Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Shit’s getting real, you guys.
Over on their Facebook page, BART posted some photos of their next-gen trains, due to begin regular service late in 2016. Very cool stuff.
Check out them straps!
Photos via BART’s Facebook page
You’ve seen the ads on the bus. Now you can download Muni’s mobile ticket app on your pocket computers today (hat tip to Akit for his post here). The MuniMobile app is available for iPhone and Android, so you can give it a whirl.
I just downloaded the app onto my iPhone. You can only buy single tickets, a cable car ticket, or a 1,3,7-day pass. There doesn’t seem to be a way to buy a monthly pass on the mobile app, or to transfer the November monthly pass that I already bought (duh) from my Clipper Card onto the new mobile app. And you won’t be able to do inter-agency transfers to BART or Caltrain on the mobile app. So for now, I can’t really use this app until … never. But your word is better than mine: Have you used the MuniMobile ticketing app. If so, how did it work for you?
A few bits of advice from the MuniMobile people on how to use the app (hint: Don’t change your phone! Your tickets don’t automagically transfer to a new phone).
The Super Bowl 50 Committee plans to ask SFMTA to take down the overhead wires on Market Street during the sportsball fiesta, but honestly, we think the overhead wires are kind of nice in a photo op.
Next year’s Super Bowl will be held in Santa Clara, but the eight-day fan village will be in Justin Herman Plaza, where the mayor told KCBS that there won’t be room for the homeless or anyone. The Examiner reports that Supervisor Jane Kim confirmed the Super Bowl 50 Committee‘s desire to pull down Muni wires.
No decisions have been made about the potential request, but the Examiner says that pulling down the overhead wires could cost a “seven-figure number” requiring “lots of overtime” to remove correctly. The F, 6, 21, and 31 lines run on overhead wires in the area.
I actually think Muni overhead wires make for really beautiful photos, as evidenced by several of the photographers we’ve featured on Instagram. Maybe the Super Bowl 50 Committee can take a look at a few of these beauties?
Photo by @nyxnax
Photo by @geoffreyupton
Photo by @itsjustinsane
Photo by @djsoul6
Top photo by @nonny1982
Remember when the news about the Board of Supervisors passing the Subway Master Plan broke? That … that was awesome.
Now, on the heels of that news, the always-handy Muniverse digs into four projects already at least in the study phase that the SMP will affect now that it has been passed.
By far, the biggest project (for the region) will be a Second Transbay BART Tube and a new line through San Francisco. BART is still in the early stages of planning, but there’s one particular corridor that seems to be gaining traction and included in presentations. Under this setup, the second Transbay Tube would cross the bay from Alameda to San Francisco, landing around AT&T park and running under Second or Third to Market Street.
Other systems/projects that will benefit from the new plan are: the Caltrain/High-Speed Rail, an M-Ocean View/Park Merced extension and maybe-subway, and the T-Third/Central Subway extension to Fisherman’s Wharf. Read the rest of Muniverse’s post about the Subway Master Plan for more details.
Image by Muniverse/Jamison Wieser
Photo by Sam Wolson, from an ongoing project following Shannon Fulcher in Oakland.
Status Update is a new exhibition of documentary photography and video about change, chance, and inequality in the San Francisco Bay Area. Curated by Pete Brook and Rian Dundon, the exhibition spans the work of 14 photographers who have been documenting life in the Bay Area, some of them for decades. The curators emphasize their “deliberate and slower approaches to documentary work,” more a “take a step back and look at what’s happening” than just relying on gut reactions.
If you’ve taken BART 10 different times, you’ve probably already won BART Driver Bingo. Today on SFGate, 10 different types of BART operator are exposed. Here’s a sample:
To read the full list, visit SFGate: The 10 types of drivers you get on BART.
One type that I would add: THE ALMOST-BUT-NOT-QUITE-ER You know the one—can’t quite get the train to line up with those black squares on the platform. Takes way too long to open the doors after pulling into the station.
If you’ve got any archetypal BART operators not yet named, share with the group!
Photo by Adam McLane