Photo by Telstar Logistics
Ed note: My god, this is so awesome. Such a great response to a shitty, sad situation. L-Taraval rider Kristen has had it with her beloved aggravating Muni Metro line. But she’s not sitting back and taking it, no. Read on, please …
Local papers declare the J-Church the worst line. If so, maybe the reason is that there are so many they can barely move. Someone told me it’s political–i.e., city officials live along the J line. Could this actually be true?
What I do know is, the L-Taraval is terrible as far as frequency and “last-minute” mid-route turnarounds/re-routing.
So I’m journaling my experiences riding the L line on the days that I consider bad. To comment: email me at quisten@pacbell.net.
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Date unknown, 2009: a.m. L stops on Taraval. Driver announces he had to stop because he suddenly lost his sight due to a diabetic episode–and that he had recently been hospitalized for a similar episode (yet MUNI had put him right back to work???).
10/12/09, 6:10 p.m. Montgomery sta. I hear announcement saying “…ALL MOVING EXTREMELY SLOW.” I take BART to 23 bus instead.
10/16/09 6:20 p.m. Embarcadero sta. Wait OK but then streetcar changes destination from Zoo to 22nd Ave. sometime before Church. Why not determine destination at Embarcadero end of line? SRO on following car at 22nd.
Read more of Kristen’s bad days on the L-Taraval after the jump.
10/26/09 8:00 a.m. 46th/Vicente. Streetcar goes two feet, then breaks down. :) I take 23/BART.
11/5/09 7:38 p.m. Embarc. After 20-min wait, L arrives; at West Portal, it goes straight on outbound K/M line even though sign in car still says destination Zoo. Everyone gets off streetcar to wait for bus shuttle. When I ask, a sup cites “blockage” further out on L line. Then, around 8:10, another outbound L appears. What a circus. They just tell you whatever.
11/6/09 8:30 p.m. Embarc. L wait time announced as 8 min, actual wait time 30 min. Barely acceptable, but why not just announce actual time? In interim, multiples of other lines appear; many remain empty, whereas L immediately fills up as if it were rush hour.
11/12/09 8:31 p.m. Embarc. Streetcar says L on outside but J on inside sign. No announcement one way or the other. Someone asks and operator says it’s a J. I get off at Montg and go back to Embarc to wait for an L.
11/13/09 a.m. Radio announces MUNI metro backup in tunnel due to auto-switch problem. I take 23/BART.
11/16/09 p.m. L says destination Zoo but only goes to 22nd Ave. (Why can’t MUNI at least announce such changes up front rather than inconveniencing riders and lengthening delays?)
11/17/09 a.m. L stops at West Portal. After 20 min, operator or manager walks through and says “Last stop.” I have to ask to find out that a train has derailed in tunnel (between Forest Hill and Castro) and they’re using shuttle buses. Hundreds of confused passengers mill about in and near the station. I catch a mobbed K to Balboa Park, take BART, and am only 40 min late to work.
p.m. They’re still fixing the metro and using shuttle buses between Church and West Portal, so I take BART/23. It’s raining, unexpectedly, with a chilly wind; I have no umbrella (violins, please). Left work 6:30, get home 8:30. (It’s about 5 miles as the crow flies.)
11/19/09 a.m. L turns right (on outbound K/M line) at West Portal, and operator tells us to go into tunnel to go downtown. (Why do they reroute the L so often? It should go where it says it’s going at either end of line.) L going outbound on K/M line still says L on outside.
12/9/09 p.m. Metro is shut down entirely due to fallen overhead wire at Van Ness. Freezing weather. I take BART/23.
12/15/09 a.m. L very slow in tunnel. Takes me two hours to get to work.
12/16/09 a.m. slow. 6:30 p.m. Embarc. N-N-K-M-J-N-S-K-J-M. Then, finally, an L but only to 22nd Ave. Why?????
1/5/10 a.m. No L for a long time. I take 23/BART. p.m. L very slow.
1/6-7/10 a.m. and p.m. L very slow.
1/8/10 7 p.m. Embarc. M-M-N-M-J-N-K-K-N-J-J-N-M-K-J-K-M-N-J-J-K-K (two of which were Ls on the inbound side of the platform). No L until 8 p.m. (hour wait).
1/12/10 8:40 p.m. Montgomery. Outbound delay due to “Fire Department incident” at Embarc. I take L to Embarc (very slow going). Then I board an outbound L. At 9:15 it gets delayed in tunnel between Forest Hill and West Portal… I get home around 10:30.
Related posts:
And now you have to buy the premium pass to use BART. What a joke.
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Here’s my travels on the L this week:
Mon 3/1 8:20 am: Inbound L experiences unexplained delays from Castro to Montgomery. Makes me 20 minutes late to work (not too bad compared to past experiences).
Mon 3/1 5:30 pm: Get on outbound L at Montg. At West Portal, L changes to K. Get off and wait for next L with hundreds of other L riders as former-L-current-K takes a whopping 5 passengers down West Portal Ave.
Tues 3/2 8:20 am: Get on inbound L at 44th. It is labeled a K. Outside entrance to West Portal station, driver announces mechanical difficulty and makes everyone get off and go to wait for one-car M or one-car T waiting down West Portal Ave to enter tunnel. Literally hundreds of people waiting at West Portal. M and T are in sight but do not budge. After ten minutes, our former “K-train-on-the-L-line” train re-labels itself “L,” enters station, we all re-board.
Thursday 3/4 8:10 am: Get on inbound one-car L at 44th. It is so jammed that it is unable to take on any more passengers by 19th and does not make any more stops. Driver repeatedly lectures us about the need to complain to Muni higher-ups or this will be our commute from now on. Also lectures about high cost to drivers of Muni’s health plan. Audience is sympathetic but he does not say how or to whom to complain. At least we were on time.
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eugenia Reply:
March 7th, 2010 at 5:01 pm
I find the driver’s remarks interesting especially because on the lines (1, 47, 49) I ride, the drivers rarely say anything to anybody.
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The L Taraval is f*&king terrible. It’s the sole reason I don’t live in the Sunset anymore.
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I’m just surprised there were no fights. This definitely sounds worse than the J besides the muggings and fights that I saw when I relied on it daily. And of course, the drivers ignored what was going on. So grateful to live at Market and Church – I take the first line that comes along. Still, sometimes I opt to walk downtown instead and avoid the whole potential mess of MUNI.
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A number of years ago we had a driver on the L line who would sarcastically announce periodically on outbound trips, “This is an L Taraval…theoretically going to the Zoo.”
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As Ace said, many times the drivers seem as fed up as we are. And sometimes we can relate. However, it’s really just unprofessional for them to vent over the intercom, especially to ask us to contact MUNI management to fight for service we pay for. MUNI management needs to look at their efficiencies and put their customers first in day-to-day operations, not just on paper.
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I think the drivers are getting a lot of backlash after they rejected the latest proposal and he was trying to explain that they’re on our side and, like you say, as fed up as we are. But yeah, it was definitely odd.
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I should request all of my complaints to MUNI about the L and 48 and 29 and 71 and turn them into a diary. Thanks for sharing Kirsten!
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Sure thing, Marcie. I decided late last year I’d start carrying a little notebook and just jot down the details of my experience as they happen every day I ride the L — or at least every bad day. I usually go inbound from 46th Ave. around 8 a.m. and outbound around 6:30 p.m. It’s odd how dramatically it can change from one hour to another, though; for example, Ace had a particularly bad week this week, but I didn’t. My last really bad day was in January. But stay tuned. You know we can always count on MUNI for more catastrophe and confusion — and stories with which to amuse our friends.
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The San Francisco Bike Coalition offers free biking classes for adults. Avoid Muni altogether & save time and money!! For those who are curious, here’s the link: http://www.sfbike.org/?edu
I took this class and now I’m fit and financially solvent. Viva the SFBC!!
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Excellent point. In fact, I am a bicyclist and a huge bicycling advocate. I used to bike to work sometimes. One of the last times I did, a bad driver forced me into an old (unused) streetcar rail, and despite being a skilled rider, I fell; I arrived at work intact but bloody. Now I’m old and cranky, and I don’t like to be smelly and sweaty at the office…which I’m sure my co-workers appreciate too. I’m fortunate that I can telecommute part time.
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Yup. That sounds about right… about why I still have a car. I couldn’t afford to spend two hours getting from the Outer Sunset to downtown. On a good day it was faster to take MUNI, but the good days were so few and far between that it almost always made sense to drive to Daly City BART and hop a train there.
As one of the drivers pointed out on the RescueMuni list, they like to avoid announcing short runs ahead of time to avoid confrontation with the riders. Ugh.
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Thursday, 3/11/10, 5:15 p.m., Embarcadero. Outbound L says destination display says Embarcadero. (Did they forget to change it, or are they being noncommittal?). By 5:30 at Castro, destination display (inside car, anyway) says Zoo. Between Forest Hill and West Portal, the operator says something too muffled to make out but ending in “will be slow.” And indeed it is. At 5:45, the operator speaks again, and again it’s mostly unintelligible, but it contains the word “traffic.” (What does that actually mean, anyway? It’s a subway track, not a freaking freeway.) And then, after these delays, the destination changes at West Portal from Zoo to 22nd Ave., and those of us further out must catch the next L. (Pathetic!… I sure miss that operator from years back who would periodically announce, “This is an L-Taraval… theoretically going to the Zoo,” in a voice heavy with sardonic undertone. That “theoretically” pretty much said it all — and it’s still just as true today.)
Friday, 3/12/10, and Monday, 3/15/10. Morning and evening they send one-car trains at rush hour — not just on the L line but (at least outbound in p.m.) on other lines too. Cars are jam-packed SRO near middle of L line. People can’t even board… (Maybe they’re doing maintenance work so they have fewer cars to send? If so, it would help if they could instead do this midday.)
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Monday, 3/15, 8:20 a.m., 46th/Vicente. One-car train even though it’s rush hour; by 19th Ave., it’s jam-packed SRO. 6:50 p.m., Embarcadero M-J-K-K-L (7 p.m.) All one car trains.
Tuesday, 3/16, 8:10 a.m. I manage to catch a two-car inbound amid a series of one-car trains. Nervous because by 32nd it’s still fairly empty, so I wonder if they changed the destination display on the outside. Inside it still says SF Zoo. It goes all the way downtown. Twilight Zone Weird. 7 p.m., Embarcadero. Wait is somewhat long; the real frustration, though, is that the actual experience is totally different from next-train system displays/announcements, which initially say L in 11 min. K-J-N/N-N/N-K-N/N-K-N/N-J. It takes 20, and meanwhile system repeatedly announces L as next train but then (apparently) they get changed. At least the two-car L that eventually shows up says Zoo on all its signs and actually goes all the way out.
Wednesday, 3/17, 8:00 a.m. (46th/Vicente) and 7:15 p.m. (Montgomerey):
I’ll celebrate St. Patty’s Day by logging a good MUNI day.
(Did MUNI celebrate too — or do its part to help keep drinkers off the road? Or was this a fluke?)
EXTRA, EXTRA!!!
Two-Car L from Zoo Travels Full Route to Downtown without Delays
Two-Car L from Downtown Travels Full Route to Zoo without Delays
Thursday, 3/18, 8:15 a.m. 46th/Vicente. One-car train again at rush hour. Says destination Embarcadero. Extremely slow in tunnel, waiting about 5 minutes per station. Get to work 9:15.
8:05 p.m., Embarcadero. 10-minute wait for L single-car train.
Wednesday, 3/24 8:15 a.m. Door problem in previous train in tunnel, 15-minute delay during which the operator repeatedly announces that riders blocking doors is the #1 problem in the tunnel. (Really?!?!? Well, maybe they wouldn’t need to if MUNI consistently ran two-car trains.)
Thursday, 3/25, 6:45 p.m., Embarcadero. L-Zoo OK till Sunset, where they turn it back and put riders on a shuttle bus. I ask the operator why they didn’t just put Sunset on the destination display. He just points to the shuttle bus. I see a supervisor near the bus and ask why they bother putting destination displays on the streetcars at all. He also refers me to the sign on the bus. (They’re missing the point. Switchbacks are very inefficient; it takes considerable time to switch the tracks, which causes more delays. Also, switchbacks inconvenience riders, who now pay MUNI about twice what we did just 10 years ago… though most of us don’t make close to twice what we did 10 years ago.) At Taraval/40th, I get off to go to Walgreens and see a stopped outbound L and a couple of police cars surrounded by a truly impressive number of MUNI personnel and other officials, all milling around talking to each other. I ask one of the MUNI folks what happened, and he says he just got there but from what he understands, a rider getting off the L was hit by a car (clearly, the reason they’re running a shuttle). Although the injured person and the errant driver are no longer on the scene, officials are still arriving after the fact — including police on motorcycles! (*** YOUR TAX DOLLARS AT WORK ***) I would have taken photos, but my phone battery power had run out.
>>> Folks: Please use your resources. Use your phone to snap photos of inaccurate MUNI destination displays, incident scenes unnecessarily overrun with MUNI management, switchbacks, etc. Make recordings of responses you get from operators and officials if you can. Send them to munidiaries. (Listen, I refuse to apologize for being the Michael Moore of MUNI blogs. IMHO, the world needs more Michael Moores: more annoying and irritating people who question authority, democratic vs. capitalistic motivation, and things that don’t make sense.)
Friday, 3/26, 8 a.m. MUNI is replacing some overhead cables at 46th/Vicente (do they have to do this at rush hour?) and is running shuttle buses to West Portal. I take 23/BART.
Friday, 4/2 8 a.m. The train I board goes only to West Portal. Since the operator kindly announces this ahead of time, I get off before that point and actually get a seat on the next train. I find myself sitting next to a neighbor, and we talk about the L-line service. He thinks the main reason for all the switchbacks and route changes is lack of funding, which leads to lack of sufficient personnel. (I’m unconvinced that it’s funding and not lack of intelligent management, i.e., too many dollars spent on unnecessary management and not enough on actual service. For example, why do they send so many officials to evaluate the scene of a minor incident after those involved are long gone? And why not always run two-car streetcars on full routes at rush hour instead of running multiple one-car trains on partial routes?)
>>> Folks: Consider saying thank-you to MUNI operators who do a good job despite being jerked around by MUNi management. Like most of our jobs, theirs isn’t a bed of roses. Many of them actually behave in a pleasant, professional, appropriate manner (rather than whining over the intercom about their long hours and crappy benefits or about why riders are the cause of bad service). Operators who do the best they can and manage to maintain a positive outward attitude deserve recognition… not necessarily a KFC run (see related blogs on this site), just a little respect.
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