Muni rider Kevin sent us his letter to the MTA Board on the unreliable wait time and inefficient bus scheduling for the 38 Geary. Kevin says that often, he has seen “two, three, sometimes four buses arrive at one stop at the same time,” then riders have to wait 15 minutes or more for the next bus.
MTA replied speedily to his letter, so we’re including excerpts from his letter and the response.
From Kevin’s letter to the MTA:
This morning when I arrived at Geary and Masonic/Presidio, I wasn’t too surprised to see the next 38 Geary would be arriving in 18 and 23 minutes. (the photo shows 16 minutes because it took me a bit to find my camera).
According to your own time chart for the 38 Geary it should be arriving at least every 15 minutes. Now I realize waiting 3 minutes longer than the scheduled frequency may not seem like a big deal and I am sure others (me included) have waited much longer for the next bus. But for one of the busiest and most used bus lines anywhere I find this unacceptable. Especially when the next bus is set to arrive 5 minutes after the first. Why is there such a large difference between the time separation? Wait 18 minutes for the first bus but the next one arrives just 5 minutes later. There has long been an issue with bus separation.
Kevin also mentioned to MTA the issue of fare jumpers, which he says he sees often on the 38 (I too can attest to seeing this on the same line).
MTA replied to Kevin on the same day (this is impressive to me, at least), saying:
Thank you for writing to the SFMTA Board of Directors regarding the 38-Geary line and people who board the bus without paying. I have provided your e-mail to the Board. In addition, I have forwarded to SFMTA Executive Director Nathaniel Ford, Chief Operating Officer Ken McDonald and Chief of Staff/Director of Administration Debra Johnson for their information.
The reply was nice and speedy, and of course we wouldn’t expect a solution on the spot. I’m also glad that there was an actual person who read Kevin’s letter, wrote a personalized, non-canned reply. It’d be interesting to see how the issues of inefficient wait time will be resolved. What is your experience with bus wait time (and specifically, the spacing of the wait times) on your line?
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“two, three, sometimes four buses arrive at one stop at the same time,”
THIS happened Friday evening while I was on my way to Best Buy. Normally I board at Geary & Stockton, but since it’s like a major transfer hub with the 30 and 45, I figured I’d be smartypants and beat the crowd by going back one stop to Geary & Kearny. Failed. I got to the stop just before 7:30 and already there was a sizeable crowd milling around (20 or so). From the looks of it, they had been waiting there for some time. 3 minutes later, the 38 pulls up…packed to the gills. Of course, like the lemmings we are, everybody piles in (the bus driver kept the front doors shut and pointed at the rear doors to board). I make no attempt at boarding since it would’ve been a futile attempt anyway; lucky I did because seconds after the doors close and it’s about to take off, another 38 appears…practically empty. Of course, this bus too gets filled after only two stops, but at Geary & Leavenworth I(we) get passed by yet another 38. So now it’s a game of leapfrogging all the way to Van Ness where yet again another 38 passes us. That makes four 38′s in the space of 15 minutes. It got so bad that at Geary & Baker, there were two 38′s stopped one after another; the one I was aboard had to stop outside of the two in order to let people off. I finally get to Masonic/Presidio and as I’m walking to the crosswalk, not one but 2 38′s pass by. Walking past the entrance to Office Depot, yet another 38 passes the intersection.
I wonder…if the Central Subway is ever built and the dream of running light rail on Geary again, can Muni run some semblance of reliable service there?
I can attest to the fare jumpers too, but that’s a whole new can of worms I don’t want to open.
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Of course this is a canned reply. Send in another complaint and you’ll get exactly the same response: a form letter, with no appreciable effect on service.
Seriously, go ahead, write another letter. You’ll get, verbatim, the same response.
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matt, I guess my expectations of public agencies is set a little lower because I was simply impressed with this part of the MTA response: “…regarding the 38-Geary line and people who board the bus without paying.”
I fully expect some kind of canned reply in part of the letter but at least this means someone had scanned through Kevin’s letter however briefly to see what it was about…
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Let me get this right. This article is complaining about a 15 minute wait for a Muni bus? Where I live, waiting only 15 minutes for a Muni bus is called being lucky.
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I send a complaint via the SFMTA website about every other week, they send me the same response Kevin got, it’s a form letter. They change the dept. and the person they “forward” the info to depending the subject, but I have yet to get a follow up from the party the email was forwarded to. Also the responses do not have subject lines.
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You need to spam them every two to three days in order to get a “real” reply.
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