I'MMA LET YOU FINISH
What brought this on? Are you in town?
One thing Muni DOES have is "Next Bus," where you can view arrival times on the web, over your cell phone, or on little marquees at many bus stops...
And the BART/Muni "split" isn't really that annoying... it's more the whole Bay Area Transit/BART split that's a problem.
Remember when the wingers told us that Philadelphia was more dangerous than Iraq?
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/
...nd_soldier.html
c'mon home, trademark dave!
And I like the MUNI system map! It's the printed timetable that's a problem...
Damn! Just missed the bus...
vacation, all i ever wanted, vacation, got to get away.
Remember when the wingers told us that Philadelphia was more dangerous than Iraq?
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/ ...nd_soldier.html
P O'Neill
Damn this war and damn Bush.
As to Muni, there once was a Mission-Cole Valley band called "The J-Church". The inside joke among those of us in the neighborhood was that "they'd never show up."
I was just checking out the overnight threads.
What a fucking zoo.
I wish we could send the trolls to Iraq.
After riding Taiwan and Japan mass transit I've come to the conclusion that BART is a cruel hoax. Nothing else can explain the ridiculousness of the system.
An example: I'm part of the new card swipe test system. But I have to actually physically remove my card from my wallet and physically touch the sensor. In Taiwan, I just run my right butt cheek past it or just swipe my whole wallet over it.
Apparently that whole RF technology was too much for BART to master.
Sheets
atrios on espresso again
"In Taiwan, I just run my right butt cheek past it or just swipe my whole wallet over it."
With or without pants on? Is it always the right cheek or do you do the left one as well?
BART was never allied or joined with the San Francisco Municipal Railway (MUNI).
A guy like me can always find a girl in San Francisco. The actual me, on the other hand, never had any luck with the Frisco fillies.
Berkeley? Hell, you can smell the sex and the weed as soon as you cross the Bay bridge. And without the weed to slow them down, they'd be fucking in the streets!
The San Francisco penninsula suburbs are my most favorite place in the US.
But I was there during the hi-tech boom, so it may be different now.
You are an idiot. The Muni map is a thing of beauty: correctly scaled, artfully colored, and completely accurate. And you can use your BART tickets on Muni, if for some reason you really do have to visit from where there is no there.
bart blows, by going basically nowhere and costing lots -- if you're with other people, it's often far cheaper to drive across the bay bridge. it's better to think of bart as a commuter train, not a subway.
in addition to connecting bart/muni, there should be a good monthly pass for bart. there's one now -- and it does count on both bart/muni, so it can be done -- but it's only good inside the city. thus, if you use bart for what it's actually good for (going to other cities), the pass doesn't work. stupid.
The split isn't annoying, the system(s) are. I speak as someone living in Easybay who commutes to the city every day.
BART is lame. You can't take bikes on during rush hour times, which is, you know, when you want to ride the damn thing. It's expensive, and it's slow- it takes an hour to get from here to the first stop in SF on a good day. On the bad days, you're stuck immobile on the tracks, watching the cars on the freeway whiz by and wishing you carpooled.
Muni is atrocious. It took almost as long to get from the BART stop to the office as it did from home to the city. Their drivers are rude, the service is slow and infrequent, leading to massive overcrowding on the busses. They have light rail, but it's worse than the bus service. Oh, and you can't take a bike on the rail.
I eventually found that AC Transit offers a bus from here to the city - the stop is under ten minutes to walk, or around three on a bike. It's 35-45 minutes to get to the city, and from there I can bike to work, around 2.5 miles. It's less than half what I was paying to suffer through the hell of BART & Muni, it's faster, and most of their busses have free WiFi.
Muni sucks, if you are going less than a mile it is smarter to walk than wait for a bus.
If you live there, you eventually pick it up. One great thing is that there are so many interlocking routes that you really can get anywhere in the city with Muni, whereas BART is way too specific to the Mission, downtown, and points beyond (East Bay, SFO).
Duncan, I believe you're referring to the MUNI trains. The MUNI bus system is what it is. Slow due to use. But the MUNI train system is a blight to be absolutely avoided.
I would rather take a detour on a bus than venture on the N-Judah any day. BART works because basically transit lay out built up around it. It takes you to the airports and connects you to whatever local transit system you need. Especially in the East Bay.
Connecting downtown Berkeley, Oakland, SF/Mission and the airport are "going basically nowhere"?
Muni has the Worst System Map Ever.
Worst Atrios post evah! Brian is right, the Muni map is a cartographic masterpiece - richly detailed, precise and easy to read. The timetable is another thing entirely - best thought of as a failed stab at magic realism bearing no relation whatsoever to bus/train runs.
The muni map is so confusing it almost ruined our trip to SF this year. Not even natives could explain how it worked.
"Brian" is yet another annoying San Franciscan who like to pretend his city is some kind of urban utopia.
It's bullshit. SF is a pain in the ass and has awful transit accessibility. I have an easier time getting around Los Angeles, between my car and the Red Line.
visited san fran back in july. i come from a place where every move one makes is self determined. i made plans, picked my poison and got everywhere i wanted with ease and time to spare.
It's not just the BART/Muni split. If you consider the region, there's Caltrain, there are the county bus systems (for Alameda, San Mateo, and Santa Clara counties), there are the ACE commuter trains, and a whole bunch of others, all a bunch of warring fiefdoms.
I'm a Los Angeles native who spent two and a half years at UC Berkeley without a car. I was damn impressed by how quickly and cheaply I was able to get almost anywhere in the San Francisco Bay area by BART and the Muni trains and buses, as well as those beautiful 1940's streetcars. It was never a problem figuring out how to get where I needed to go and I frequently had more than one option available.
My only complaint was that it all largely shut down after midnight.
There is also the problem of who is going to run these things. You can't get a more comprehensive system than the NY subways. Yet, despite the fact that you can fall on the tracks from the crowds, the MTA says the system is running a huge deficit. None of them are being fired as fas as I know but the latest we've been told is that fares are going up 33% next year. 3 bucks a pop to go to work is kind of heavy, especially when they are saying they are also going to cut service.
I won't even go into our bus system.
Call 3-1-1 (415-701-2311) you sod. And don't try to diss the Muni. They kick SEPTAs ass all over the place. SF ain't no transit utopia, but it has the best system west of the Hudson river.
I'd like to know what qualifies you to judge the Muni Metro diagram, Mr.
Transit-Wankmaster Flex?
Of course, we noes that you just pulling an billo and pissing on someone to rile up the bored and motivated the traditionally apathetic.
Although not a commuter, my experience with MUNI is pretty good, considering when I'm visiting my dad in SF, I can walk two blocks from his place and take a streetcar (the N Judah) downtown to Pac Bell Park, get off and see a Giants game. And it's even better when it's a bobblehead giveaway day. (Hey, is there gonna be an Atrios bobblehead available soon?)
it's important to understand that San Francisco is a county unto itself. Muni is for the city and county of SF. BART is a regional commuter rail system that serves several different counties, possibly more if it links up through Jan Jose.
i beg to differ... i just spent several days in sf and used the detailed muni map available for $3 from various outlets around town and found it quite adequate in addition to doubling as a street map complete with all sorts of landmarks... the digital onboard upcoming street announcements and the digital signs announcing the next two arrivals from all lines at the stops are a very useful addition... i will agree, however, that the bart/muni split makes no sense whatsoever...
http://takeitpersonally.blogspot.com/
Everything is wonderful.
Please move along.
Stay back from edge.
You really can't get "almost anywhere" in the Bay Area on public transit, unless by "almost anywhere" you mean just the main corridors of SF, Oakland, Berkeley, Richmond, Hayward, and parts of the Peninsula. Certain parts of the Bay Area are served very well by public transit. Other parts are entirely on their own or at the mercy of far-flung systems with limited reach. I say this as someone who commuted every day from far reaches of eastern Contra Costa County to Berkeley and Oakland for several years.
Anyone who is going to savage Muni but in the same paragraph laud AC Transit is not worth listening to.
SF is a broken city, yet people still act like Gavin Newsom is competent and prgressive due to one empty gesture he once made.
While Muni mostly sucks and BART exists more to serve the people who live really far from SF and have no business coming here very often, the city is extremely walkable and most necessities are close by so I don't really notice that much. Density is where it's at.
The BART/Santa Clara Metro split is a lot worse -- as in BART doesn't even reach Santa Clara County.
Thanks 1957 Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors! Your decision to build more roads instead of joining BART totally worked out.
You're all haterz. Muni metro is like a masterpiece of Kubrick/Soviet architecture, and the superticket they give you for $1.50 lasts for ages. Easiest tourist experience I've had so far while over here in the US. And the map makes perfect sense if you choose to catch the superbus.
mark-it's a myth that Santa Clara (or Marin) voted to not be part of the district. If you'll recall it was mostly fields back then. San Mateo voted to withdraw and the population densities of Santa Clara and Marin made BART not viable. Indeed even today BART is not viable in Marin or Santa Clara and BART to San Jose is a fraud. Yet every day 50-70K people squeeze onto buses on the Geary corridor.
Transit Planning in the Bay Area. It's grand
BART into SF across the TransBay tube is almost at capacity as are the downtown stations at peak hour. Most of the system is horribly underutilized running to low density suburds. Instead of fixing this problem we are taking about extensions to Livermore and San Jose. Its all about politics.
Shocked to discover that BART doesn't allow bikes on at peak. If there's any transit system in the world that ought to allow peak time bike use, it's BART. Those railcars are HUGE -- they make even some of the Amtrak stuff look a bit small. Of course if they insist on putting in business-class-size seating, I guess that cuts down on space a bit, for bikes, standees and virtually anyone who needs to move around the railcar at anywhere other than the end stops on the line.
Here in the Midwest where we actually need those seats for our fat asses, I could understand, but not in the Bay Area. And yet here we get these little tiny hard plastic things that are designed for 13 year olds.
I don't use public transit alot, but if BART/Muni is a bad system, then I've never been near a good one. I've always looked forward to going to the bay area to use the public transit. I would be thrilled to have BART replace the Trolley here in San Diego. THAT is a ridiculous system.
Plus, (maybe I catch them on a good day) but the Muni folk are always happy to give me precise instructions if I get confused. Got me to Amoeba in record time.
Finally, as pointed out aboue, Muni is for the city/county of SF. BART is regional and covers many counties. What are you gonna do? That would be like complaining about the "split" between BART and Pleasanton's local bus system.
NextBus rocks my world. Muni can be a pain in the ass and needs a lot of improvement, but it still beats driving. I sold my car a month after moving here and never looked back.
Also, BART needs to quadrify Daly City to central Oakland -- this includes the Transbay Tube -- and do a better job of linking up with other transit systems. I understand there's actually a proposal not only to give BART the extra two tracks, but to get yet another two tracks for a total of four new tracks under the Bay so that commuter and heavy rail (e.g. Amtrak) can finally venture into downtown San Francisco from the East Bay and beyond for the first time ever.
Building BART out to Livermore and San Jose is a great idea (all about connecting with other systems and reducing time-consuming changes of train, you see) -- if it's also accompanied, preferably sooner rather than later, by capacity improvements under the Bay and through downtown San Francisco. Ideally, BART ought to be able to handle double to triple its current ridership, but it never will until the Transbay bottleneck is addressed. BART has this amazing grade-separated interchange in central Oakland that could process truly gargantuan numbers of trains -- if only it didn't all funnel down to two tracks to San Francisco.
Don't live there, looked at the map fresh. In my view the Muni map is neither a masterpiece nor an atrocity. The two lines sort of merging/overlapping thing was confusing, and it might have been good to have the map show the other connecting services with more than just a link icon (i.e. draw out the Caltrain/BART lines.)
What it looks like to me is that those who've piled praise on MUNI and BART are visitors from out of town who have never had to deal with either system on a day-to-day basis as residents of the Bay Area. All you have to do is comb through the archives of the San Francisco Chronicle or the Contra Costa Times to find plenty of evidence for the proposition that BART and MUNI are in serious need of upgrading, if nothing else. Not everybody who rides MUNI or BART and has complaints about it is a "hater." The systems are both barely keeping up with needed maintenance. When I rode the Washington DC Metro a couple of years ago, it was light years ahead of the Bay Area transit systems in terms of upkeep and ease of use.
Okay, so. BART doesn't let bikes on at peak times because there is zero accommidation for them. You just stand up and hang on. There's no room during rush hour, which is consistently packed and standing room only.
CalTrain solves this by adding cars with dedicated bike storage, but for whatever reason there's nothing comparable on BART.
As for Muni, I mainly rode the light rail, because it got me closer to work. And it was just a godawful mess, every day. It was constantly subject to delays and breakdowns, and the normal time to get from Embarcadero to 3rd & Mariposa was around 45 minutes, which is around how long it would take to just walk there. And there's no direct bus service along this route.
So, instead of dealing with that mess, I now bike to the nearest transbay stop, then bike from the transbay terminal to work. It's about a fifteen minute ride. I've found the AC Transit drivers and riders to be quite pleasant, and their busses are consistently on time or early.
Also, I dropped my wallet on the bus a few weeks back. It had my debit card, ID, and a pass good for most of the month. It was returned to me two days later, 100% intact. I doubt that would happen if I dropped it on Muni.
Your observation is a bit weird, as the SF Transit Map used to have the reputation for the best map of SF, period, and I used said map 23 years ago for a date in SF using the transit map and Muni system, we went from Twin Peaks in the day to her own twin peaks that night.
Yes, the MUNI rail system is bolluxed, but the expansion is underway. The expanded T line into the Central subway will help a lot.
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