Ah, "reforming Muni." The new hot topic everyone's talking about. Whereas just a few years ago, you couldn't get a local official or activist group to even say the word "Muni," now, as the Muni Death Spiral gets faster and faster, suddenly everyone wants to get on board the Muni Reform Bus.

Which is wonderful, if local politicals and activist groups want to spend the time to carefully look at Muni and make the kinds of long term decisions that benefit everyone - even those of you who don't ride Muni every day and drive a car or ride a bike or walk.

Unfortunately, while fixing Muni is like curing cancer (if there was only one cause, it'd be easy to cure, but it doesn't have one single cause), trying to cure cancer in a politicized environment where the loudest screams get the most response isn't likely to happen.

Back in May, "progressive" Supervisors introduced a proposed amendment to the San Francisco City Charter that included a myriad of changes to Muni, some of which were clear (set aside money for the agency) and some which were not. As of July 26th, not only is there no finalized amendment - it may never appear on the ballot anyway.

Frankly, I'm not surprised. From the beginning, this had the look and feel of a bargaining chip as part of the back and forth of the legislative process, and as such wasn't worth taking too seriously. That's too bad because Muni isn't an "issue" that belongs to one faction or another - it's a system we Muni Owners rely on to get around town that needs to work.

Likewise, there was a lot of shouting about the proposal to give Supervisors direct appointments to the SF MTA board. Currently whoever is Mayor appoints the MTA, and the Supervisors approve the choice. The proposal was to give Supervisors 3 direct appointments and one joint appointment with the Mayor to the MTA Board - effectively giving them majority control over the agency.

Since at the time I was researching this post this was a Really Big Deal, I decided to email the four supervisors who proposed this change (Chiu, Campos, Mirkarimi and Mar) and ask them just who they'd appoint to the MTA Board, why they'd do a better job, and how these new folks would be free of political interference.

The response?

It is awesome because the City of San Diego is re-doing the signage at the Convention Center Trolley Stop in Kilngon.

This is one of many reasons it's a great event to attend. For now I'm following it all on The Twitter, and planning to buy passes for next year. At least it's sunny in San Diego.

(Links courtesy of California Streets blog and @proggrrl on Twitter)

However, this so-called "progressive" charter amendment on the outset has some serious flaws, policy-wise and practical. It makes some noise about funding Muni - fine - but it also is giving Supervisors the power to easily discard any route changes they don't like, practical scientific analysis be damned. It also does nothing to overcome the burdensome, costly and often antiquated work-rules that result in things like the infamous "pay me not to work" scam, and other inefficiencies as well. (Sup. Campos was offended by this, apparently.)

WhatEVER. Remember how everyone did what organized labor demanded in 2007 with Prop. A, and it ended up blowing up in everyone's faces? That went well.

There's another, more practical problem with this amendment - besides being complicated, there is absolutely no organization, no cash on hand, no nothing going for it right now to see it get passed. Fix Muni Now has been up and running and had to earn 75,000 signatures on the street, while this thing is bottled up at the Board until at least July 20th, if not later. So while one is a coherent, viable operation to pass a difficult measure (Fix Muni Now), "progressives" aren't even organized enough to wave signs for this thing. (Good luck with that).

It would have been nice if there was one, multipartisan thing on the ballot to improve Muni, kind like how we all came together to save SF General Hospital, but that's in the Haley's Comet league of Things That Rarely Happen.

As I said, I'm waiting to see the official wording and read every line of it myself (So you don't have to!). For now, though I am issuing a challenge to the progressive Supervisors who created this thing: I'm asking them to post here why they feel this is the best way to "fix" Muni, and answer questions from you, the Muni owner/riders and from myself.

Let's see if they can talk to you directly and explain this in their own words. I wouldn't suggest holding your breath though - you don't want to die of asphyxiation!

There's just one thing - the number is meaningless. First, this was after major service cuts (spun as an "overhaul") last year, so comparing a smaller system to a larger one is comparing apples and oranges. More to the point, it doesn't really matter if Muni is "on time" 75% of the time if the system isn't reliable. Think of the many times you've tried to get home on an outbound N, only to see an endless line of empty Js and KLMs speeding by, thus ensuring the only N showing up is super crowded.

So while everyone at City Hall pats themselves on the back for a Muni well done, remember that figure when you're stuck waiting around for an hour because of an unplanned for absence, or because something broke down. If nothing else, you can figure out the odds of when you'll be lucky enough to be using it when it's actually running on time.

So, without further ado, here's all sorts of random fun in no particular order.

-Jay, who runs the family owned Sunset Barber on 9th Avenue was off most of the week - because he and his wife just had their first baby boy, Issa (named after Jay's dad)! Congratualtions to Jay and his family! If you're going by the Sunset Barber, be sure to congratulate him when you get your next haircut.

-A bit belated but still good news: The Inner Fog Wine Bar (pictured, via iPhone) on Irving and 7th (same building as One Shot Tattoo) opened on June 2nd. My friend Elaine and I crashed the party after spying Sup. Ross Mirkarimi as we left Pacific Catch last week. It's definitely a fun spot - it's hard to believe Crossroads (which moved down the block) used to have its dressing rooms there.

Now it's a warm, inviting place to hang out with friends over a fine wine. Elaine wrote about our adventures there last week.

-A new Muni App was annoucned today in the Apple Store: Muniverse. This was co-authored by our own Loyal Reader Jamison, and from what I've seen so far, it's yet another unique use of the freely available NextMuni data. This is critical - with open data, many people are able to come up with new and unusual ways to provide said data giving you, the Muni owner, many options. I will be reviewing this app as well as Transporter (which I've been using, along with Routesy).

Special note to Android users: I would love to review any Next Muni Android apps, but I do not have an Android phone, so if you find on and would like to show it to me and help me write a review, feel free to email me.

Finally, Streetsblog posted links to this video of a rather unique take on mobile street food, beer, and bikes. I swear, if you had a bunch of these available to ride during Critical Mass, they'd make a lot of friends REALLY fast.

Have a great weekend!

Lost in the shuffle is that all of this "restoration" talk is that this partial "restoration" is completely based on short term fixes, which mean that a year or so from now, Muni will be back to slashing service. Meanwhile Mayor Green Newsom and the Board can brag about how great they are. Even if the Muni operators had voted for the one-time giveback (which would have meant we could have virtually eliminated the 10% Ford-Newsom slash to service), it too was nothing more than a short term solution.

Now, don't get me wrong - it's nice to see at least some service restored, especially in areas that were hard hit by the cuts (thinking of lines like the 66 for example) and at least for now, we won't have as many Muni failwhale regattas as we have been lately. But it's not going to last long, and in the long term, we may be faced with worse choices later. Plus, once again we have the Mayor trying to sound like Mr. Transit, when a lot of the problem started, and remains with him and his handpicked management team.

There is some talk of some Muni "reform" measure by "progressive" Supevisors, but as of July 6th, there is no final plan, there is no campaign to get it passed, there is no money to get it passed, no track record of passing these things, no professionals in charge, and once again, we have a compromise to appease public employee unions that will likely sink it, given the way we were bamboozled in 2007 with Measure A and its compromises. That means that whatever long term local funding solutions are in this alleged package, it's not likely to pass since as of now, with only a few months until the election, there is no operation in place to get a complicated law passed by the voters.

Meanwhile, the Fix Muni Now campaign has been up and running for months, and seems to have submitted enough signatures for the ballot, and that's great. However, the savings that the Fix Muni Now proposition proposes won't appear like magic overnight, and is designed to fix arcane rules and an outdated charter amendment. Any fixes it makes to Muni will take some time, which is not a bad thing - but again, that's the thing with authentic, long-term solutions - there's no instant showboat-y payoff.

For now, let the vuvuzelas of the politicians and the extremist groups drown out the sound of reason. We got 5% of our service back!

Update: It's amazing to see how well the spinners have now got the press saying this is a "service enhancement." No, it is not. It is returning half of the cuts made a few months ago. And don't forget the cuts in December that Prince Gavin called "a major overhaul" of the system, when in fact it was more.

I hate to use an Orwell reference but this is so memory hole/chocolate ration. Seriously.

For example, Mayor Newsom's been breathing more hot air than a dragon on crack lately. He's been doing a good job demonizing the Muni operators way beyond what's fair (this is to make him look "tough" to out of town voters). Now he's screaming at the SF County Transit Authority about a one-time $7 million grant the SF MTA went, hat in hand for, a few months ago. As the SFCTA is not an ATM for the MTA, and has a responsiblity to administer sales tax revenue, it wisely said "not without conditions" which would ensure the money wasn't blown on Newsom work orders, big pay for management, or other nonsense.

Claims are being made such conditions have been met, and this one-time cash grant to the MTA is likely to go through. But the Mayor being the Mayor (and egged on by his PR minions) had to go all "FU" to the Board of Supervisors (who also serve as the SFCTA board), which is unecessary and stupid. I suppose if the Board and the Mayor agreed to make July 1 "Rainbows and Puppies Day," he'd be screaming about how they didn't love puppies enough or something. WhatEVER!

But let's toss aside the shenanigans. Muni has always betted on getting this cash in the first place, even though there were no guarantees. That's part of Muni's budget game - bet on getting money that may never show up. Think of it as you deciding to pay your rent or mortgage payment with a magical bag of gold coins that falls from the sky, then hoping that it shows up by the end of the month. Crazy? Yes. SOP at Muni. Yes.

More importantly, the Orwellian doublespeak downtown will sell this as "saving" Muni, when it doesn't. It's a one time cash grant that'll keep away cuts for a year. That is all.

Same goes for the proposed federal money for operations some people were demanding yesterday - from an even more unreliable source than that rainbow showering gold cois (AKA the Feds). Mayor Newsom's crew spews bile at anyone that dares suggest auto drivers share the pain in any form, and TWU does as well when asked for a short term pain sharing agreement to alleviate cuts now, until we have a long term plan.

Oh, that long term, stable source(s) of revenue for Muni? What's that you say? Something to actually save Muni for good instead of fiddling around year to year? Well, as always, it's easy to propose short term solutions from short-time politicians, and it's easy to latch on to easy-sounding ideas that make ideological sense.

It's much harder to come up with a comprehensive plan that divorces our fate to that of a failed state and federal governments and builds back a functioning Muni (vs. Ford's "smaller" system of FAIL). But that doesn't make for a nice press release, does it?

It's been 42 days now since that post and predictably, there is silence from Muni. Big surprise, I know. If you tried to take a Muni Metro train during say, Pride Sunday, you KNOW what a mess it was. That+Giants Game+Usual Sunday Fun = no one getting around anywhere fast.

So again, for fun, I shall updated these at random and see how we go. We know the Mayor can't really rely on Muni, since it doesn't go out of town to all those places he's campaigning for Lt. Governor, and it's not like he would know how to pay for a bus fare or anything since Muni is not on Planet Gavin. As for the Board....well...let's not go there.

I'm adding a new countdown as well...the number of days it takes to find out when the new bus shelters on Irving will be installed and the story behind what looks like two new parking spaces where the N stop at 9th and Irving is. I've emailed folks as of June 23rd and have yet to hear back. I made the mistake of trying 311 on Twitter, where the response first was "call 311" and then "we don't know." So why tell me to call 311? Seems kind of silly, yes?

A closer inspection of the flyer, however, indicates this may not be what it claims to be. Yes, the rally is in support of a bill that would free up federal funds to pay day-to-day costs for a short time, instead of paying for infrastructure. That flies in the face of decades of federal transportation policy, but given how bad things are nationally, some people see it as a solution. However, it's a very short term solution that once again makes our local Muni dependent on outside sources of money, and it's one that won't last long anyway.

Let's take a closer look at the group this group that claims to be pro transit rider - it's the TWU national and local, and ATU locals and nationals (another transit union that mostly represents BART workers). The flyer talks mostly about getting operators paid, and makes only a few concessions to those who ride transit.

Does anyone else see the irony in this?

We had a chance to roll back cuts, acting locally. If the TWU (the only union in the City that doesn't participate in collective bargaining and the only Muni union to avoid any hardship) had agreed to some short term give-backs, we could have rolled back recent service cuts.

If the Mayor could pull the flagpole out of his backside and stop blocking a rational, well-studied expansion of parking meters, we could have rolled back recent cuts. (Both packages ended up being about the same amount of money).

If we'd put aside our locally generated sense of greed and entitlement, and done BOTH, we could roll back even more cuts, or reduce monthly pass costs a little. Or something else sensible. Yes, these too are short term solutions, but it would have helped Muni do that whole "get owner/riders to their destination on time thing" better, and been a decent local stop-gap until a permanent local funding replacement for looted state operating funds could be restored.

Of course that didn't happen. The Mayor threw one of his patented hissy fit+fatwas aimed at anyone who suggestewd "parking meters" as a response to the crisis, and the TWU threw their own temper tantrum and literally said "the budget problems aren't our problem" in response.

Wow. This is the City That Knows How?

I'll repeat once more - driver pay is not the main cause of Muni's problems. But excessive, unplanned overtime is costing the agency millions of dollars it no longer has, and asking Muni operators to engage in collective bargaining is not unreasonable.

Public service unions, and in particular Muni's unions, have to understand that the great majority of us don't have pensions, do not have guaranteed pay and work, and are operating under extreme duress during Great Depression II. We are being forced to sacrifice more and more in the way of taxes, fees, fines, and fares, and get less and less service. Meanwhile, we see others who continue to be able to get paid not to do their jobs, or do them poorly (conduct which would get us fired in a minute) and screaming protests saying "give me more" begin to fall on deaf ears, even progressive ones.

More importantly, we seem to have a group that claims to be for us the Muni owner/rider, but at every opportunity, seems to think "working in coalition" with Muni unions means "do whatever they want because their union president is on our board. That is NOT what it means.

A true, honest, coalition means everyone helping each other in common cause and recognize that a functioning Muni that serves the owner/riders is the end goal - not just helping one pressure group over another for their own selfish ends. I believe it's possible for everyone to find some common cause on making Muni a world-class system, and I'm willing to work with anyone who wants that goal.

I do not, however, believe that the bullying tactics of extremist organizations and unions who tell me I have to accept higher fares and attacks on reasonable reforms serves anyone.

Until San Francisco's alphabet soup of groups and activists realize what true solidarity and coalition building mean, continue to watch as people claiming to be your friend are simply using you to prop up a few loud groups - all at your expense.

Despite the heated rhetoric from the Mayor, TWU Local 250-A, various politicians and the like, all of whom have been all too happy to engage in the kind of rhetoric best suited for a schoolyard fight, this is just a minor correction to the Charter, that may end up in some cost savings for Muni. That is all.

This amendment says NOTHING about Muni pay, does not "bust unions" and simply has one holdout out of dozens of city unions finally do what the rest of them do - engage in collective bargaining. It will also allow Muni to send to impartial arbitration outdated "work rules" and have these things dealt with in a calm and rational manner.

Now, I will note a few things. As said before, there is nothing in this amendment regarding the actual pay of Muni operators. In fact, there's no reason why in the collective bargaining process, a merit pay system that rewarded the really good ones with a true bonus couldn't end up a part of their contract.

There's no reason why in exchange for cutting overtime costs, pay might be bumped up slightly, so at least Muni management knows what's going on. All of that could or could not happen as part of the natural collective bargaining process. So all the screaming bullsh!t from people calling this "racist" or whatever is just a sign that some people feel entitled to something, and don't care who else they hurt in the process.

And, as always, let's remember that Muni's fiscal problems stem primarily from the loss of annual revenue from the State, and the lack of a stable local funding source to make the State irrelevant. Yes, the overtime costs and the myriad of old fashioned work rules are causing problems, but it's only one part of the Muni Death Spiral.

Like cancer, if there was only one cause for all of the problems, fixing Muni would be simple. But like cancer, that's not the case, so get ready for more fun on the ballot this year, and in years to come.

UPDATE: The Snitch blog at SF Weekly expertly calls out Mayor Newsom for his SOP of coming to the party late and taking credit for it only after it's popular. Kinda like Healthy SF.

@njudah I like to make the most of my morning N-Judah commute http://twitpic.com/1xodbv

N Judah rider Sara is a student at SF State University, and when she's not performing acrobatics on the N, can be found online at http://www.sarapantera.blogspot.co.