Shilpa's boyfriend still running late

Coming as a surprise to no one, the SF Chronicle recently reported that an internal audit has revealed that MUNI doesn't come close to running on time or on schedule.

Muni misses on-time goal
Just 70 percent of buses, streetcars meet schedule

Excerpt:

Reliability was one of the key issues expected to be addressed under Proposition E, 1999's voter-approved reform measure. Voters said that by 2004, at least 85 percent of Muni's vehicles must run on time.

The deadline has come and gone with the goal nowhere close to being met. Nathaniel Ford, who runs the Municipal Transportation Agency, which oversees Muni, said last year after assessing the situation that a more realistic target would be a 75 percent on-time rate -- at least for now. Eventually, he'd like to see 100 percent of the fleet running on time. On time means they show up no more than four minutes later or one minute earlier than scheduled.

Of the 80 Muni lines, only three show up as scheduled more than 85 percent of the time, according to Muni. Fifteen lines break the 75 percent mark. More than half the lines run too early or too late 30 percent or more of the time.

See also The N-Judah Chronicles, which had this to say on the report:

If you haven't already seen the latest statistics gathered by MUNI it's worth checking out. There's some interesting information in there, but there's also a lot of work produced by the No Duh Institute on the Obvious as well.

For example, we find that our N-Judah is #1 amongst streetcars for keeping to the schedule 75.8% of the time. Yay! Then you remember, voters passed a measure (oh how we love our ballot measures) demanding that by now, MUNI would be on time on 85% of bus lines by....2004.

Also possibly of interest is the N-Judah Chronicles' report on the responses from MUNI Management to questions raised at the town hall meeting last fall.

One nugget of good news in there is that NextBus/NextMuni, and presumably the 511 dial-up transit tracking service (aka Shilpa's boyfriend) will be providing information on all electric bus lines by the end of March.