Market Street rails turn 150!

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Image by Market Street Railway Blog

There’s another anniversary happening today. One that we transit nerds at Muni Diaries HQ feel deserves as much pomp and circumstance as Independence Day.

SFGate’s Carl Nolte has a story up that details the background of why putting a streetcar on Market Street was so revolutionary in 1860:

Surveyor Jasper O’Farrell had laid out Market as a grand boulevard in the 1850s, but the infant San Francisco grew up around Portsmouth Square not far from Telegraph Hill. If San Francisco had a main street it was Montgomery, where all the best businesses were located. […]

The route of the pioneering Market Street rail line went through “wild country, the middle of nowhere,” [Emiliano] Echeverria said.

The rail line changed all that. “It set the wheels in motion, if you’ll pardon the expression,” Echeverria said.

And Market Street Railway Blog celebrates this glorious day in transit history thusly:

Eighty-four years after the Declaration of Independence was, er, declared on July 4, 1776, the first street railway on the Pacific Coast opened. It was an odd-looking railroad-type coach, powered by steam, running from Third and Market (pictured below) to 16th and Valencia. By 1867, the noisy steam engine aroused enough neighbors’ ire to be replaced by horsecars. (Guess they preferred the manure.) Cable cars took over as the predominant Market Street transit in 1883, succeeded by electric streetcars in 1906, which endure today as the F-line.

Both stories are worth a read.

Happy SF Transit Independence Day!

Category: News

Weekend Photos: Happy USA Day!

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Photo by Flickr user Joe Lindsay

It couldn’t’ve come at a better time. We’re simply exhausted, after our last-minute push to get the new-look Muni Diaries up last weekend. We hope you’re liking it. Aside from making the comments easier to read, we think all the kinks are out. Also, we added a new feature midweek: The ability to view posts by bus route. See the sidebar on the right over there. Nifty!

Now wethinks weneeds a long weekend, one filled with nice weather, good friends, good food, fun times … oh, and fireworks. Anyone know where we can find all of the above?

SFMTA says Muni will operate on a normal schedule both Sunday and Monday. And now, the week’s Muni news:

  • West Portal Muni crash proving costly for SF (SF Examiner)
  • Muni Bus Crash Injures Two (SF Appeal)
  • Muni plans to roll back half of new service cuts in September (City Insider); Details on which routes will be affected (SF Appeal)
  • New penalties proposal targets violence on Muni (SF Examiner)
  • Transit Rally’s Speakers Say Solution To Muni’s Woes Lies In Federal Funding (SF Appeal)
  • Union Prez Picks Sides in Muni Reform (The Bay Citizen)
  • July 6, 2010, hearing on Muni September 4 Restoration Details (SFMTA)
  • Muni reform petition goes to City Hall (SF Gate)
  • SFMTA issues instructions to operators in case of broken Clipper readers: Riders ride for free! (Muni Diaries)

Enjoy these photos, and we’ll see you back here Tuesday …


Photo by David Teter


Photo by Lilah Johnson

Trainstalking
Photo by davitydave Striking resemblance to the Democratic nominee for California Lt. Governor, no?

Category: News

Should You Pay When the Clipper Card Reader Is Broken? (update from MTA)

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New Clipper Card and Carrying Case
Photo by AgentAkit

Update (12:45 p.m.): We just heard back from SFMTA. Apparently, when the machines are broken, drivers are not supposed to make cardholders pay, regardless of whether the rider has his/her Fast Pass loaded on the card. Here’s a document SFMTA says they sent to operators notifying them of this change in procedure:

So, in Lisa’s case (see “Original post,” below), the driver was wrong to ask her to pay. Maybe that driver didn’t get the memo, literally. It’s dated June 29, which was Tuesday, the day before Lisa’s incident.

Original post: What do Fast Pass holders do when Clipper readers don’t work? You’ve paid $70 or so for the Fast Pass, but should you still pay the $2 if the Clipper reader can’t read your card?

Muni rider and Clipper Card holder Lisa shares this story (excerpted):

I was trying to catch the 28 [Wednesday] morning around 6:30 a.m. at 19th Ave and Holloway and the translink readers on the bus were down. The driver tells me I have to pay cash fare when the reader is down and that’s policy. I tried to explain to her that that made no sense as I had a monthly pass and, therefore, had already paid regardless of the reader.She said no, it’s policy, that I had a translink card and not a pass. I said, I paid for a pass, your readers are always down, I ride everyday and no one has ever said this to me before. But she still said I had to pay. So, in the end, I refused to pay on principle, and the driver would not allow me to ride, despite having paid my $70 for my monthly pass. I was 20 minutes late to work. I should have just gotten on the back with the rest the fare dodgers.

We don’t see any information on the Clipper site about this situation (neither the FAQ page nor Clipper with specific transit agencies pages). And we can easily envision this situation happening with increasing frequency as more and more riders use Clipper with their Fast Pass loaded onto the card.

What do you think? How do you think this situation should be handled? Even better, has Clipper considered this situation and devised a fix for it?

We asked SFMTA and will update you as soon as we hear back.

Related: Akit has a post up today about Clipper/Fast Pass holders whose passes aren’t loading by the first of the month, and aren’t being given the 3-day “grace period.” Kinks, they abound!

Category: diaries Tags: ,

A better way to transfer between Muni and BART

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The awesome Mr Eric Sir has a great idea for easier BART-to-Muni or Muni-to-BART transfers:

See? We eliminate two flights of stairs and save up to 5 minutes or so.

So what’s the rub, why didn’t they build the station like this in the first place?

It seems there simply isn’t enough room to have all the extra faregates and ticket machines we’d need on the station platforms. Or at least, it USED to be that way.

But now that we have Clipper, couldn’t we make do with less? All you’d have to do is exit Muni and tag on to Bart. Or in the other direction, tag off Bart and on to Muni.

Muni trains already have Clipper machines inside the train, and it’s a proof-of-payment system, so gates aren’t really needed. Bart could just have a couple faregates at the platform level. It wouldn’t have to take up too much space.

Wethinks this should be on a list of shovel-ready, high-priority stimulus jobs. You listening, Mr. Prez?

Above ossum grafik by Mr Eric Sir.

Category: diaries, Funny: Muni LOLs

Stand Up For Your Muni Line

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Muni lover
Photo by Flickr user ekai

Don’t let the picture fool you — we love the N-Judah plenty. In fact, we’ve got a whopping 51 stories about the N-Judah here on Muni Diaries. How do I know? We just added a drop-down box on the sidebar to the right over there so you can select stories by bus route. This was one of the most often-heard requests during our redesign, so here it is.

But don’t let the N, the 22, or the 49 steal the thunder from other lines. Can it really be that there are only 8 stories for the 19-Polk? What about poor 3-Jackson?

We know stories happens on Muni all the time, so if you’ve got a story, photo, or art for your line, send it over so you can show some love for your route!

Category: diaries, News Tags:

Muni Playlist: From Kanye to Kerouac

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SF Muni
Photo by laughlin

Early last week, we asked you what you were listening to on Muni. We can’t help it: we want to know what’s emanating from those sexy earbuds you’ve got in there, drowning out the noise around you as you slip into your own private headspace.

Today’s playlist is the A side, if you will, of the musical selections you sent us via comments and tweets. The B side (in no way inferior to this one) drops next week. Stay tuned. In the meantime, check out what your fellow Muni riders are rocking out to. Here they are, in their own words:

  • @anniebanannie kanye west (we took the liberty of choosing “Heartless”)
  • @revunderpants #Pavement! (we chose “Gold Soundz”)
  • @tonyriggins Jeezy “Put On” … for my city. Perfect for people watching on the Embarcadero
  • Lola LCD Soundsystem (This is Happening), Massive Attack (Heligoland), Matt and Kim (Grand), and Broken Social Scene (Forgiveness Rock Record)
  • Dancing Penguin Dog&Panther – Love Make // The Sweet Serenades – Die Young // Neon Walrus – We Don’t Matter // We Are Enfant Terrible – Seagull // Bonaparte – My Body is a Battlefield // MNDR – I go away…
  • Andrea My morning entertainment this morning was . . . Blues and Haikus – from Jack Kerouac, Al Cohn and Zoot Zims.
  • Sam “Bulletproof” by La Roux

For your listening (and possibly viewing, if you’ve got that kind of time in your day) pleasure, we’ve created another Muni Playlist on YouTube. Enjoy!

Want another soundtrack from the bus? Check out last fall’s Muni playlist,

Category: Aww: Cute on Muni, diaries Tags:
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