Subject: Passenger Transportation

• Who do you trust less to run your transit system? MUNI, or the City?

  July 4, 2007

• MUNI To Run Faster, Cheaper and On-Time Under New Act

  August 2, 2007

• Sucky MUNI Probably As Good As It'll Get — an SF Weekly analysis

  December 5, 2007

• MTA War Is Brewing on MLK Day as Archduke Gavin Newsom Inspects His Troops. It's ...

  January 21, 2008

• Newsom’s Muni Budget Shell-Game Not New

  January 28, 2008

• Killer MUNI Ignored for Carbon Crusade

  February 14, 2008

• Cost of Muni FastPasses Probably Won't Go Up

  March 19, 2008

• The Clickable Clit: "Working in a Real Office Makes Cybersex Difficult"

  October 15, 2008

• 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

• "19th Avenue: I Know, I Know, I Know." - Gavin Newsom's Message on Transit

  By Benjamin Wachs I have to admit something before I begin: Gavin's ability to be boring is stronger than my ability to be funny. I'm slipping. I think I can hold the line for seven-and-a-half hours, but if he posts a sequel (perhaps "State of the City: Revolutions," or "State of the City: Attack of the Moderates") I'll be overwhelmed. In the meantime, here's the State-of-the-Citysode on Transit. For the Citysode on Healthcare, Education, and the Environment, click the respective links.

  December 5, 2008

• Letters

  January 10, 1996

• Transit Spotting

  A transportation activist points to inefficient and costly projects like the Central Subway.

  March 25, 2009

• Hope, Change, and Parking

  How support for a modest condo project should give us all hope for the city's future.

  January 21, 2009

• Controversial police ticketing program gets makeover

  October 15, 2008

• Subway Daze

  BART fears city subway project poses danger to busy downtown S.F. station.

  July 23, 2008

• Baby you can drive my TAXI

  February 14, 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

• Best Scrolling View

  May 11, 2005

• 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

• 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

• Visionary Thinking

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

  December 5, 2001

• Death and Taxis

  Why can't Hattie Neelon get to a funeral? Well, have you ever tried to get a cab in S.F.?

  August 16, 2000

• When Cesar Reigned

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

  October 13, 1999

• Cothran

  July 14, 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

• Take BART, Please

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

  December 24, 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

• 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

• 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

• 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