Monday, September 29, 2008

Another 29, Another FAIL

I got on the 29 this morning in plenty of time to make my work shuttle to Palo Alto. The bus was full and we passed up the usual dozen or so people on Sunset, but all was well until we turned around at Crespi and Varela (Park Merced), where the driver began to say things like: "What's she doing?" and "Well we may not be going anywhere with this bus today." We crossed 19th and our driver stopped, got out, had a quick word with an inspector who had apparently flagged her down, then pulled around the corner and stopped again. The inspector (an efficient-sounding, slender 50-ish woman) and the driver started talking about the outside right mirror on the bus. "I know, I was just trying to get everyone where they want to go this morning," she said.

But the inspector pulled the bus out of service and the driver offloaded us. I guess the reasoning was that we would run over fewer people, on average, if the mirror was set properly. Doing the arithmetic, I figured my shuttle would be 1-2 minutes gone (at least) by the time I got to Balboa Park, so I crossed to the M platform ....

So I'm in our downtown office today, which is fine, except that my management gets annoyed with me if I spend more than one day a week here, and Monday isn't the day I wanted to spend here this week.

Plus I really, really, really need coffee now. At least I can go take care of that in a few minutes.

2 comments:

Mike said...

All I can say is I feel your pain. I'm so tired of complaining about MUNI, voting on ballot measures that are supposed to help fix the problems, etc. It never gets better.

I arrived home yesterday after 2 weeks away. No problems with my flights or BART or Caltrain. The last two miles on MUNI were just awful. One-car trains on a Sunday featuring Folsom Street Fair and the final Giants game of the year, against the Dodgers. Surely they could anticipate that a two-car train on some of the KLM routes might possible be useful. Instead, we get a one-car K that is so packed many of us are left standing, followed by a one-car L with one set of doors broken (so no one will move into that part of the car lest they get trapped).

Joseph N. Hall said...

Continuing in the vein of plastic bag and cigarette bans, except at actual taxpayer expense, we have:

Greening plan needs a lot of green money San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom's big plan to turn Civic Center into a world-class example of how government can go green isn't going to come cheap.

Officials estimate the project - solar panels on city buildings, a garden atop the main library, wastewater pools in the plaza - prices out at $19.7 million over the next three years.

About $15.6 million of that will be picked up by the city's Public Utilities Commission through what the PUC charges city departments for their utilities.

What's the theory here? It's too hard to do anything about Muni, so we'll plant a bunch of stuff downtown?