Category: News

What Does It Take to Ride All the Muni Lines?

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san-francisco-muni-system-mapmediumthumbThat’s the question that Adrian at adrian is rad asked himself one day and decided to actually start doing just that. He has been documenting his “SF Muni Project” on his blog with some cool photos to boot.

Several other Muni enthusiasts have also set out the same goal: Kathleen at No Line Left Behind has faithfully recorded her rides, complete with timestamp. A few years back, a group of young people managed to ride every Muni line in three days.

I’ve probably only taken about one-third of the lines in the 10+ years I have lived here! It’s so easy to just get stuck in taking the familiar lines and never actually leave my ZIP code. Has anyone else attempted this feat of riding all the lines or almost?

Category: News

Poll time: Worst Muni line

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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).

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Post of the Month – Justice on the M

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Animals have taken over the month of April here at Muni Diaries – a wayward pigeon was saved by a goth man, a box full of rats was almost unleashed by a mystery woman, and  a gorilla rode the 49. Our most popular post this month, though, involves a flock of teenagers who reminded Muni rider Denise Cho of a different animal altogether. Here’s a snippet from Denise’s post, Justice on the M:

The drunk pubescent boy sways in the seat next to me: “blah, you and everyone has an iphone!” I turn my eyes into slits and ignore. Then the girl with the tiara starts screaming like a banshee, but several pitches lower – I dunno, like a manshee? banhe? She runs up and down the train, drunk and muffin toppy.

Read the rest of Denise’s post to see if the rowdy kids got their comeuppance.

Check out other popular posts this month: Tiffany’s hilarious clairvoyance into the mind of Guy Who Takes Up Two Seats and Tara’s interview with SFMTA spokesperson Judson True.

Got your own Muni story to tell? Submit it to us so your story can be in the running for the post of the month for May!

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Muni Diaries Live: Riders With Drinks at the Make-Out Room!

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#048: Jun

Did you know Muni Diaries is best enjoyed with a live audience, accompanied by a beer or cocktail? Come join us for Muni Diaries’ first ever Riders With Drinks event at the Make-Out Room on Friday, June 12.

In the fine tradition of spoken word, your fellow Muni riders will read their stories, recite Muni-related haikus, re-enact some funny Muni scenes (finger puppets, anyone?), and everything in between. The idea is to tell Muni stories in whatever form that inspires you, so if you’ve got a Muni tale to share, or music, art, photography, or video inspired by Muni and would like to join the lineup, email us asap!

By the way, we are one of the main events at the Make-Out Room that night, which means our name will be on the big sign outside! Can you tell we’re really excited?

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8 years late, 3 Fare Inspectors Surplus

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Catch Me If You Can
Photo by Troy Holden

For the first time in memory there were fare inspectors at the O’Farrell and Van Ness (38 outbound) stop last night. I applaud this attempt. Again, this is the first time I recall ever seeing inspectors there and I have been taking the bus home from work (where I get on at O’Farrell and Van Ness) for nearly 8 years. But there was not just one inspector, or two…there were four (4) inspectors. I was so overwhelmed at the show of force I asked one of them if they were all ‘working’. Yes, they were all working, as I witnessed when the bus approached. Does it really take four inspectors to make sure everybody pays? I would think one would do the trick. Heck, you don’t need inspectors if the bus drivers did their job and not allow people to enter the back of the bus. I just returned from Vancouver where I saw a bus driver physically get up and walk to the back of the bus to boot somebody off for entering through the back and not paying.

With Muni’s budget woes there is a need to make better use of the money and services already there. Collecting every fare is one step. Cutting back on unnecessary expenses another.

Photo by Flickr user james94103.

This diary came to the Muni Diaries Gmail inbox from Kevin Adler. If you’ve got Muni or BART stories, gripes, or transit news tips, you can email us or submit stories here.

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38 Geary Drops Lots of Motor Oil on Geary This P.M. (w/update)

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Update: First, our bad. Jim is the Jim of the estimable SF Citizen blog. Next, according to Jim, this happened 3355 Geary in front of Mel’s Drive-In at around 1:05 p.m.

Original post: Muni rider Jim Herd sent us these photos of a Muni bus dumping what looks like an awful lot of motor oil on Geary this afternoon. Yikes, especially in this hot weather…anybody else see this? Or do we have to wait to read about it in those new SFMTA incident reports?

Thanks, Jim!

If you’ve got your camera lens trained on any Muni happenings, be sure to send some pics our way. You can also email us at muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com.

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