New Muni Policy AKA The Official Boning of the N-Judah

Just when you though things couldn't suck enough, what with the delays, jacked up fares, and whatnot, now comes what is surely to be the official boning of Muni and the N-Judah starting next week - they're actually closing the downtown subway starting at 10 p.m..

Now, of course, they tell us it's a yearlong project to "make Muni better." And while hate to join the ranks of the knee jerk cynics, it's really hard for me to believe these folks can really do anything to make things better. They've already paid an incredible amount of money to the incoming Muni director, Nathaniel Ford, who not only gets paid, but even if he gets fired STILL GETS PAID FOR SEVERAL YEARS MORE. And they keep finding ways to avoid real funding solutions for Muni in favor of screwing the fare-paying customer.

Now this. And of course, they're great at flashing this update on the few stops that have NextMuni installed, but they don't really know what they're doing. Just remember - whenever you read "subway service replaced by bus service" you might as well read "reliability thrown out the window and a crowded ride on a jerky bus."

SFist, one of the few online outlets for the kind of news that matters, has kindly provided an unofficial map showing the area to have what little reliability and usefulness tossed out like a morning log. They've also provided some predictions and suggestions for the new year-plus state of affairs for downtown Muni.

Needless to say, that chance to take an extended work assignment out of town is starting to look good. Frankly I don't wanna be here for the total boning of my beloved N-Judah. The least Muni could do before this giant municipal screw job is buy us all dinner first. At least then we'd feel better in the morning, waiting for our "buses."

(Special Note: It's nice to see that some media outlets in this town can provide relevant commentary and notes to things that matter. Unlike the whiny, useless Bay Guardian, or the sophomoric and equally useless SF Weekly, at least SFist tries. And these guys aren't paid nearly as much as the community-college dropout writers at the big weeklies.)