Oh Honey, I know. Breakups are hard.

Did someone just get dumped?

Just eating a gallon of ice cream while riding the bus....

Zombie, MD

On the way home tonight on the 71, there was a creepy homeless guy studying MCAT text books. Once he got off, I asked the stranger next to me, "Does anyone else think that was strange?"

The girl behind me was complaining to her boyfriend that the guy really freaked her out: "He talked like a zombie... I hate zombies!"

My take away from that was (1) she has talked to zombies, and (2) she knows some zombies personally, and she's had some bad experiences.

I added, "And he was studying for the MCATs. That should really scare you. Once zombies pass medical school we're all in trouble. They'll know how we work."

When Santa is in the off season

He takes a week or two vacation in San Francisco. And rides muni incognito. Almost.

please hold on

Muni cares.

remind-hers

Seen on Muni Thursday night, she had just finished painting her nails on the car:



"You remind me of a very young Delta Burke."

my God Muni sucks

Not only is it one of the worse-running public transit systems in the States, and a a blight on the reputation of what is otherwise be a world-class city, but the Muni municipal railway system is a giant cash-suck in its failure to provide reliable or timely services.

From the SFGate: Muni arrives in S.F.'s top overtime spot

San Francisco municipal overtime spiked $18 million over budget in the first year of Mayor Ed Lee's administration - with one Muni mechanic raking in an extra $163,856.
Khoa Trinh, who heads the Muni signal shop, more than doubled his base of $106,036 by clocking in 1,954 hours of overtime - which is roughly equal to working an extra 40 hours a week, every week, at $83.85 an hour.

Add in more than $23,000 in premium pay and shift differentials, and Trinh's salary for fiscal 2011-12 totaled $293,370. [snip]

While Trinh was tops in OT earnings, Muni Transit Supervisor Evette Geer-Stevens clocked the most hours - with 2,262 hours of overtime, for $147,446.
According to Reiskin, Geer-Stevens is one of the supervisors you often see on street corners, keeping an eye on the buses and trains - and helping out in emergencies.
Last year, 10 Muni supervisors made more than $100,000 in overtime - bringing their pay to $200,000-plus apiece.

Overall, Muni had 22 of the city's top 25 overtime wage earners. The transit agency was the biggest overtime buster in the city, at $55.7 million - far outpacing the usual leaders like police and fire.

Bolding is mine.

I shudder to imagine what would happen to all the commuters and everyday working people if there were no public transit system at all for, say, a full week. But it's annual reports like this that make me join the rabble crying to dismantle the entire system, fire everyone, and replace it with rehires who are required to interview and a new organization with strong benefits for its members, but also deep penalties for failure to meet basic benchmarks. And zero tolerance for the overtime shell game that has been going on for more than a decade.

The growing sentiment I hear on the street, as we wait, has been a "Kill them all and let God sort it out" attitude toward Muni management. More news like this and I am likely to join the Torch and Pitchfork Party too.

transit faust

As if Muni weren't bad enough. For a City that taxes cars so highly, eliminates parking, and cries "transit first" whenever it wants to eliminate/tax something, it really needs to get its public transit shit under control.

Cab Complaints Climb in San Francisco

Muni hopes to tell you why it's not coming

We've aoften called muni her "boyfriend." Because she calls him all the time to see where he is, he never calls back, is always late, and sometimes never even shows up.

And she keeps going back to him.

It looks like the SFMTA/Muni is going to try to catch up with other systems to use the NextBus system to alert riders of delays and SANFUs:

Muni Begins to Catch Up With NextBus Delay Alerts for Riders

muni on fire

Seriously? This was my view on the N-Judah substitute bus last weekend headed from Church and Market toward Cole Valley. (And for fuck's sake how long will this 'no N rail service on weekends' continue past its well overdue date?)

Dude gets on. Settles in the seat. Takes out a box of papers, and a paper bag. Takes the plastic bag from the paper bag, and rather soppily fills and rolls himself a fat one. Then stuffs the bags back in his hoodie, and lights up. He tokes for a while, but has to keep relighting it for the entire ride. I have a hard enough time with smoke of any kind, but this was pretty rank, and close to me, in a closed box. I decided against saying or doing anything as he was so far gone it wasn't going to make any different. I decided I would just bide my time until I could get off, get a coffee, and transfer to another line.

On the next bus, having just escaped the loud pothead who kept blazing up, there were two unmuzzled dogs and any number of creepy general Muni policy violations, but the Muni driver—looking like Orville Redenbacher's OCD older brother—kicked me and another clear-cut rider off the bus for having coffee in paper cups, regardless of the lids.

Seriously Muni, WTF?

"transit first" will drive you crazy

The City leaders in the Mayor's office, City Hall, DPT, and Muni have an open and aggressive policy to make it as difficult and as expensive as possible to own a car in this city, much less drive.  And forget about parking.  These policies fall under the utopian idea of "Transit First," wherein personal conveyances are unnecessary thanks to fabulous systems of public transportation.

It's just that the public transit system sucks epic.  The citizenry's unbridled hatred of Muni service is exceeded only by it's disdain for Muni management.  "Transit first!"  the officials cry as they remove parking, prevent parking structures, and tax the hell out of auto-owners.  "Take Muni to the Insert-Great-Event-Here!"

Trust me, we would all love to take Muni, but the odds we can cross a city only 7 miles across within an hour is a total crap shoot.   Often the emphasis is on the crap.  It kills me that I am only four or five metro stops from downtown, and it often takes an hour to get there, that is if there is not some system failure or unannounced redirection.

The real pain comes when the City expects everyone to use public transit for high-population events, but the transit agency takes no actions to provide increased or adequate service for such events.  Pride brings a half a million people downtown, but more years than not Muni is running it's usual light Sunday schedule leaving hordes of citizens stranded around the city.  Or the Giants' World Series parade.  Or concerts around town.  Or New Year's Eve.

A timely case in point is this weekend for the three-day Outside Lands super music festival in Golden Gate Park:  As reported in the local blog Civic Center:

The Outside Lands music festival started its three-day rock music marathon in Golden Gate Park on Friday, and this was what was printed prominently in an Examiner story:

The crowds on Friday were dutifully following this advice but the criminally mismanaged Muni system hadn't bothered to schedule any extra buses on the few lines that travel close to Fulton and 30th Avenue such as the 5-Fulton, so the vehicles were overfilled before they even exited Market Street for the park.

The crowds on Friday were dutifully following this advice but the criminally mismanaged Muni system hadn't bothered to schedule any extra buses on the few lines that travel close to Fulton and 30th Avenue such as the 5-Fulton, so the vehicles were overfilled before they even exited Market Street for the park. 

Beleaguered Muni drivers were forced to drive by stranded would-be passengers without stopping for them, and frustrated concertgoers were then trying to hail nonexistent cabs.

"With extremely limited parking availability at the Outside Lands music festival, taking public transit or alternate means of transportation is encouraged in order to reduce congestion."

The blog's photos of sardine-packed Muni busses is disheartening.

And according to Akit's Complaint Department: Half of the parking area at Ocean Beach was closed off for Outside Lands attendees, and only one car parked there.

now THIS is muni

London's getting amazing new buses based on the iconic Routemaster, but designed to be the most environmentally-friendly, people-friendly and energy-efficient public transport in the world. 

illumination of muni movement

Muni Diaries' Jeff Hunt put together this very cool visualization of Muni's movements using real time tracking data for the month of June.



It's like the lava lamp of public transit.

Via the SFist.

Correction from Jeff Hunt of Muni Diaries: "Hi there. Thanks for posting this, but, as much as I wish I had created this nugget of awesome, credit goes to Eric Fischer, who's on Flickr here."

March against Muni stomped by Muni drivers

The March Against Muni was poorly attended, and by accounts was completely overwhelmed by Muni union marchers who showed up and show downed the young angry riders.

Muni/SF MTA continue to abuse their ridership

Well, it seems that the SFMTA has now completely messed up the fast pass situation for City riders. The Muni sitch just keeps getting worse and worse.

Muni: Taking You for a Ride

Any SFer knows that Muni sucks. And there's no alternative and nothing you can do about it. Well, two pissed off professional guys with no particular political acumen are trying to do something. One is a graphic designer and the other is a web guy, so their site is pretty awesome.

There is a March Against Muni tonight, and they are calling for a "don't buy a Fast Pass" boycott for the month of March. SF Weakly has some coverage of the "movement."

SF and is contract wit Muni is a clusterfucked quagmire steeped in the City charter and the irresponsible ridiculously powerful Muni union (why are they so strong? really?). By contract, Muni drivers must be the second-highest-paid in the nation. However their professionalism and competence seem to be lowest.

Just this week I had a driver show up on a bus on the N tracks, which means something is jacked on the N line, but could not give a straight answer as to why the bus was running and not the train, and where the bus was going other than "Market Street" or how it would get there. No two riders got the same explaination—in barely recognizable fractured English no less. I never support "English-only" legislation, but I do think Muni drivers should be absolutely required to be able to speak English, and not just marginally. At the very least that is a public safety and emergency issue. We, the riders, finally figured out he was just answering "yes" to anything asked. And were enraged upon turning off the tracks at Cole Street to see an actual N arrive headed downtown behind us at the corner. We had to scream to get the driver to stop and allow us to transfer to the train he had previously said wouldn't be coming.

The City is tightening its belt and has to cut most everything, but is doing so in a spirit of "we're all in this together" and let's try to do the best we can to help each other out. Because fo the budget crisis, Muni has to cut services significantly, and is increasing fares. More money for less services—and when it came time for the Union to vote to suspend their contractually mandated raises for one year, they overwhelmingly voted to screw the City (see also). Add to this their record of gaming the system to collect sick and overtime pay simultaneously, among other unethical practices, and I think these guys may be right that the populace has finally had it.

From the SF Weakly:

Yes, one can be righteously miffed that bus drivers are getting non-negotiable raises this year, even though they voted down wage concessions that could have eased the blow of service cuts and fare hikes. But you can't do away with automatic pay raises without altering the City Charter. You can't place a grass-roots charter amendment on the ballot without gathering 70,000-odd signatures. You can't do that without scads of money. And you can't do anything without running headlong into the Transit Workers Union. And they just hired political pit bull Eric Jaye to kill that charter amendment by any means necessary. And, guess what? Jaye does know politics, unions, the in-and-outs. He knows this stuff.

The Weakly has no faith in the March Against Muni movement, and their lack of faith is pretty well justified.

But I also think now may be the time to chuck the charter as citizens and riders may be willing to endure a public transit meltdown (like the other Muni meltdowns we've had to endure) for a month or two while the City fires all Muni drivers and staffers and starts from scratch under all new rules.

this is how ridiculous the rain has been today

There's a waterfall down the stairs at the Van Ness Station.



Listen for the announcer to call for an evacuation because the Van Ness Station is flooding.
Says the guy with the cam, "No shit it's flooding."

more madness on Muni

The SFist has posted a Muni rider's footage of a fight between two women on a Chinatown bus (looks like the 30 Stockton, judging by the tunnel.

I often wonder, what is up with these people who act out like this on public transportation? And it's creepy that I have to wonder about this often because this sort of crazy happens all the time. And at what point should one get involved? You have to weigh the "do the right thing and defuse/stop the violence" against the "doing so will likely get me knifed and that is a stupid way to die."

What is great about the video is that the guy annotated it. And that he saw the ultimate smackdown coming and got out his camera—such a sign of the times. He knew then it was going on YouTube when he got home.

Threat Level: Hell no!



There are days I am so happy that I walk to work.

the Routesy fight continues

And I'm continuing to root for Peterson and his Routesy.

The Muni Diaries has a recent update.

And from Routesy's Twitter feed July 30: Routesy—now has top-notch legal representation. The fight is now officially underway! Thanks for your patience, everyone. :)

What would Mrs. Slocombe say?

Looks like this is from an Italian blog. Cracks me up.

NextBust

• N-Judah "humper" identified, apprehended and under arrest. I love that a complaining witness was able to refer to her Twitter feed for exact times and locations of incidents.

• It looks like Routesy is going to court, and is likely to win with a slam dunk over the pair of extortionist douchebags in Oakland. See Routesy's twitter feed with links. BART, gleefully, does not share Muni's or NextBust Inc.'s issues with the NextBus Information Systems pretenders