Your place to share stories on and off the bus.
Sorry. I shouldn’t try to be cute in this space.
I was tipped off to a nice little blog about Muni etiquette last night. Hop on over to Muni Manners and learn a thing or two about how properly to ride the rails and routes.
And please, show some love.
Okay, I’m done.
Some of this post is F-centric, and some of it is just rants and raves about what should be basic common sense on public transit. It’s going to be pretty clear which is which.
Muni Diaries often complains about the F. I guess Muni Diaries complains about a good handful of things, but there are special problems inherent in the F that require extra-special complaints.
I don’t know how much it cost by its unveiling in 2000 to expand the F-Market line to the wharves, but I’m sure it was expensive. It appears to have been part of a continuing effort to revamp the rails and give tourists something cute to ride on. Nonetheless, I think the city underestimates how many people, regular SF residents, use it to get to work. We use it because there is NOTHING QUICKER. It’s so freakin’ cute. It emphazies local history and I love that to bits. But it is so inefficient and slow, it makes me and the other commuters want to rip our hair out as we all fight to get on the tiny, infrequent cars.
This may come as a shock to some, but I don’t ride Muni every day. I bike to work, and I walk most other places. I claim no authority at crafting the site you’re visiting, other than being witness to its birth in idea form. I mean, I ride buses and rails just like the rest of you, just maybe not as frequently.
But, like I said, I ride my bike to work, so I deal with Muni in a way I’m pretty sure many of you do: Avoiding the bus as it’s coming to KILL ME.
What I’m speaking of, specifically, is Muni buses’ proclivity toward not seeing bicycles. The phenomenon breaks down into two main categories: Pulling in front of us, or pulling out from the curb toward us.
The first I speak of happens like this: I’m riding at a moderate clip, as aware as I can be of my surroundings. I approach a traffic-lighted intersection, and as I do, WHOOSH! a bus zooms by my left side and cuts me off as it beelines toward the stop on the other side. Thanks, I think, and continue riding at a slightly slower speed, only to then encounter scenario two:
I ride past a bus that is at a stop, angled as it were with its ass pointing out. Because I’ve almost been hit by drivers who pull away from the curb before looking to see if anything is coming, I steer way too clear, looking behind me first to see … you guessed it, if anything is coming.
Two questions:
This is a good candidate for Takes the Cake.
I’m wary of all Muni drivers, and you should be, too. Walking across Geary (yikes) the other day, I preferred to stand in the unguarded median than race an oncoming 38. While drivers of regular vehicles will usually stop for a pedestrian in an unlighted crosswalk (you know, it being the law and everything), Muni is clearly above this standard.
I’m not just bagging on our favorite local transit agency because of a continuing killing streak the buses seem to have been on the last few years. It’s highly cool to hate Muni, of course, but I’m not just jumping on the bandwagon.
I walk a lot. Alone, usually. I obey more traffic signals than most of my fellow pedestrians who, braver than I, will dart in front of a California Street cable car because it takes too long to wait for our light. So, I get really pissed off when Muni buses (to name names, the 10-Townsend when it’s on North Point and the 33-Stanyan when it’s on 18th Street) take the red light like it ain’t no thang. I follow the rules. Are you going to?
File under WTF …
Saw the gem above on my first ride on the 31, from middle Richmond to Third and Market. Oh, and Google Maps said the trip would take 38 mins, but it turned out to be more like 50. It goes through the Tenderloin, after all.
Anyway, yes, there was glue-graffiti on some of the backseats. My impulse is to shake my head and say, “Kids.” But I was a kid not so long ago. Still, I can’t see what would possess someone to do this. You can read it even less clearly than most tagging.