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One of my lines I can ride into work is the N-Judah line. This line is the busiest MUNI line. It is faster to get to my work because it goes underground and the
by swang 10y ago
One of my lines I can ride into work is the N-Judah line. This line is the busiest MUNI line. It is faster to get to my work because it goes underground and the MUNI buses I have to ride go slower, especially when there are a lot of pickups.
It is the most frustrating experience to walk to the N line because it is such a huge gamble. It use to get so crowded that you had to shove in there like you were on a line going into Tokyo. Just wall-to-wall people. They alleviated some of that by having more stops come back earlier going the other way. Only took them 2+ years since I've been here to decide that was an actual GOOD IDEA.
Equally frustrating riding on the line is that the N-Judah is sometimes actually a J-Church train that comes back right before you enter the tunnel into Market St. The only sign it is not the one you want is the last car on the train is locked out, and the badging for the train still shows N-Judah.
So sometimes you get on that expecting to go through the tunnel except it dumps you right outside of it. Now you have to pray there is room leftover on the next N-Judah line. Or alternatively you can try for the J-Church train that is entering near where the N dropped you off. So N-Judah is the closest line, but 50% of the time I have to use the J-Church train to actually get into work.
And that's even assuming the tunnel into Market St. is not bogged down. Whose genius idea was it to have all lines converge into one line?
What's the point of all this and what's it have to do with this article? Well fucking MUNI that's what. They recently increased fees for cash payment/limited payment card to $2.50. It is still just "$2.25" if you have a Clipper card. When I arrived here 4 years ago it was $1? $1.25? to ride. Literally for the increase of $1 more per ride I have seen service get progressively worse. When this bug hit, it said 30 minutes 'til the next N-Judah train. I tweeted to MUNI's twitter about what was going on and it took them 20 minutes to respond. And all they can say is "technical" problem as though 40% of the population in SF doesn't know what that really means. It is an embarrassment. SF is suppose to be some tech capital of the world yet we can't even ride into work without pulling our hair out over getting there.
Sorry, ranting, but it is unbelievable how incompetent our public transportation is given how much money they have.
- wcummings 10y agoDo they really have that much money? Public transit has been chronically underfunded in most of the US, including progressive metro areas. Boston has billions of dollars of backlogged maintenance, which contributes a lot to reliability problems.
- pquerna 10y agoAll in, about ~1.8bn annual budget in SF. The Proposed Operating Budget for FY 2017 totals to $1,154.7 million[0] The Proposed MTA FY 2015 and FY 2016 Capital Budget includes an appropriation of $562.9 million in FY 2015 and $669.0 million in FY 2016. [1] Is that underfunded? SFMTA has massive basic accountability and prioritization problems, tons of more money wouldn't make those better. [0] - https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/agendaitems/2016/4-5-16%20Item%2014%20FY17-FY18%20Operating%20Budget%20Book.pdf https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/agendaitems/2016/4... [1] - https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/agendaitems/4-15-14%20Item%2011%20FY15%20and%20FY16%20Capital%20Budget%20Book%20%20Attachment%20C_0.pdf https://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/agendaitems/4-15-1...
- elsewhen 10y agoaccording to wikipedia, the SFMTA (the agency that runs MUNI) has a 35% farebox recovery ratio [0] (fares only cover 35% the cost of running the system). [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio
- yladiz 10y agoOne problem is that you can walk on the buses without proving you paid for fare, and the bus drivers have the right to ask but in practice never do. It would likely go up by a bit if they were more strict about it.
- stuckagain 10y agoThe 38-Geary is actually the busiest, but since it's broken up in the the local, "rapid", and express variants it doesn't look that way in the tables. ETA: also it's been 14 years since the fare was $1.
- skuhn 10y agoI think you're misremembering what fares used to be. Muni raised single trips to $2 in 2009 (and now it's $2.50 in 2017). Meanwhile my rent has more than doubled in that time. It's actually (still) much cheaper than other cities I have lived in, and anecdotally fare evasion seems extremely high. Relative to the cost of living here, fares should be like $5-6. Maybe with that kind of money they could actually accomplish anything, although I kind of doubt the problem is solely financial.
- swang 10y agoYou are right. I was sure that I paid less than $2 when I first moved into the city but I looked it up and apparently it was $2 for a while before the hike.