While I was at Church and Duboce today around 6PM, 7 22/outbound diesel coaches passed me within about 2 minutes.
Where are the street supervisors? What happened that required the diesel coaches to be ran? Of course, the last 5 22’s were completely empty.
Don’t expect to see two-car trains on Muni’s new T line. It isn’t equipped to ADA standards, nor does the Union allow it.
The San Francisco Public Utilities commission is working on a program that would have Muni’s fleet of polluting diesel vehicles run on environmentally friendly grease from the city’s 2600 restaurants. As part of a $1.3m program, the PUC plans to buy a couple of vehicles, higher some staff, and go about siphoning the grease traps that would otherwise drain into sewers, clogging them, and attract rats.
The cost of a gallon of Biofuel Oasis in Berkeley costs $3.65, compared to the current lowest price of $3.01 for petrol in San Francisco. In the long run this program might be a smart move considering the ever increasing price of oil and Muni’s plans of expanding diesel service via BRT deployments over much more pollution-friendly light rail and electric trolleys.
Transit ridership in the US is on the move upward, the highest since World War II: 10.1 billion trips, up 2.9% from 2005 to 2006.
The death spiral that is Muni ridership declined 1.7%. Can Newsom fix it one route at a time?
Bay area top three systems, 2005 over 2006 ridership change:
The winner here is again Caltrain, proving if you expand service, people will ride.
In the interest of transit advocacy, LastMuni has joined SPUR in researching and pushing forth transit in the city of San Francisco.
There are two upcoming meetings that we’ll be attending:
Learn about and support the Geary BRT project at a special session of the Small Business Commission on Monday, January 29. Please consider attending the meeting to learn about the project and decide for yourself whether you agree with us and advise the Commission that the drastic increase in the speed, capacity and comfort of Geary Blvd transit are well worth the minimal effects on parking and traffic including during construction. If you know +the owner or manager of a small business in the Richmond who might support BRT, please contact me. The meeting is at City Hall, Room 400, at 5:30 p.m.
Mark your calendar for February’s Transportation Committee meeting, Monday Feb. 5, 12:30 to 1:30 p.m. at the SPUR offices, 312 Sutter St., 5th floor. Muni has to close a $15 million deficit in FY 2007-08, and SPUR wants to help them do that without fare increases or service cuts. Our recommendations for this topic constitute the entire agenda Feb 5.
Tonight I went to The San Francisco Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) to see if these people actually stand a chance at improving anything. Normally I’d lurk at such an event, but as soon as I walked in the door, papers were shoved in my hand and before I knew it I was talking to all the key players in the MTA, one by one, person to person. My complaints were heard, and written up on the wall for all to see.
If you can imagine for a second, if everyone came to that meeting with a complaint about Muni, how many comments would be on the wall? It was jammed with various complaints, everything from “what’s up with nextbus” to “we need more cowbell”.
I talked to, among other people, the person in charge of complaints at Muni, the director of GoGeary, and the director of TEP, Leah Shahum. If that name rings a bell, it’s because is also the executive director of the SF Bicycle Coalition. Why is that important? The SF Bike Coalition is very powerful.
For those of you who care about San Francisco transit, here is the “word on the street”:
I’ve been making a habit to write down the driver and bus number if I spot a problem, like the entire rear of a 38 geary being covered from floor to ceiling with graf. A month after sending in two complaints in a row, I got this email:
From Elvira.Deleon@sfmta.com Thu Oct 12 02:45:31 2006
Subject: 215543
Date: Wed, 11 Oct 2006 19:48:05 -0700
From: “De Leon, Elvira”
To: Mark Ballew
October 11, 2006
Dear Mr. Ballew:
Thank you for your report regarding your experience on the #38 bus on
September 19, 2006.
Your report was forwarded to the Equipment Maintenance Division for
their review and subsequent action.
Again, thank you for your report. I appreciate being kept informed of
San Franciscans’ concerns, as we continue in our efforts to improve the
quality of our transit service. Public feedback is crucial in our
efforts to earn a new reputation with the people of San Francisco.
Sincerely,
Maria Williams
Manager, Passenger Services
SF Municipal Railway
Reference #: 215543
But is it all lip..er.. I mean text service from our friends at the MTA? Probably. 
Bayview residents in San Francisco are up in arms over plans to bulldoze and redevelop the area. “We are under attack,” cried Alicia Schwartz, a community organizer with POWER. “We are being shot in the back every day in the community, but the last straw was when the City Attorney said ‘I don’t care what 30,000 people said.’”
Not only do rising property values make the neglected, polluted, and poor Hunter’s Point/Bayview area prime real estate for development, but the launch of the new Third Street Light rail set for revenue service in April makes the area more attractive to live in.
From the article: “It’s wrong,” complained resident Patti Franklin. “Redevelopment’s gonna come in and put in condos that we can’t afford. We can’t afford things the way they are now. But when they put the [light] rail in, they just want to get rid of us.”
I thought in-fill was the best way to develop an existing community? Forcibly removing existing residents is a formula for destroying communities, but perhaps this is what the city wants, and 33,000 people can’t be wrong.
Thanks to a new law signed by California govenor Arnold Schwarzenegger this week, fare evasions will now be treated like traffic tickets.
From the article:
The bill, introduced by state Sen. Carole Migden, D-San Francisco, aims to streamline the enforcement of fare evasion citations. It is also intended to free up court dockets to handle more serious offenses, according to Migden’s office.
Leading the way in mass transit is Portland, with their 44-mile Max light-rail system. Nation wide, light rail ridership is up 11.2%, and even buses carry 4.5% more passengers, according to this article at the Economist.
Americans have not always embraced public transport. “We had people carrying signs saying `Light Rail Kills Babies’,” recalls John Inglish, head of the Utah Transit Authority[…], but even Utah’s rider ship is up 39%. Even oil rich areas are feeling the heat, with Denver, Dallas, and St. Louis struggling to expand their systems. In Salt Lake, trains became so full that the light rail suspension sank, preventing the suspended electric line from touching. Passengers had to lean the car in order to proceed!
Finally, I’ll leave you with this fun quote from the article, “Sadly, few people want to ride on buses unless they have to. In many American cities they are the transport of the poor, the drunk and the illegal. They are slow and often smelly, and come at unpredictable intervals. And when they stop, they may block traffic.
Sounds like a certain local transit authority we know!