Nominate Your Muni Route in GOOD Magazine’s Best Bus Route Contest

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Meltdown In Progress
Photo by Troy Holden

The good people at GOOD magazine are having a big Best Bus Route Contest! If a Muni route doesn’t win this contest, then nothing in life makes sense. Okay, maybe that’s a little dramatic. But check it out, a word from GOOD magazine:

Bicycles can be chic, subways artful, but buses? Buses are not exactly the golden child of transportation. They’re more like the red-headed step child: Deep down you know they mean well but they’re just a little harder to love.

Yet public buses are an essential form of transit in cities across the country, and they account for a big chunk of the nearly 10.2 billion trips Americans took on public transportation in 2009. We think it’s time to give a little love to one of the least celebrated modes of transit. To that end, we’ve teamed up with Transportation Alternatives and an impressive group of bus-loving jurors to see and hear why your bus route is the best in America.

What is it about your bus route that you love? Is your bus driver brilliant? Is the view from your window breathtaking? Do your fellow riders characters belong in a Hemingway novel?

Is your Muni bus driver brilliant? We’ve got drivers who threw a party on the bus, decorated the bus with Halloween goodies, saved you from fare-evading hooligans.

Is the view from your window breathtaking? Our Muni Flickr pool doesn’t lie.

Do our fellow riders belong in a Hemingway novel? We’ve got Dali, a chicken, Jack-In-The-Box, and “service animals” riding the bus here in our fair city.

Buses are such a big part of San Francisco that at least two of you even took wedding photos in Muni.

You guys, we Muni riders have this competition in the bag.

If you need inspiration, try the drop-down menu on the right hand side of the page to see stories by line. And meander over to GOOD Magazine to see details to enter.

Hat tip: Streetsblog!

Category: News Tags:

Are Muni Riders Good for Business?

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"N" Scale
Photo by Brandon Doran

Are transit riders good or bad for business?

StreetsBlog points us to a report from Columbus, Ohio, where businesses actually don’t want bus riders on downtown commerical streets. The Columbus Dispatch reports that “downtown developers have complained that COTA passengers waiting for transfers … and buses lining the curbs make the area less attractive for retail stores and their customers.”

Some businesses in downtown Columbus claim that bus riders who transfer downtown don’t shop, and that “large numbers of people waiting for a transfer can be intimidating for someone walking down the sidewalk.”

StreetsBlog and the Columbus Dispatch rightly point out the class and race implications in these reports.

Having never been to Columbus myself, I can only guess that maybe the negative attitude toward transit riders comes from the city’s relationship with public transit. In San Francisco, Muni is a must, whereas in other cities it might be cast as some kind of “second-class” transportation. As one of the commenters observed, maybe the problem is with the businesses if these retailers don’t cater to the many people who pass by their storefronts — are they only selling stuff that car owners (and not transit riders) want to buy?

Maybe I am being naive, but I think we live in a town where easy transit access to your business is a good thing?

Category: diaries

It’s Almost Over: Today’s Giants parade will disrupt Muni

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Photo by EricaJoy

The World Series champions San Francisco Giants will be toasted by the city in a parade this morning that starts at 11. CBS 5 has more:

“The parade will begin at 11 a.m. on Montgomery Street at Washington Street, the mayor’s office said. It will head south on Montgomery Street to Market Street, where it will go west to City Hall.

The public is invited to line the sidewalks along the parade route or gather in Civic Center Plaza for the celebration. Attendees are advised to arrive early and take public transportation.”

Here’s the advisory from SFMTA:

All Muni Metro trains will stop at Civic Center station for the celebration and Parade, as well as at Powell and Montgomery stations for the parade. The SFMTA will schedule six additional Metro shuttles to supplement the existing Metro service.

The additional service will begin at approximately 10 a.m. and continue until the event clears at Civic Center.

The following Muni routes and lines will be affected:

  • California Cable Car
  • F-Market and Wharves
  • 1-California
  • 2-Clement
  • 3-Jackson
  • 5-Fulton
  • 6-Parnassus
  • 8x-Bayshore Express
  • 9-San Bruno
  • 10-Townsend
  • 12-Folsom-Pacific
  • 19-Polk
  • 21-Hayes
  • 27-Bryant
  • 30-Stockton
  • 30X-Marina Express
  • 38-Geary
  • 41-Union
  • 45-Union-Stockton
  • 71-Haight-Noriega

And … Market Street Railway has an amazing photo of a 22-Fillmore going by the SF Seals stadium back in 1958, the first year the Giants played in San Francisco.

Delays on the N-Judah on the Embarcadero to recommence in … 157 days.

Category: News Tags: ,

From the driver’s seat: ‘Sometimes I Miss Driving Muni’

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Ed. note: A reader who calls himself Trolleypup and tells us that he works as a Muni supervisor shares his perspective on what it takes to “have happy people instead of cranky people,” especially on Halloween. He even sent us a picture of his train decked out in Halloween fun. – Eugenia

As a supervisor, I describe the job as “Less Stress, Less Fun!”

Not that operating buses and streetcars for Muni is a bowl of cherries all the time, but sometimes you can make your own and others’ day.

So, Halloween: a night that one tries to avoid being out in the mayhem, unless you can be part of it! My schedule request for Halloween was always “Late finish NIGHTS, if not available, early finish DAYS.” And if I got a late night run, I would decorate my bus and wear a costume (adding bits to the uniform, anyway).

One night, I was doing the Halloween Shuttle in the subway — two-car train, back and forth. I had decorated my train in each cab with electric pumpkins, Halloween lights, custom head signs, with me in some sort of costume, Halloween music, and sound effects over the PA. By the end of the night, I was the ONLY shuttle train that without some sort of incident to write up.

Sometimes it just takes a little bit of work to have happy people instead of cranky people. And on an extremely crowded train, that can make all the difference.

Category: Aww: Cute on Muni

Rocking Muni for the Giants

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Video by Amber Wolf of Wiz Bang Photography

You might’ve heard that a local baseball team did the biggest thing U.S. baseball teams can do last night. That’s right, the 2010 San Francisco Giants won the fucking World Series, y’all! And Muni was right in the thick of the wild celebration.

Watch the 33-Stanyan wade through the thicket of toilet paper and Giants fans in the Castro in the video above.

Fans in the Marina atop a 30-Stockton (photo by @jcsnotes):

More fans in the Marina took over the 2-Clement (photo by SHUN [iamtekn]:
San Francisco Giants 2010 World Series Champions

San Francisco Giants 2010 World Series Champions

I got a couple of pictures of guys hopping on top of a soon-to-be-stranded 14-Mission, on Mission Street, in (you guessed it) the Mission:

Amy grabbed this short video of that same 14-Mission:

Ariel has a shot of the 22-Fillmore stuck in the Mission:
Operator On Hold

Giants fans on Muni were burning up Twitter last night too:

“Some guy stepping off the L announced GIANTS 3-0!! Driver repeated it over the PA. No reaction from riders. Me: Really? Giants!” @wallbounce

“people are sitting on 30s here on Chestnut. First Clipper now this. Anarchy!! Let’s go Giants clap x5” @jcsnotes

“28 driver now leading @SFGiants cheer.” @dalbizo

“I’ve never experienced anything like last night in SF after the win… I just remember running through cloudy MUNI buses #SFGiants” @cementone

Indeed. Indeed.

Congrats to the 2010 San Francisco Giants!

Category: diaries, reflection Tags: , , , ,
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