Category: News

Streetcars! Maps! Histories! Oh, my!

San Francisco architect Randolph Ruiz (whose work we’ve featured before: “Am I riding a Muni bus, streetcar, or subway?“) sent over the map you see above. He calls it SF Muni in 1932—some of the missing letters.

If the visual isn’t enough for you, as awesome as it is, over on Muni’s site, Aaron Bialick’s wrote a history of Muni’s rail lines through the years, which helps to explain why there’s an E and an F, but no A–D. There were G, H, and I lines once upon a magical time. There was a J that didn’t have anything to do with Church. And there was an O that ran along Union Street.

Check out Aaron’s post for a deeper explanation of the Muni rail lines and why they aren’t around anymore.

Image by Randolph Ruiz

Muni buses are getting air conditioning for the first time, for, you know, those 10 days of the year when you don’t need to wear a hoodie. The SF Examiner reports that 98 of Muni’s 880 buses will get air conditioning by September, and the rest of the fleet will have air conditioning installed by 2018.

John Haley, director of transit at the SFMTA, said that operators voiced a need to cool the air in the buses. The cost of installing air conditioning is about $5.1 million, SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose told the Examiner.

I don’t know anyone with air conditioning in their homes, so I guess we’ll see you on the bus during our Indian summer?

Photo by stefan klocek

Last week, we told you about the end of an era: the departure of paper transfers because SFMTA was looking to upgrade farebox technology. This week, SFMTA approved the new fareboxes, diagrammed above, that will print out receipt-like transfers when you board the bus, reports SFBay.ca. The approved contract for $21.9 million will mean the installation of 1,336 new fareboxes for cash-paying riders, according to SFBay.ca.

Here’s what the new transfers will look like:

Yeah, well, OK. While the images feel more descriptive of a Vertsateller machine from the ’80s or a prop from Back to the Future, we accept that it’s probably more efficient, if less “San Francisco” — an outcome that always requires at least one sad face emoji.

That’s right, gone are those nights when you feel like you’ve won the lottery because the driver gave you a Late Night transfer, so get your nostalgic transfer shirts (or tattoos) soon.

Photo credit: SFBay.ca