Rescue Muni

The MTA gave a briefing yesterday morning to its Board of Directors on what would need to be done to meet the Prop E mandated 85% on time standard, and it wasn’t pretty. According to staff, Muni would need an additional $150 million per year to achieve the standard mandated by voters in 1999, and it won’t happen until 2012, five years from now and thirteen years after it was passed.

Update: Detailed powerpoint on On Time Performance is at the MTA website. (pdf)

Couldn’t it happen faster than that, particularly if basic steps like expanding and enforcing transit lanes, consolidating stops, implementing Proof of Payment systemwide, using already installed signal pre-empts, and dispatching trains in order from Embarcadero were taken? The SF Transit Effectiveness Project is studying these proposals and others.

The Yes on A / No on H campaign needs your help to promote Muni Reform to voters this fall. Sign up now on the Yes on A website!

This measure will increase funding to Muni and also improve accountability for Muni managers. For more on Prop A, see the summary on Prop A’s site, or review our Muni Reform category.

Update: The No on H campaign has also been launched. Both can be reached via the Transit not Traffic page.

It’s fairly obvious, but sometimes doing the obvious is exactly what is needed. The SF Transit Effectiveness Project‘s latest report states that by focusing Muni’s efforts on improving reliability on the 10 most heavily used corridors, public confidence in and ridership on Muni would improve.

SFTEP has a Citizens’ Advisory Committee meeting Monday evening at 5 pm to discuss. These meetings are at Muni HQ at 1 South Van Ness (near Van Ness Muni Metro) and are open to the public.

The SF County Transportation Authority is moving forward with its study of congestion pricing for downtown SF. Similar programs in London, Singapore, Stockholm, and elsewhere, leading to big reductions in auto traffic and double-digit percentage improvements in mass transit speed and reliability.

In SF there will be a public workshop on October 17 from 5:30 to 8 p.m. at the Milton Marks Conference Center in the State of California building, 455 Golden Gate Ave. Come and comment!

The Transit Not Traffic campaign, led by SPUR and many other community groups supporting better public transit, has launched. This campaign supports Proposition A (Muni Re-Reform), which would dedicate additional funding to Muni and improve many work rules that today make it very difficult to improve service reliability, and opposes Proposition H, the so-called “Parking For Neighborhoods” initiative that would dramatically increase parking downtown and allow new parking spaces and garages to block Muni lines and remove street trees citywide. If you agree that better transit should be SF’s priority and not huge increases in auto traffic, get involved! (Comment here or sign up at SPUR’s page.)