Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Photo by chainsmokingbluemonkey
It was one of those errors introduced “upstream,” as they say, evidenced by lachtaylor‘s iPhone screenshot:
“Detorus,” eh? I think that’s Latin for “detour.”
Hey, maybe Sarah Palin should hire this Muni copywriter. You betcha!
Also, in case you missed it, another Muni-SF Marathon FAIL.
Jessie sent us this justifiably confused email:
Um….wasn’t the 53 discontinued a few months ago? Way to go, Muni!
Maybe SFMTA is recycling from past years? No, the date is right. Unless this sign is from … ah, screw it.
Photo by eviloars
Muni news of the week:
Weekend service updates from SFMTA:
On Sunday the annual San Francisco Marathon will begin from The Embarcadero and Mission at 5:30 a.m., with staggered starts until 6:30 a.m. The race route will loop along The Embarcadero, through the Marina to the Golden Gate Bridge, south on Lincoln Boulevard, through Golden Gate Park and east to 3rd Street and The Embarcadero, behind the ballpark.
From midnight to 2:30 p.m. northbound Embarcadero between 3rd Street and Broadway and southbound Embarcadero between Broadway and Harrison Street will be closed.
In additions to the Metro lines F Market, K Ingleside, T Third, L Taraval, M Ocean View, and N Judah, the following Muni bus routes will be affected:
1 California
2 Clement
5 Fulton
6 Parnassus
9 San Bruno
10 Townsend
12 Folsom/Pacific
14 Mission
18 46th Avenue
19 Polk
22 Fillmore
24 Divisadero
27 Bryant
28 19th Avenue
31 Balboa
33 Stanyan
37 Corbett
38 Geary
43 Masonic
44 O’Shaughnessy
48 Quintara
49 Van Ness
71 Haight/Noriega
Finally … photos! Enjoy.
Photo by moxpox
Photo by StevenBrisson
Photo by Mr Ush
I’m in charge again, but just for today. I think even if Eugenia were around, though, she’d recognize the beauty and value of Eric Fischer’s info-graphic here. Take it away, Eric:
The colors are the same as in the Month of Muni map but the effect is very different. Except on the cable lines, which are genuinely slow, you can see here that the Muni vehicles move quickly when moving but have their average speed slowed by spending a lot of time stopped.
The difference is that instead of drawing a line from each sampled location to the next in a color corresponding to the average speed across the whole distance, this one plots only the sampled points themselves, with the instantaneous speed the vehicle was moving at the moment it crossed that point. The unfortunate part is that you can hardly see the subway because the reporting there doesn’t interpolate nearly as many points as you get for vehicles on the surface. But on the surface you can see the slowdown at every corner. The plotting gets fuzzy in the Financial District because of noise in the GPS signal from the tall buildings.
Black is stopped (less than 3 mph). Red is slow (3-5 mph). Blue is overall average operating speed (5-9 mph). Yellow is fast service (9-19 mph). Green is rapid movement (faster than 19 mph). Data from NextBus, April 13-June 6, 2010.
See a larger version of the graphic here. Information is beautiful, what?
Photo by messtiza
That was substantiated by a comment on Beth’s post from Jake, who says he’s a Clipper employee (yay for Clipper employees reading Muni Diaries!).
But SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose got back to us on the question of why they’re there, and his answer might surprise you.
“There are readers in the back for busy bus lines, at busy times of day. When we can have a representative back there, we try to use the back door for boarding to speed things up.”
Sounds logical enough, but I wanted to make sure I understood correctly. “So, this is basically a) driver’s discretion, and b) only when SFMTA can get another employee back there to check for Fast Passes (until they’re phased out) and to make sure their Clipper cards are being tagged?” Yep.
Asked about SFMTA rolling out an official back-door boarding policy, Rose couldn’t commit to any specific date, or whether it’s even under serious consideration now.
So there you have it. If you’re lucky enough to legitimately back-door board a Muni bus, let us know.
Photo by Brandon Doran
Remember, the Transbay Terminal is closing (pdf) and being moved to a temporary site on August 7, 2010. Don’t say we didn’t warn you!