Poll time: Worst Muni line

caution: MUNIAt Muni Diaries, we don’t particularly like to quote-unquote go negative. But perhaps it’s just the nature of the beast — a site meant to reflect the goings on of a public-transit system in a major metropolitan city will, at least from time to time, contain nuggets of negativity like this one.

Last night around 11 p.m., an Examiner story caught my eye. The headline “J-Church line called worst performer in City” is kind of hard to ignore, no matter how much wine you’ve had throughout the evening. (Our friend Greg Dewar of N-Judah Chronicles gets a quote in the article.) So I threw it up on Twitter. Of course, I was looking for reaction from the community, as I am with this post. People definitely have their opinions of which line performs worse than the others, and are quick to defend some lines from the verbal spears of other riders.

In your opinion, what’s the slowest, least-on-time line in the city? Let everyone know in the comments. And let’s try to be constructive here and offer the agency some solutions as well.

Below the fold are the responses we’ve received so far on Twitter, in the order they were received (we’ll update the post if we get more).

MonstersInSF the N Judah is WAY worse then the J.Ask everyone and their mamas who live along the N line.

mikeon I know that when I use to take the J line, it was often faster to just take the M than wait for the J to get to Balboa Park.

njudah (responding to MonstersInSF) that’s bullshit. Every study has the N running the best. The problem is they keep cutting off Ns for KLMs.

armchairperform worst Muni ride I’ve ever had was on the N Judah, beyond sardinecan, went fetal on the floor. I’m not usually like That.

puppchen N can be more of a clusterfuck than the J, but dilutes it with high volume. J just has lower-volume chronic lameness.

sfsmskater J Church not on the todo list for run time adjustments for the fall

sfsmskater Do you really believe Muni has improved its on-time performance? http://tinyurl.com/d7krhb

rnaglejr I take exception to the M lately, very shaky, unreliable service. Don’t like.

immunoqueen The N seems so much more infrequent/tardy than the J, especially in the morning. The N sucks in the afternoon commutes too.

Photo by Flickr user messtiza

6 comments

  • Garamon

    The J Church performance is abysmal. The kicker is that MUNI uses the J as the “we’re making our last run” route for almost all of the other outbound lines. And it STILL sucks.

  • Tough call. Most of the lines I usually complain about actually aren’t that bad. They show up sort of on time and usually take the same amount of time to complete my route, within 10 or 15 minutes of the fastest time. I guess I’d have to say the 22 Fillmore is the most problematic of routes I take.
    It can be inefficient, makes unnecessary stops and is always packed. Getting rid of some stops might be the best way to fix this.

  • Beth W.

    I <3 the J, but agree that its reliability … doesn’t exist.

  • Sunset Kitty

    Dearest njudah, Who runs these studies that you speak of? I’m sure it’s an overly paid upper management hooligan at MUNI who rolls his Benz daily, rather than takes the bus’ and trains that he studies. But I must agree, part of the problem along the N line is that MUNI doesn’t send enough trains especially during the evening commute.

  • I would say the 19 Polk. For those of you who don’t live in Russian Hill/Tenderloin/SoMA/Potrero Hill/Hunters Point, I personally think this bus sucks ass. No long buses to handle the kids coming back home, there’s sometimes fights on the bus, crackheads riding from the TL to SF General or whatnot…I could think of worse I guess…

  • Jessica

    the 29 – aka the bus that got eaten by the park fog monster

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *