Good news on the Oyster, Octopus, SmarTrip, Suica style smartcard front: Testing of Translink on BART has been successful, and the cards will be supported “within a month.” Not coincidentally, the Translink working group recently fired the contractor responsible for many of the recent delays.
If you don’t have a Translink card, sign up now!
(Thanks to Muni Diaries for the tip.)
As all T-Third riders know, despite the City spending over $600 million on the T-Third line, it runs far slower than it could and is no faster than the buses it replaced, according to an editorial in today’s Examiner. The Examiner calls for MTA to apply common-sense changes to the service to allow it to run faster.
One obvious change would be to reverse the design decision to put the section around Oakdale into mixed traffic, and instead mark a dedicated mass transit lane on the whole length of Third Street. Also, several areas with very low speed limits (e.g. the Islais Creek bridge) need to be looked at again. And if/when the Central Subway is ever built (it’s delayed AGAIN) the Fourth and King intersection absolutely must be redesigned to reduce the massive delays that every T and N rider experiences today.
Supervisor David Chiu is preparing legislation to reject the MTA’s budget due to the very high amount assigned to work orders to other city departments, notably the SFPD ($18 million for how many cops on buses?) and 311 ($1.96 per call). This follows weeks of hearings in which riders opposed service cuts and urged the MTA to reject the work orders, and Sup. Dufty’s initial push to get them reduced.
As long as the rejection doesn’t lead to more deferred maintenance and unplanned, random service cuts, this could be a good way to force other City departments to stop raiding mass transit to cover their own deficits.
The SFMTA will be holding another meeting and public hearing on the budget deficit and proposed fare increases/service cuts on Tuesday, April 21, at 2 pm, at City Hall, room 400. We urge everyone who can attend (of course it is scheduled during the work day) to comment on the proposals.
In addition to opposing the inflated “work orders” from the various city departments that are now being contested (thank you Sup. Dufty!), Rescue Muni has some specific recommendations:
Concerning the Work Orders, we have several objections:
We also suggest that MTA consider the following proposals for long term improvements:
If you attend, comment here or let us know on Twitter!
“Through Feb. 20, the transit agency paid out $29.6 million in overtime, or about 96 percent of what it had budgeted for payments this fiscal year, according to the latest data.”
Ken McDonald ominously stated that reducing service and cutting lines will solve the overtime budget overrun.