Rescue Muni

The Metropolitan Transportation Commission and various regional rail agencies are updating the Regional Rail Plan, which covers proposed expansions to BART, Caltrain, Amtrak, and other passenger rail systems in the Bay Area. As part of this project, public workshops are being held - but despite San Francisco being the second largest city in the region (after San Jose) with the most transit boardings, there is no workshop here. Transit riders looking to promote expanded rail service should attend the workshop in Oakland on Wednesday, August 15 (there are two sessions, one at 3 pm and one at 6 pm). Nearest BART station is Lake Merritt.

Rescue Muni supports expanding High Speed Rail and Caltrain to the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco (so it’s not just a billion dollar bus station). And we support Geary Light Rail which should be part of any regional plan. BayRail Alliance also has detailed recommendations for better regional rail service.

Update: The Chronicle reports on the proposals discussed.

Today’s Chronicle quotes a Caltrain commuter on the N: “It’s like I woke up and the nightmare was over.” Meanwhile the K and T lines are through-routed, as planned long ago for the Third Street line, and the new 20-Columbus is running to North Beach.

Is service better? Check Nextbus before you ride, and let us know what you think.

Muni announced this week that it is making some pretty significant service changes on June 30 to improve access to downtown and Caltrain. This was in part due to the public feedback on the T-Third’s troubled start of service as well as the discontinuance of the 15-Third north of Market Street. (Chronicle report here.) The N-Judah will go back to Caltrain, the Castro Shuttle will be restored, and the new 20-Columbus will be a new rush hour service from North Beach to downtown replacing the 15 north of Market.

Update: Chronicle report on the meeting and T-Third issues more generally.

About thirty or forty Muni riders attended the town hall meeting held in response to an online petition complaining about service problems and route changes associated with the startup of the T-Third line. A good number of Rescue Muni members were among the attendees.

MTA Executive Director/CEO Nathaniel Ford outlined the agency’s action plan to deal with service reliability problems—increasing operator availability, dealing with bottleneck intersections, etc.—and promised a preliminary answer within a week to service design concerns raised at the meeting. He emphasized that he wanted to find the right answers to the problems before taking final action.

Attendees, many of whom were transit commuters who live outside the city, made a number of comments and concerns. Here’s a list of the ones I managed to jot down during the meeting; there were quite a few good points raised. I apologize in advance for any omissions or errors. Note that this is a summary of the speakers’ opinions, and doesn’t necessarily represent the views of Rescue Muni, nor those of our evil puppetmasters. Read the rest of this entry »