Bay Citizen: Muni Issues Accurate On-Time Report

The Bay Citizen reports that the SFMTA has issued an accurate on-time report, after being called out by the publication in July that the agency was boosting these numbers. From SFMTA’s latest report, Muni’s vehicles were on time 57.2 percent of the time in August. “That number was slightly down from July when the on-time rate was 60.4 percent, according to the report, which covered the first eight months of 2012,” the Bay Citizen writes.

In July, the Bay Citizen also reported that then-CEO Nat Ford and another former CEO, Michael Burns, received bonuses because of these inflated rates.

From the Bay Citizen:

[Paul] Rose, the SFMTA spokesman attributed the 57.2 percent on-time rate in August to a combination of bus driver absences, rickety old vehicles, a Muni operator shortage and special events such as the America’s Cup yacht race that spread service too thin.

…

Muni officials have long said that on-time performance isn’t the most important measure. Passengers, they reason, would rather that buses arrive consistently every five minutes rather than adhering to specific scheduled times.

On Friday, Muni also released other performance measures, such as how often buses bunch up together and create long waits for riders at bus stops. The number crunchers found that buses that were less than two minutes behind each other nearly 6 percent of the time.

What do you think: what metric is the most important to you as a bus rider?