Twittering the Meltdown

Some choice tweets  from this morning’s seemingly ongoing debacle:

meganallison Cole&Carl ib N: no

Plug1 12 train N/T backup heading into the Metro Tunnel. Muni meltdown is in full effect!

AgentNano Ok looking through Twitter chatter, looks like there are still Muni Metro delays due to a control issue with the underground.

rowenoftc RT @nbcbayareacom: Muni RIDERS! Slow subway traffic on ALL LINES because of a problem with the train control system. (Mike Inouye, Trx Guy)

AgentNano Muni problems started at 7. Muni alerted the media am hour later.

AgentNano Muni problems for all Metro trains underground due to a problem with the train control system.

Send us your Muni Meltdown™ stories … once you reach peace of mind. Or not.

6 comments

  • Plug1

    and Muni’s station agents wonder why i have not paid to board a train since November 2007. why? well if a girlfriend treated me the way Muni does — i would dump her. if a job treated me the way Muni does — i’d up and quit. if a restaurant treated me the way Muni does — i would never go back.

    unfortunately with the mistress Muni, i do not have a choice unless i want to walk to work in the rain.

  • tarniv

    @Plug1
    Rationalise your theft of service all you want to yourself, but realise that I and many others see you as stealing from your fellow riders (ie, us) and tax payers (ie, us).

    Plus, to borrow a phrase from politics:
    You don’t get to bitch if you didn’t pay.

  • the meltdown wasn’t in full effect when i got on my trusty N this morning; by 8:45 when i hit the tunnel, though, you could tell something was up. there was a 5ish minute wait (oh noes!) before being let into the tunnel, and then another before the Van Ness station. i think our train, or a few in front of us, may have started the pile-up — when i looked back down the tunnel you could see a train waiting and more headlights behind it.
    seems weird to me that the train control system was down, but the maps were still up and working. the old school one that we used to see (the confusing one) is the same one that station operators and train controllers see/use to dictate flow. hmmm, weirdness…

  • Plug1

    @tarniv

    i might agree with you if the service lived up to what was promised back in the mid-nineties. see i ride the T-Third line, which replaced the 15 a couple of years back. when the new line was propositioned to the voters, it was highlighted as supporting the lower 3rd St corridor from King St to Sunnydale Ave or wherever it ends. in the earlier days, the new route was for the most part flawless. but as Third St became more and more populated, the trains became more crowded. most days i have to wait until the 3rd train to board.

    one day, i asked an operator (who lets me on for free most days) why we cant get a train with more than 2 cars to bring us to and fro work? he said that the 4th St Bridge cannot support a train with more than 2 cars — so it will never happen. my next question then was why we cant get more 2 car trains? he agreed with me, but didn’t have an answer.

    so to your point, yeah i probably should pay. im 33 years old and shouldnt be evading the fare inspectors. but for my to and from work route — Muni has proved itself completely unreliable, and left me walking home on many a night.

    perhaps the answer for me is a Translink card. whereby if the train picks me up at stop A and is able to drop me off at stop B, i will swipe my card before exiting the train.

  • There was a bomb threat today over at Van Ness. Got me late to the rally, but, still made it.

  • My quoted tweet was accidental, which is clear from looking at the sequence; I was attempting to operate Tweetie one-handed (coffee in the other) from a totally functional, timely N-Judah at Cole & Carl. I was actually twittering about something else, just using the N stop as a locational marker.

    But, I boarded my usual 9:05 train with no problems, and as soon as we approached the tunnel at Duboce & Church, our operator was forthright and communicative about delays. Granted, it sounds like the “meltdown” was subsiding on the later end of the commute, but what I don’t understand is why people are content to wait it out and bitch? If you get to Civic Center and you know there’s a delay, why don’t you just hop BART down to Montgomery or wherever you’re headed? Muni is not your mommy.

    Obviously, I’m going in a different direction (inbound from the west) than Plug1 so I can’t speak to service on the T or how it is entering the Market St tunnel from the other end. But as to buying more streetcars (which would be nice, on all lines), I’m not sure if you’ve heard but Muni’s budget deficit is staggering. They can’t afford to repair the infrastructure they have, let alone invest in new capital. It really doesn’t help when people pride themselves on fare evasion and then cry bloody murder when they get a ticket.

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