The N-Judah Chronicles

By now, most people have heard something about the Transit Effectiveness Project, a project of the SFMTA to try and make things run more efficiently. The braniacs at City Hall have been touting the process as an example of their commitment to A Better MUNI, and clearly the top brass at MUNI and the SFMTA have bet most of their chips on this thing to try and make things better.

The good citizens at The Transbay Blog have posted some very thoughtful comments on the proposed changes, and it's well worth your while to take a look at what they have to say. I was struck, in particular about their comments about the 36-Teresita line, which I have relied on when house-sitting for a friend up in the hills (and have been stranded more than a few times waiting for a bus as-is).

There are many ways you can get involved with the process and offer praise and critiques of the proposed changes. One way, of course is to attend public meetings, a list of which is provided at the end of this post.

For me, I have found the research they've done to be quite interesting, but often times of the "we knew that" variety. For example, they discovered that people want the buses to run on time so they can plan their time accordingly. Well, um, yeah. Also, while they've done a heck of a job pinpointing the most and least used routes, et al, I haven't seen a lot so far about projections for the future.

One of the problems we have now is that we have lots of people living in places that did not have lots of housing 20+ years ago, the last time we made any real changes. So I wonder how they're gonna try and predict where the up-and-coming regions of Our Fair City will be, and how they'll accomodate those changes in the years to come.

Anyway, here's a list of meeting times and places. You can also contact them via email (and be sure to CC your Supervisor and the Mayor when you do!) or via traditional USPS mail. No matter how, do what you can to learn more and get involved.

They can ignore my silly blog, they can ignore a small band of folks, but if enough people learn more and participate in good faith, eventually they have to listen to someone. Surely the good citizens of our city can offer up good ideas to make things work better for all of us, right?

• Saturday, May 3, 10:30 am, Jean Parker Elementary, 840 Broadway St. (at Powell St.)
• Monday, May 5, 6:30 pm, Visitacion Valley Elementary, 55 Schwerin St. (at Visitacion Ave.)
• Saturday, May 10, 10:30 am, Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, 4235 19th St. (at Diamond St.)
• Monday, May 12, 6:00 pm, West Bay Conference Center, 1290 Fillmore St. (at Eddy St.)
• Wednesday, May 14, 6:30 pm, Bessie Carmichael Elementary, 375 Seventh St. (at Harrison St.)
• Saturday, May 17, 10:30 am, Mission YMCA, 4080 Mission St. (at Bosworth St.)

Posted by Greg Dewar at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Reader Michael wrote in inquiring about a comment I made to the Examiner that appeared in this morning's paper:

I'm not sure if the Examiner quoted you correctly when they wrote:

"'If you board the N-Judah on 48th [Avenue] and get off before downtown, there is no one checking your ticket,' said Greg Dewar, who runs the blog The N-Judah Chronicles."

The statement attributed to you is not correct. Although it is true that MUNI fare inspectors only work the MUNI rail lines; it is not true that they only do so downtown.

I live in the Outer Sunset (43rd Ave.) roughly equidistant from the N and L lines and ride them both regularly...although I tend to favor the N because it is less crowded and runs much more frequently than the L. On both lines, I have encountered fare inspectors well away from downtown.

On the N, I have faced them at 19th/Judah, UCSF, and Church/Duboce. On the L, I have encountered them at 31st/Taraval and 19th/Taraval.

I think when I was speaking to the reporter (while trying to do some work on the computer at the same time) I don't know that I made it clear I was referring to the second train in a two-train N as being where one can board without paying. I don't for a moment think this was an intentional mistake on the part of the reporter - rather I just didn't pick the precise wording with regards to that issue and the mistake would be mine.

One thing I discussed with the reporter that probably didn't fit into this particular story was the fact that once upon a time, on busy bus and MUNI lines, MUNI paid people to collect money and load people on and off the bus at the back doors of said buses and trains, to move things along and collect money they're owed.

However, I think there is a case to be made that having some more fare inspectors on some of the more notorious bus lines is not a bad idea - I think the 71 Haight easily qualifies as one of the biggest fare-evadin' bus lines in the system. Your thoughts? Post 'em in the comments.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 3:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Reader Mark sends us this dispatch from the Sunset, expressing frustration with our Beloved MUNI, and a suggestion to pass the time whilst on a crowded train home:

Hey, I sometimes read your website, but have to say it's been a while. I am a 6 year resident of the sunset and for the first 4 I rode the N Judah back and forth to work. Then, 2 years ago I discovered the 16X. Since I live at 17th and lincoln, i take this in the AM and take the N home.

Now, I am done with Muni. I am buying a bike and will use that as my mode of transportation. Still, I have a suggestion for your site. It boggles my mind how Muni is run...the most heavily ridden metro is always short changed. How can they not fix this? Yet routinely i see 2 K's back to back or 3 M's as I saw one day! What a waste...

So here's the suggestion to see if this gets them going: Encourage riders to capture how stuffed the N gets with cell phone videos. I honestly think none of the officials ride muni. (Newsom, BoS, or the Muni head). So they must be out of touch to the realities of it...so I say let's show them. (ok, i am not going to be one as I have given up...but i have hope and sympathy for those still going to use muni)

Perhaps this might be a fun spring project for all of us on the N, or any MUNI bus or train. Take your cellphone pics, videos, etc. of your crowded-like-sardines commute, and join the MUNI Follies group on Flickr. As submissions are sent in, we'll find particularly entertaining ones and feature them here on the site. Thanks for the suggestion, Reader Mark!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 1:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Wall-E on the N!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 4:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

Looks like there's some damaged power lines that are delaying the N-Judah, in and outbound in the Outer Sunset, and buses are being provided to replace the streetcars....plan accordingly!

UPDATE: A Loyal Reader was kind enough to email me right after the wires broke, and took some pictures:

at the n-judah turnaround

just heard a sound like trampoline being detonated
somehow the judah screwed up its wires... you know
the big web of them down here at the turnaround.. they're
nicely tangled now :(

happened at ~3:15pm (4/28)

wondering if we'll see something on the RSS feed :)

Posted by Greg Dewar at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Here we go....today it's reported that our green-tie wearing Mayor and allegedly Greener Than Thou Supervisors are starting to feel the heat regarding the proposed parking ticket fine increases, and are threatening to kill the MTA budget to stop it.

Techinically the MTA board is free of political influence (because, you know, you can vote for judges but not MTA board members), but in an odd twist, a supermajority of our Beloved Board and our Mayor can override the entire budget and send it all back with notes.

The Mayor, as usual, always floats out bold "talk" when the issue comes up first, but in the face of any opposition or controversy, backs down, and instead is now talking about screwing the Transit Effectiveness Project he's been promoting, ad nauseum, for a year now.

As I've said before, I was never really comfortable with the idea of relying on parking ticket fines as a stable source of revenue, and have tried, unsuccessfully, to get our Dearly Elected Leaders to realize that these half-assed, fiddle-with-the-margins solutions to MUNI's financial woes will never get us out of the hole and on track to a service that generally works, and is financially secure.

However, once again lost in all these reports and chatter is that once again, our Board of Supervisors, our Mayor, and even our state representatives all seem to be dedicated to cutting as much funding out of MUNI as possible, and never seem to come up with new, stable, fair ways to pay for a system - or even dare audit the MTA and determine just how much money it really takes to run the system, and go from there.

After all, we've had so-called "progressive" leaders actually call for cutting MUNI revenues for certain people, we've had our state Assemblymembers vote to cut MUNI funding from MUNI, BART and every transit district in the state, and our Mayor pushed through big pay raises for certain city employees, blowing out the budget (as well as dipping into MUNI funds to pay for political staffers).

They do manage to slap a picture of the Earth or drive in a Prius in a piece of election junk mail, and the masses are calmed. The out-of-town press comes to town and fawns over Green SF becuase some elected has a hybrid terlet or whatever, and yet, reality collides when a sooty bus arrives 40 minutes late.

Funny that.

So, for fun, I'm going to propose a few "common sense" ideas for the Big Kids at City Hall to consider as they fight amongst themselves and all those special interests at City Hall. I'm sure it'll be ignored by both "progressives" and the Mayor's Voting Bloc, but hey, at least we're converting negative energy into positive, right?

Anyway, let me get my hippie crystals and come up with the following:

1. First, figure out what is necessary in terms of personnel, equipment and annual costs to make a MUNI that actually runs on time for the people of San Francsico. No BS, no silliness, and no bloated management and paying for political aides. I mean what it really takes to run a real system, not this toy train we have now.

2. Next, figure out how much it really costs, cutting out the BS as much as possible, but for the love of Our City, don't cut things like training and maintenance. We've done that, and seen the results (millions in lawsuit payouts and vehicles trailing parts). This is not that hard, electeds, use your chess club brains and figure it out.

3. And now for the hard part - stable, reliable ways to pay for MUNI. Don't buy in to some hippie rhetoric about endlessly taxing only businesses - that is as unfair as jacking up fares to $10 on "the poor." Don't buy into right-wing rhetoric about cutting out transfers - even the Federales agree that transfers are necessary to keep people using mass transit. Instead, start from scratch and don't rely on things like sales taxes all the time - find some stable, fair ways to pay for it instead, to support a real workable system ,not the 7 headed Hydra of BS we have now.

4. Finally, really take a look at where you're investing the money for the future. The Central Subway is a multi-billion dollar Train to Nowhere that has been cloaked in political correctness/shenanigans for years. It will not help Chinatown, it will cost a fortune, and will do more damage to the system than the T-Third on a bad hair day. Take the Central Subway files, burn them, and put long term investments into things that will make the system work better for everyone (including Chinatown and North Beach who suffer on the infamous 30 Stockton), not worse.

These are just some thoughts I've had for awhile now, but encourage folks to post other ideas in the comments. I'm not paid to be a transit expert, nor would I want to be one. All I know is that as of now, my chances of getting stranded late at night thanks to MUNI is higher than ever, and the proposed silliness by our Board and Mayor are going to make things worse. (Don't even get me started on how pricey and sucky our cabs are.)

However, it's more important we get our so-called greenie electeds to wake up and stop debating these issues via soundbite and press release, and start coming up with better ideas. Every single one of these people is going to be asking for re-election or a promotion to the state Assembly, Senate and the Governor's Mansion in the future - maybe they should earn that promotion instead of just having it handed to them because they peddle feel-good rhetoric instead of actually getting something done.

UPDATE: I saw this link to a "bold speech" by Our Mayor on "environmental justice" via his Facebook profile.

Talk certainly is cheap. But it sure sounds great!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 11:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you're not already reading Eater SF the sister site to the always awesome Curbed SF, well you really should check it out if you're interested in more information on the many fascinating (and sadly, expensive) places to eat out in Our Fair City.

Today, Google Reader and Eater SF conspired to bring this little vignette about SF's allegedly super-greenie eviro-y restaurante. Funny enough, they're not only offering Critical Mass Happy Hour Specials, they're also giving Bike Coaltion people expensive "organic" beers for Pabst Blue Ribbon prices.

Memo to hipster greenies running your "Friend of the Earth" restaurant....if anyone deserves a break on pricey hipster beer prices, it is the hard working men and women of Our Fair City that endure a MUNI ride every freakin' day. We're not driving our cars, we're "doing the right thing," so cut us a break even though we don't scream like bashees about some lost cookie, m'kay?

Thanks, and for more information on MUNI, consult your local library!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is depressing as Hell: here I was working away trying to fix a problem on my new MacBook, when WHAM! I heard a noise outside. At first I thought it was just a neighbor's TV or something, but then heard a commotion outside. As it turns out, there's been a pretty nasty accident at 12th/Lincoln and traffic westbound is totally blocked, and no doubt most eastbound traffic will be blocked too.

I didn't see the accident actually happen, but according to eyewitnesses it seems that the car that hit the light pole was hit from behind by another car, however, although 4 people called 911, most of 'em had left by the time I got outside

However in a bit of good news, the firemen and paramedics were on the scene in literally minutes, so that's a good thing. I hope the people involved aren't seriously hurt and that people would please please please try and drive more safely when in a congested urban area like SF.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 2:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I put the MUNI Alert RSS Feed into Google Reader to see if it'd be useful...and today it was, as it seems there's a derailed MUNI car at the Caltrain Station. As I need to take Caltrain today, well this helps me know that Things Will Be Delayed.

No details as of yet. If you use an RSS reader, you can cut and paste this URL into Google Reader or whatever you use, and be updated on the latest and greatest in MUNI mayhem:

http://www.sfmta.com/rss/announcements.xml

Enjoy!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 1:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

o hai for the blog

Posted by Greg Dewar at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

What a day it was in blogville (and its suburb, Twitter-ville) today, eh? We had some amazing blog goodness, particularly from Eye on Blogs, CurbedSF, SFist and Fog City Journal, among others.

For today's Links of Interest, however, we'll take a step away from the rush-rush of the day's events and focus on some blogs that take a look at urban life through a MUNI-esque lens. I've found all of them to be quite entertaining in that observational kind of way.

I caught TangoBaby's blog via Google News alerts, and her photo essay on the commute, via the Mighty N, was a nice find. She also did an entertaining post on the reading habits of those of us commuting on the N.

Likewise, if you've not read the dispatches by Rachel over at Fog City Notes, you're missing out on the kind of "as it happens" commentary I used to do more of when I started this blog a while back. And it's thanks to her I also discovered No Line Left Behind, which is an entertaining ride on all the MUNI lines. Her notes as she makes various stops are quite illuminating. I remember years ago reading about a group of people who decided to ride every line on MUNI over a Labor Day Weekend, but have yet to find the article....

Two other observational blogs I've caught on Google Alerts are I Ride MUNI and the awesomely named Stepdown, Stepdown. Both offer yet more eyes on the daily grind that is MUNI, and both are fun to read.

Remember, you can always find our ongoing Links of Interest by clicking on the subject heading in the right column. It's better than trying to cram all the awesome links into a giant column, and you also get a little background on each site as well!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 7:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

All of today's Olympic Torchy Goodness has been making MUNI hellacious today - the N, of course, is blocked over by the ballpark, and there's new chatter that the torch is going to run down Van Ness instead (where no one is around to actually see it) and there's an army of Chinese and American security forces out there today.

All of the MUNI alerts about the old route along Embarcadero may be moot, and now we'll have all sorts of closures and whatnots on this "new" routing that they just announced to psyche out the protestors. They already closed the cable cars this morning (replacing them with...buses..), and the N isn't scheduled to be online to Caltrain station until at least 4pm.

I decided well in advance to avoid having any meetings or work downtown, so I'm sitting here watching the torch goodness on KPIX's Eye on Blogs and SFist.

If you've got a tale of a particularly annoying commute or other tales from the front lines, post 'em in the comments and let the bloggy goodness continue.

UPDATE: MUNI just posted this alert...allegedly the N is back on line all the way to CalTrain...

Posted by Greg Dewar at 2:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

By now, every blogger in town has weighed in on all things Torch related - Brittney over at KPIX's Eye on Blogs has been rockin' with her coverage of said blog posts around the Bay.

After reading a few, I'd just offer the City this modest proposal to have a hassle-free run of the torch: Don't have the runners run down Embarcadero, or whatever. Just put the thing on the N-Judah at Judah and La Playa.

Not only will any planned protests along the route miss it, since it'd most likely not show up on time, or speed past the stop, you can have a breakdown at 19th and Judah, and then have it put on say, the 6 Parnassus, or maybe the 71, so it can get downtown. Or better yet, put it on one of those greenie buses with the wifi. Then you could have a designated protestor blog a protest on the bus, live.

See? Everyone wins. We think about the children. China won't nuke SF. And protestors get their say. Yay Us!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 12:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

An FYI to commuters and some of those who live within range of the N-Judah (or just the Sunset District and parts elsewhere west and south in Our Fair City) - we've got two events that may or may not affect your commute.

Monday, of course, is Opening Day for the Giants at AT&T Park, so it's reported that MUNI will be operating a special "stadium shuttle" as well as other tweaks to move people along to the game. The Giants have thoughtfully provided this guide to getting to the ballpark by pretty much any means possible. If anyone goes to the game, feel free to report your tale of MUNI woe or triumph here in the comments!

On Tuesday, there's a Special Election for those of you who live in the 12th Congressional District. This election is being held to fill the vacancy left by Rep. Tom Lantos earlier this year. Many people may not realize there's an election, even with the spattering of junk mail pumped out by the various candidates. However it's an important election as currently the district (and our N line) is without any Congressional representation.

If one candidate wins the election with a 50%+1 majority, no additional special election will be held, if not they'll hold a Special General Election on June 3rd. However, if the latter happens, it will also mean our CD will continue to have no representation in Congress, which is not a good thing, esp. when we have messes like the Central Subway to try and clean up.

Right now the race seems to be between the frontrunner, who has, among other things, a CalTrain locomotive named after her and an assortment of no-names. I'm rooting for my hometown hero, of course, but you should definitely vote for the candidate of your choice!

Posted by Greg Dewar at 11:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Starting this week, I'm going to have a new feature where I link to all sorts of MUNI/urban life/etc. bloggy goodness. Thanks to the kind folks at Google News Alerts, I've discovered a number of interesting blogs that I'd not seen before, as well as some fun posts from familiar comrades-in-blogs.

First, SFMike at Civic Center highlights an unsung hero at MUNI. MUNI gives us plenty to annoy us, but when we discover someone at MUNI who actually works to make our day better, they deserve a high five.

Two MUNI blogs I've been catching up on, the "MUNI Sucks Log and MUNI Grouch which provide more tales of MUNI woe that almost seems to define us as San Franciscans sometimes.

If you're not already checking out KPIX's Eye on Blogs, well stop reading and get thee over there at once. Brittney Gilbert has done an amazing job, in a very short time, covering blogs across the Bay Area and finding the best in them (oh so many of them) every day. Rather ironic that so-called "local alt-weeklies" got bested by a tv news station.

And finally, a fun link from Eve Batey, deputy Managing Editor for all things online and good at SFGate.com, proudly representing the N Judah on Easter Sunday. We'll be selling these shirts (and more) on our new Zazzle store shortly!

That's all. And remember, for more link goodness, simply click on the Links of Interest link on the right, and find yourself transported to an array of interesting sites to fill your workday. Hey it beats working, right?

Posted by Greg Dewar at 5:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)

When I read this headline on my RSS newsreader, I figured it had to be a joke, but it's not - KGO reports that someone found a way to drive all the way into the West Portal Tunnel, until they got to the part where it narrows and got stuck. Fortunately no trains were running so there was no chance for a major accident.

Still, one wonders the logic, or lack of, that would let someone think "O Hai! Tunnelz, I has them!" and just barrel on through.

Then I remember the infamous Judah's Prius Incident captured by one of the Loyal Readers, and realize, in this town, any-thing's possible.

And now, a re-run, of that famous day on the N last year. Enjoy.

Posted by Greg Dewar at 11:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)