on everyone at SFist's favorite topic -- MUNI! It's this Saturday June 30th at 10 a.m., at the Jean Parker Elementary School on 840 Broadway (x Powell). Your MUNI buses: the 30 and the 45 are your best bets.

Here's the press release in Chinese too (.pdf), just because it's cool.

Picture of an F Market by Jerry Jarvis from the SFist Flickr stream.

Imagine a wonderful, delicious future in which the 38-Geary runs as smoothly and quickly as a train; speeding along in its own lanes without squidging in and out of traffic. Oh what a dream! And it's not so far-off: planning is well underway on a Bus Rapid Transit system that'll feature "fancy new buses, dedicated lanes, timed signals, more parking, and a safer and more beautiful walking environment, with pre-paid boarding and new stations!"

You probably want to know more about this amazing vision, don't you? Yes, you do. Luckily, there's a picnic happening TODAY, hosted by SPUR (the always-correct urban planning group) as thanks to Jake McGoldrick for supporting the project. It's happening at the Rossi Playground (on Arguello near Anza) from 1:00 to 4:00 pm. You can take the 33 there, or at least, you would be able to if it wasn't Pride weekend and Muni wasn't totally fouling up that particular bus route because they don't know how to orchestrate a simple detour. See you there!

If you're a subway rider, you've probably already noticed that Muni's running on manual today. Their signaling system -- the one that run on OS/2 -- is, as always, experiencing problems. They're waving the trains through the tunnel by hand. And the delays aren't too awful -- as it turns out, having no system at all isn't all that much worse than using Alcatel's dreadful ATCS.

But here's where we slap our foreheads: Muni's posting updates to the situation on their website. But they're posting the updates in Microsoft Word format. Oh, Muni.

In the first past of our Very Special Ask a Muni Driver, our driver discussed what driving the lines are like. Today, we discuss two issues that always makes us wonder-- what do drivers do if they need to go the bathroom and just how boring is it to constantly drive the same route everyday for eight hours?

Let's start at the very beginning, a very good place to start....

...as for the bathroom, this is a HUGE problem. A lot of drivers carry around empty plastic bottles…

There’s something called a ‘702’, which is a code that drivers can radio in to Central that allows them to take up to twenty minutes to go to the bathroom. The problem with this is that you’ve got twenty minutes when the bus is not picking up passengers and is obviously not going to be on time. This means the bus must go out of service and ‘deadhead’ (go forward without passengers) to the next possible point where it can catch up with the schedule. This is why you see some buses hauling butt without anybody onboard. Obviously you can really piss off not only the public, but your fellow drivers, inspectors, barn supervisors, etc. if you routinely take a lot of 702s so really there’s a motivation to avoid it if at all possible. I run into the bathroom issue often. I’ve almost peed my pants on many occasions (I know why they’re made of indestructible polyester!) I take my fair share of 702s, but try not to abuse it. But if there’s no bathroom at the end of the line, you really have no choice. Kidney and bladder infection rates are very high among MUNI drivers. We bitch and bitch and bitch and beg and cry trying to get more bathrooms, but somehow don’t materialize. Once in awhile the big bosses will cave to driver pressure and install a Port-O-Potty at the end of a line, but these are almost always broken into right away and rendered unusable.

A three-minute wait isn't a big deal, at least not in a geological time-frame. But in transit, it can make or break a schedule. Take, for example, the 33 route this past Saturday, where a driver decided to park in the middle of the route and run some errands at Walgreen's. They're not supposed to do that, y'know.

Now obviously, it's not the end of the world. A delay of three minutes isn't going to dramatically affect the schedule, especially on a day when wait times are up around seventy minutes. Wait, what? Seventy minutes!? Good lord.

Now, what on Earth could cause such ridiculous bunching and delay? Hmm. It's almost as if some Muni employees aren't entirely invested in providing the highest possible quality of service.

Oh hey! Due to the constraints of our Movable Type rebuild queue, SFist can't offer an RSS feed of all of our Muni-related posts; but that's OK because The Armchair Dispatcher made one for us! Thanks, AD!

June is busting out all over! With lawsuits, we mean. Added to the total from a few weeks ago, we're up to $456,565.92 in Muni claims since February. Wow, that's a lot of money. Sure would've gone a long way toward hiring a few more drivers, or repairing a few more buses, or buying a few more NextMuni signs. Oh well.

Some of the cases are pretty standard -- personal injury, property damage, etc etc etc. (We winced upon reading of one plaintiff who was whacked in the face when they grabbed for a faulty grip-bar.) Those cases usually get settled for around $10,000. The juicy ones, though, can reach up around $60,000, as does the case of a pedestrian who was struck by a 49, and a Muni inspector who opened his car door into a bicyclist.

On the bright side, Muni will also be meeting with counsel to talk about their case against Five Star Parking/Elite Parking, in which the city could get about $4.6 million. A lucrative game, this lawyer business!

Hi everyone! Here's a quick reminder: never ride Muni without a camera. We got the following report from a reader yesterday:

"The driver had a full (standing room only) one-car J train (#1477) going outbound. It arrived at 24th and Church at approximately 11 pm on 6/12/07. The driver stopped the vehicle, exited it, and entered a donut store to make a purchase. The vehicle remained idle at 24th/Church for 4 minutes."

As always, our Security Guy responds to last week's questions to give everyone the low down on the security haps. Since there were so many questions last week, we'll give the first half today and the second half tomorrow.

We're cool like that.

I have noticed a lot more inspectors recently, usually on the t or the n, ( I don't ride the buses). They are polite efficent, and 9 times out of ten, I see them catch one offender on each sweep through a carriage. I hate it when I see folks sneaking onto muni, so thanks for catching them (or at least some of them)....

We are doing what we can. We will keep up the work. Thanks for the comments.


20*35=700 shifts per month. That's barely more than 2 citations per shift (unless they are part time). Even if they are all half time, that's 4 per 8 hr shift. Is that all they can manage?

No, they can do more however customer service is our key. This also depends on the inspector out there. We have good efficient workers and the ones who don't want to work (unfortunately).

Oh how we hate that high-pitched whine generated by held-open subway doors. It hurts, but of course, that's the point -- it's supposed to make you let go of the door so the whole train doesn't have to wait for your giggling gasping slowpoke friends.

But maybe it hurts a little too much. Here's an item on the SF County Transit Authority's agenda for tomorrow's meeting (10:30 am, Room 263, City Hall):

...Chairman Dufty requested a hearing about the apparently excessive noise levels generated by the alarms that sound on Breda Light Rail Vehicles when doors are prevented from closing. MTA staff will present information on the issue and discuss potential ways to address it.

We're not totally sure why MTA staff get to present info at the SFCTA's meeting; we'd much rather hear what the SFCTA has to say, since they generally are better than big unwieldy Muni at putting together plans. You can think of the two agencies as being sort of like siblings, with the SFCTA like gentle Lily Tomlin and the MTA like corruptible Bette Midler.

Anyway. Here's our suggestion, in case you care: switch out the whining noise with a recording of grinding gears. If people are scared that their holding-open of doors is actually breaking something, they'll let go. Or scarier yet: a recording of the ghoulish Vincent Price laughter from Thriller. That would be awesome.

While most of you have been analyzing the last five minutes of "the Sopranos" (soon to be the most analyzed piece of video since the Zapruder film) over-and-over again to figure it out, we got answers from our Muni Driver as to what a day in the life of a Muni driver is like. And since there's so much to his response, we'll do this in two parts. Today, the shifts. Next week-- bathroom breaks!

I have to start addressing the above questions by reminding everyone that I’m not at liberty to give out the kind of super-specific details that might make my identity obvious. So I apologize in advance for having to be somewhat general this week.

There is a legal cap on the number of hours a driver can work continuously – 10 hours of actual driving. Technically there are no legally mandated breaks – nothing like the office worker gets in the way of 15 minutes in the morning, a lunch hour, and 15 minutes in the afternoon. Oh no.

Split shifts have breaks built into the split, anything from half an hour to as much as six hours. But MUNI drivers aren’t paid for the first two hours of any split; once the clock ticks over two hours they are considered to be on ‘standby’ status, so if there’s a need they can be sent out to drive, but this rarely happens.

OMFG there totally just a street fair in the Haight! Did you know it was coming? Muni apparently did not, as the bus arrangement were decidedly last-minute. (Either that, or Muni simply didn't care/wasn't capable of doing any better ... but that couldn't be the case, could it?) Check out the above video of the 33, taken in the evening when things were winding down. A couple things of note:

- Those buses sure are bunched up at the beginning of the video -- they're practically knotted together like two mating dogs.
- Muni was running diesel buses, since the detour didn't have electric wires -- so the NextMuni transponders are definitely hooked up and relaying data from the diesels. Well, almost; there was one bus that wasn't relaying anything, so it was invisible to NextMuni. We know this because NextMuni told us to expect a half-hour wait, but we were surprised to catch an "invisible" bus 15 minutes later.
- How come, at the end of the day, two of the buses are still taking the detour (south of Haight) but one of them has resumed the normal Haight-bound route?
- And how come NextMuni is unable to understand a temporary re-route? Did it not occur to anyone that sometimes lines get disrupted? When the buses take the detour, they completely disappear from the system, which means that to an online observer the wait time could skyrocket to an hour or more. Next time, Muni, please let NextBus know, "hey, we're moving the route south by two blocks, so don't grey-out the buses just because they've moved off the regular route for a few minutes."

See how the sparks fly down at the Pharr Yard in San Francisco when with a little steel meets up with an angle grinder. This dOOd rocks. To his left is the side of a Market Street Railway "California Comfort Car" from the 1920's. We're all about the comfort so we look forward to seeing old #798 back in action on Market. To all the hardworking people taking care of the F-Market cars: For all you do, this Bud's for you.

Update: You commenters are always so clever - this worker could be a volunteer, instead of a Muni employee as we had originally assumed. Thanks!

This week, we're going to change things up a bit and go all History Channel on you as we explore the history of Muni Security. Next week, we'll go back to the usual responses to the various questions.

The unit has been around since 1999, created to handle mostly fare evasion or Proof of Payment "POP" starting with a group of approximately 20 persons-all transfers from other places in MUNI and most, ADA transfers. All POP occur on the trains only.

This initial group has been interesting, with attitudes like most drivers that people complain about. More interesting that there was no one holding the personnel accountable for their actions. POP inspectors are represented by Local 250-A, the same union that represents the Operators (drivers and cable car conductors / gripmen).

The unit was initially overseen by Michael Hursh, who left in 2005 to another transit agency. Since August 2006, the person overseeing security is SFPD Deputy Chief Antonio Parra

Anyway...

Service changes! Yay! Who doesn't love service changes? Communists, that's who.

The point is, Muni's announcing some service changes. You're just going to have to take our word for it, though, because as usual the information isn't on their website yet. (We once asked a Muni spokesperson: who takes care of putting info on the website? Nobody could answer that.) We'll post a rundown of the changes below. Are they good or bad? Who knows! Let's just implement them with no real plan and see what happens!

To be fair, Muni says that these changes are the result of "detailed assessments." If there's one thing for which Muni planners are known, it's the level of detail in their assessments. Anyway, check out these incredibly confusing changes, only some of which we are capable of comprehending:

Rail:
- N-line service will travel to Caltrain
- J-line will switch back at Embarcadero Station
- K and T-lines will become interconnected:
- K-Line will become the T line inbound at West Portal to Sunnydale.
- T-line will become the K-line in the subway outbound at Embarcadero to Balboa Park (Geneva & San Jose).
- Castro Shuttles will be restored

Bus:
- New service will be introduced: The 20-Columbus will travel
from Van Ness and North Point to Beale and Howard limited hours,
weekdays only: Inbound from 7:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.; Outbound from 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m.
- The 10-Townsend service will be restored on weekends

UPDATE! We should probably also have mentioned that the changes will go live on June 30.

In today's installment, our new Muni Driver gives us his views on how to improve Muni. We'll get things started right away but first, a reminder. If you got any questions you'd like asked, send them to editor@sfist.com.

And second, our driver would like to state this disclaimer before we go ahead.

I am not an official spokesperson for anything except my opinion as a MUNI driver, San Franciscan, and daily passenger just like the rest of you sorry sods relying on MUNI to get us to work on time. If you figure out who I am, please, please don't tell my bosses 'cause I want that pension some happy day – assuming there's any money left in the fund for the lowly drivers by that time.

And onto the question, "what else would you do to fix Muni?"

If I throw out everything I have to say here, this post will be too long for anyone to read. The last driver who wrote for this column stated a lot of the problems. They’re not mysterious; you, me, MTA, as Leonard Cohen would say: “everybody knows”. So I’m just gonna focus on a few ideas I think might actually do some good.

The above photo of the adorable little ones on their way to the Symphony was taken by Flickr user Alie Slavin. The expression on every face pictured is priceless, especially the adults' in the background.

Anyone who's ridden Muni in the middle of a weekday is quite familiar with this scenario. As your bus pulls up to its stop, you see a dozen or two school kids anxiously waiting to embark Muni. You and your fellow passengers groan and brace yourselves for the ensuing chaos. (Mind you, we enjoy the company of kids but not large groups of them in enclosed spaces.) Last Friday morning was our most recent encounter of this kind, and we were inspired to compile all of our of "gangs of kids" on Muni memories. Feel free to share your kid/Muni invasion experiences in the comments!

Friday's ride played out like this: We were riding the 49 along Van Ness, when we were soon invaded by about ten to fifteen 10/11-year-olds. Although we were at the back of the double-bus with no vantage point of the stop, we had a bit of a warning about this invasion when the bus, in the process of pulling up to the stop, was met by the collective, high-pitched screams of several young girls. We were like, oh no, did one of them get run over? Luckily not—they were just excited about the novelty of riding Muni. And maybe the driver looked like Justin Timberlake or Usher? (We can't exactly remember what our driver looked like, but we think he probably looked more like Pat Morita. And by the way, who are the tweens loving these days, anyway?)

More kids invade Muni after the jump!