Light-rail vehicles collide at West Portal, dozens injured (w/updates + video)

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Muni Crash at West Portal Station in San Francisco
Photo by Flickr user chrisjbarker

Started seeing many tweets just now about an apparent Muni collision near West Portal Station. We’ll try to update this post as frequently as possible with new information. For now, there are reports of 12 injuries, and delays on the K, L, and M lines in both directions. Updates are in reverse-chronological order, beginning with the latest:

Update:(Wednesday) just caught wind, via Twitter, of the first-ever videos of the crash, from SFGateSF Appeal (wtf, SFGate?):

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Cable Car Confessions: The new cable car and its presidential guests

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Presenting the July 2009 edition of Cable Car Confessions. This month, Laura tells us all about the newest addition to the fleet, as well as some of its VIP first riders. Our last president and his family never dared set foot in our little burg, much less hitch a ride on one of our historic treasures.

“Ding ding. All aboard. Next stop Powell Street Chinatown. Tickets please, show me your tickets please.” I heard about the unveiling of the new #15 San Francisco cable car from a blogger friend, who lives in Arizona. After hearing about this great cable car confession, I immediately talked to some of the conductors to hear their thoughts on the new car and the special guests riders.

Max, a cable car conductor, told me, “Even though so much has happened and changed in San Francisco, our cable cars are still the center of the inner workings of our city. To us San Franciscans, the sounds of the cable car bells chiming day and night are the natural sounds to the city. “

In fact, I must confess to you that when I travel and can’t hear the cable car bells at night, it feels too quiet. I can’t get to sleep! And if you told me this when I first got to San Francisco, I would have never believed you. I now can’t live without hearing passing cars, car alarms, foghorns and the ringing of bells. Read more

Category: diaries, reflection Tags:

Ew de Muni: Fried chicken and formaldehyde

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Jeez.
Photo by Flickr user adotjdotsmith

This olfactory delight by Mary Stream arrived in our inbox the other day:

Here’s a smell vignette from last night’s (July 14) 71L ride home:

At Fillmore and Haight, a senior Asian man gets on with two large containers of Popeye’s chicken. The chicken smell fills the bus causing one man in the back to yell “Hey, who’s serving chicken up front. Remember us back here.”

When the bus turns on Lincoln by UCSF Medical Center, an intern (name tag so indicated) got on and sat beside me. He smelled of formaldehyde.

What a great combination of smells (gag): Fried chicken and formaldehyde!

Got a story to tell? Funny, gross, gripe? Send it our way.

Category: diaries, Funny: Muni LOLs, WTF: Weirdness on Muni Tags: , , ,

From a West Portal resident: ‘Wrong Solution to Saturday’s Tragedy’

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Outbound
Photo by Flickr user Jamison Weiser

Media attention has turned to the manual controls of the Muni trains in the West Portal accident. We received the following email from rider and West Portal resident Mark:

Let me first say that my heart goes out to all of those who were injured Saturday afternoon in the Muni accident at West Portal.  That said, I feel like it is necessary to speak my mind on what happened because I feel that I have a unique opinion which I have not yet seen expressed by anyone in the media.

As of Monday, the media has finally drawn its attention to the procedure of taking trains off control of the ATC [editor’s note: Automatic Train Control] prior to entering West Portal Station.  As a long-time resident of the West Portal area, I know that this has been going on almost ever since the ATC went online; any regular Muni patron knows this as well. If there is no train currently in the station, the ATC brings the train in.  If there is already a train in the station, especially if it’s only a one-car train, as it was on Saturday, once the ATC has stopped the train outside of the station, drivers usually switch off the computer and take the train in manually so two trains can load/unload at the same time.  This is a very efficient procedure because West Portal is both a bottleneck inbound and outbound, as only one train can enter/exit at a time, so often during commute hours trains will be waiting to enter/exit West Portal Station.  By allowing the driver to bring in the train in manual mode, the driver takes full advantage of the three-car length platform and speeds things up a bit, which in my experience makes a big difference.

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Weekend Photo Diary: Deeper Concentration

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Time Is On My Side
Photo by Troy Holden

Dude, Plug 1 just won’t let up, will he? He’s all over, everywhere, all the time, taking amazing photos, dropping them into various group pools on Flickr, and even doing us the favor of sending us Muni-related news tips. We swear, he must be two or three people, or be able to bend the time/space continuum curve to be able to do as much as he does.

This photo is so cool, so real, we almost feel like we’re on the train with this guy, not our day-job desks putting together a Weekend Photo Diary.

Alas …

Weather this weekend should continue to feel not-quite-like-July-in-San-Francisco, meaning warm weather and mostly clear skies. Weather Underground sees highs in the upper-60s, while our mobile app tells us low-70s. You can interpret both to mean: GET OUT OF THE HOUSE AND HAVE SOME OUTSIDE FUN, PEOPLE!

Cheerio!

xoxo

Muni Diaries

Category: diaries, Photos

Not the good kind of nudity

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Photo submitted by author

In high school, we were broke. So we had to find cheap ways to entertain ourselves, and one of those ways was to take the 38 in from the Richmond and take the now-defunct 42 Downtown Loop to the old Tower Records and the Wharf.

One fateful day, my friend Bob and I were on the 42, sitting in the second-to-back row on the driver’s side. It was fairly crowded, but not uncomfortably so. We were minding our own business, talking about Man of La Mancha or whatever the hell it is we talked about in high school.

Eventually, we noticed some kind of commotion near the front of the bus, and a handful of people getting off. We tried to see what was going on, but there were too many people. Eventually, more people got off and we saw a totally naked middle-aged woman ambling around the front of the bus.

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Category: Funny: Muni LOLs Tags:
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