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 out, let’s focus on the positive: at least someone realizes what to do next.

But, I have a hard time being excited about these proposals. I cannot hide my fear that Muni is barely capable of managing its own operations, let alone managing a system-wide overhaul. They just can’t do things right.

This is an agency that claims multiple times in press releases and at public information events that they can’t seem to hire enough bus drivers. Yet, they don’t post bus operators as an available job on their website. (I would know too — I’ve looked many times, pushed by a perverse desire to drive a bus in the City.)

This is an agency that spent nearly a billion dollars to replace a bus line (the 15) with a light rail system (T-Third) that offered barely any noticeable improvement in service quality, or, by many accounts, a decrease in service quality.

This is an agency that has virtually zero accountability over its ground-level workforce due to extremely onerous union negotiated contracts. They can’t even immediately fire operators after they’ve killed innocent pedestrians.

This is an agency that, to operate most efficiently and implement changes suggested by the TEP, needs absolute access priority over roadway design and right-of-way for its transit vehicles. So far, no evidence has been shown that Muni’s merger with DPT has provided this level of absolute priority. Nor have the actions of the Mayor nor the Board of Supervisors shown that they have the interest or even the ability to offer such priority for our dear Municipal Railway.

So, rock on TEP. Just don’t write checks you can’t cash.

Link

On my ‘to write’ list is a manifesto of how to fix Muni. Lay out what’s wrong. Lay out what we need to do to fix it.

Dave Snyder of SPUR beat me to the punch. I met Dave last spring when I served under his leadership with a group of volunteers to pitch for approval from the Board of Supervisors to pass the 38-Geary BRT project into the next stage, environmental review.

This article is SPOT ON.

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 number of people that use Muni resources.

Muni needs to increase its quality of service. Removing user fees would decrease the quality of service. It would result in more crowded buses, leading to lower frequency and lower average system speeds.

Here’s the real Muni solution: increase quality (frequency, speed, reliability, cleanliness) on critical lines such as 38-Geary, N-Judah, or 14-Mission. Enforce real transit-only lanes that enable high speeds with true signal pre-emption. Prepare Muni to operate faster than a personal vehicle for trips on these ‘primary’ lines. Then, the City can increase user fees to $2 or even $2.50 for these primary lines.

Our residents don’t want free Muni. City residents are more than willing to pay for an effective transit system. It’s up to the City to provide an effective transit system and price it properly, not make a crappy transit system free.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m happy you’ve figured this out by now. It’s just silly that this advice cost tax payers $20,000+. I would have been glad to provide this advice for a bit less. Let’s say $10,000.

Let’s look on the bright side. At least you’re open to new ideas. Just talk to me next time and I’ll charge you half the rate of the consultants, and I’ll give you better ideas faster.

kfarr

• The City was slow as usual for this time of year.
• With just under one hour remaining on my shift, a lady hailed me in the Marina asking to head toward Tiburon to see her mother who was sick. I feared that it would push me over my time limit but just barely. It was worth a try. Fortunately she didn’t need to go deep into the hills or anything; she let me drop her right at the town entrance. I made it back to the garage 5 minutes late, but the cashier let me go without charging. Thanks, cashier.
• I picked up a young couple downtown. They had me head toward Pier 39 to meet family for lunch. They were tourists. Something clicked in my head — it’s been a long time since I had a tourist in my cab. It was fun to talk about our mutual midwest upbringings. Thanks, tourists.
• I found a fare quickly from Fisherman’s Wharf straight to a hotel. At the hotel the doorman gave me an airport since the guy had excessive baggage and I had a van. Thanks, doorman.

  The passenger and I had a long conversation all the way to the airport. He reminded me a great deal of my friend Tom. Like Tom, this guy studied business finance in college. Like Tom, this guy started doing hourly construction work. And, like Tom, this guy realized that he could gain more leverage by creating his own construction company. This guy ended up investing heavily in rental property, a path he thinks is solid through good times and bad.

  I’m curious to see what Tom will do.

• I picked up a young couple early in the morning near the 24th and Mission BART station. They needed to get to SFO to catch their flight and didn’t realize the first train didn’t come until 9:30 am.

  I realize that it’s not possible for BART to operate 24 hours per day, as limited track capacity means trains must stop at night to make way for maintenance vehicles. But, BART leaves people stranded every Sunday morning. As much as I enjoy the income from stranded passengers Sunday mornings, it seems pretty clear to me that there is demand enough for Sunday morning service. Let’s get with it, BART.

• I took a very, very strange lady very, very early in the morning to a grocery store. She said she had tried being a cab driver for one month until she got rear-ended and decided it wasn’t for her.
• I showed up to a 3 van call at a youth hostel. A school group from Argentina was heading up north to Sausalito.

  The group leader, a middle-aged teacher or volunteer, rode in my cab. I quizzed her about working in Argentina — a path I’ve recently been considering. She was very bullish about this plan.

  “Yes, yes! This is a good idea,” she said. “You will love it.”

  I couldn’t argue with that.

  She went on to say it would be very easy for me to find a job teaching English with my university degree and the currency conversion is still very favorable. We’ll see.

This time the N-Judah tries to slice off an old lady’s foot.

Links:

• Nice coverage in Metroblog
• SF Gate
• N-Judah Chronicles blog eats this up.

This is getting ridiculous. Rant.

Link (Examiner)
Link (SF Gate)

First, a non-surprising statistic about per capita vehicle ownership. The USA ranks at the top!

(Source)

(Old Source – This data set was silly since it just measured cars and not motor vehicles per Bob’s comment below.)

Second, Americans spent about 52.2 cents per mile on their personal vehicles in 2007 after adding all the costs of ownership such as purchase price, insurance, maintenance, and gas. At an average usage of 15,000 miles per year, that works out to $7,800 per year per car.

Let’s compare that to the cost of public transit. It’s about 15 miles of BART rail from Civic Center to Richmond. At a fare of $3.80 that works out to 25.3 cents per mile, half that of a vehicle.

Third, Americans hold an average of $8,000 in credit card debt per household.

“Stop right now,” you say. “This is nothing but a silly conjecture! That credit card debt isn’t directly related to personal vehicle expenditure. And, your cute little Bay Area public transit system doesn’t exist in most other US cities.”

“True and true,” I’ll respond. “But, chopping transportation spending in HALF would significantly reduce a major household expense for many Americans. And, if we start investing NOW in smart public transit in the United States, we can reduce these significant (and quickly rising) expenses in the near future.”

Hmm. Public transit is good for the environment AND for the economy? And it decreases our reliance on foreign oil?

EXTRA CREDIT: This is a very well written post on calculating your actual per mile vehicle expenditure.

I’m a big fan of Eric’s Transbay Blog. This Eric fellow never fails to impress.

A recent post posed this question: if we had all the money in the world to spend on transit (and sometimes it seems like we do) what would a comprehensive City subway system look like?

Link

Most transit maps of Bay Area and City transit systems suck.

Some are misleading. It seems like everyone that moves to San Francisco checks out the Muni service map (warning, large GIF file) and responds with joy! “Wow, look at how comprehensive the public transit is in the City!” The map does not express, however, the ridiculous infrequency with which these lines operate.

Most maps don’t provide relevant information for users of the system. The BART map simply lists locations and routes. It’s such a sparse map at present. Couldn’t more useful information also be included?

And, nearly all Bay Area transit maps are system specific. While we can all understand the bureaucratic separation between transit operators, we must have reached the point in societal evolution that we can realize people use more than one transit system to reach their destination (obviously not).

Here is where dedicated geniuses come forward. The SF Cityscape website features a number of transit maps designed with the user in mind, not the transit agency. Wow, what a concept!

Here are my two favorite:

• A BART map that also includes travel time and fare from your current location. What a simple concept! It’s so much more useful than the current maps which just show location.
• A Bay Area rail transit map which includes Muni, BART, CalTrain, VTA and a few others.

Of course, 511.org never fails to impress me with its ability to provide accurate, transit operator agnostic guides for taking public transit. (Click Transit > TakeTransit Trip Planner.) Try it out if you’ve never seen it.

Link to SF Cityscape

Here’s another cool factoid from the amazing (out-of-print) book on the history of the San Francisco Municipal Railway.

We know Upper Fillmore Street today as a bustling commercial district with high-end shops and restaurants married closely with its residential community. This is a direct result of the great 1906 earthquake.

After the quake, the Fillmore Street cable car line was the first line restored to service. The downtown shopping district was still buried in rubble, helping Fillmore Street become the temporary retail and civic epicenter of the City.

This page on the history of Japantown describes how “old mansions served as department stores, and churches and synagogues doubled as courthouses.” The Muni book didn’t go into as much detail, but the Japantown page also described the transition of Upper Fillmore Street to evolve into what we now refer to as Japantown.

I think it’s easy to forget how strongly transit can shape our City.