Rescue Muni

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.

The always useful Curbed SF blog has a detailed discussion up today on the Geary Bus Rapid Transit project, which we have supported since time immemorial (well, almost). As the progress proceeds at a glacial pace, Matt of Curbed points out that the concerns about higher density and transit oriented development were much less of a problem when actual transit oriented development was happening, almost a century ago when the Municipal Railway first opened the A and B lines up Geary in 1912. So it really does not make sense to oppose restoring a small subset of the service that was available a century ago on the grounds that it will somehow make Geary less livable.

One concern, however – in the design of the BRT project, why are high quality shelters with NextBus proposed for “most” stops? The whole point of BRT is to upgrade the service at ALL stops.

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.

The SFMTA purchased insurance at the cost of $2.4M, which covers claims from $5M to $25M. The policy went into effect July 1, which means that the July 18th crash between two Muni LRVs at West Portal Station, which injured over 40 people, maybe covered. So far, the only claim that has come forward is a $193 claim from a passenger who had some personal belongings damaged, plus her medical costs from hitting her head.

The largest Muni payout was in 2003, where a Muni maintenance truck jumped the curb and crushed a little girl to death. That payout was $5M, which would have just have been within range of Muni’s new insurance policy.