Muni’s 8.1 mph average, visualized

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Average instantaneous Muni speed at each location

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?

Category: News

More on Back-Door Clipper Readers

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thank you
Photo by messtiza

On Monday, Beth posted a reasonable question: Why are Muni buses equipped with Clipper readers at the back door when Muni’s policy for bus boarding says, explicitly, that they only allow front-door boarding at this time? We had read that Clipper readers were installed back there because the agency wanted to have them in place in case they eventually did enact a back-door boarding policy. 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.

Category: News Tags:

52-Excelsior: Center of the Universe?

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52 EXCELSIOR / Persia + Prague
Photo by dannyman

I. Narges has this delightful story to share (and to think, just yesterday, Eugenia asked “What does Muni say about San Francisco?“):

I live in the Excelsior, at the top of the hill near McLaren Park. On days when I commute on BART, I sometimes take the 52 Excelsior for my uphill homeward trip, although the recent service cuts can mean a wait that’s longer than my total walk home.

Monday night, I saw by the Next Muni sign that I would have a very long wait for the bus, so I decided to start walking. I was carrying several heavy bags, my knee hurt, and it was foggy and windy – not a great evening for the 9-block schlep up the steep hill to my house. I was moving slower than usual, so when I got to Silver and Mission, I checked the sign at the bus shelter – 9 minutes for a 52. I decided to sit down and wait for it.

As soon as I did, I realized that I didn’t want to spend the next 9 minutes inhaling second-hand smoke from the kid standing directly upwind – and I didn’t want to move my tired, sore self from the bus shelter seat, either, so I asked him to move downwind. He turned around, and the last thing I was expecting to see was a sunny smile, but that’s what he gave me as he said “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English” (in quite passable English).

I made myself understood, he moved downwind, and I was settling back in to wait when he popped back, saying “excuse me, can you help me?” and brandishing a map. Now, I was not in the best mood, but he seemed very harmless, I had time to kill, and I never mind giving directions. I had a hard time understanding him at first – his accent was odd, though he spoke well – but figured out that he wanted to go to Prague Street. He didn’t know the cross, but Prague is only 5 blocks long, and he said he’d be able to find his way once he got there. As I was wondering why this clearly foreign visitor wanted to go to a random residential block in the Excelsior, he explained that he was an Argentinian on day 1 of a 3-month English language course, and was staying with a family in the neighborhood.

As it happened, the best way for him to get where he was going was the 52, so I told him to get on the bus with me, and showed him the sign that said the next bus was coming in 3 minutes. Read more

Category: diaries, reflection Tags:

What does Muni say about San Francisco?

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03.bus
Photo by Flickr user Omer Simkha

What do experiences on public transit say about a city? I started thinking about this question when I was on a bus in Rome last week, having just arrived from the airport with my parents. We sat across from a fashionable Chinese woman in a purple dress who seemed like a local. As my parents and I conversed in Chinese about whether we were on the right bus, I looked over to the woman to see if she understood us. She eyed us briefly and took out her cell phone to make a call, speaking in accented Italian. Well, fine, I guess she doesn’t speak Chinese after all, I thought.

The next morning as I was walking under the 90 degrees heat to the Coloseum, who do I see but the same woman from the bus, leading a group of Chinese tourists, speaking in fluent Chinese to explain the history of the Coloseum! I pretended not to recognize her.

The experience on the bus really soured me for a moment on Rome. This leads me to wonder: what kind of impression on our city do visitors get from riding Muni?

Category: diaries, reflection
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