Transit News: Muni hybrid buses, how to defraud BART, BART to San Jose, Muni Metro doubling

news10
Photo by Our Hero

  • Muni wants new hybrid buses on the road this summer (SF Examiner)
  • Buy the Ticket, Fake the Ride: A Tech Scientist Devises a Means to Defraud BART (SF Weekly)
  • SFMTA Board Considers New Muni Fare Discounts (Streetsblog SF)
  • BART extension to San Jose is moving right along (SJ Merc)
  • Advocates turn attention to free Muni for SF seniors, disabled after Google gift (SF Examiner)
  • Muni Metro tries doubling up (SFGate)

Weekend Transit Advisory – First Sunday Streets of 2014, Daylight Savings Time

This weekend, dust off your bikes for the first Sunday Streets of the year at the Embarcadero! And then these’s that pesky Daylight Savings Time thing that will mess up your sleep schedule forever. Straight from the SFMTA, here’s your weekend transit advisory.

Little League Parade
On Saturday, San Francisco Little League Baseball will open the 2014 season with a parade from the Presidio to Marina Middle School.

Beginning at 10 a.m. the parade will leave the Presidio Main Post through the Gorgas Gate, turn south on Lyon Street and proceed east on Union Street to Laguna Street, north to Chestnut Street, west to Divisadero, through the neighborhood and back to Bay Street to disband in the school parking lot.

San Francisco Police Officers will monitor the parade for necessary street closures.

The following Muni routes will be affected:

22 Fillmore
28 19th Avenue
30 Stockton
43 Masonic
45 Union

Repair and Maintenance Projects
Beginning at midnight, Saturday and through 4 a.m., Sunday, crews from the SFMTA, San Francisco Public Utilities Commission, Department of Public Works and PG&E will perform maintenance work along Market Street and at various locations:

Market Street between 6th and 8th streets
Market Street at Fremont Street
Spear Street at Mission Street
3rd Street at Market Street
There will be no street closures required for this project.

The following Muni lines and routes will be affected during the course of the work:

F Market and Wharves (Muni buses will replace street cars)
K Ingleside (Early Morning Metro Buses Only)
L Owl
M Ocean View (Early Morning Metro Buses Only)
N Judah (Early Morning Metro Buses Only)
N Owl
5 Fulton
6 Parnassus
8X Bayshore Express
9 San Bruno
19 Polk
21 Hayes
30 Stockton
31 Balboa
38 Geary
38L Geary Limited
45 Union/Stockton
71 Haight/Noriega

Customers are encouraged to allow extra travel time during the hours when the maintenance work takes place.

Sunday Streets – Embarcadero
The first Sunday Streets events will be held this Sunday along the northbound Embarcadero from King Street to Fisherman’s Wharf and down 3rd Street to Mission Bay. The 3.3-mile route will be available to pedestrians and bicyclists for recreational activities from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. These events are free to all participants.

The headquarters for the event will be located at Harry Bridges Plaza in front of the Ferry Building, where participants can get details about activities along the event route as well as free bike rentals and maintenance. Other key locations are Fisherman’s Wharf, East Park (south of Pier 39), Rincon Park, South Beach Park and Mission Bay Park (near Pier 52). For further event details, please visit www.sundaystreetssf.com.

Beginning at 10:30 a.m., northbound Embarcadero will be closed for the event and will be re-opened by 4:30 p.m.

Southbound Embarcadero will remain open throughout the event. Motorists should expect heavy traffic around the event area and should allow extra travel time.

Motorists heading to the Fisherman’s Wharf area can use an alternate route by travelling north on 3rd Street, to Kearny Street, then Columbus Avenue and into the Wharf area. Enforcement personnel from the SFMTA will be on site to direct traffic. Local access will be allowed to the piers via southbound Embarcadero or cross streets.

The following Muni lines and routes will be affected:

F Market and Fisherman’s Wharf
T Third
39 Coit
76 Marin Headlands
108 Treasure Island
Participants can take the following Muni routes and lines for easy access to Sunday Streets fun:

F Market
Metro Lines (J, K, L, M, N, T)
10 Townsend
22 Fillmore
30 Stockton
45 Union-Stockton
Start of Daylight Saving Time

On Sunday daylight saving time will commence at 2 a.m., requiring clocks to be set forward one hour.
All Muni service will continue to operate on standard time through the end of Owl service. Muni schedules will adjust to daylight saving time with the start of regular service on Sunday.

Researchers Say Muni Beats the Giants as Top Twitter Topic in SF

muni iphones
Photo by Neil

A new social analysis company researched Twitter data and found that San Franciscans love tweeting about…you guessed it…Muni. I hate to say “I told you so” but our Twitter followers don’t lie! The study found that #SFMuni and #Muni are the most popular hashtags from people tweeting in San Francisco, beating out #sfgiants by a long shot.

The company also researched Twitter-happy New Yorkers and found that, in New York they’re mostly busy tweeting about the weather while we sunbath in Dolores Park.

Top 15 local hashtags for San Francisco from the study:

1. #sfmuni
2. #muni
3. #sfbeerweek
4. #sf
5. #crunchies
6. #swobma
7. #goldengatebridge
8. #sm4np
9. #bart
10. #tahoe
11. #sanfrancisco
12. #patue
13. #bayarea
14. #sfglive
15. #sfgiants

How was the study done? Details from Mashable:

London-based social analysis company Peerindex took a look at the tweets of a pretty substantial test group from both cities — 1.6 million people living in New York and San Francisco — for the 30 days leading up to March 5. Between them, the subject group tweeted an average 2.8 million times a day.

To narrow down what they were tweeting about, Peerindex looked at the hashtags they used, then discarded any that were tweeted less than 500 times. Spam-like hashtags, such as contests, were also discarded. Eventually, each city ended up with a list of hashtags in order of their “local score” — meaning that hashtag was that many times more likely to show up in that city.

Transit News: Singing Muni driver, shuttles, shuttles, moar shuttles

news9
Photo by Jeremy Brooks

  • Muni driver adds a note of cheer to the 29-Sunset (SFGate)
  • Google’s Muni gift won’t stop appeal against S.F. commuter shuttle program (SF Examiner)
  • S.F. shuttles tread on Muni’s turf as pilot program aims to cut overlap (SF Examiner)
  • Dear Google: Here’s How to Make San Francisco Love You Again (SF Weekly)
  • SFMTA puts people of SF first (Ed Reiskin opinion on SF Examiner)
  • Regional transit agencies use Muni stops at no cost with no hassle (SF Examiner)

Swedish subway ad blows our minds, our hair


Via Apotek Hjärtat – Blowing in The Wind from Ourwork

A recent ad campaign in Sweden left subway riders doing a double take thanks to one of the coolest electronic billboards ever. Created for Apotek Hjärtat’s Apolosophy hair products, the billboard was rigged so that a model’s hair would begin blowing every time a train entered the station.

If only we had something to make waiting a bit more interesting around here. Muni and BART advertisers, it’s time to step it up.

Via Adweek

Google donates $6.8 million to Muni

google
Photo by cjmartin

Looking to stop San Franciscans’ stooping so low as to use Bing, Google announced Thursday that it is donating enough money to cover Muni’s free passes for youth program for the next two years. SFGate has the details:

The donation, the largest ever from a nongovernment entity to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, will fund an existing pilot program that allows low- and middle-income San Francisco kids ages 5 to 17 to ride Muni for free. It costs about $3 million a year. So far, more than 31,000 youths have registered and received passes.

It comes as tech companies are facing a backlash from city residents upset about rising housing costs, gentrification, a wave of evictions, and perceived aloofness from those companies and their employees.

LOL, that’s putting it mildly. Read the rest of the story at SFGate.

Unless you’ve been living under one of those rocks that don’t come with WiFi, you know that those large shuttle buses kickin’ it at Muni stops all over town have been, uh, stirring up quit a shitstorm. Will Google’s gift to San Francisco and Muni cause you to feel any differently?

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