Muni Diaries

Photo by phrenologist

Awesome person and Muni rider @cripsahoy, who writes A Streetcar Called Taraval, today describes her recent tour of Muni’s LMC (Line Management Center). Among other interesting tidbits, we liked this:

The trains are managed by one employee with the lines separated across four LCD monitors. He has a printed schedule and some more reference materials on the desk in front of him. As he watches the vehicles cross the screen, he calls operators and tells them to turn around trains and answers calls from stations about other train timing issues.

Read the whole post at A Streetcar Called Taraval and learn a little more what it’s like to manage the mess we call Muni.

• Muni operators overwhelmingly reject contract (SFGate)
• Supes Approve SFMTA Operations Center Move Over Objections Of City’s Budget Analyst (SF Appeal)
• Sticking Points in the Muni Driver Negotiations (SF Weekly)

Image: Google Mobile Blog

Google Maps is delivering live transit updates to four U.S. cities, and San Francisco is one of them. The Official Google Blog says that live transit updates are available on Google Maps for mobile and desktop. But the live transit update information is for BART only and does not include Muni and Caltrain, a spokesperson at Google told Muni Diaries.

“The launch of Live Updates today is only effective with BART trains and does not include SF Muni or CalTrain.  We hope to expand this service to cover more cities as we get interest from other agencies to get their real time information into Google Maps,” Google spokesperson Anne Espiritu told us.

Too bad. We still have NextBus anyways, right?

The live transit update, according to Google, works when you click on a transit station or plan a route with Google Maps. If there are no delays or alerts, you’ll see the scheduled departure times. You’ll see “Live Departure” times only if BART is reporting service alerts.

There is a video demo showing off the feature, but not much yet to see for San Francisco. How much longer until NextBus and SFMTA hook up with Google Maps? We’ll keep you updated.