Rescue Muni

Last night, Rescue Muni members heard a presentation on the San Francisco Transit Effectiveness Project. Members asked a lot of great questions about the project. We told the TEP staff our members would ask a lot of detailed questions about the plan, and the folks at our meeting didn’t disappoint.

Members were generally supportive of the concept of the TEP, and the wide array of transit improvements contained in the project, like the ambitious citywide rapid network, but attendees expressed a number of concerns about the proposed elimination of some of the community service routes, like the 66-Quintara.

We’re in the process of formulating a formal position on the TEP proposal, and we want as much feedback as possible from our members. Please contact us with your thoughts on the project. And a very big thank you to the members who attended last night and made the meeting a success, as well as the TEP staff, led by Julie Kirschbaum, who stayed for over two hours answering questions and taking comments from members.

Also, we encourage members to attend one or more of the seven remaining community meetings about the TEP. The next one is tonight, and they run through May 17:

• Wednesday, April 30, 6:00 pm, City College Mission Campus, 1125 Valencia St. (at 22nd St.)
• Saturday, May 3, 10:30 am, Jean Parker Elementary, 840 Broadway St. (at Powell St.)
• Monday, May 5, 6:30 pm, Visitacion Valley Elementary, 55 Schwerin St. (at Visitacion Ave.)
• Saturday, May 10, 10:30 am, Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy, 4235 19th St. (at Diamond St.)
• Monday, May 12, 6:00 pm, West Bay Conference Center, 1290 Fillmore St. (at Eddy St.)
• Wednesday, May 14, 6:30 pm, Bessie Carmichael Elementary, 375 Seventh St. (at Harrison St.)
• Saturday, May 17, 10:30 am, Mission YMCA, 4080 Mission St. (at Bosworth St.)

Also, while you’re at it, remember that you can join Rescue Muni or renew your membership online. And if you’re up to date, urge a friend to join up.

Come to our General Meeting to hear about the SF Transit Effectiveness Project!

We will have a detailed briefing on the most extensive plan to improve SF transit in a generation, from Julie Kirschbaum of the SFMTA and Transit Effectiveness Project. Come with your tough questions on proposed service changes including expanded Rapid service, and improvements to wayfinding, fares, and more.
Also we will consider the endorsement of long-time Rescue Muni member and Supervisor Tom Ammiano for Assembly (district 13), and District 7 Supervisor Sean Elsbernd for re-election. (Our Board has recommended early endorsements in these races; we will consider all endorsements for Supervisor in August of this year.)
Date/Time: April 29 (Tuesday), 7 p.m..

Update: The meeting is at SPUR, 312 Sutter, fifth floor.

Today’s Chronicle discusses the downside of increasing service on the proposed Rapid Network, as proposed by the Transit Effectiveness Project: service reductions on some of SF’s least used lines, as well as on lines that are redundant to other service.

The SFTEP will be presented in detail at today’s MTA Board meeting (2 pm, City Hall, room 400), but if you can’t make that there will be many opportunities to get a detailed presentation, ask questions, and provide feedback. Rescue Muni is planning to host a General Meeting on the subject in early April.

Today Mayor Newsom, MTA Director Nat Ford, SFTEP head Julie Kirschbaum, and others unveiled a highly detailed plan to revise Muni service citywide, to improve service quality and better match service to customer demand. This is easily the most extensive revision to Muni service proposed in a generation, since the crosstown routes were created in the 1970s. Highlights include:

The best way to review this is to look at the 8 page proposal summary (pdf) and service policy framework (pdf) and then go straight to the list of proposals by line.

Many of us at Rescue Muni have been participating in the SFTEP Citizen Advisory Committee, and the detailed proposal is quite consistent with the policy proposals discussed in these meetings. It’s very good news to see the MTA thinking about service as a whole and not just about specific point changes that can be made – after all, most riders use more than one line on a regular basis, so a faster, more reliable system is what is needed to increase ridership and get more San Franciscans out of their cars. And it’s also quite refreshing to see these proposals being made based on real world data on ridership and customer input, instead of just drawing lines on a map.

Of course we will have specific comments about many of the specific proposals, which we’ll post here soon, but we’re delighted to see Muni focusing here on what really matters – faster and more reliable service.
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The SFTEP has been working on proposed changes for the entire Muni system, but one corridor in particular that has gotten a lot of attention is Mission Street, where the 14-Mission local bus currently averages only 8.2 miles per hour end to end. Muni will soon propose major changes including a big expansion in limited stop service, some stop consolidation, transit only lanes, and signal pre-empts, in an attempt to speed up this service and make it more competitive to driving. (Several Rescue Muni board members are on the SFTEP citizens’ advisory committee – meetings are open to the public and well worth a visit.)

For the serious transit geek, very extensive data on all Muni lines (used to come up with these service proposals) are available at the SFMTA’s website.