Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Photo by Flickr user levi mpls
The good folks over at Tenderblog alerted us to this post on Going Underground, a London Tube blog. It’s about a group of riders in Boston who’ve banded together to raise public awareness of what they call “Man-Sitting,” or the practice of taking up more than your allotted seat on the train or bus. More power to ya, Bostonians!
Photo by Earthnik
Update (8:36 p.m.): Earthnik sent us this photo (“one more showing minimal damage to the robust Muni train”)
Original post: Our Twitter feed is all abuzz about the L-Taraval crash this afternoon. Reader Kath also sent us an alert from her building guard, who saw the aftermath. According to SFGate:
The inbound L Taraval train was on Taraval Street when it collided with the car heading south on 34th Avenue at 12:09 p.m., Muni said. The male driver of the car was taken to San Francisco General Hospital with unknown injuries.
The cause of the crash was not immediately known. There are stop signs at the intersection for traffic on 34th Avenue but not for traffic on Taraval.
Another pic from Earthnik after the jump:
Our brethren across the Bay, AC Transit, alerted us to this amazing video demonstrating something most of us need help with — getting your bike into one of those dadgum contraptions on the front of the bus. Why, just this morning, we ran a diary-ette about “mounting” stuff to the bike rack. How timely.
Say it with me now one time: “Bring it down, pull the bar, put it on, put it on, take it off, put it up when you’re done, when you’re done…”
Photo by Devin
Several months back, BART replaced all the cameras in Embarcadero station. I have no idea why — there were tons of cameras in that station already. “Replaced” isn’t the right word, of course, because they didn’t remove the old ones, just installed dozens more, often pointing at the same things. At a guess, the new ones don’t work yet and they won’t remove the old ones until that’s corrected. Or, knowing BART’s ability to do technological upgrades, the new ones will never work properly, so they’ll all stay up, gathering dust and grime and preventing no crime or disorder at all. At a wild guess, the only reasons Embarcadero is so richly endowed with cameras are (a) it’s full of tourists getting their pockets picked, and (b) part of the station is underneath the Federal Reserve Bank, engendering a sort of mutually reinforcing bureaucratic paranoia.
This harrowing, probably-totally-against-the-rules tale arrived in our inbox the other day from Muni rider Christine:
Dear Muni Diaries,
The other day I learned you can’t bring a ladder on Muni.
I borrowed the ladder from a cross-town friend. The 22 bus pulls up, I put my bike on the front, and walk up the stairs with the ladder, and flash my Fast Pass. The driver tells me that I can’t bring the ladder on the bus. Dumbfounded, I stare at him. He tells me it’s “too dangerous.” What?!
Anticipating a very long walk with my bike AND a ladder, I came up with a solution by the time the next 22 pulled up…. 🙂
Camouflaged, my ladder rode happily back to my apartment.
– Christine
Seen contraband on the bus lately? Let us know: muni.diaries.sf@gmail.com
Photo by David Gallagher from the Muni Photos Flickr pool
Well, this was a big week for us here at Muni Diaries. On Monday, we gave birth to our first transit-diaries spawn: BART Diaries. That site works just like this one: Mosey on up to read or write about your favorite (or barfiest) time on BART, and enjoy the show.
The week also saw news of Routesy’s return to app-dom. We were finally able to finish our review of the iPhone app, after we were rudely interrupted by phony money-grubbers. Boo!