NYT: Riders Switching to Mass Transit Due To Higher Gas Prices
San Franciscans have known for decades that mass transit is the cure to high gas prices, but today’s NY Times reports that commuters nationwide are moving to transit with gasoline reaching $4/gallon in many areas. Of course, transit agencies including Muni are also facing higher fuel prices themselves, with diesel at all time highs, but SF is in better shape than most cities due to the ready source of electric power from Hetch Hetchy.
I’ve asked before in public and directly to MUNI why they don’t capitalize on the very fact that all electric busses and trains use a DEDITCATED Hetch Hetchy line of pure water powered electricity and no fossil fuels and put that very fact on overhead posters in the vehicles. Most people do not know that fact. It’s a motivator, an affirmation and a vindicator. And it’s one we ought to brag about.
But MUNI is just such a massive, oseto-union arthritic bureaocracy complete with self perpetuating management that it just can’t move without painfully breaking the joints of organizational calcification that develops faster than it can be chipped away with progressive reform.
In the bay area’s desire to “stand for the worker”, we don’t push for a consolidated transit agency or union reform the way GM and the others are doing – so we are stuck in the stagnation we are creating out of trying to be “nice”.
Our tolerance of this poor service from MUNI is like that of the rude cashiers at Rainbow Grocery (because they are WORKER owned and don’t HAVE to be nice like in “western” Safeways of mere trained monkeys by oppressive Republican managers)
I’m not against unions, I’m very much for them. I’m against a unique bay area sentiment towards them that allows an almost east-bloc attitude to prevail in customer service, organizational efficiency and fund utilization because somebody thinks accountability and reconfiguring the management and unions to meet modern day issues is too Republican.
I’m a big ole liberal and I see it as an efficiency and honesty issue – not a political one. NYC consolidated everything transit related, we should to.
Somebody needs to just say “I have the power to consolidate, we are wasting tons of money not consolidating, I’m consolidating wether the unions of fiefdom managers like it or not, and I’m reconfiguring management to create accountability and motivate some creativity and pride in the job of management”.
I doubt very many people care how MUNI is powered provided the trains run on time. What consolidation? With BART, Sam Trans and Golden Gate Transit? Is the proposal for a regional transit system under one management?
Personally, I live in SF and work in Novato. I’d like to give public transportation a try, but everything 511.org tells me is ~ 3 hour itinerary. F that. So that, with gas prices, I work from home! 🙂
In the city, I love NextBus (as I am sure you to do). That is why I added the ability to get NextBus stop predictions from my site MoDazzle. Send an email or text message, and get NextBus predictions on your phone, anywhere you are. Everyone should be using NextBus in SF, and I hope this helps. Please check it out, and let me know what you think!
http://blog.modazzle.com/2008/05/modazzle-gives-sf-muni-bus-arrival.html