The service standards reports (pdf) are out, and once again the J-Church has the lowest on-time performance of any rail line in San Francisco (64.9% in FY 2009). Supervisor Bevan Dufty, who represents the area served by the J, has requested a Controller’s audit.
Overall on-time performance was up the last quarter, to 72.7% (page 4 of pdf). Muni has never come close to the 85% on-time service mandated by Proposition E in 1999.
SFist had an excellent blog post yesterday about the SFCTA’s study of the proposed Geary Bus Rapid Transit project. In brief, the project team agrees with us that the dedicated bus lanes should run down the center of the street, in dedicated right of way, as most of SF’s light rail lines do (e.g. T-Third). The SFCTA also backed our call for a “rail ready” project that can be easily upgraded to light rail in the future, as funds become available.
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.