The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board of directors announced Thursday that the Department of Public Works Director Ed Reiskin will become the next agency’s executive director. Reiskin arrives at a crucial time in the agency where Muni’s on-time performance fell slightly to 71 percent and the relationship between the agency and its drivers is increasingly strained.
Category: Transportation
Posted inCity Hall, Muni, News, Transportation
Supervisor wants to see results of new Muni contract
An arbitrator-imposed labor contract for the city’s Muni operators went into effect on Friday and is expected to save the city $41 million over the next three years. City Supervisor Scott Wiener wants the transit agency to show where those savings are coming from.
Wiener introduced a resolution at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting calling upon the transit agency’s governing board to give periodic updates on how the agency is saving money from the deal.
Posted inMuni, Transportation
Muni to start express bus to ease crowding on N-Judah
Muni N-Judah streetcar riders may soon get some relief during their packed morning and evening commute home. A six-month pilot project to run an express bus between Ocean Beach and the Financial District will begin on Monday. With 38,000 daily boardings, the Municipal Transportation Agency says the N-Judah is the most used and crowded of all the rail lines. Complaints have been coming in to the transit agency from passengers who are not able to board the N-Judah during peak hours, according to the agency. The six-month pilot project will operate on weekdays during peak morning and evening hours making stops between Ocean Beach and 19th Avenue and Judah Street in the morning before heading to Montgomery and Bush streets.
Posted inNeighborhoods, Public Safety, Transportation, Utilities
New Muni crash comes as agency defends safety record
A Muni light-rail vehicle was struck by a big rig Monday morning, injuring six people, according to San Francisco Fire Department spokeswoman Lieutenant Mindy Talmadge, in an incident that highlights the rancorous debate happening right now at the state level concerning the city’s transport safety.
The California Public Utilities Commission is weighing a decision to penalize San Francisco’s Metropolitan Transit Agency for alleged violations of key safety regulations on its light-rail system, including defective tracks and a malfunctioning automatic train control system.
A failure to communicate more regularly, and transparently, with the state was another charge leveled at the agency in a recent report issued by the commission, which oversees safety guidelines for all rail systems in the state..
Posted inTransportation
Bike sharing technologies on display in San Francisco
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency sponsored demonstrations Friday at Civic Center Plaza to promote a new high-tech way of renting and sharing bikes in the city. The bike sharing pilot program is expected to launch in the of spring 2012 with 500 bikes deployed around the city.
Posted inCity Hall, Transportation
Muni says it will improve practice that forces riders off trains early
In the past several months, Muni riders have been frustrated by Muni light-rail vehicles turning around mid-route without informing them of the switch until the very last minute.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which operates Muni, addressed those concerns in a new report and plans to change some of its policies when turning trains around including operator announcements and displaying the correct final stop on the train display.
Posted inEnvironment, Labor, Land use, Transportation
Treasure Island building plans draw fire
Foes say development would choke bridge traffic and worsen air
Proposed redevelopment on Treasure Island would increase traffic jams on the Bay Bridge, lengthening commute times and exacerbating Bay Area air pollution, critics say.
Residents, environmental organizations and local agencies voiced those concerns this fall in almost 700 written comments on proposed new residential and commercial development that planners have said would make the island a world-class green neighborhood.
Comments about the project’s draft environmental impact report submitted by the September deadline expressed deep misgivings with the plan by the city and the developer to limit driving on and off the island.
Posted inMuni, Transportation
Drivers take the heat for discontent of Muni riders
Operators face long hours, crowded streets and a sometimes hostile ridership
Proposition G, the initiative that voters overwhelmingly approved to change pay and work rules for Muni operators, focused attention on the system’s drivers, painting them as a reason that San Francisco’s Muni transit system is notoriously slow and unreliable.
And the drivers did little to help their cause on the public relations front — rejecting cuts that other city workers agreed to, boycotting the annual Cable Car Bell Ringing Contest and threatening to strike if the measure passed.
But on the job, drivers work in a high-stress environment, with long hours and, for many drivers, few breaks.
Posted inMuni, News, Transportation
Muni: In elusive quest for 85% on-time performance, computers are displacing eyes on the street
Transit agency says tech will help it turn corner, but money remains tight
Multimillion-dollar vehicle-monitoring technology installed at Muni headquarters is at the heart of a new initiative aimed at solving the transit system’s never-ending performance problems.
By investing $13.6 million in the NextMuni satellite tracking system and a new 24-hour vehicle monitoring center, San Francisco transit officials promise major improvements in keeping the city’s more than 1,000 buses and trains running on schedule. Already this year, Muni Metro trains in the Market Street tunnel are speeding up, they said.
But Muni managers are still struggling with the question of how to get the most out of this new technology to increase performance at a time when budget pressures make it increasingly difficult to do that.
Posted inMuni, Transportation
Muni planners say speed to come from untangling messy streetscape
Transit planner calls the city’s streets and tunnels ‘a nightmare’
San Francisco transit planners say a recipe of small fixes could amount to big changes in the nation’s fifth-largest urban transit system. But without new sources of money, many of these ideas, some of which would change the way the city’s streets are configured, will remain on the drawing board.
The system is chronically slow and crowded in part because its diverse fleet of bus and rail lines operates on a rollercoaster terrain in a fully built-out urban grid. Street fairs and demonstrations, ball games and construction routinely clog major arteries, making schedules seem academic.
The Municipal Transportation Agency launched its Transit Effectiveness Project in 2006, to reconfigure the city’s streets and tunnels — where physical constraints notoriously slow basic public transit to what one Muni planner called “a nightmare.”