+$4M: More Money for Muni
Fellow Muni blogger Greg Dewar blogs the Chronicle‘s report of increased fare collection on buses and trains in San Francisco. This seems like good news to us!
Author: jeff
The End*, and the Beginning
Muni Diaries would like to congratulate Barack Obama on becoming the 44th president of the United States.
Hip hip, hooray!
* As for George W. Bush, well, we wish him good luck. We think he might actually need it.
PS: Tell us where you’re celebrating tonight!
Spiffiness for a Certain F-Car, Mate
As SFist’s Mattymatt points out, F car 496 unveiled a refurbished look Friday. Transit lovers everywhere will surely rejoice, right?
(Update) Dinner break for all 49 operators?
Update: KRON-4 has the latest on what may be the cause of the transit snarl, a suspicious package left at the Chinese Consulate near Japantown. Tara got a cab, and her cabbie was told to avoid Geary at all costs.
Original post: Yeah, it’s Friday. It’s felt like a longer week than normal for a lot of us.
But you knew the positivity couldn’t last, didn’t you?
So what, exactly, explains this, eh, Muni?
Tara snapped that out at Van Ness and North Point a few minutes ago. She called to tell me about it, so I decided to check NextBus and see what it had to say. At my stop, 20th and Mission, the 49s heading north to North Point and Van Ness are scheduled as follows:
And Tara just called back to say that her signs read: 14 minutes and 16 minutes, followed by an Arriving, with no bus in sight.
I’ve heard of FAIL, and I’ve heard of Muni FAIL, but this exceeds all expectations of fucked-upitude.
Perhaps Muni and NextBus should look into having the signs read “Buses are broken, look for alternatives now.”
Driver Cellphone Ban
On my way to class Tuesday night on the 43 outbound, my Muni driver inexplicably hopped off the bus at the Laguna Honda stop. At first I thought the bus had a mechanical problem, but the driver was acting a bit erratically — stepping on and off the fully powered bus while talking on his cellphone. Each time he stepped back on, we riders cocked our heads expectantly his way, hoping for some sort of announcement about why a perfectly functional bus wasn’t approaching our destination.
After about 13 minutes of idling (I was astutely watching the scrolling clock tick away on the digital placard), the driver reclaimed his seat at the wheel and resumed our route.
Faster Munis Make Zoooooom!!!
Well, if only it were so cut-and-dried. The Examiner‘s Mike Aldax has more on the proposal for Muni to run its trains at speeds up to 50 mph in certain stretches of the underground.