Subject: Mass Transit Systems

• SF Gov InAction: These Are Not the Budget Numbers You're Looking For

  The excitement stops here. I know ... I know ... that today's the day Gubernatorial Candidate Gavin Newsom releases his budget for San Francisco (a California city he occasionally resides in for campaign purposes). And I know that, when he does, we're all going to die a little. I know. But, the action's still not likely to happen this week.The budget will be a big document. People will need time to go through it. Oh, sure, someone's likely to start shouting about it any second now, b

  June 1, 2009

• Muni's 'New' Notion of Selling Cable Car Sponsorships Was a Great Idea -- In 1982

  Sadly, it's too late to wheedle a cable car sponsorship out of Thelonious MonkWhen Municipal Transportation Agency director Malcolm Heinicke earlier this week proposed selling off "sponsorships" to the city's treasured cable cars as a means of making the city's ends meet, you could almost hear the resultant hemorrhages in city preservationists' cranial blood vessels. After all, the cable cars -- along with the Golden Gate Bridge -- are the city's most treasured and unique symbols. Good sir, how

  June 3, 2009

• Letters

  January 10, 1996

• Off the Books

  Outdated laws are still on the books in San Francisco

  August 1, 2007

• Muni-Me

  Gavin Newsom may be the city's top official, but he's not its highest paid--not even in his own office

  April 11, 2007

• Porkmistress Pelosi

  Madam Speaker says she wants to tame pork-barrel spenders. Takes one to know one.

  January 3, 2007

• Missed Connection

  The multiuse Transbay Terminal project may have shrunk into a really expensive bus station

  March 8, 2006

• Clang, Clang, Clang Went the New Subway

  The billion-dollar Central Subway transportation plan may collapse under its own expanding weight

  February 1, 2006

• Gridlock

  Bill Lieberman, new planning director for the Municipal Transportation Agency, wades into the swamp of San Francisco transit politics

  May 4, 2005

• Bus Stopped

  How an attempt to make the 38 Geary bus work became another senseless San Francisco social cause

  November 24, 2004

• Subwaylaid

  Why the new mayor should spend his political honeymoon taking the doggle out of a boondoggle known as the Central Subway

  December 10, 2003

• Gimme Shelters

  After mortgaging our future in an orgy of budget-related borrowing, the Legislature hatches new orgiastic plans: sleazy tax shelters

  August 13, 2003

• Death, Maiming, Money, and Muni

  The enormous costs -- human and financial -- of bad drivers and lax discipline at the San Francisco Municipal Railway

  August 6, 2003

• Unnatural Gas

  "Environmentalists" make bad transit worse by insisting Muni buy alt-fuel buses

  December 4, 2002

• Letters to the Editor

  Week of November 13, 2002

  November 13, 2002

• Life Is Change

  Even a headstrong columnist can meet his match -- and have to move on

  November 6, 2002

• Training Daze

  In the absurdist musical The Transit Rider, public transportation becomes a metaphor for life

  September 4, 2002

• Letters to the Editor

  Week of April 24, 2002

  April 24, 2002

• Runaway Train

  Why is Muni in such a hurry to win approval for a blindingly complex, potentially risky, $1 billion plan to privatize the city's rail fleet?

  April 10, 2002

• Visionary Thinking

  The "X Plan," a draft of Muni's hopes for the future, offers a glimpse of transit utopia

  December 5, 2001

• When Cesar Reigned

  An aging journalist remembers 1999, when an election became a revolution, and the city changed forever

  October 13, 1999

• Political Economy

  How a Willie Brown real estate venture snagged tens of millions of dollars in government subsidies and opened the way for Democratic heavyweight Angelo Tsakopoulo to make even more money

  August 25, 1999

• Cothran

  July 14, 1999

• Cothran

  June 23, 1999

• Letters

  December 23, 1998

• Letters

  December 16, 1998

• Rewarding Failure

  Streetcars that are too wide, long, and heavy (136 @ $3.5 million per). Bus engines that don't fit and are scrapped (20 @ $116,000 a pop). Manhole covers that take 10 engineers and three months to design (cost: $243,000). Muni's management has produced su

  December 9, 1998

• A Million Here, a Million There ...

  December 9, 1998

• Rewarding Failure

  What's really wrong with Muni? For starters, one third of its employees don't show up to work, causing systemwide delays and costing the agency more that $20 million a year in overtime. First in a two-part special report

  December 2, 1998

• Take BART, Please

  We make Henny Youngman answer hard questions about regional transit and his mother-in-law

  December 24, 1997

• Letters

  April 30, 1997

• The Grid

  April 16, 1997

• Willie's Wild Ride

  The Transport Workers Union contract with Muni is up for renewal, and TWU boss Larry Martin says that anybody who wants to roll back the union's cush work rules, lucrative salary structure, and handsome trust fund is a "racist" and can go to hell. Meet t

  December 27, 1995

• Someone's Getting Thrown Under the Bus on MTA Budget Battle. Who Will It Be?

  Perhaps this graffiti artist was displeased with Muni's budget as well...When Supervisor David Chiu last month placed an item in the Budget and Finance committee's Wednesday agenda rejecting the Municipal Transportation Authority's controversial budget, he wasn't doing it to merely test out the buttons on some new legislative assignment gizmo he found on Craigslist. In crafting such a motion even before the MTA deigned to pass a budget, Chiu presciently took the Groucho-as-Professor Quincy Waggs

  May 4, 2009

• Supes Punt MTA Budget Imbroglio To Special Meeting Next Wednesday

  Oh, they're dragging this out...The ongoing rancor over the Municipal Transportation Agency's woeful budget has transformed into quite a cliff-hanger: First Board President David Chiu fired a shot across MTA and the mayor's bow by crafting legislation allowing the supes to scuttle the budget. Then, at the last minute, Chiu signed off on a tepid compromise -- earning the enmity of his peers. Then said peers resurrected the threat of voting down the budget and Supervisor John Avalos marched over t

  May 19, 2009

• S.F. Ticketing Program Could Open Costly Pandora's Box For City

  Joe EskenaziFormer SPOT director Pat Tobin lectures a mover during a hearing. Contractors claim such hearings denied them their right to due process -- and members of the Police Commission worry this could be true.Wednesday night's hearing regarding a controversial police ticketing program was not nearly so crowded as the last time this matter came before the Police Commission; perhaps last night folks were gawking instead at the half-naked male and female dancers gyrating at a loud Carnival sho

  May 7, 2009

• Bus-ted: David Chiu Triggers Supes-Mayor Showdown Over Muni Budget

  Supervisor David Chiu gives Muni budget the whammy...Whatever David Chiu needs in life -- a faster bike, a more stylish helmet -- he doesn't require assertiveness training. The rookie supervisor and president of the board last month audaciously engineered a motion that would allow the supes to shoot down the Municpal Transportation Authority's budget. Yesterday, he audaciously carried it off -- and he notes that, yes, he has lined up the seven votes required to send MTA's budget back to the bus

  May 7, 2009

• SF Gov InAction: Madatory Composting -- And Your Mother -- Are Back In Town

  Well, that's the thing: I thought my mom would know the Snuggie was a gag gift, but she actually thought it was a real gift. So here I'd planned this completely ironic moment, and she was starting to tear up. She actually said "It looks so comfortable, and I get so cold in winter!" Shit! So what could I do? I ... Oh! Hello! I didn't see you there. It's all right, you're not interrupting anything. I was just explaining how my mother got arrested on her special day. Funny story: Apparently

  May 11, 2009

• S.F. Inquiry Regarding Disability Placards May Miss the (Disabled) Elephant In the Room: It's Just Too Damn Easy To Get a Disability Placard

  Who wants some?Supervisor Eric Mar was on the side of the angels yesterday when he convened a hearing looking into the Municipal Transportation Authority's enforcement of potential disability placard fraud; if Mar can help bring the legal hammer down on able-bodied folks who fraudulently represent themselves as disabled, hog San Francisco's precious parking spaces all day long for free, and cost the city millions in the process, more power to him. And yet, a discussion framed around MTA enforcem

  May 12, 2009

• Cops, Muni in Stress Position Over Reward Posters

  Now with wanted posters!After an an apparent daylong game Thursday of bad cop communication, good cop communication, the San Francisco Police Officers Association reports it's going to be able to put up posters in city buses seeking witnesses to the 2006 murder of a 17-year-old Bernal Heights boy."We want to make sure the POA is seen as a viable contact in the community, where we are showing more than a work effort bringing these cases to court, and that we are concerned about the family," said

  May 21, 2009

• Ironically, bike hater Rob Anderson advances cause of cycling in S.F.

  May 27, 2009

• Terminus: Progressives Stymied as Supes Can't Muter Votes to Reject Muni Budget

  Today's very special noontime Board of Supervisors meeting clocked in at an extremely svelte 50-odd minutes. But, as was always the case in the ongoing wrangle over the Municipal Transportation Agency's budget, you could have boiled the whole thing down to a momentary exercise: Clerk: What'ya think, Sophie Maxwell? This Budget good enough? Sophie: Suits me! And there you go. Once again, Maxwell decided that the act of rejecting Muni's budget and forcing the MTA to draw it up again from scratch w

  May 27, 2009

• Bicyclists Pack City Hall -- No Spandex in Sight

  Anna McCarthyValet?Bike parking was scarce at a City Hall hearing this morning as bike advocates arrived downtown in droves donning helmets and fluorescent pink identification stickers reading, "Double the number of bike lanes." Although helmets, U-locks, and other bicycling accessories abounded, many had traded their spandex for khakis and collars. This was no rowdy critical mass crowd: This crowd meant business. With the hearing room full by 9 a.m., bicyclists filed into the overflow area to s

  June 26, 2009

• Muni Union Head: Early Switch to Manual Power In Train Tunnel, Fingered for Weekend Crash, an 'Understood Practice' Among Drivers, Management

  Jim HerdA pair of culprits have emerged as the potential causes for the weekend's nasty Muni crash at West Portal station: Sources within Muni have told the media that the veteran driver reported he blacked out -- which wouldn't have been a problem if the driver didn't shift his train from automatic to manual operation while coming out of the tunnel, an apparent violation of Muni policy. Irwin Lum, the president of the Transit Workers Union, confirmed to SF Weekly that the driver told him he bla

  July 20, 2009

• In the Nick of Time: One Week After Horrific Muni Crash, Trial Lawyers' Convention Hits San Francisco

  'A barrister, my dear sir, is a taxi plying for hire. That is the fine tradition of our trade.'If you've got some loose carpeting, creaky staircases, or, say, have been allegedly flouting safety rules to pad your public transit agency's on-time performance -- this would be a good time to tidy up.  With eerie timing, the annual trial lawyers' convention hits San Francisco on Saturday, exactly one week after the massive Muni Light Rail Vehicle crash at West Portal station that hospitalized ne

  July 22, 2009

• The Muni Paradox

  August 29, 2007

• Muni Tax Shelter Deal Could Lead to More S.F. Rail Carnage

  Jim HerdDid promised millions froma shady tax shelter deal blur Muni's judgment?​A month before investigators began to sift through train wreckage to determine the cause of last week's Muni light rail crash, officials examining deadly transit accident in Washington D.C. discovered a defect that could eventually lead to problems with San Francisco trains. According to Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal, and other outlets, Washington transit officials failed to replace worn-out rail cars be

  July 28, 2009

• Noe Valley and Mission residents say Google shuttles are evil

  September 2, 2009

• NYC's Metropolitian Transporation Authority Threatens Man Marketing S.F. Muni T-Shirts

  Joseph Moore is K-onfused​ A few weeks back, San Francisco resident Joseph Moore got so fed up with Muni that he decided to express his disdain via custom-made clothing. The resultant T-shirts utilize various San Francisco Metropolitian Transportation Agency line names, which appear in black block letters surrounded by a circle of color, and then use that lettering to make a sarcastic critique -- for example, the "N" symbol becomes "N-one"; the "L" becomes "L-ate," the "J," "J-acked," the "T,"

  September 3, 2009

• Safe Bet: Newsom's Pot Shots at Longer Parking Meter Hours Mean You'll Be Suffering More on Muni

  Jim HerdWhoosh! There goes your parking revenue! ​As first reported on Streetsblog and then this morning in the Chronicle, Mayor Gavin Newsom has made clear that he's no fan of alleviating Muni's revenue headaches by extending parking meter hours. Muni's pledge to study the merits of extended parking meter hours was one of the only takeaways for progressives during the painful Muni budget dustup from earlier this year; let Newsom's current behavior be a warning to anyone else who sees fit to s

  October 5, 2009