Rescue Muni

After literally decades of debate, San Francisco is about to begin a six week test of car restrictions on Market Street, including mandatory right turns at Eighth and Sixth Streets and a ban on private cars east of Fifth. The objective is to reduce auto traffic to speed up inbound transit vehicles and improve bicycle safety.

Rescue Muni has long supported this proposal due to the extremely long delays faced by Market Street Muni commuters, but we remain concerned that the city may not communicate the change well to auto drivers and transit riders alike. It is vitally important that auto drivers get clear and explicit instructions about how to get downtown from each intersection on Market Street – otherwise driver confusion will lead to anger and a quick reversal of this decision. Communication is absolutely key to this proposal being a success.

The Planning Department has some, but not much, detail about the project.

Update: Streetsblog interviewed a handful of people, including an SFBC staffer, and they seemed to like the idea.

Not sure if it’s the “jewel in BART’s crown” as described by the spokeswoman, but there’s no question that Balboa Park station is one of the most heavily used and most in need of improvement in the system. In particular, riders who transfer from BART to Muni Metro and vice versa today face a very confusing and sometimes dangerous street layout where there should be an easy-to-navigate transfer station.

It’s not clear from the proposal (click on “Balboa Park” links, all pdf) which improvements for Muni are included, but there’s no doubt that proposals for easier access J, K, and M platforms as well as pedestrian safety improvements are badly needed. We’ll keep an eye on this project after groundbreaking this Friday.

Don’t wait for the Culture Bus, because starting at 6PM today it will no longer be making its run between downtown and the museums. After 11 months and numerous service cuts, the Culture Bus line, known as the 74x, will finally go out of service, freeing valuable man power and bus resources to the cash-strapped SFMTA. Even cutting service to once and hour and raising fares to $10 for all day rides wasn’t enough to lure enough passengers.

Rescue Muni’s policy since this line’s inception was the immediate elimination of the 74x, and we’re glad to see it finally happen, but the loss of precious revenue to this program over these 11 months could have gone to stave off other Muni cuts.

This should be interesting: Supervisors Dufty and Elsbernd have called a hearing before the City Operations and Neighborhood Services committee on Monday, August 10 to discuss Muni’s recent safety and reliability problems, notably the Muni Metro and F-Market crashes. The meeting is in the Board Chambers at 10:30 am.

Meanwhile, some riders were stuck on an inbound M-Ocean View car for 19 minutes in the subway yesterday before being taken to the wrong stop. This sort of thing happened during the “Meltdown” of 1998, and it’s very disappointing to see that it’s happening again.

Updates are available from during and after the hearing.

Tired of your bus stopping twice on one block? At long last the MTA is about to announce proposed stop consolidations citywide, which will allow Muni to offer faster and more reliable service. This is something that was discussed in the SFTEP but as not yet been implemented. The proposal includes a new spacing policy, ut more importantly, actual implementation of that policy (only 18% of lines conform to policy today). Of course stops would still be closer together on steep hills.

For a simple example of how service can be faster with fewer stops, compare lines 21 and 5 through the Western Addition. The 21 stops on every block and sometimes twice in one block, while the 5 stops on every other block – and due to reduced dwell time the 5 is much faster from Stanyan to City Hall. Implementing 5 line style stop spacing citywide could speed up service at no additional cost, giving more potential riders a reason to switch to transit. (Rescue Muni has favored stop consolidation for over a decade.)

Update: Curbed also has an item on this.