“Join Us” page fixed

January 27th, 2009

To our members – apologies if you have had difficulty joining Rescue Muni or renewing your membership recently. We have now fixed a problem with our payment processor and the “Join Us” page is now working properly again. Thanks for your patience!

Chronicle: Muni pares back service on new $7 ride CultureBus line

January 21st, 2009

Culture Bus frontThe Culture Bus, a 1 year project that will cost Muni $1.6 million, has only 255 weekday riders, according to the Chronicle.  Known as the 74X-CultureBus, the line is intended to bring tourists and Muni regulars from downtown to the car-congested Academy of Sciences building that recently opened in Golden Gate Park.  The buses aren’t run like the rest of the fleet, the coaches are extra clean and the drivers have gone through additional customer service training, something that the rest of the Muni system could use more of.

Service on the line has since been cut from 20 minutes to once an hour according to the article, but Rescue Muni has taken the position that this line should be terminated if it is not profitable within one month, especially in light of the city, state, and federal budget constraints.

Chronicle: Fare Collection is up

January 19th, 2009

Old cable car transferImproved fare enforcement and more people deciding to save money and stress by taking transit has boosted Muni’s bottom line, with cable cars raising the biggest slice, bringing in a whopping $14.5M, or 21% more over the last 6 months. Muni could really use the money too, with a projected $90M shortfall over the next 18 months.

Rescue Muni is monitoring the budget situation and will publish how the numbers will add up to in a future posting.

“Transportation for America” advocates more mass transit spending

January 16th, 2009

Shovel ReadyWhere should Congress spend the proposed stimulus package? A national coalition called Transportation for America (mainly unions, environmental organizations, and transit advocates) is lobbying for increased spending on mass transit, and not just more highways. Lots of mass transit projects nationwide can be considered “shovel ready,” the buzzword du jour for economic stimulus.

Locally, the SF Bike Coalition and SPUR are members. Want to get involved? Sign up here!

Chronicle: Congestion Pricing Plan “Half-Baked”

January 15th, 2009

Congestion ChargingThe Chronicle editorializes against congestion pricing today, calling the plan “half-baked” despite ample experience elsequere in the world (London, Singapore, Stockholm) that congestion pricing reduces traffic and speeds up mass transit.

The Chronicle even cites increased transit usage as a disadvantage of the plan! To quote: “[T]he second intended effect – nudging drivers into public transit – may further burden overtaxed systems such as BART and Muni, which can be inconvenient, unreliable and jammed.” But that’s the whole point – to get discretionary drivers to switch to mass transit, and at the same time reduce delays that cause that mass transit to run slowly. By speeding up service, San Francisco would be able to provide more service for the same money, surely a high priority in these difficult economic times.

Rescue Muni continues to support some form of congestion pricing in downtown SF. We hope the Supervisors will take seriously the concerns raised about this proposal – but not back down from a proven way to improve service for Muni’s 700,000 daily riders AND SF’s motorists, who will experience reduced traffic when they do choose to drive.