Much like the citizenry did almost ten years ago with then mayor Gavin Newsom, a citizens' group is challenging the current mayor and Board of Supervisors to ride Muni themselves for 22 days in June, in order to fully feel our pain.

Per the Chronicle, the SF Transit Riders Union wants the Supes and Ed Lee to feel both the "joys" as well as the "pains and sorrows" of the bus- and underground-riding experience — even though the "joy" part may be reserved solely for the whimsy of cable car rides and hopping the F with out-of-town relatives, so long as it's not one of those deathly loud, orange Milanese cars.

The Mayor and the Board are actually required by law to ride Muni, or other public transit, at least twice week, via a 1993 ballot measure pushed by Jerry Brown. No one knows if any of them are flouting this law, however.

An organizer for the Transit Riders Union, Ilyse Magy, says that the purpose of the challenge, which has been delivered to the Supes by email and will be reiterated at their weekly meeting today, is to get them to be more empathetic with our transit woes. "When the mayor and Board of Supervisors regularly ride public transit, they better understand the rider’s daily experience and prioritize funding a more reliable robust, and visionary transit system to support it," Magy says.

The thing is, this Board of Supervisors is well aware of the problems with Muni — its current state of congestion at rush hour, its ridiculous slowness, its frequent but less-frequent-than-they-used-to-be meltdowns on the underground. Last year Supervisor Scott Wiener proposed a city charter amendment that tied Muni funding directly to population growth, and voters overwhelmingly approved the amendment in last November's election, via Prop B. Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Lee had Prop A on the ballot, which also passed, and which was a $500 million bond measure for use in road and transportation improvements — although there is no guarantee that that money will get spent on Muni projects. Both propositions passed.

It's not clear if Mayor Ed Lee ever rides Muni trains or buses, but he did ride an M-Ocean View train once last September, in the run-up to the election, as a bit of a stunt to support that bond measure. At the time his spokesperson said, "The mayor knows the system needs improvement. That's why he's asking residents to invest in the system." He also has a proposal to increase the city's vehicle license fee to help fund transit, and that's scheduled to go on the 2016 ballot.

So far, no one has signed on for the Transit Riders Union's pledge, but they intend to hand out pledge cards and get all 11 supes, and Lee, on board.