MUNI is one of those things you just have to deal with living in San Francisco. Vehicles are constantly breaking down, things are alway delayed. It’s like watching a gigantic slow motion car accident. Since the recent fare increases I’ve noticed an accelerated deterioration in the quality of service and it doesn’t seem to be getting better anytime soon. The following list of things aren’t the some of the big reasons why muni fails, but the smaller things that get under my skin.
The touch to open strips on some buses
These things almost never work. I guess the whole point is to make it easier and less moving parts mean it would break down less. This would be nice, if it worked. Out of all the times on these buses I think the system has worked maybe once or twice.
Angry/unprofessional muni drivers
I understand the job hard and you gotta put up with a lot of crap, but that does t give you the right to be angry at customers. If this were a restaurant or any private business if they were as rude as they are they would be fired. Also there are the MUNI drivers who are constantly talking to someone during the trip. Not only is it unsafe, but it slows down service because they aren’t doing what they are being paid to. There are many occasions when I’ve seen drivers chatting it up with someone at a stop and they forget to leave delaying me even further. There are tons of MUNI drives who are very nice and professional, but it only takes one or two bad apples to sour the reputation and give an impression that all of MUNI drivers are like that.
Stops at every block
Do we really need a bus stop at every block or every other block? I know one of the original goals of the muni layout was to always have a stop within two blocks where ever you are. This is nice, and would be convient on more of the hilly sections, but there are large sections where I think its completely redundant. Is it so hard for people to walk an extra block or two to get to a stop? I personally wouldn’t mind walking an extra two blocks if the stops were spaced apart further. This would reduced the number of stops MUNI would have to make and maybe speed up service and reliability. Once a vehicle stop it introduces a level of unpredictability that constantly is slowing down service.
The lack of information regarding delays
It’s great that muni has bus prediction, and it’s understandable that it’s not always accurate. What really irks me is when a delay occurs there is no information that is readily available about why there is a delay. If they would just pass on the information to customers I wouldn’t be as frustrated as I am when one occurs.
Not making full use of station platforms
Okay muni trains are not that long. Most platforms seen to be long enough to accomidate 3 cars on them. So why not use that space to let more people off. I know they can do it because when there is a serious problem the use the whole platform to get people out of the stations and onto buses.
Bad train allocation
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen this; having 3 trains of the same line go past in succession, or having all the lines but the one your looking for pass. Now this is understandable for inbound trains, since muni shares track with above ground traffic it cannot determine the order in which the trains enter the underground sections. It doesn’t really matter that much on this anyways since most trains terminate at Embarcadero station anyways. For outbound traffic I don’t understand why they cant just reallocate train assignments. How hard is it to order the trains so that trains leave in order like J, K, L, M, N in that order or something reasonable, at least dont let 3 K trains go by or 4 N trains go by without a change to something else.
