DPT officers get a bad rap. Everyone seems to despise them, yet they are a crucial element necessary to help all of us to effectively share our City streets.
Here are a few of the ways they make our lives better:

Parking meter enforcement: You think it’s hard enough to find parking now? Without meter enforcement you [...]

I had a beautiful set of days to drive a cab in the City. Sunny and 60s is the perfect weather. Above 60s and the greenhouse effect of the car windows makes it a bit too warm.

I picked up a woman downtown who was heading out toward one of the hospitals in the outer neighborhoods. [...]

I am so fond of ragging on San Francisco’s poorly managed Municipal Railway that I often overlook Muni’s remarkable, world-class achievements. (Yes, they really do have some remarkable, world-class achievements.) This post is a first attempt at fixing my glaring oversight.
Muni’s extensive trolleybus system is a modern treasure. Muni claims to hold the largest trolley-bus [...]

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is a bureaucratic whale, containing, in separate stomachs, the Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT) and the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) public transit system.
Recently, the SFMTA crunched some numbers and said, “Uh oh, we won’t have enough money to cover our costs over the next two years.” [...]

A week ago the Chronicle reported on some promising preliminary recommendations based on findings from the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP).
These recommendations are great. In many ways they are in line with common sense: improve highly used lines using BRT, ditch under-used lines.
Aside from the frustrating fact that it took Muni 40 years to figure this [...]

Wow, it looks like Nat Ford might actually know how to run a municipal transit agency.
Let’s hope the Board of Supervisors gets off his back and lets him do it right.
Link

Dear Mayor Newsom
You didn’t have to spend City taxpayer money on private consultants. Anyone could have told you: Just like any other shared and limited public resource, public transit needs user fees.
Offering ‘free’ Muni is a destructive proposal. Muni rolling stock is not unlimited. Removing user fees distorts a natural and effective form of limiting [...]

The Examiner and the Chronicle both report on a disturbing incident which occurred Wednesday in the Sunset District. A man attempted to board the N-Judah around 9pm when the doors evidently closed on him. The train proceeded to drag him for 2 blocks. Authorities pronounced him dead upon arrival.
Just one day before, Muni Executive Director [...]

Kudos to Muni for trying to address one of the two main causes of Muni’s notoriously low system-wide average speed: DWELL. (Dwell is a geek transit term for the time for loading and unloading of passengers.) The other cause? Busses receive lowest priority for signal timing and lane placement.
Muni’s dwell time is excessively high — [...]

Above: San Francisco Muni Chief Nathaniel “Nat” Ford (left) chats it up with Mayor Gavin Newsom.
KQED’s amazing community affairs program “Forum” featured Muni Chief Nat Ford Thursday. Michael Krasny asks some hard questions but didn’t always get great answers.
Some observations:

Mr. Ford seems to have a good grasp of Muni operations but presents no vision for [...]