My Year of Commuting

I've been photographing my commute on Muni, Caltrain, and BART almost all of 2008. Hopefully my project will be a Blurb book by the end of the year. In the meanwhile I've posted some of the photos on Flickr.

The Wide Stance

As a friend of mine has observed, a few people like to sit on the bus or train with their knees two feet apart. Normally these are guys. Maybe they think their units need extra room.

This is fine by me as long as you aren't sitting next to me getting into my personal space. I can do without feeling your warm thigh pressed up against mine, you know?

Anyway, this morning, I had a wide stancer to my left, and the corresponding unwelcome warm thigh. (This person turned out to be a she, but this wasn't apparent until she got up and, um, walked away from me.) Then my left side was rejoined by another wide stancer, this one a hippie, and definitely a guy. I rode another 15 minutes with a warm hippie pressing against me.

Can I just say, ick?

Also: If you need a belt, and have a large, hairy, pasty white, extremely unpresentable man ass, please don't get up out of the seat next to me and stick nine inches of your immense nasty cheek cleft in my face. I may just bitch slap your lobe. (Then cut off my hand.)

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.

I Should've Got off at Chrissy Field, Part I

So Saturday I was planning to take some photos of the Maltese Falcon crossing under the Golden Gate Bridge at low tide, 2:00 PM. It took me a while to get my incredibly disorganized gear together but eventually I set out at around 12:30 to catch a 29. NextMuni told me the bus would pick me up at my Sunset stop a little before 1. I figured, most of 45 minutes to get to some spot toward the east end of Chrissy Field, I'd have 15-30 minutes to spare, no big deal.

1PM passed and no 29. I asked a girl waiting on the bench next to me, "Have you been here a while?" 20 minutes she said. Eventually two 29s arrived together. The first was a 25th and Geary and the second, according to the driver of the first, was "going allllll the way." Sounded like my bus! So I got on, lugging over 30 pounds of camera gear, and a tripod, and got set for a scenic ride through the park and around Baker Beach.

Little did I know that on this Saturday morning, there had already been an accident on Lincoln. Then there was this:

Mile-long line for Academy of Sciences opening

The California Academy of Sciences finally opened its revolutionary, eco-friendly, glass-enclosed iconic building in Golden Gate Park on Saturday, and welcomed an enthusiastic invasion by tens of thousands of visitors waiting in line for five hours or more.

It took us at least 10 minutes to get into the park from about 22nd and Lincoln, and traffic was still inching along northbound on 19th. The reason for that became clear a few minutes later when we inched by a couple of cop cars behind a rear-end accident in the left lane. But at that point the road was wide open and it was clear sailing to Baker Beach.

After that, we continued to the Golden Gate Bridge, squeezed our way through some confused tourists, and started to enter the dubiously small bridge underpass. A 28 was coming the other way, though, and almost immediately our driver was window-to-window with the other driver saying things like "It won't work!" What definitely would not work was either bus continuing forward. Now the underpass is a very popular route for Muni, tourbuses, cyclists, pedestrians, and of course disoriented tourists in rental cars. Immediately vehicles stacked up behind both buses. It took two cops (who fortunately are easy to find there) and about 10 minutes to get our bus backed up and out of the way and then back into the tunnel, without the 28 in the way this time. At this point it was probably about 1:40, not good, but not panic mode, because Chrissy field was less than 5 minutes away.

Our driver was one of the most cheerful and good-humored drivers I've ever encountered on Muni, which was great up until this point, but I began to lose confidence when he started to say repeatedly, "I don't know my way around here. I've never driven this route all the way up here. I'm not supposed to be here." (Dude, step outside and look at the letters above your windshield.) Just out of the tunnel he stops next to an outbound 29 and asks "Have you got the lefts and rights for this route?"

Yes, we had a driver who had never driven the route and was asking another driver for his route sheet.

Good humor, it turns out, won't actually steer a bus. But the driver, cheat sheet in hand, did manage to find Chrissy Field by about 10 till. Hoping to get a little farther east to get a slightly better vantage point (I wanted to be farther from the bridge so I could get a larger variety of photos), I stayed on.

Unfortunately, after that, we proceeded to take a route that no 29 had ever taken before, and probably never will again - wandering aimlessly through the Presidio until somehow we wound up on California, then on Geary around 4th, and then of course he drove all the way to 25th and Geary and let us off. By then it was about 2:30 and a once-in-a-lifetime photo had already sailed away, so to speak. Clearly, my gambit to save a little less than a mile of walking with my gear had been a foolish one.

So, fuming at this point, I rode a 38 to Park Presidio and waited for a 28, along with about 50 other people (!!) who had apparently been there as long as an hour. Three or four 28s came by in a row and I got on the last one and around 3:00, ta-da!, I was back at the bridge. I wondered, could I get a photo of the yacht? Could it somehow be late? I hurried to the railing at the overlook, to see three huge sails disappearing behind Angel Island at least 5 miles away. The sight lasted maybe 10 seconds. Oh well. I sat at the inbound 29 stop and out of boredom took photos of tourists with a 300mm lens. Tourists are boring subjects, though, so I got back on an inbound 29 (you're thinking, do I have a hole in my head?). Figuring I would wind up taking some photos of sailboats or something I did get off at Chrissy Field this time, then hoofed it to the beach and set up a tripod. (I really dislike carrying tripods and I was determined to get at least a little use out of it.) Turns out, most of the sailboats had left the Golden Gate for parts more interesting. The alternative of taking telephoto photos of couples walking in wind jackets on the icy beach was even more boring than just standing around being bored.

A group of people in their 20s came by and asked, as groups of carefree happy people in their 20s often do upon seeing a tired looking 40 year old guy set up with a tripod and an impressively large white lens, "Would you take our picture with the bridge in the background?" Sure, no problem, I took three okay photos with their point and shoot, and then one of them asked was I there photographing the big ship? No, I missed it, grumble, my bus driver got lost, grumble, et cetera. "Well I think it's still out there; it sailed around Angel Island and then came back."

I really couldn't see a thing - Belvedere (where the yacht was to be moored) was 4-5 miles away, and although it was a reasonably clear day there was still some haze. Even an immense ship with sails over 190 feet high looks pretty small at that distance. Not obvious to the naked eye unless you know what you're looking for. But after some searching ... I thought I saw something ... and even though they look like photos from a beached spy satellite, I did get a few snaps of the Maltese Falcon.

But wait ... that's not the end ...

Stupid Passenger Grouch

How is it that regular riders on a half dozen consecutive stops today couldn't manage to operate the rear doors on an Orion hybrid?

Stupid passenger: "Back door!" Bangs on door. Door doesn't open.

Adjacent passenger: "Just hold your hand there." Door opens.

Next stop.

Stupid passenger #2: "Back door! The back door won't open!" Bangs on door. Door doesn't open.

Adjacent passenger: "Put your hand on it." Door opens.

Next stop.

Stupid passenger #3: "Back door! Open the back door!" Bangs on door. Door doesn't open.

Adjacent passenger: "It won't open if you bang on it. Hold your hand there."

And so on.

Muni was, of course, foolish in calculating that Muni riders would be intelligent enough to operate an assortment of door opening mechanisms. But then again, a rat would have no difficulty learning to operate two different types of doors as long as it received a sufficient stimulation of its reward center upon success. So what is it going to take to straighten out these otherwise high-functioning* passengers? Do we need to install hoppers of food pellets at bus stops?

Good news: Today's driver filled up the bus.

*Remember, what "high-functioning" means to psychologists and behavioralists is more along the lines of "generally does not drop trou in meetings" than "got Ph.D. at age of 16."

You Were Ronstadted (We Blew by You)

Another fine morning of pass-ups on the 29 - we didn't stop for or pick up a single passenger, again, between 19th & Holloway and Ocean & Plymouth. At least today the bus was mostly full.

Grouch Is Back in Session

Now that City College is back in session, the 29 Sunset can start passing up passengers again. Today our driver passed up about 20 people between 19th and Ocean. Not so much a shock except that not only was there room for at least 10 standees in the back of the bus (the aisle was empty) but there were even empty seats in the back.

As I was getting off at Ocean I stopped to tell him: Hey, there were empty seats in the back and you had room for at least 10 more standees. His response:

"I couldn't see."

Well, pardon me, but he never said a word during the whole 35 minute trip, except for "Exit to the front," once, when a passenger was having difficulty opening the rear door. (The door was refusing to open the whole time.) When his bus was filling up he didn't say "Move to the rear." Does he think there's something special about his bus, that his passengers automatically pack the rear of the bus first? And what excuse does he have for not getting up to check that his bus is full before he calls in saying he is full?

Lame.

The passengers who alight on the hill between 19th and Ocean are about fifty percent elderly. No doubt they enjoyed watching the bus go by, and their subsequent ten minute wait for the next chance to get a ride. It's no big shock to them though; it happens all the time.

Yup, the Grouch is back.

Nice!

I'm glad I caught the first one.

Pass-ups meets Most Ignored Federal Law #1

From the driving-is-hard-let's-go-shopping dept.

A flawless double performance by today's morning driver on the 29 Sunset:

1. The bus was an old one with no annunciator. This allowed the driver to strive for complete perfection, by saying not a single word between Irving and Ocean. Not a single stop was announced audibly or visibly in any way. Score: 10.0 / 10.0.
2. And evidently as a Muni driver, when the mood strikes, you no longer need to pick up passengers - even if your bus isn't full. Although the bus had room for 10-20 more passengers, the driver didn't make even one stop between 19th and Ocean - same as yesterday. Score: 10.0 / 10.0.

1) is illegal; next.

With regard to 2), Muni counts a refused boarding as a pass-up only if there is no bus with room following within 3 minutes. But what about when the first bus isn't full? Why should a passenger have to watch a bus go by when it still has space, even if the wait for the next one is "less than 3 minutes."

Not even thinking of picking these people up....

Anyway, I've been on the 29 3 out of 4 mornings this week, and we've blown by 30-40 (would-be) passengers so far. Nice work, Muni!

And also:

Oh my God, this is funny. I thought it was only in South America that people ride on trains. I wonder, is or isn't fare evasion one of the things you could be charged with for doing this? You're not inside a paid area when you're clinging to the outside of a vehicle, are you?

Pass-ups Part 3: Back in School

From the see-ya dept.

The kids are back in school and the 29 is full again in the morning. The bus ran 5-10 minutes late and it was almost standing room when it arrived at Irving. We blew past Noriega, completely full, leaving about 10 people standing there. We passed up every single stop between 19th and Ocean.

The cool thing is, this time, I have pictures! With any luck you'll be able to see the sad faces of people holding out bus passes as we drove by.

Yesterday the bus also ran late and was full when it arrived at Irving. However, there was another bus right behind it, as in, right behind it.

My back-of-the-envelope calculation is that if you board the 29 somewhere between Judah and Wawona, between 8 and 9 in the morning, you will be passed up by at least one out of every 10 buses. Probably closer to one out of 5. If you live on the hill between 19th and Ocean, maybe one out of every 20?

Hey, it's only $1.50; what do you expect?

Most Ignored Federal Law #1

Heard over the radio on the 29 today:

Attention all operators. Federal law requires that all mass transit operators announce all transfer point stops.

Huh. I'd always wondered why two or three N Judah drivers announced "transfer points," particularly the driver who we all know as MAJOR TRANSFER POINT Guy. Personally, I like the guy on the L Taraval who announces "Safeway" and "Walgreens."

Through the wonders of the internet I came upon the source for this. It's a product of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990:

The U. S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) regulations implementing the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA) contain two requirements that are meant to assist persons with vision impairments and other disabilities to use fixed route transportation services. Section 37.167, subsection (b), which applies to public and private entities that operate fixed route systems, requires that:

...The entity shall announce stops as follows:

(1) ... at least at transfer points with other fixed routes, other major intersections and destination points, and intervals along the route sufficient to permit individuals with visual impairments or other disabilities to be oriented to their location.

(2) ... stops on request of an individual with a disability.

Section 37.167 (c) requires that:

Where vehicles or other conveyances for more than one route serve the same stop, the entity shall provide a means by which an individual with a visual impairment or other disability can identify the proper vehicle to enter or be identified to the vehicle operator as a person seeking a ride on a particular route.

I think that the signs and voice announcements on buses would satisfy these requirements, mostly. But of course the signs aren't working about a quarter of the time. I hear and see just fine and I can't tell what street I'm passing on Sunset if I'm on a bus where the sign is out, the windows are scratched, and the driver hasn't said a word in 20 minutes. At least when I'm getting off at Irving, I can make a panic pull if the bus turns off to the right and only have an extra block to walk.

The N Judah, forget it. Without an announcement, the only way you can tell where you are on that train is by looking out the north side windows for street signs. Carefully.

Quiet on the 29 This Week

With school out, the 29 is empty in the morning. It's a good time to do those pass-up stats!

Freezing to Death at Taraval (Where were the 29s? Part 2)

So Saturday around noon it was beautiful out here in the Sunset. I had such plans for photography. I was going to shoot some street candids then in mid afternoon walk from Sloat to Judah up the beach, and take more candids and some IR photos. Part A worked out well; I took the N to Noe, then walked down to Castro Station, and took the L or K or something through the tunnel. I'd never been to Forest Hill station so I got off there and actually walked the 120 or so steps up, then back down. (Damn, that's a lot of stairs. They're complaining about the proposed Chinatown station being 100 feet underground? Forest Hill is already 75 or 80. Like, big deal.)


Then I rode the Taraval to the end of the line. Still, from inside the train, it looked like a beautiful day! I got out and was instantly disabused of that notion. It was only about 3PM but the weather had changed .... It was about 50 degrees and the wind was blowing. Blowing. So much, in fact, that sand had drifted partially across the parking lot opposite Sloat. I tried to walk down to the water but my hair, pockets, and eyes were filling up with sand. I turned around, and so much for that. Problem was, now I was stuck down near Sloat and I needed to be on Judah, and it was just no fun anymore. I needed a bus. I'm embarrassed to admit that I forgot that the 18 runs on 46th; I began my search for it at 45th and kept walking uphill. "Where is the bus stop?" I wondered. I zigzagged my way to Taraval and finally thought, okay, I will just walk up to Sunset and take the 29.

What all this very very long story is coming to is that when I got to the 29 stop, the nextmuni banner read 33 minutes. On Saturday afternoon. In godawful weather.

That's service for ya.

I had lost interest in freezing to death so I took the L back to Van Ness and then the N home. Sooo sloooow. Oh well. I had a nice conversation on the way back, which was unusual, and cool.

Oh. I thought it was kind of neat that the Taraval bus stop faced away from the water, to shield passengers from the weather. But then again, if you're shielding yourself from the weather, how do you see the bus, and vice versa? The striped glass isn't all that transparent from a distance. A well intentioned, but fundamentally stupid, design.

Muni Crushed Their Spirit

Visualize with me the expressions held by the group of about 10 mothers, children, and middle-aged women we passed at a single stop near Ocean this morning. You might expect frustration, annoyance, even outrage. But they're resigned, some chatting, some standing silently. Muni crushed their spirit long ago.

Only a lone woman, a blonde in her 50s, reaches out with her arm - as if she were on a lifeboat watching her rescuers leave without her.

Pass-ups: Part 2

or: Step to the rear of the bus. Like, seriously.

Today, a quiet morning on the 29. Yesterday, fairly busy. We passed up around 3 stations on Sunset, but in reality, the bus was not full. People got on through the front door, a few people squeezed in through the back, and the driver asked, "Move to the back of the bus, please. Move to the back of the bus." Then after there was no more room behind the yellow line, he ceased picking up passengers.

Just so you know the secret code, when the driver says, "Move to the back of the bus," what he really means is, move to the back of the bus.

You three losers standing three feet apart in the back of the bus while there's major frotteurism going on in the front, what's your problem? Being deafened by your iPods and texting your homies is no excuse.

Slightly Less Frequent AM Peak Service ...

Out of curiosity, I've started taking a look at some of the Transit Effectiveness Program's proposed changes, and the very first one is a headscratcher.

According to the summary for the 29 Sunset, there will be "slightly less frequent AM peak service."

I guess I need to post some photos for those of you (apparently including the authors of the TEP) who haven't been on the 29 during the "AM peak."

Jargon Part 1: The Pass-up

If you are waiting for a bus, and when it arrives it is full, and you watch helplessly as the driver leaves without opening the door, you have just experienced a pass-up. Your misery is magnified because the usual reason for a pass-up is that a previous bus (or three) was missing. So not only did you wait for a late bus, but when it got there, it left without you.

SFMTA counts a bus too full to pick up passengers as a pass-up when there is no bus 3 minutes or less behind it that can pick up passengers. But as far as I know, SFMTA does very little counting of pass-ups at all.

The 2008 FY Q1 service service standards report lists pass-up statistics for only a handful of lines, among them my favorites the 29 Sunset and N Judah. When I rode the N regularly into town in the morning I would occasionally, but only rarely, ride trains that were too full to accept passengers at some point. Let's say, one or two mornings out of 20. If the N was 10-20 minutes late it was pretty much a given that some people at Carl and Cole wouldn't make it on.

But the 29 is a different story. I ride it southbound from Judah most every morning around 8:30, and 1-2 days out of 5 the bus is too full for passengers on Sunset starting somewhere around Noriega. During yesterday's cluster fuck, the bus passed or was unable to pick up all the passengers at about 2/3 of the stops on Sunset, cleared out partially at SF State, and then (this was something new for me) filled up again. We blew by about half the stops from 19th to Ocean. And this morning we would have passed by about half of Sunset except that the driver had a half dozen people standing ahead of the yellow line ... and this was a diesel bus without the interlock on the back door steps, which allowed a few people to stand in the stairwell.

Oddly, the pass-up statistics are for the northbound/inbound 29. If the point is to find the pass-ups, the southbound route is the one to study. By my reckoning, 80% of the riders on the bus between Lincoln and Ocean are students headed to either City or State, mostly City. Morning rush hour is always busier than evening rush hour, and southbound is the route in demand in the morning. (You can walk from Balboa Park to City in a few minutes, and there are a zillion ways to get to Balboa Park, so who cares about northbound.) Someone may well have measured 0.0% pass-ups on the inbound 29, but that's not the busy route.

0.0% pass-ups sounds pretty good though.

Where Were the 29s?

I'm sitting on the steps at Millbrae station now, fuming. I know I'm not supposed to rely on Muni to arrive at a particular time, or to arrive at all, but, geez, when the 29 doesn't run for 25-30 minutes between 8 and 9 AM, how is that reasonable? I need to catch at 29 at 8:30-8:40 to get to Balboa Park, to catch a work shuttle that runs to Palo Alto. So, this morning, I checked Nextmuni before I left to see how I was doing timewise, and it said "33 minutes." What? The map showed a bus a little ways north of the park, so I figured it was just some kind of craziness and the bus would be along in about 10 minutes. When I got to the stop there were already a half dozen people waiting, so, obviously a previous bus was either late or missing. Then another 15-20 minutes passed and a hybrid showed up, standing room only. So I got to my shuttle pickup 10 minutes late.

In what way is it even vaguely excusable for what must have been at least two 29s to just not show up during the busiest time of the morning?

Anyway, I took BART to Millbrae, and then jogged up and down the stairs as a southbound train arrived, and departed, while I was buying my ticket.

So that brings me to another question. If Millbrae is an intermodal station, and the Caltrain personnel can clearly see people running up and down the stairs from BART, buying tickets as fast as they can, why does the "other mode" leave people on the platform?

Anyway here I am, steali, er, borrowing some wi-fi, slowly working my way toward Palo Alto and being 1-1/2 hours late for work. At least the weather's nice.

How to Jerk and Be a Jerk at the Same Time

You know that part in Drivers Ed where they teach you to ease off the brake as you come to a stop? And if you don't, even though the deceleration of the car remains constant, your passengers feel like they're about to go through the window? Sudden changes in acceleration are called jerk. It's an actual physics term. You feel a jerk because the car was decelerating until it stopped, but once it was stopped, the brakes couldn't make it go any slower. (D'oh.) So the deceleration went from some more or less constant value, to zero, almost instantly. The result: jerk. If you have braced yourself against the deceleration of braking, and then the braking stops abruptly, you are tossed in the opposite direction.

Or, to put it in simpler terms:

Jerk throws things around. It makes them spill. It makes them fall over. When you carry a hot cup of coffee with no lid on it, you move smoothly; otherwise you shower everything in the vicinity with steaming liquid. Coffee is precious. Move smoothly. But as precious as coffee is, I think people are even more precious.

So, now to the point, if you have a bus full of standing passengers, is there a good reason, dear Muni driver, why you can't brake like they are precious cargo? It may be crazy talk but let's pretend, or even presume that drivers realize they are being paid to deliver passengers to their destinations unbruised and right side up.

Most drivers, I think, do. But some, I swear, they are fucking with us. A few mornings ago on the 29, the driver claimed a couple of spry teenagers and a little old lady with her "jerk." She was either lunging forward, lurching while driving (gas on, gas off, gas on, etc.), or braking suddenly as if each stop sign was a complete surprise. All three passengers went down into the arms of other standing passengers, all at different times. I've had rides on N Judah trains with bad brakes (and spaced out drivers) that were smoother.

If you or I drove like that while taking a driving test, we'd flunk before getting out of the parking lot. In that scenario we have one passenger and both of us are belted in behind airbags.

Maybe every morning drivers could take a couple moments to imagine that they're driving a busload of people they give a shit about. They don't have to actually care, of course, but why not pretend.

And this leads up to How to Waste Your Hybrid's Diesel, but that's another post.