Category: diaries

Weekend Photos: Facing Forward

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Royal Crown
Photo by Troy Holden

A week into the service cuts, you’ve let us know in pictures and in stories how these cuts are affecting you. Meanwhile, new audit and cut backs on fare enforcement drove most of Muni news this week:

– St. Francis Circle Rail-Replacement project schedule changes to being Monday (SFMTA)
– Muni Says It Agrees With Its Audit, Still Wants to Rebut It (SFAppeal)
– Fare inspectors aren’t law enforcement officials (Bay City News via SFAppeal)
– Graffiti moniker helps solve Muni case (Examiner)
– Supervisors Prepared to Reject SFMTA Budget if Muni Service Cuts Stay (StreetsBlog SF)
– Muni cuts back on fare enforcement in light of profiling concerns (Examiner)
– New Muni attendance policy in the works (Examiner)
– City Audit Slams Muni Labor, Management (SFWeekly)
– Suspicious package (burrito) disrupts the N (CBS5)

This Sunday is Bay to Breakers so if you’re not running/walking/stumbling under the influence, be sure to check out the impacted Muni schedule due to the race.

Oh hey, is that a Muni Banksy in that photo below?

Enjoy the pictures and your weekend. And if you take any Bay to Breaker photos on Muni, we want to know, like, asap!

Go Humans Go
Photo by Thomas Hawk

(Inverted) Muni Banksy
Photo by Flickr user dumbeast

urban blur #3
Photo by Flickr user optimal tweezer

Category: diaries

Tell us: How are the service cuts affecting you? (with update)

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Broken 47
Photo by Flickr user Rubin 110

Update:

Perhaps as evidence of service cuts hurting everyone’s commute, rider JimmyD sent in pictures from his commute this evening and asks why a single car train is running at rush hour. Here’s the crowd at Embarcadero Station around 5:10 p.m. today:


Photo by JimmyD

How has your commute been this week?

Original post:

It’s now been five days since Muni enacted its latest service cuts, a whopping, decimating 10 percent reduction on just about every route in town. In less serious times, we’d be forced to joke about how service couldn’t possibly be reduced further, right? Wrong.

We see people’s toils and troubles on Twitter. We experience them ourselves in our commutes and our attempts to simply connect with our friends and colleagues. The cuts are real, and we feel them.

But now, we want to know how they’re affecting you. Share your stories in the comments, please.

(In related news, Streetsblog SF reports that the Board of Supervisors was set to discuss the SFMTA budget and the recent Muni audit at today’s 1:30 p.m. meeting.)

Category: diaries, reflection

Freestylin’ 49, Part 2

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Muni Graveyard
Photo by Flickr user DaveFayram

I hate bagging on Muni drivers, whether it’s via the relative anonymity of the interwebs, to a friend at a party, or to their faces. It accomplishes nothing, as you’re still shit out of luck even after you’ve gotten worked up, right? But I had to say something this time.

Background: I spun this yarn a few weeks ago about a 49-Van Ness/Mission that inexplicably stopped at 14th Street, instead of continuing further south like it’s supposed to. Fine. Whatever. But during each of the three times this has happened to me, news of the offbeat route was announced with an inside voice that could shame the quietest church whispers. The 49 isn’t exactly quiet, either. All signs indicated that this was indeed a 49 that went the full route.

During my charmed third time on the 49-Stops at 14th Street, the bus pulls to a stop, and the same driver (at the same time of day) opens all the doors. He steps outside the bus, walks the length of one side, and notifies people with his inside voice, “last stop…last stop…last stop.”

As 50 people stare at one another confusedly, wondering if the driver simply bailed to the gas station for a snack, I stepped outside and asked if this was the last stop. I said he needs to actually announce this to people next time, because no one can hear him. That is why 50 people are still sitting on his bus.

His response: “The PA is broken, what do you want me to do?”

Hmm.

Yes, PAs break, especially on Muni, where a lot of things break all the time. And he’s apparently driving the same broke-ass bus every time, hence the regular lack of aurally acceptable announcements. Shitty. But come on; why did he go outside, first of all, instead of walking the length of the inside of the bus?

Consider this another plea for better communication between drivers and passengers.

If you’re curious, the bus turns east on 14th Street after slowly emptying its confused load of folks.

Category: diaries, WTF: Weirdness on Muni Tags: ,

Mystery Bus Stop Park

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Empty Bus Stop Park

Flickr user Rick Audet captured this quick guerrilla Muni stop parklet on Castro at Market street over the weekend, right outside the Twin Peaks bar. Here are some folks enjoying it:

Bus Stop Park

Rick said that he saw a photographer across the street set up to snap some photos of the pop-up bus stop park, then the parklet was quickly dismantled. More from Rick:

I don’t know how long it was set up, but it was there for the 15 minutes I spent waiting for the next 24 line. It appeared that the people who posed for the photographer across the street were the same people who drove up to this spot and dismantled the parklet, and then the photographer grabbed his gear, crossed the street and hopped into their vehicle too.

Anybody have any idea about what’s going on here? I’m strangely fascinated.

Category: diaries
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Ok, first, I must say that I risked my life in running across the 4th Avenue and Fulton intersection while dodging in front of and behind fast-moving cars, just to flag down a 5-Fulton. But that’s not what the story I’m retelling is really about. The bus stopped, and I made a point to say “Thank you” to the kind bus driver. I took my seat across from an overweight man in a wheelchair. A few minutes into my ride, he begins talking to no one in particular. Of course, no one responds, and I continued thinking there was NOTHING special about this behavior. Well, at about five minute mark, I begin to smell cigarette. Again, I thought nothing of this; that is, until I notice smoke protruding from the cigarette the man had just lit up.

My jaw dropped…and quickly I grabbed the collar of my ski jacket to cover up my nose and mouth. No one stopped him. Once all of us had realized what was going on, we reacted in different ways. One person decided to move towards the back of the bus: One of the two males sitting near me let out a jokingly-over-exaggerated cough. The other said “Oh, you got something in your throat?” We all laughed in a semi-secretive fashion. The man in the wheelchair continued to smoke his cigarette until he felt he was done. He dropped his still-lit cigarette onto the floor, failing to put it out when he made an attempt to move his right foot forward half an inch. There the cigarette lay: lit. I had an intense urge, as a girl who hates cigarettes with a passion, to stand up, put the thing out with my heels, and tell him that what he just did was extremely disrespectful, but didn’t. I can assure you that I’m a good citizen, but I’m one that knows better than to start something with an incoherent piece of crap.

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