A reader writes in to ask one of the biggest questions there is about MUNI:

I've attached a screenshot of the J Church train on a Friday night, according to Next Muni's site.

Yep, that is five trains arriving within one ten-minute period, for a train that's supposed to go every ten minutes. This is at a stop that is five stops from the terminus, where (in theory) someone should be sitting there saying "A J left ten minutes ago, now it's your turn to go."

Um, what the hell is this? If five are arriving this quickly, that means I'll probably have to wait forty for the next one. This really isn't that hard. What's going on, MUNI?

Good question. We remember being at the Montgomery Station and watching like four or five M,L, and K trains go by, each holding less and less riders in them before we saw our N Judah pass. Shouldn't somebody sit there and go: "gosh, maybe we shouldn't have the same train run over and over again when other trains are late?" How frakin' difficult is it to do something like that?

Dan from Burritophile continues on after the jump. And remember folks, send your Dear Mr. Ford cards and letters to us

So, I'm on the N Judah this morning, around 8:45. I'm seated when I feel someone leaning on me. Lord help me, I look up, all annoyed, when I realize that the guy standing next to me has lost consciousness, and is falling.

The people around me reacted quickly, one guy grabbing him from the front, as the woman behind him hangs on to his head and keeps him from completely falling. I grab his shoulders. He's in a dead faint -- I won't go into embarassing details, but the brother was out.

It's probably hard to drive through the park, especially with a long bus, so I ignored him, but I became suspicious when it took us about 20 minutes to get out of the park. Several restless riders noted the presence of a gas station on the edge of the park, at Lincoln, and we told the driver that he should ask for directions. The driver stubbornly followed the driver in front of him, who was also lost. The notes on the Bay to Breakers website say, "The Express buses run back to the start area with intermediate stops ..." However, I don't think returning to the start area included a long trip down Lincoln toward the Ocean. The despair rose along with the avenue numbers, and one of the runners in the back of the bus became so queasy from all the twisting and turning that she vomited all over the bus floor.

It wouldn't be Dear Mr Ford without an adventure with SFist Matt, would it?

I must begrudgingly give Muni high marks for customer service today (even as I give it low marks for timeliness):

I was on my way to a job interview today, and I called the When's-The-Next-Bus-Coming number (673-MUNI) to find out when the next 33 would be coming by. "Two minutes," someone told me. Ten minutes later I'm still waiting, so I call again. This time, I get a woman who is apologetic that I've been waiting that long, and actually calls a dispatching office to see what the delay is. After being on hold for five minutes, she returns, apologizes again, and explains that for some unknown reason, the bus is, in fact, very late, but it was now on its way to me. Another ten minutes go by and finally it arrives, only 25 minutes after it was scheduled to. So, booooo for Muni being late. But YAAAAAY for the proactive Customer Service lady making calls on my behalf. (And in the end, I got to my int rview with 5 minutes to spare. Whew.)

Then again, judging from some of the responses we've seen, we're not sure if they're thorough or just trying to bore us to death. You'll see what we mean when you expand to read the correspondence between Muni and SFist Reader Jas, a "A twice daily 6,7,66,71 and occasionally J-Church and N-Judah rider."

"Often the next train to come through will be crush loaded and there will be even more delay as people cram in (because you just don't know if it will be another 10 minutes or not) and that delays the next train and so on..."