San Francisco is My Home

28
Dec

MUNI troubles

Author: kris, Category: Transportation

Ohhh, MUNI. Take another little piece of my heart, why don’t you. Twice I have ridden your hallowed rails in the last three days and twice I have been stymied by lengthy delays due to computer error and signaling problems. Trains stayed frozen in place like we were starring in Ice Age VI, or whatever number they’re on now.

I have big respect for the worker bees of the MUNI system, who toil for thankless patrons like myself on a daily basis. But something needs to be done about the system as a whole. Until my friend visited from London last year, I never noticed how horrible the labeling system is. I challenge a first-time visitor — or anyone who doesn’t ride the underground regularly — to make sense of the BART and MUNI division in the underground stations. Which turnstile goes where now? And where and how do I pay? What are all these machines for, and why do so few of them provide quarters? What do “inbound” and “outbound” mean, and how can I tell which trains are going which way? And so on.

Buses are scarcely an improvement. Stops sometimes don’t have any upright signs at all, relying on half-erased paint marks in the road to tell you which bus you’re waiting for. The new satellite tracking signs you get at many stops are a big improvement, but I’d still prefer buses that ran on time.

However, I am still grateful not to pay eight pounds a ride, or whatever outrageously high fee they’re charging for the London underground. And I’m grateful we have a transportation system even as good as we do, since I’ve lived in many a city where the bus situation was far more dire. Still, let’s at least get the computer situation sorted out, eh fellas? Some of us have to get home and update our blogs.