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On April 10th 2009, he came to work with his laptop and established a small corner office at the Potrero Division lunch room. While he was writing my letters, many operators came and asked him advice for rule violations they received from the management. Then he said \I helped some of them and I felt that it was almost impossible for one person to solve every problem. In addition, I received many phone calls on my cell phone from other operators in other divisions, asking for my help. Because of these calls.It is obvious to us that Muni Transit Assistance patrol officers are a great asset to Muni operators’ safety and riding public as well. They were observed in many occasions to break up a fight between youngsters at bus stops and around schools in the afternoons. I witnessed myself that on two occasions passengers on board the 22 line bus were ready to fight. The two Muni Transit Assistance Officers separated them apart and diffused the situation\.

He also said \When these officers are on board the bus or at bus stops, they seem to create security for operators and riding public with their presence. For example, when they are riding my bus with full capacity of the bus, it seems that the passengers were very are quiet. Also, I did not see any persons attempting to board the bus through the rear door. Not only they provide security for all of us, but also deter passengers from riding free. I don‘t think the riding public know the role they play in this transit organization. However, they are more visible than the San Francisco Police Officers. Yet, they are doing the job that SFPD should have being doing. In addition, I know that they are not making enough money and they need to be fully compensated for the keeping operators, school children and riding public safe. Moreover, I was told that they are only working Monday through Fridays. As most of us know criminals and people that create problems on buses, on the streets don’t take weekend off. In addition, we have all witnessed the current increased violence on Muni transit system against Asian Americans in San Francisco and elsewhere, which is even more evidence that these officers are needed aboard MUNI.

MTA should hire more of them. We need more of Muni Transit Assistance Patrol Officers on the weekend and during the nights. They are doing a wonderful job. They need to be recognized. On the other hand, MTA has given about $ 12 Million Dollars this year to SFPD for security services in Muni Transit System. Yet, the violence is increased in general. As an operator, I witnessed that the police officers are not present nor are they visible in the system. I think Muni Transit Assistance patrol Officers should coordinate with SFPD and should be given communication equipment and more responsibility in the transit system. We need more of them and they need to be paid more because they are keeping us safe. When Muni says promises to the riding safe reliable service. Well the safe part comes from Muni Transit Assistance Patrol Officers. Therefore, we need to encourage them to do more, but we have to recognize them by paying them more than what they are making know\.
1. Did union officials, in general, including the vice chairs, secretaries of each divisions receive lump sums of their union dues last year or the previous years?

2. Could you site a provision in a union local by law that will state that the union officials are exempt from paying their membership dues?

3. All division chairs, vice chairs, and secretaries are classified as 9163, transit operators. We all operators pay union dues bi-weekly. Tell me which union officials are those gets lump sums each year of their union contribution? And Why?

4.I have a few reliable, credible union officials sources that either now or previously were the beneficiaries of the above benefit, which is not available to the other transit operators or members of this union.. Can all my union dues for the last 11 years returned to me? If not, why not?

5. I would like you to disclose the audit of previous years including the firm, address and telephone number a contact person. I also would like a copy to be sent to me or given to the members. I would appreciate your prompt response. Thank You.

Thank You.

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I do agree with you, there are a lot of drivers out there who do need to retire or get fired. they are the ones who make it bad for guys like me. I only wish I could have stayed in the Bay Area and not have move to SC so I can make what they do. I also see people on here talking about sub-contracting out work to Veolia or First Transit. Let’s be real we are much better equipped and trained than they are.

This is one reason we are worth the pay !!!! My company has brought in Veolia and MV to operate some of our routes. I can tell you it’s been crazy. These drivers keep getting into accidents and tearing up equipment. I understand your point that you feel a better service should be provided to you as a taxpayer and customer. I just think you have to really weed out the bad seeds.

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Well, for your information, straight from Transport for London:

Complaints Per quarter (calendar year 2009):
Jan – Mar 5060
Apr – Jun 5184
Jul – Sep 3994
Oct – Dec 4017
(the above is regarding London Underground service only)

Now, that’s interesting. Let’s say that the MTA is at about 4500 complaints per quarter (682 + 2347 + 993 + 400 = 4422) . Average it out and the London Underground sees roughly the same number of complaints. (5060+5184+3994+4017)/4 = 4563. Maybe that’s an unfair comparison between the Underground (which has far higher ridership) and the MTA. You could also whinge about including ADA complaints as the USA is one of the few places with any sort of focus on accessibility… which would leave you with roughly 4000 vs 4500, or roughly 12% more complaints and 400%+ of the ridership.

IMO that says something pretty significant that a system capable of handling roughly four times as many passengers as MUNI sees roughly the same number of complaints. My next task is to see if they’ve categorized the complaints, but that may take a while (this data was supposed to be available by the 3rd of July).

Of course, as per the British Freedom of Information Act, that data is copyright TfL.

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Looking at my complaint in my first post, about the driver who violated safety rules and put her passengers clearly in harms way (making we the passengers play frogger, mid-block, in traffic, in the dark, when there was nothing stopping her from pulling curbside at each stop). I realized that rather than acknowledge the issue, you criticize the complainer, then choose to whine (your word) about hostility toward the “lady” bus driver.

I again have to wonder: Is this cultural at Muni?

(by “this” I mean such a surprising diversion from the issue at hand, defending the driver (and even playing the Political Correctness card!) rather than addressing the very real safety issue & complaint.)

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If the driver was a man I would have said “the shockingly rude/lazy fat man driving”. If anything you should be calling me out on insensitivity to weight issues.

Anyway, you appear to insist that Muni is without flaw, which makes a “discussion” kind of impossible (i’m not Alex, who appears to be getting your goat…nonetheless your response to my first post was “take a laxative” -so, I’m not sure why I bothered to engage further at that point…)

That said, aside from calling out your clearly contrived outrage over (clearly non-existent) sexism in my post, I’m done here as well.

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I actually did have a good driver interaction that day. One of the bus drivers thanked me for pointing out that his right headlight was out. Of course, the real question there is, what happened during that safety inspection that drivers get paid to do before they take out a vehicle?

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The Munich S-Bahn carries 800,000 riders a day. That’s just the light rail. Munich is less dense than San Francisco and has about 1.3 million people (vs about 800,000 in SF). In fact, I’d say for a city as dense as San Francisco, that’s pretty low ridership.

As for the statistics, don’t forget that the MTA also claims 100% of the complaints have been resolved. Anyhow, if you look at the 2010 Fiscal Year Service Standards report[1] (pages 51 and 52) you’ll see that there were 682 complaints for unsafe driver behaviour, and 2,347 complaints for inattentive driver behaviour, 993 regarding belligerent drivers, and another four hundred odd ADA complaints (page 31). Add them up and you get over four thousand complaints for the second quarter of FY2010 alone. Of those, almost one third of all complaints cannot be acted on because of the MOU (page 54). Of those complaints that could be acted on, over half were not acted on for unknown reasons (likely the TWU protecting the bad drivers).

Of course there are a few things wrong with basing assumptions on these statistics. How many people call in for a given complaint? Let’s say that yet another L driver stops by Gene’s Liquor on 32nd (or 7-11 if it’s late). If nobody calls does that mean that this is acceptable behaviour? No. If one person calls it in, does this mean that only one person was wronged? No. If anything, you should be looking at complaints per run, not complaints per individual trip.

But, then again, the MTA stacks the cards in favor of the drivers. 311, which the drivers want to abolish, was the first agency to actually take MUNI complaints seriously. Back when the protocol was to call 6-SF-MUNI, your complaint would be binned without an acknowledgment. But the MTA is back to their old tricks again. 311 is now enforcing a separate queue for MUNI complaints, a queue that has a much longer wait time. How many people do you think don’t bother to file a complaint knowing how long it will take them? How many people have looked at the service standards report, seen that the union gets most of the complaints dismissed anyhow, and just not bothered?

1: http://www.sfmta.com/cms/rstd/documents/4-20-10Item12FY10Q2ServiceStandardsscorecard.pdf

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