For Your Weekend Viewing Pleasure …
Photo by goodpotatoes from the Muni Photos Flickr pool
Transit News Digest 3.6.09
The Examiner reports on Nathaniel Ford’s stating of the obvious: that service will suffer due to a deteriorating fleet of buses and trains if millions aren’t found in funding to shore up the vehicles. Millions as in more the $680 of them. $680 million. In this economy?
The non-Chronicle, soon-to-be biggest daily in town also reported on Muni’s hiring of a new safety head. As rnaglejr responded when we echoed the news over on our Twitter feed, “yeah, well, what about the reliability chief? Still waiting on that hire.” So are we, Rob.
ABC and others tell us that yesterday’s Fruit(less)vale BART station protest was largely uneventful. Oh well, we’re sure there will more attempt to make the innocent suffer with BART delays and station shutdowns to come.
And we leave you to the weekend with this week’s humorous and tragic monkey business, as an opossum apparently caused major BART fuckery on Tuesday. Ouch.
If you’ve got news tips for Muni Diaires, or, you know, Muni diaries, send them our way. Or follow our Twitter feed for more immediate BART and Muni news. Have a great weekend!
Monsters vs Aliens: Featuring the F Car
In case you haven’t seen the signs on the bus, the F trains are featured in the upcoming animated movie, “Monsters vs Aliens,” opening March 27. Other prominent San Francisco landmarks are also featured in the movie.
Watch the trailer here – especially if you have a pair of 3-D glasses handy.
91-Owl Crash Injures 3
Muni bus crashes into vehicle in Marina, The Examiner’s Will Reisman reports.
Passenger Quota on Muni?
This came from Muni rider Joey:
Tuesday evening on the 45 headed from Cal Train station. Apparently the bus driver thought the 45 was some sort of shuttle bus. I was a bit late for the 5:37 p.m. bus but at 5:43 p.m. it was still there and pretty full. I grabbed one of the handful of seats left and figured we would be moving momentarily. But we sat there for another 10 minutes, while the bus got fuller and fuller.
By the time we left people were already yelling to those in the back to “MOVE to the back of the bus.” Maybe the bus driver thought if she crammed as many people on the bus as she could that she wouldn’t have to make many stops for the rest of the route. I too hate the bus constantly stopping, but it’s public transportation not the Google shuttle, it can leave the terminal with seats available.
Anybody else encountered this? Seems like another big reason the buses aren’t on time — and as Jeff commented yesterday about the Muni Wish List, there are some definite improvements that won’t really cost us any of that stimulus money.
A Timeline History of the F
Where would we be without the benefit of the tireless folks at What I’m Seeing? The other day, they graced their site with a remarkably thorough history of the F line, accompanied, of course, by really great photos.
What I’m Seeing is mostly a photo blog, but they provide background behind these types of themed posts. It’s becoming more and more an invaluable treasure for us SF-obsessed nuts.