San Francisco Engagement Shoots on Muni 02.01.12
Photo: Sarah Dawson Photography
Pictured below are Katie and Shadi, and Bryan and Michelle, respectively.
We curse it to hell during commute hours, but any San Francisco photo shoot just isn’t complete without it. In 2009, Jeff and I couldn’t resist, either. We met in San Francisco and get all marshmallowy over neat stuff on public transit, so there you go.
Photo: Right Angle Images
Photo: Right Angle Images
Snuggle up on Muni (with permission from your snugglee, that is), and send us your photos and stories today. Why’s Muni your backdrop for more than getting to and fro?
The Good Ol’ 39-Coit Will Keep Truckin’ 10.22.08
Reposted, with permission, from Tony Long’s North Beach Examiner
The 39-Coit has been saved.
Thanks to the tireless efforts of neighborhood activists and a sudden moment of lucidity from the MTA board, Telegraph Hill’s bus will live to drive another day. Not only that, but the Union Street leg of the route, which was to be lopped off in any case, will be preserved, too.
And not only that, but Muni now favors extending the line to Pier 39, something 39 advocates have been beseeching them to do for some time now. (Numerology alone would seem to favor this extension, wouldn’t it?)
The MTA board took the action Tuesday, finally acknowledging that a viable bus up to Coit Tower is the best way to reduce traffic on the hill. As part of the plan to extend the line to Pier 39, the Muni said it expects Fisherman’s Wharf merchants and the community at large to help publicize the 39-Coit to help increase the ridership.
Keeping the Union Street leg is especially good news for hill residents. Try walking up to Montgomery with a couple of bags of groceries sometime and you’ll know what I mean. Try it with a couple of balky Achilles tendons and you really know what I mean.
Anyway, I don’t get to say this often but I’ll say it now: Thanks, Muni.
More on our reaction to Tuesday’s TEP vote coming soon. — Jeff
The dog and pony show rolls on 09.12.08
(Reposted, with permission, from North Beach Examiner)
The Metropolitan Transporation Authority — or Muni, as most of us still prefer calling it — has been trying to get rid of the 39-Coit since the 1950s. Unless eight supervisors vote against the transit system’s current Transit Effectiveness Plan at their Sept. 16 meeting, Muni will get half its wish.
Elimination of the Union Street hill leg of the 39 route is one of the provisions of the plan. Several other lines around town are facing truncation or elimination as well, which Muni maintains is necessary to provide the “greatest good for the greatest number.”
This is a pretty hilly town (in case you haven’t noticed), and a densely populated one (which, if the city planners get their way, will only be worse in coming years). The only way to provide reliable transit service with this kind of topography and population is by saturating the place with bus lines. Eliminating lines, or in the case of the 39, drastically cutting service, flies in the face of the city’s so-called “transit first” policy.
confirmed by a cab driver… 06.20.08
…that San Francisco is one of the worst cities in the country to do pretty much any transiting. Put it this way: no matter how you decide to get from Point A to Point B, whether by bus, streetcar, cab or regular car, it will take infinitely longer to do so than it would in most other major metropolitan areas.
Why was I in a cab at 9 a.m. on a Friday, you ask?
As Jeff posted earlier, the F line stopped on Market and dumped all its passengers near New Montgomery. This was due to an apparent power outage somewhere on the line. From what I could gather, given the clusterfuck around every trolley bus and streetcar, everyone on the line had to stop. This created a mass spillover into Market Street and surroundings, as people clamored for cabs and shoved their way into the already-full buses clunking past. I picked up a cab on Second near Market, and the fare jumped to almost $5 before hitting Market. For perspective, it cost roughly another $5 to get from Market to the very north end of town.
Aside from the F, the only Muni lines that I know go by my job are the 10-Townsend and the 39-Coit. Seeing as how neither of those was near me (not as far as I could tell), I had absolutely no idea how I could get to work without taking a cab. I tried looking at a system map on a bus shelter on Third Street…but couldn’t see through the ink-black graffiti covering almost everything.
North Beach Magic Bus — 39-Coit 06.10.08
Reposting from Tony Long’s North Beach Examiner, a look at one community’s counter-proposal to Muni’s idea of euthanizing the northeastern line.
Disclosure: Tony is my boss in both of our day jobs. And he’s one hell of a journalist and good guy.
North Beach Examiner on Proposed Muni Changes Afoot in North Beach 06.06.08
The Examiner takes a close look at the proposed cuts on a couple of linnes with paltry ridership.
A little teaser from the story:
These cuts are two of many proposals being studied by Muni as part of its Transit Effectiveness Project, which, if implemented, would result in the most comprehensive bus rerouting done in my memory. And I’ve been here a long time. There isn’t a single line passing through or near North Beach (save the cable cars) that wouldn’t be affected in some way.
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