Muni Diaries

Photo by eviloars

Too much going on to spill too many 1s and 0s here. Also, Happy Hour at Secession Art and Design, tonight.

Muni news of the week:

• Muni Driver Clothing Theft No Longer A Novelty, Now A Pattern (SF Appeal)
• Can Scott Wiener Ride ‘Fix Muni Now’ Bus to Victory? (SF Weekly)
• Surprise Vote by Pro-Transit Supes Against Vehicle License Fee Measure (Streetsblog SF)
• New Clipper Cards Not Without Problems (CBS 5)
• ‘N-Word,’ Assault on Muni Platform Lead to Felony Hate-Crime Charges (SF Weekly)
• Arrest Made of Muni Mechanic in Late-Night Transfer Racket (Streetsblog SF)

Weekend service updates from SFMTA:

On Sunday the annual San Francisco Marathon will begin from The Embarcadero and Mission at 5:30 a.m., with staggered starts until 6:30 a.m. The race route will loop along The Embarcadero, through the Marina to the Golden Gate Bridge, south on Lincoln Boulevard, through Golden Gate Park and east to 3^rd Street and The Embarcadero, behind the ballpark.

From midnight to 2:30 p.m. northbound Embarcadero between 3^rd Street and Broadway and southbound Embarcadero between Broadway and Harrison Street will be closed.

In additions to the Metro lines F Market, K Ingleside, T Third, L Taraval, M Ocean View, and N Judah, the following Muni bus routes will be affected:

1 California
2 Clement
5 Fulton
6 Parnassus
9 San Bruno
10 Townsend
12 Folsom/Pacific
14 Mission
18 46^th Avenue
19 Polk
22 Fillmore
24 Divisadero
27 Bryant
28 19th Avenue
31 Balboa
33 Stanyan
37 Corbett
38 Geary
43 Masonic
44 O’Shaughnessy
48 Quintara
49 Van Ness
71 Haight/Noriega

Finally … photos! Enjoy.

Photo by moxpox

Photo by StevenBrisson

Photo by Mr Ush

I’m in charge again, but just for today. I think even if Eugenia were around, though, she’d recognize the beauty and value of Eric Fischer’s info-graphic here. Take it away, Eric:

The colors are the same as in the Month of Muni map but the effect is very different. Except on the cable lines, which are genuinely slow, you can see here that the Muni vehicles move quickly when moving but have their average speed slowed by spending a lot of time stopped.

The difference is that instead of drawing a line from each sampled location to the next in a color corresponding to the average speed across the whole distance, this one plots only the sampled points themselves, with the instantaneous speed the vehicle was moving at the moment it crossed that point. The unfortunate part is that you can hardly see the subway because the reporting there doesn’t interpolate nearly as many points as you get for vehicles on the surface. But on the surface you can see the slowdown at every corner. The plotting gets fuzzy in the Financial District because of noise in the GPS signal from the tall buildings.

Black is stopped (less than 3 mph). Red is slow (3-5 mph). Blue is overall average operating speed (5-9 mph). Yellow is fast service (9-19 mph). Green is rapid movement (faster than 19 mph). Data from NextBus, April 13-June 6, 2010.

See a larger version of the graphic here. Information is beautiful, what?