Rescue Muni

On Monday, Gov. Schwarzenegger authorized emergency funds for Bay Area transit agencies, including Muni, to operate fare-free in the wake of the literal meltdown in the Macarthur Maze. Those funds covered only one day of service, however, so Muni fares resume as normal today. Replacing the Dali-esque melted freeway will, according to news reports, take somewhere between eight weeks and infinity. Apparently you can’t buy steel freeway girders at Home Depot. Who knew?

So don’t leave home today without your Fast Pass or your buck-fifty.

-Daniel M.

The deterioration of service on the N-Judah since the startup of the T-Third is at its most dramatic during the PM commute. This random glimpse via NextMuni speaks volumes about the state of things on the line:

Muni announced a series of steps to deal with the petit mal Metro meltdown, including the rapid hiring of more LRV operators, bringing some LRV operators back on a temporary basis, and the re-engineering of the bottleneck intersection at Fourth and King, and says we should see results in a month or two. The steps seem reasonable, but would it be asking too much that they be undertaken, you know, before service started on the T?

Supposedly, trains are being re-designated at Embarcadero to even out service, but, at about 6:00 p.m. Thursday, after waiting 13 minutes for an outbound N at Van Ness, only to be passed by a crush-loaded N (and a slew of half-empty M-Ocean Views), and to be informed by the helpful folks at 311 that the next N would be in, uh, 26 minutes (and obviously crush-loaded too, after that long a gap) I gave up and took a cab.

And on days when there’s a game at Pac Bell/SBC/AT&T/its-heirs-and-successors Park, well, just forget it.

Is Metro service just as bad on the other lines? What’s your experience? This can’t be unique to the N, can it?

-Daniel M.

MTA director Nathaniel Ford told the Chronicle that service is improving on the T Third as well as other Muni Metro lines since the opening three weeks ago. (This is over a baseline of 25% on time service for the T-Third, according to a staff report at the SFCTA CAC (pdf) this week.)

Is service improving for you? Comment below or in our Yahoo Group. And check the NextMuni Google Map to find out where your streetcar is before riding.

Update: KGO-TV has a story about the Caltrain riders’ petition mentioned previously.

This should not be a surprise to anyone who rides the 38 Geary, but a recent study by the SFCTA has found that a bus rapid transit system would save riders up to 14 minutes per trip while increasing ridership by 25%. (The Orange Line in Los Angeles, a similar concept, has been a big success since opening a couple of years ago.)

Rescue Muni strongly supports this proposal and is a founding member of the Go Geary coalition. If you’d like to help this move forward, join us for a Merchant Walk this Saturday (April 28) at 11 am. Location details to follow – sign up below.

Today’s Examiner has a story about an online petition started by Peninsula commuters including Rescue Muni reader svetcov frustrated with reliability problems on Muni Metro from Caltrain to Embarcadero. The organizers have requested a meeting downtown with Muni top management to discuss these issues. (Rescue Muni is also working on hosting a meeting downtown on Metro operations – if we can arrange this we will of course invite Peninsula commuters.)

See our T-Third category for more on this issue including alternate routes to downtown from many locations on the T including Caltrain.

Immediate recommendation to all involved: put a NextBus display in the Caltrain station!