2013-05-09
post/49972166292
Income inequality along the San Francisco KT light rail lines. Can you tell where it goes past the Tenderloin, and where it passes from the rapidly gentrifying Dogpatch waterfront into Bayview?
Then there’s the chart for Caltrain’s local service. That’s a heck of a difference between Redwood City and Atherton.
2013-03-18
post/45708268921
Many thought the old-fashioned streetcars assigned to Geary looked more and more antiquated, almost like the cable cars on Powell.
Certainly that belief was shared by many merchants on Geary Boulevard, the wide section of the thoroughfare running westward from Masonic Avenue through the Richmond. They were lobbying City Hall for a ‘Great Wide Way’, replacing streetcars with buses … and more parking for automobiles.
Planners who were eying the part of Geary between the Richmond and Downtown echoed this pro-auto sentiment. The Western Addition had been a vibrant community of Victorian homes before World War II. The section along Geary was populated mainly by Japanese-Americans. When World War II started, they were infamously hauled away to internment camps. African-American newcomers, who had come west to work in war industries, largely took their place. By the mid-1950s, there was talk of ripping down the Victorians along that part of Geary to gouge out a broad expressway to get automobiles downtown more quickly.
”What Might Have Been - Geary, a 2008 update of a story from the Market Street Railway’s newsletter in 2002.
This pretty much encapsulates the bad transport decisions of the 1940s and ’50s in the US: replacing streetcar (tram) tracks with widened roads served by buses (always subservient to private cars), a willingness (some would say eagerness) to demolishing houses in minority neighbourhoods in favour of freeways, and merchants demanding more parking.
At least the latter two arguments tend to have fallen out of favour, but business still seem to complain about parking all the time.
In the end the B Geary survived until the late 1950s, but the desired expressway was built in the early 1960s. Current plans for a “bus rapid transit” scheme seem to be as far away as they were in 2008.
2013-02-17
post/43291272580
Four photos from Ryan Lewis, who posts to Instagram under the account name urbanglitch. From his submission to Year of the Glitch:
I have been using the panoramic feature on my iPhone as a tool to create stretched images for a few months.
I wanted my process to be something that I physically had to work at and not just pressing buttons.
Each time I do a panoramic, I have to decide the optimal distance for the shot and path that the subject (in this case, a muni bus) is turning the corner but not coming towards you. The iPhone panoramic feature draws sliver by sliver as you move the camera across the area. As I experimented with the pictures, I was able to find the sweet spot of how to make the buses look stretched.
2012-12-25
post/38793162859
![jamisonwieser:
Next month the SFMTA will paint three blocks of Church Street red and restrict them to only transit and taxis as part of a pilot project.
This proposal aims to reduce delays and improve service reliability for Muni’s J Church trains and 22 Fillmore buses by allowing Muni vehicles to bypass traffic congestion and access transit stops more quickly.
Some of the traffic congestion is created by the trains and busses themselves which block the traffic behind them while boarding, even if it means missing the green light.
The inverse of this is car traffic waiting for the like blocks busses and trains from being able to reach the platform.
During peak hours it can take as much as 5 minutes for Muni vehicles to make it those three blocks, but not for much longer and this pilot is the beginning of a much larger program to transform the Muni system.
[this is good], I hope.
Despite living a block from the J, I tend to walk another five or so to get to BART at 24th and Mission, because the extra ten or so minutes of walking time is usually made up by the fact BART gets to Powell in about five minutes rather than twenty-five. Obviously, that’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison (Muni’s LRVs have to deal with traffic, both from cars on the street sections, and congestion entering the Market Street Subway), but then they’re also both options for my route.
That said, I do tend to take the J home, at weekends, and if I have a lot of reading to do on the way to work, so it’ll be interesting to see if I notice the difference.](http://25.media.tumblr.com/6f7416a344e70450e71e87e4dc2aacc7/tumblr_mfi0rpcXvw1rdzhrzo1_500.jpg)
Next month the SFMTA will paint three blocks of Church Street red and restrict them to only transit and taxis as part of a pilot project.
This proposal aims to reduce delays and improve service reliability for Muni’s J Church trains and 22 Fillmore buses by allowing Muni vehicles to bypass traffic congestion and access transit stops more quickly.
Some of the traffic congestion is created by the trains and busses themselves which block the traffic behind them while boarding, even if it means missing the green light.
The inverse of this is car traffic waiting for the like blocks busses and trains from being able to reach the platform.
During peak hours it can take as much as 5 minutes for Muni vehicles to make it those three blocks, but not for much longer and this pilot is the beginning of a much larger program to transform the Muni system.
[this is good], I hope.
Despite living a block from the J, I tend to walk another five or so to get to BART at 24th and Mission, because the extra ten or so minutes of walking time is usually made up by the fact BART gets to Powell in about five minutes rather than twenty-five. Obviously, that’s a bit of an apples to oranges comparison (Muni’s LRVs have to deal with traffic, both from cars on the street sections, and congestion entering the Market Street Subway), but then they’re also both options for my route.
That said, I do tend to take the J home, at weekends, and if I have a lot of reading to do on the way to work, so it’ll be interesting to see if I notice the difference.
2012-09-21
Compare and Contrast: NFC Edition
With NFC on your #GalaxySIII, you can pay on the go, transfer files with a touch, and more! smgm.us/07R
— Samsung Mobile US (@SamsungMobileUS) September 20, 2012
Due to #clipper’s poor design, you can ride Muni for free if you have an Android phone with NFC. itworld.com/security/29652…
— Mr. Eric Sir (@mrericsir) September 20, 2012
I’m not quite sure that hacking Muni was what Samsung had in mind when they promoted this post, but I quite liked the juxtaposition.
2012-05-07
post/22557426311
Muni Fast Pass Adult 2010 by jamesim on Flickr.
A small cache of SF Muni Fast Passes (2005-2011) to aid a casual study of urban wayfinding, social design processes and their influence on visual culture.
This was the last full year of SF Muni “fast pass” go-anywhere tickets on paper. (The same fare is still available, but only on the Clipper smart card.)
2012-04-06
post/20556278517
2012-04-02
post/20353506787
In 1920, the B line, replaced by the busy 38-Geary in 1956, departed from the spot where the Ferry Building stands today and zoomed out to near Ocean Beach in 35 minutes. The fare was a nickel.
Today a similar $2 trip on the 38-Geary takes 54 minutes, while the 38 Limited, which makes fewer stops, takes 43 minutes.
”After 100 Years, Muni Runs Slower at The Bay Citizen.
As the article notes, there are reasons for this. Even with a bus not a streetcar, there’s an obvious way to get the speeds back up: cut car traffic back to 1920 levels. (Of course, that’s far more easily written than done.)
(Also, a minor nitpick: the Ferry Building was already over a decade old by 1920.)
2011-05-19
post/5621116304
Every morning, I push the STOP button on the handrail of a number 63 bus. It tells the driver I want to get off at the next stop.
I’m very fond of the button. It immediately radiates robustness: chunky yellow plastic on the red handrail. The command, STOP, is written in white capitals on red. There’s a depression to place my thumb into, with the raised pips of a Braille letter “S” to emphasize its intent for the partially sighted. When pushed, the button gives a quarter-inch of travel before stopping, with no trace of springiness; a dull mechanical ting rings out, and the driver pulls over at the next stop. […]
It’s immediately clear what to do with this button, and what the outcome of pushing it will be. It makes its usage and intent obvious.
This is a good button.
”Tom Armitage on Buttons - The Game Design of Everyday Things at Kill Screen.
This was particularly resonant given the truly atrocious way that Muni handles the same problem. A few buses have the same STOP button, but a majority of them (and all of the modern streetcars, along with most of the vintage ones) have pull-cords along the windows. The cords usually have a two to five second lag before the alarm sounds letting you know it’s actually been acknowledged, so often they ping repeatedly.
Meanwhile, unlike London’s simple “the doors are opened by the driver”, when you go to get off the bus, there are at least three different door-opening mechanisms.
Some buses have you pushing the door, others stepping down, and streetcars ask you to push a bar next to the door. Because each is different, each needs labels (often multiple labels, in inconsistent typefaces). Occasionally the door won’t open until the driver switches something, leading to cries of “Back door!” from frustrated passengers (or, more commonly, those watching someone who’s so tied up in being confused they don’t think to call).
You wouldn’t think you could get homesick for a simple button. You’d be wrong.
2011-02-17
post/3347935665
I think I broke the NextMuni live map. (Inspired by Gem’s screenshot.)
