The MUNI
Chronicles
Intro by Avery.
Go directly to the Updates
Ok, this story has been a long time coming.
It started after Bay to Breakers, that hellish little cross-town run/walk/crawl
where every freak in the city decides that it's time to go out and show the
world that "Hey, I am a little active". For some reason, Janet and I were
feeling really energetic and we decided to drop down a chunk of change (about
$40) and join the "World's Largest Roadrace (tm)".
Fast forward 3 hours. We're sore, we're thirsty and hungry. The news reported that approximately 80,000 people signed up for the race, and by the time we finished, about 35,000 of them were doing exactly what we were: waiting for a bus.
I don't know why MUNI doesn't understand! If there is a planned public event, why the hell don't they run more buses? It took us almost an hour and a half to get home, and that included a mandated walk from UCSF to the Lower Haight.
This morning (6/28/98), we decided to head downtown about an hour after the Pride Parade had finished to pick up a copy of X-Wing Collector's Edition at the new Comp USA. Every underground stop that we passed had a platform FULL of people trying to get from Downtown to the Castro. Of course, MUNI was running on a Sunday schedule, so the trolleys were running infrequently and when they did run, it was a single car only. Give me a break.
Fast forward another two hours... we're all geeked out and ready to head home. So, we walk to Montgomery Street station, figuring that the further east we headed, the better chance that we would get a seat. At Montgomery, there was no line and we got a seat immediately. At Powell, the crowd was not bad... there were still seats available. At Civic Center, there were hundreds of people just trying to get anywhere... including a person with a sousaphone. In High School, I used to play a sousaphone. I would never think about getting in a crowded MUNI with one, but I digress. Anyway, if the crowd at Civic Center was large, the crowd at Van Ness was even larger. I'm surprised that we could even get off at Church Street station.
The moral of this story is this: MUNI, observe reality. You know when there
are going to be throngs of people waiting for a MUNI. Pay the freaking overtime
and get more buses and trolleys on the road. Sheesh. -- Avery
[Janet] 4/26/99
So I get on the bus at 7:15 AM to go to work, and I all of a sudden smell
the smell of cat pee. Where is that coming from? I think. It's
not me is it? The cat didn't pee in my bag, did she? If it was me, I would've
smelled it when I left the house. Where is that smell coming from? I
keep standing and riding (because the bus is packed, of course) and standing,
and riding, until someone gets out at their stop and a seat opens up. I sit
down.
Now I know where the smell is coming from. Great.
[Avery] 3/1/99
Ok, time to play a little game called: How to avoid getting smacked
by Avery when riding the bus.
[Avery] 1/27/99
Tuesday morning, I left for work at the usual time. It had been raining horribly
all throughout the night, and the wind was gusting so strongly that the sound
of the windows rattling woke me up a few times.
Still, when I left Tuesday morning, the rain was letting up... it was really gray and drizzly, but nothing that severe. The morning news reported no delays on MUNI, so I figured that it would be an uneventful ride to the office.
Boy, was I wrong.
As soon as I stepped out of the door, I noticed a bus coming down my street... which is bizarre, because the buses don't run on my street. The buses run on Haight street, one block south. I figured that it was out of service and returning to the depot. Then I noticed that it was full of people.
The bus pulled up to the corner and opened its door, so I ran up to the door and got in. I figured, what the hell... it's a 71 Noriega bus, and it's heading in the right direction... even if it's on the wrong street.
It ended up that a large tree fell down on Haight Street between Steiner and Pierce. It totalled a couple of cars, blocked traffic, and it also knocked down the electric bus power lines. You see, in San Francisco, most of the east-west buses run on overhead power lines. You lose the Haight Street power grid, and only the infrequently scheduled half-sized diesel buses run. The result? Thousands of people crammed into these oversized mini-vans running at 1/3 the normal bus schedule. Needless to say, the commute in sucked.
No wonder the Examiner (the afternoon paper) reported that on a recent survey over 80% of all MUNI passengers are dissatisfied with MUNI service.
[Janet] 1/14/99
When I leave for work at 7:00 AM, I can usually catch a bus that's not packed
full of people, and many times even get a seat. The past few days have been
quite another story. Since I was summoned for jury duty and subsequently
(almost immediately, I might add) chosen for one, I don't have to leave the
apartment until 8:30. At that point, you can just about forget about catching
a bus, because once they do start to appear, they're usually too packed to
let anyone on.
The first day of jury duty, I had to be at the courthouse at 9:15 AM. As usual, I left the apartment and walked down to the bus stop with a semi-spring in my step that only an extra hour of sleep on a weekday can give you, but the instant I saw the size of the crowd assembled there, a feeling of impending doom took over. Buses were coming by, but they -- of course -- were packed wall-to-wall with people. Normally, if this happens, I just walk the four or so blocks down to the Underground trains and have better luck. When I got there this time, there was a train sitting at the entrance to the tunnel...not moving. Behind it were two more trains, also, obviously, not moving. At this point, I had already wasted precious commuting minutes waiting for the bus and walking to the trains, but decided to stand around to see if the trains actually started moving, which, of course, they did not. Breaking into a slight panic, I racked my brain trying to think how on earth I was supposed to get to the courthouse. I didn't have time to walk all that way, there were no alternate bus routes that got me anywhere close, and any part of the Underground would be backed up for god knows how long, at this rate. I decided to run back up to the bus stop.
More precious minutes tick by. I hot-foot it back up the four blocks -- uphill, this time -- get back to the bus stop, look up the street and feel my panic level rise as I see no busses whatsoever. Cursing the city of San Francisco with all of it's lenient policies and laid-back attitudes about time and responsibility, I start walking to the courthouse. Quickly. I get all the way to the next bus stop and for the hell of it, turn around to look up the street again and, lo and behold, there's an actual bus! As it approaches, I realize that there are more people on that bus than the law probably allows, but got on anyway and ended up standing right next to the bus driver (which, if you're not an avid public transportation-taker like myself, is not exactly the safest place to stand, as there is essentially nothing to hold on to.) Another girl got on behind me and was standing so close to the windshield, she would have had no problem going right through it if the bus had made a quick stop.
The same scenario happened to me today (when will I ever learn?) but this time I actually got on one of the trains and it moved steadily along...until it got the the entrance to the tunnel, where it stopped. And sat. Until it moved 20 or so feet, where it stopped again. And sat. (Repeat this sentence 10 times, while picturing me panic as I picture me walking into a courtroom filled with people waiting for me, and only me, and having the judge yell at me, and only me.)
Last Sunday, the only two things that Avery and I did were go out for dim sum and go to the gym, and between all the waiting, and the putt-putt 15-mph so-called bus-driving, and more waiting, and the transferring to another bus and even more waiting, it literally took us all day. Ahhh, San Francisco.You can't have a car, because there are virtually no parking spaces, and you can't take MUNI, because it never runs properly. So, what's the solution?
I don't know...a good pair of comfortable shoes?
[Avery] 12/9/98
THE GREAT BLACKOUT OF 1998
Because San Francisco is such an environmentally conscious city, they decided
that whenever possible, all bus lines and subway lines should run
on electric power. DC cables line most of the city, and the major downtown
lines all are electric. On top of that, the subways are all electric.
Well, guess what happens when the power goes out for a whole city, and the public transit system doesn't have backup generators...
At 8:18am, the buses and subways just stopped. No coasting, no warning, they just stopped. The people who were above ground were lucky. They could just get out and walk to where they needed to go. However, for the estimated 2000 people who were stuck underground, they had to be evacuated through the subway tunnels. Some people were stuck underground for hours before they saw daylight again.
MUNI responded by running all of their diesel buses (about 500 of them) along all of the major routes. In addition, Da Mayor, Willie Brown, declared the city in a state of emergency, so all buses were running for free. Unfortunately, at about 9:45, when the radio reported that the power would be out for 2-5 more hours, everybody who had made it downtown to work decided to go home. An estimated 35,000 people who counted on some form of public transit to make it home were suddenly trying to cram into packed buses which were running on a reduced schedule. Many decided just to walk.
At 1:30, right before the power came back on, Janet and I observed buses, jam packed with people making their way to the residential districts.
Still, throughout all of this, Mayor Brown still insists that MUNI ran admirably. I believe that they certainly made the best of the hand they were dealt. But if this is how poorly they handled a simple power outage, I shudder to think what will happen after the next big earthquake.
[Janet] 12/6/98
While enjoying a meatball sandwich earlier today, I picked up a copy of this
week's SF Weekly, one of the city's free weekly newspapers. The cover story
happened to be on the real reason that MUNI service is so bad: the employment
perks that MUNI employees receive. Did you know that these people are entitled
to 7 days a year where they can wake up, decide that they don't feel like
working, and go back to sleep without even so much as a call to
their supervisor, or anyone for that matter, to say that they're
not going to be at work? Not only that, but they also get 10 days a year
where they are able to go into work late -- late in this case meaning not
the common 30 minutes or an hour or two, but being able to arrive at any
time before their shift is over -- again, without having to call anyone
to say that they'll be in late.
If that interesting little tidbit isn't ludicrous enough, just remember that the public transportation workers in this city are the second-highest paid in the country, and get 13 sick days and up to four weeks of vacation per year on top of all those allowable absences. If none of these policies float the typical MUNI driver's boat, they can always choose the slightly unethical, yet workable options of either cutting their bus runs short or calling in a false breakdown just to get home a little earlier. With all of those perks, you would think that a prompt, professional and efficient citywide public transportation system would result. But yet, we riders of public transportation are still standing idly at bus stops, watching the minutes tick by and planning how we're going to explain today's tardiness to our bosses because unfortunately for us, we don't have the same extra-lenient, union-backed lateness policies as the drivers do, and also unfortunately for us, we've used the "I was stuck on MUNI" excuse so may times that its beginning to sound like we're crying wolf.
The truly shitty part of this whole scenario -- aside from all the disgruntled MUNI riders -- is that it's probably never going to change, because if anyone does try to change it, MUNI workers, who are unionized, will simply go on strike and the city will come to a complete standstill. Unions were originally designed to protect the worker from a dangerous work environment, but now it seems that union members use the fact that they are able to go on strike to ensure themselves more and more often-undeserved perks. If unions keep being abused in this way, we're going to need something to protect the rest of us.
[Janet] 10/26/98
The other day I had yet another jam-packed,
no-as-a-matter-of-fact-this-ISN'T-a-clown-car experience on MUNI. People
were literally pressed up against one another, all trying to get home from
downtown and, as usual, the people waiting at every stop along the way assumed
that they would all somehow be able to fit into the 2 square feet of available
space. One of the people who got on happened to be the type who absolutely
has to ride in the back of the bus at any cost. I'm not talking about
the shifty-eyed suspicious-looking type, either; just regular semi-yuppie
looking people who bypass all the seats in the front of the bus just to be
able to obsessively get to the back, which, I might add, is my least favorite
section of the bus because either you have to sit sideways, facing the people
across from you, or be trapped on the end of that 6-person back row seat
with god knows who else.
Anyway, even though the aisle is full of people standing back to back, this person insists on squeezing through each and every pair of back-to-back-people in order to get to the rear of the bus, which you couldn't even see at this point. He gets to me and whoever's back was pressed up against mine and does that little excuse-me point, motioning that he wants to get through. So I move the whole available inch, and he tries to squeeze behind us, all the while wearing a backpack so full that it looks like it should belong to some junior high school nerd, all bursting at the seams with textbooks and Trapper Keepers and whatnot, which makes me even madder because if everyone on the bus with a backpack took them off their shoulders there would probably be a whole lot more room.
So, he's trying to squeeze and of course it's not working, as there is literally no space whatsoever to move into. He gets stuck between me and whoever was behind me, and in his obvious frustration turns around, looks at me and says all haughty-like "You don't have to push." Umm, OK, Mr. Nothin's Gonna Stop Me Now...I was so shocked at the inanity of that statement that I couldn't even manage to blurt out any of the 50 witty things I could have said, which is OK, because I didn't think of them until 10 minutes later, anyway.
Oh. Note to people who neglect to wear deodorant because that they think that they "don't need to:" Believe me, you need to.
[Avery] 10/5/98
7:30 am. Waiting for a bus
Well, after getting up and dragging myself out to the bus this morning, I
made a startling realization: There are no buses coming!
7:35 Waiting for a J-Church
That's better. Just as I got to the corner where the new Rite Aid is
being built (which, I might note is right under an AIDS hospice... tres
tacky), I noticed a J-Church coming up Church Street. Yay. Then I was
able to get a seat. Double Yay. Fast forward 5 minutes. Powell Street Station.
A vagrant comes on the bus. Afore mentioned vagrant starts urinating in his
pants. Yuck. Then said vagrant pulls out a handkerchief, and starts dabbing
at his pant legs. Double Yuck. Then the vagrant smells the handkerchief and
puts it back in his pocket. Triple Yuck.
I really need to get a job that I can walk to.
[Janet] 9/24/98
Usually I don't run into too many problems traveling on MUNI to work,
only from work, but that didn't seem to be the case a few mornings
ago. As usual, I board a relatively full bus at my bus stop, ride all the
way to Eighth Street (I need to get off at Third Street) and upon almost
reaching the actual bus stop, come to a sudden halt. The bus driver then
tells everyone that they have to get off here, that the bus will be going
no further. Of course, everyone starts mumbling little expletive-filled comments
to themselves, as most people take the bus all the way down Market Street
to the end of the line in the financial district and we were still quite
a ways from there. While getting off the bus I notice that we are 3rd or
4th in a line of halted buses, all stopped at the bus stop, all with people
piling off of them. At first I thought that the first bus must be broken
down, but then hear shouting and see a small crowd of onlookers gathered
around the front of the first bus. It turns out that there was a
vagrant/homeless-looking guy in a wheelchair purposely sitting in the road
right in front of the bus! People were yelling things to the tune of "just
get out of the fucking road, why're ya in the road, why're ya making everybody
late?" Wheelchair Guy was visibly hostile and kept whacking the front of
the bus with his cane and snarling back, the only comment that I happened
to overhear being "You can just walk! You people can just walk!"
At this point there were 5 buses and a trolley all stopped, one after another, held up by the relatively small and hostile Wheelchair Guy. When I saw that the entire reason why I had to get off the bus, walk a block to the nearest underground stop, and start my commute basically from scratch by waiting for yet another mode of San Francisco-flawed public transportation was not, contrary to popular belief, the fault of MUNI this time, but the fault of a crazy homeless/vagrant guy basically just being an asshole, I literally felt my blood pressure go sky-high. I felt like a cartoon character with a tingling red line of anger rising up my whole face little by little, eventually making my entire face bright red -- the only thing missing was the smoke coming out of my ears accompanied by the sound of a train whistle. I wasn't quite sure why someone couldn't have just picked him up, wheelchair and all, and deposited him back on the sidewalk...or even wheeled him somewhere (preferably into oncoming traffic, I was thinking as I began my "those damned homeless people" diatribe in my head.) I wonder if the reason that there are so many crazy people in San Francisco is because the city just grates on people, little annoyance after little annoyance, until they just can't take it anymore.
[Janet] 9/19/98
Over the past two weeks or so, I've been following the usual
avoid-the-damn-underground-and-take-the-crowded-bus routine. One notable
episode happened during one of the times that I was taking the 21 Line, y'know,
the one that doesn't really take me anywhere near to where I live, but that
I have to take because all the buses that do are packed? Unfortunately, the
21 was also packed that day and halfway home the bus driver stops at a bus
stop and, for some inane reason, lets more people on. Due to the sardine-can
status of the current passengers, this was impossible. The driver then stands
up, turns around to face the bus and says, while looking at the obvious lack
of room, "Can't you all just show some consideration and just
move back?" Then somebody swore at him, and nobody really moved anywhere.
At least this commute wasn't like the time when the driver did the same thing
-- let more people on than the bus could hold -- and then said "we're not
goin' anywhere 'til I can see the door" and then proceeded to sit there while
the stoplight turned from red to green to red to green. When some of
the passengers told her that there was literally nowhere to move to,
her oh-so-brilliant response was "Well, then someone's gonna hafta get OFF!"
If this isn't something to make your blood pressure go right through the
roof, I don't know what is.
[Avery] 9/6/98
How screwed up is this? On the evening news, we found out that a N-Judah
streetcar went for three stops without a driver! It seems that our
hero went out to "get a drink of water" and "forgot to put on the automatic
override" and the MUNI simply went along it's preprogrammed route, sans
driver. The funny thing is that nobody really noticed. When asked, MUNI
officials stated "That's yesterdays news. We have many more problems this
week to deal with." Sigh.
[Janet] 9/5/98
For some strange reason, I haven't been having any MUNI trouble getting to
work by 7:30 in the morning...a bus usually comes within 5 minutes and it's
never really packed. Getting home, however, has been an entirely different
story. Since the underground is at a virtual standstill due to the glitch-ridden
computerized automatic train system, I've been avoiding it like the plague.
Evidently, so has everyone else. By the time any buses get to my stop, which
is only, like, the third stop into the route, the buses are beyond full and
the drivers won't let anyone else on. On Thursday, since it was my turn to
go to the grocery store, I waited for an F-line above-ground train which
drops me off right there. 3 F's went by completely full. All of the buses
that take me within a block of my house were also full. After watching the
full buses go by for half an hour, I started getting a panic attack. I was
trapped downtown! There was no way to get home and it was way too far to
walk! This could go on for hours! More and more people started standing at
the bus stops, and every time a packed bus came along, a collective shout
of four-letter words would ring out. Scowls were everywhere. To make
a long story short, I ended up taking the 21 line, a bus that goes nowhere
near my house or the grocery store. I ended up walking 8 or so blocks
to Safeway and then walking the 5 blocks home. Of course I had on my most
uncomfortable, most unruly work skirt on, the one that likes to twist around
and "ride up" while you're walking with a heavy bag on your shoulder. So
not only was I pissed, starving and sick of walking in work shoes, I also
had to keep pulling my skirt down every 2 minutes.
Total commute time, including the 9-items or less line at Safeway: 2 hours.
(Usual time, including groceries: 45 mins.)
[Avery] 9/2/98
MUNI Sucks!
On my way home, it was my turn to go grocery shopping. So, after a decent
15 minute ride on the J-Church line, I was at Safeway. So, I pick up everything
that I needed for tonight's dinner (chicken breasts marinated in a barbeque
sauce that I make from scratch, fat-free refried beans, and spanish rice)
and proceeded to an open register. When the cashier finished up with the
groceries, I said "Oh and two fast passes." So, the cashier gets on her intercom
and calls the courtesy clerk desk who promptly informs her that they were
our of fast passes. Give me a break! It's the second day of the freaking
month (each month's fast pass is good until the 3rd) and they're
out??
Tomorrow, I am going to have to go out to a pharmacy by the office, get fast
passes and bring one to Janet's office so she doesn't have to shell out a
dollar for the ride home. Sheesh! It just proves that something has
to go wrong every single day with the San Francisco Municipal Railway.
[Avery] 8/28/98
Due to the poor construction and implementation of the automated train routing
system, all subway cars in San Francisco were shut down this morning. They
are expected to come back online soon, but according to a report on the morning
news, it is expected that San Franciscans will have to deal with this for
"a long time" and no short-term relief is in sight.
I have a solution: just turn the freaking system off and go back to the manual
routing system in the interim until it's debugged!
[Janet] 8/26/98
In the past few days I've all of a sudden noticed that trying to get from
the Financial District to home is a real trial. Yesterday I started to go
underground to take MUNI home from work, and promptly turned around when
I saw a thousand people fuming on the platform. I went above ground and tried
to get on a bus to no avail, as they were all packed full of people, which
was weird because the Financial District is practically the beginning of
the line. I had no choice but to cram on with the rest of 'em, and then had
to endure the desperate people at each stop who seemed to think that as long
as they managed to get one foot onto the steps of the bus, that they
could magically fit the rest of themselves into that foot-sized space.
And what ride would be complete without that one loud-mouthed hates-her-life
middle-aged woman who shrieks "Could you please SCOOT BACK?" For some reason
a person shouting orders which include the words "scoot back" to a bunch
of adults makes me cringe. On a thank-god-it's-not-just-me note, the rest
of the MUNI-riding community is also miffed at the new Jetsons-esque "automatic"
trains. So miffed, in fact, that some of them actually got tired of waiting
for the damn thing to move, broke the glass around the "push only in an
emergency" button, opened the doors themselves and got out in the
tunnel. There's gonna be a revolution soon.
[Janet] 8/22/98
All of the seats in the train are taken. The aisles are full of standing
passengers. The area around the doorway has turned into just one big collective
person there's so many people packed in there. It's one of my worst nightmares
to get on at Montgomery Street Station and get pushed further and further
into the middle of the train, so far away from the door that I run the risk
of missing my stop (only a mere 4 stops away from where I boarded.) This
has actually happened to me on the bus, so I know what I'm talking about,
and I understand the panicked looks that suddenly appear on people's faces
when they realize there's a snowball's chance in hell of being able to squeeze
through all these people to get out. However, when the train is coming
up to a major stop where nearly half of the people that are on the
train are also going to exit, you don't have to yell "excuse me" three
times in my ear and then try to crawl over me and step on my feet and push
me and act crazy like the people in "Independence Day" when the alien ship
started blowing things up and throwing cars around. Because, see, you're
able to get out just fine, and oh! I'm ALSO getting out, isn't that ironic!
And the other 100 people, well, they'll keep the door open as they walk through
it. It's kind of like an elevator that way!
[Janet] 8/16/98
MUNI has just introduced a new 21st-century feature to its service: automated
trains! Controlled by A Computer, which is probably hidden in the rafters
somewhere in one of those dark rooms with lots of screens like in the movies,
the new feature now affords the drivers the luxury of just sitting back and
enjoying the ride along with he rest of us on the underground potion of the
route (without the added fun of the sardine-can effect, a privilege which
we get to PAY for.) Well, it's all fun and games until the computer breaks,
or gets unplugged, or has a system failure. On Friday I was on my way to
work, already cutting it close because I just can't seem to drag my ass out
of bed on time, and phew! Along comes a train pretty quickly. We pass the
first station, the second...going pretty slow, but that's OK...the train
then gets to the third station and stops. And sits there. For a long time.
The driver makes an announcement that since he's not controlling the train,
he can't open the doors or move forward. Then he kind of suggests that everyone
should get out there, which I do and then walk the rest of the way to work
and arrive a record 45 minutes late. I'm all for moving forward technology-wise,
but how scary is it when you're trapped in an underground tunnel and know
that the only thing that can save you is a computer?
[Janet] 8/11/98
More often than not, our underground public transit system makes people edgy
and tense. The tension may be so great that some of these people may even
begin to think that they have special powers. To onlookers, it appears that
in their minds these people are the size of a small cornish game hen, because
every time a packed train pulls up to the station, at least one of them tries
to squeeze into the one square foot of space that is left. Less than one
square foot of space left, you say? Never fear! It appears as though their
powers also have a built-in pushing feature, where they squish people even
tighter together with just one evil look! The most horrid thing of all is
that once one of them transforms into the game hen, a few others will inevitably
do the same. There's at least one transformer at every station, so beware!
[Avery] 8/5/98
Yesterday was the commute from MUNI hell. After dragging my ass out of bed
way too early in the morning, I proceeded to head down to the corner
of Haight and Fillmore to catch the bus. Bus 1 comes by and it is completely
packed. It would take a bucket of vaseline and a shoe horn to get in. Not
a problem, I see another bus coming down from the Divisadero Street hill.
Bus 2 - completely packed again. Not a problem, it's still early, so I decide
to wait for another bus.
10 minutes later, when it was obvious that another bus was not coming, and
the crowd of people now waiting reached 20 or so, I decided to walk to the
underground. A 3 minute walk later, I see an N-Judah coming! So I run to
the stop... there are only 2 other people waiting... it looks like it's going
to be an easy ride! I might even get a seat! Wrong.
The blithering idiots at MUNI were running single cars, instead of the usual
double-cars. For some reason, the MUNI managers feel that is they run less
buses or less cars, that less people will get on the bus, and therefore it
will be less crowded. HAH! So, I squeeze onto the streetcar and prepare to
go underground. All is going well, until we get to Montgomery Street Station.
1 minute after leaving Montgomery street station, the streetcar just stops.
We stayed at rest for about 25 minutes while waiting for "clearance" to pull
into Embarcadero Station, my stop. One of these days, I'm going either buy
a car or a shotgun.
Total commute distance: 2.5 miles.
Total commute time: 1hr, 5 mins.
[Janet] 7/26/98
We don't have a car for many reasons: a) we can't afford one right now, b)
we couldn't afford insurance and gas for it even if we could afford one right
now, and c) unless you have a parking space (which we also probably
couldn't afford right now), there is absolutely no parking around our apartment.
So we rely on MUNI to get everywhere. Over the years we have learned to cope
with it's many problems, but even with a lot of patience the constant annoyances
still tend to get your knickers in a major twist. Today we waited for a while
at the nearest bus stop, but as per usual, no buses seemed to be coming our
way. We decided to walk to the underground and take that. Everything was
fine until the train suddenly came to a dead stop in the tunnel, practically
giving everyone whiplash and prompting an old man to yell in disbelief, "are
you crazy?" Turns out the reason that the train stopped was computer
failure (oh, that makes me feel safe). A couple of hours later we
decided to try to get home via the underground, got on the train and discovered
that the computer must still be failing, because we would intermittently
stop and sit and sit and sit in one spot. No explanation or anything. Why
don't they ever let us know what's going on? And why do they even let people
pay a dollar to go downstairs to the station when they KNOW that something's
wrong and the trains aren't running? One of my biggest fears is to be trapped
in one of those trains -- some of those people look so craaazy!
[Avery] 7/26/98
If MUNI is inconsistent on the weekdays, forget trying to get anywhere on
Sunday. Here is the major problem: Janet and I live in the Lower Haight.
The Lower Haight is halfway between the tourist meccas of the Upper Haight
and Union Square. So, on the weekend there is reduced bus service, which
means that they run about 1/2 of the normal buses on all of the routes. This
means that tons of tourists are trying to cram on the 6, 7, 66 or 71 buses.
Unfortunately, if we are running any errands downtown, it means that we have
to vie for the few available seats with a ton of map-and-guide-reading tourists
asking "Is dis vhere die Haight Strasse ees?"... it's enough to drive
you batty. Now, we usually ride on the metro [subway] and walk the extra
blocks back home. It's more inconvenient, but it's better than being trapped
in the tourist sardine can called the Haight Street Bus Lines.
[Janet] 7/22/98
It has come to pass that it's not so much that MUNI doesn't ever arrive on
time as it is that once it does arrive, a tense and fidgety crowd of people
has usually built up. As you can guess, they all want to get on said MUNI
vehicle, even if there are only two square inches of space left. Even
with people literally hanging out the windows and pressed up against the
doors, there will still be that guy who just HAS to get on THAT bus, yelling
"Move back! Move to the back!" Most of the time people just stand where they
are and shuffle their feet, feigning movement. Even so, that guy always
squeezes on anyway.
Message to those people who get on a semi-empty train and immediately position themselves directly in front of the very same door that all the remaining fifty or so of us are trying to get through -- Don't do that! Maybe the feeling of being trampled and elbowed will remind you that YOU'RE IN THE WAY!