Bay Area Diaries — Part VII: Muni buses

The Bay Area Diaries takes a noticeable departure from the usual quality and tone brought to the entry on Muni’s bus operations.

The Diaries, and L.A.-oriented Ride Reports published on MetroRiderLA, takes pride in copious attention to the fundamental details of the ride. What time did the bus arrive, what was the number and make of the bus, what line is ridden and how many passengers were aboard. The pedantry’s message: We care.

There will be no effort to maintain that level of detail for Muni buses. Muni earned heaps of well-deserved scorn from San Franciscans for management and operations that seemed to have been mailed in — by Pony Express. If a transit agency, through concerted inaction or lazy inaction, could treat its riders this way, the Bay Area Diaries’ feedback loop senses that it can act the same way with its readers. And will.

Fortunately, this entry is going to be lightly patronized since it’s about buses and most people couldn’t give a crap about them in the first place. Rail’s another matter. That attracts a lot of attention and very passionate viewpoints, so commentary must tread with caution. Muni buses, though, get the tritest of all literary and discussion devices: A Top 10 list. Unroll your eyes for a second and click below for MetroRiderLA’s Complete Muni bus Info and Rider’s Guide.

Preface

For the brave — and bored — few who actually clicked through to this point, the introduction was written with tongue firmly in cheek. The real reason why a list is being presented because the exploration of the system did not lend itself to sitting down and taking notes. San Francisco is still unfamiliar territory, despite a good deal of time spent memorizing the Muni service grid and service frequencies. Also, the trip was as much exploring San Francisco and having fun as mining content for MetroRiderLA, so attention wasn’t focused directly on the fundamentals.

Also, Muni has so many characteristics similar to Metro that L.A. riders can quickly adapt into a familiar environment. And vice versa. If you’re a Muni rider who ever plans to come to L.A., just substitute Sanfran references with Elhay.

And again, the opinions expressed here are nowhere near as harsh as those found on Bay Area transit blogs. Overall, riding Muni was not bad, and a brief impression was favorable. But locals have a better everyday impression of the problems California’s fourth-largest city has in running — or not running — its buses and trains. Here are links to some of these blogs:

• Rescue Muni, an advocacy organization
• Transbay Blog
• SF Cityscape
• Muni Outrage

Without further ordure …

MetroRiderLA’s Complete Muni bus Info and Rider’s Guide … a Top 10 List

1. It’s a jungle out there …

A typical Thursday afternoon on a Muni bus. Without a caption, people might think this is a generic L.A. shot.

Disorder and confusion everywhere … no one seems to care … well I do … hey, who’s in charge here?

Randy Newman’s theme song for “Monk” — set in Sanfran — could very well have been inspired by a Muni ride. In fact, Tony Shalhoub could turn a “Mr. Monk and the Ride on the Muni” episode to comedic gold by running through all the character’s idiosyncracies and phobias by a short bus ride. The caveat is that the San Francisco-based show is filmed in Elhay, with the on-site locations becoming more obvious to us.

The bus scenes would be interchangeable, though. Metro and Muni are fraternal twins when it comes to ratty buses. The vehicles are dirty and graffiti-scarred. The buses are packed where nearly every cubic inch of the interior is consumed by the pressing together of massive bodies of flesh. The buses rattle even on the smoothest roads. Buses, being what they are, are frequent but very slow. Rail service is confined mostly to the eastern and southeastern neighborhoods, but the Metro trains in the west and southwest act like buses outside of the tunnel. For most of the city, riding a bus is inevitable.

L.A. riders have been exposed to the rugged wilds of bus transit, and a Metro rider has the nerves and patience to feel right at home on Muni. Most Americans have little to no experience with transit, though, and the experience would be intimidating.

The most extreme example is a sticker affixed on the front of buses and trains admonishing passengers of the severe criminal penalties imposed for assaulting a Muni operator. Wow. OK, San Franciscans, this begs a question. Is it really so bad that passengers routinely wail on Muni drivers and the sticker is necessary? Riding a bus can be a trying experience, but the warning makes it sound like Muni needs Blackwater mercenaries to drive.

This nullifies San Francisco’s very good efforts making transit options visible. Most city maps have Muni routes drawn on the streets, and the signage is superb. And Muni, along with all the other Bay Area agencies, has a centralized information center for maps, schedules and route planning. Sanfran is also the home of Reineck and Reineck, the transit industry’s best cartographer and producer of most of the Bay Area’s bus and train maps. Transit delays are even available on TV and radio traffic reports, as well as on electronic freeway information signs. Being one of the world’s premier information economies, Sanfran is a standard-bearer for making it known how to get around. The actual journey, though, is more primitive.

2. It’s not that we don’t care because we’re jerks. We’re too busy to give a crap.

Muni drivers have a reputation for being ogres. From an outsider’s perspective, the reputation is undeserved. They are well-compensated, but they have a very difficult job to do. Plus, most of the veteran and friendlier operators tend to gravitate to the rail side. The men and women in brown and khaki get a bad rap.

The Muni drivers have tremendous skill and professionalism. They must maneuver large vehicles on narrow streets. Trolley bus drivers have the added challenge of keeping the poles connected to the wire. They need cast-iron nerves to do this for eight hours a day.

Are they the polar opposite of their misperceived images? That’s also inconclusive. Muni drivers don’t practice anything consumers know as good customer service. They don’t smile and offer salutations when boarding, they’re not particularly talkative and they won’t allow time to be wasted. If someone wasn’t at a stop and runs for the bus, they’re SOL and have to wait for the next one. If someone is too slow to exit the bus, once the doors close, they stay closed. They’ll just have to walk back. In fact, most drivers avoid making eye contact with passengers altogether. Maybe those stickers are justified in being there. And Muni’s newer buses have driver partitions to reinforce isolation.

Locals seem to know the system well and didn’t ask the drivers questions. They left the driver alone, and the drivers didn’t exhibit any form of surliness.

Drivers who aren’t the whistle-while-you-work and how-do-you-do types found on the F Market & Wharves line or the cable cars aren’t automatically nasty jerks who wield their civil service privileges as a cudgel. Their professionalism comes from getting hundreds of thousands of passengers to and from their stops the best that they can. Because they don’t do it with a smile and kind words doesn’t make them monsters. They’re human, too.

As for making Muni drivers more friendly, the best and most effective human relations technique was and is The Golden Rule. When passengers become nicer to the drivers, the drivers become nicer to passengers. If there’s a problem with the system, take it up with the customer information hotline, not the first driver in eyeshot. If riding for the first time, gather as much information as possible beforehand. Drivers, and other passengers, don’t want to be slowed down by noobs’ inquisitiveness. Board through the front door and exit through the rear. If the ride didn’t have any major problems, tell the driver “thank you” or wave once off the bus. If passengers did this, more systems would be like Santa Monica’s Big Blue Bus.

3. Transit math

There’s an algebraic rule that holds true for all agencies, not just Muni. Sanfran just gives it the QED. The rule: Frequency inversely relates to reliability. In layman’s terms, the more buses scheduled to serve a line, the less likely the buses are going to follow the published timetable.

Muni has high frequencies on most of its lines. Most of Sanfran has buses that run every 15 minutes or more. The bad news is that since most of the lines are high frequency, the entire route network’s reliability is unreliable.

Not all of it is professional incompetence. Muni’s buses are very well-used, and that’s the nut of the problem. More passengers mean more stops and longer dwell times. In a way, the transfers that act as 90-minute passes help matters somewhat. On busier lines, people board through the rear doors despite the ominous warning of doing so being a citeable offense. Then again, drivers throw fare compliance to the wind and let the riders all get on without checking for valid transfers.

The notoriously bad Sanfran traffic and heavy pedestrian activity are external elements that keep buses very slow. Buses must fight to leave bus stops, and the pedestrians are numerous and belligerent. People continue to cross well past the “don’t walk” signs flashing and only stop when opposing get the green and assert their right of way. When the lights are red, pedestrians then jaywalk. Most bus trips are spent braking or idling, rather than moving.

Another aspect is psychological. There’s much less of an effort to keep a high-frequency line reliable because passengers experience less delay than an infrequent service. Who’s more impacted: A rider who waits 20 minutes for two 10-minute buses to show up at the same time or a rider who waits an hour for two 30-minute buses? Because the outrage would be justifably higher for the latter, infrequent buses tend to stick closer to schedules than lines where the service runs so often a schedule isn’t necessary.

Muni doesn’t get a free pass, though. Its organizational mismanagement is nationally infamous. Even the Los Angeles Times runs the occasional 20+ column-inch features on major system meltdowns and reports of high levels of operator absenteeism.

In general, when Muni notes a line running every 10 or 15 minutes, it can do very little to ensure that 4 to 6 buses run at evenly spaced intervals and arrive at fixed times. Instead, a number of buses are allocated based on ridership demand, and that number is spread out evenly to form a semblance of a timetable. Say if a bus line has 10,000 boardings a day, hypothetical service policies dictate that there should be roughly six buses an hour in each direction, which equates to 10 minute service. Getting the buses to arrive at specific times depends on outside factors that employees cannot control.

And what to do if a bus is late? An article in New Scientist says its best to stay put rather than walk.

4. Schedules? We don’t need no stinking schedules.

When is a bus late? In Sanfran, the answer: Who knows? Maybe the buses are on time and passengers just have serious perception problems. When there are no schedules, there’s no concept of time. When there’s no concept of time, nothing is on time or late. By that logic, Muni’s a flawless operation.

Schedules apparently only exist on the intertubes. They can be found on 511, but printed timetables are either nonexistent or rarer than steak tartare. Plus, the arrival times for Muni services on those schedules are useless. The travel time between two timepoints is accurate, for the most part, so the site is good for determining how fast slow a bus goes.

At Muni’s service levels, service is frequent enough that schedules don’t need to be consulted for a trip. And like L.A., expect to transfer often but not wait too long for buses to arrive.

5. Limited buses = same as L.A.

San Francisco has four limited-stop lines: 14L, 28L, 38L and 71L. They’re identical to L.A.’s limiteds and Rapids. They stop where a transfer can be made to an intersecting bus line. Because Sanfran has so many transfer points and much narrower stop spacing, Muni’s limiteds offer much less of a time advantage than Metro’s.

Muni’s limiteds are more prone to confusing noobs than L.A.’s. Always read the headsign carefully. Muni doesn’t have a separate class of numbers for limited-stop service like L.A. It’s the local line + L. The headsigns don’t say 38L. It’s 38 to the Lth power. The L is a small exponential superscript. Look for it carefully.

6. Express buses are very different

In L.A. an express bus is defined as a service that runs nonstop on a freeway for at least four miles. In Sanfran, express buses are designed to addle and confound noobs. Express buses have large segments where they run nonstop.

But where?

They’re Muni’s fastest services, but the 511 web site only has the schedules and no route maps or explanations of the stops they bypass. Some of the longest lines have an A and a B express, with one of the letters serving the outermost realms of Sanfran and the other serving the outer two-thirds of an area.

Call a customer service agent or ask a veteran local rider before trying out these lines.

7. The most important number to know

(510) 817-1717.

This is the out-of-towners’ number to call for 511 help. Dialing 511 using a phone with a Southern California number connects to 1-800-COMMUTE. On land lines it should work fine. Bay Area visitors should program that number in their cell phones.

Live customer assistance is available until 7 p.m.

8. Play the Passport lottery

Purchasing a 1-, 3- or 7-day visitor passport is an affordable way to get the most out of San Francisco. These cards come in the form of scratchers, similar to a lottery ticket. The month and day used must be scratched off. The multi-day passes may only be used on consecutive days. Best of all, they almost pay for themselves after just two cable car rides, which cost $5 per boarding. And presently, showing a visitor passport at a Ghirardelli chocolate store gives a 10 percent discount.

9. Traveling without expelling gas

Muni has both 60-foot articulated, and 40-foot gruff-speaking, electric trolleybuses.

This cheeky subheadline is not an admonishment for riders to avoid farting on the bus. Riders get the benefit of the doubt in the hopes that they have a modicum of common sense not to do this in crowded public places. Right? RIGHT?

Besides, Muni has hard plastic seats that make it impossible to discharge a one-cheek sneak discreetly and anonymously.

No, this is a basic primer on riding a Muni electric trolleybus. Muni is one of only five agencies in the U.S., two on the West Coast, and the sole California operator to run ETBs. That makes them unique enough to try. Wikipedia has a list of the routes.

They look like Muni’s other buses, except for their “leashes”. The ride quality is noticeably different, and somewhat better. Outside, they make almost no noise. Plus, the buses do not struggle on Sanfran’s many steep hills. These are often on the hilliest routes, and the views are often scenic.

Riders are accustomed to buses being slow. Not on the ETBs. When they accelerate from a stop, they pick up speed fast. Always hang on to a handrail to avoid flying through the rear. Standees also get to experience “the Muni wave,” a simultaneous movement of all standees’ bodies into an S and then straightening out again. It’s quite poetic. Also, always maintain a good footing. The trolleys may fall off the wire and the buses could come to a hard stop. Muni’s new trolley bus models have supplemental power systems that allow them to run off the wire, but not for very long periods.

While the buses are silent on the outside, they have a dull whirr inside that becomes bothersome to hear after a long time.

10. Plan, plan, plan

And plan again. San Francisco transit information is vast and plentiful. Just not when riding or using the system itself. Muni’s system map also lists Sanfran’s whole street grid, not just the streets where buses run. Save it to a cell phone, PDA or iPod. Convert it to a graphic file to reduce its size. And get a general idea of how frequently the buses and trains run, but do not plan events around a tight schedule. For meetings or events with a specific starting time, the best thing to do is arrive 15-30 minutes early. This allows some slack if a bus or train is running late, and every Sanfran neighborhood has interesting street life and stores to check out before the start of the event.

These 10 steps also apply to L.A., where the bus service is so identical it’s sad. In both good and bad ways. For that matter, these can apply to virtually all big cities.

This is the Bay Area Diaries, so those other places don’t matter for the time being.

Previously:

• Prologue
• Part II: Megabus
• Part III: Golden Gate Transit
• Part IV: Sonoma County
• Part V: Golden Gate Ferry
• Part VI: Muni rail

Photo by neutralSurface via Flickr (Creative Commons license)

BART Board for upcoming arrivals: CalTrain to Millbrae arrives in 1 day BART to Pittsburg/Bay Point arrives in 2 days Closing thoughts arrive in 4 days

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bay area • bus • electric trolleybus • muni • san francisco