The MUNI Fail Interview Director’s Cut
Did an interview for Wired over the weekend about MUNI Fail. The finished post is quite good, but I thought you kids deserved the entire bloated Director’s Cut:
What have some of your bad experiences been with Muni?
The absolute worst was about a month ago. I believe there was a problem in the West Portal tunnel. I was taking my son to school. The minute we got to the Church Street platform we knew there was a problem. It was packed and trains were lined up the length of the tunnel. None of the MUNI employees had any idea what was going on. We
left the station, waited 15 minutes for an F, as about 5 empty shuttle buses drove by a full platform, as MUNI had decided the shuttles would start operation at Castro Station. When we finally made it to Castro we were packed into a shuttle bus that sat, overfull, for 20 minutes before taking off for West Portal. By the time we got to West Portal
it was a mob scene. We started walking to school. Got there an hour and a half late.
What struck me the most about this, and other MUNI incidents, isn’t the initial problem itself; a public transportation system is bound to have breakdowns; but the total lack of communication between different points in the system and the total lack of plan about what to do when breakdowns happen. And the casual disregard for its riders. If a
retail company had customer service this horrendous they’d be out of business.
You also created the http://hasgavinnewsomresignedyet.com/ site, right? What are some of your complaints about the Mayor?
I voted for Gavin Newsom. I elected him to run the city. He’s not doing that. The city is in terrible shape. We’ve got a broken transit system, a terrible homeless problem, shit on the streets, a disfunctional local government, bridges falling into the bay, and a mayor who’s checked out. I understand he’s upset his campaign for governor didn’t pan out, but you can’t just take your ball and go home. We’ve still got a city to run and the person we elected to run it either needs to start doing his job or pass it on to someone who wants it. His heart’s clearly not interested in being mayor anymore.
He’s pulled off the remarkable feat of making Sarah Palin look reasonable by resigning her job when she didn’t want to do it. She, at least, had the guts to stand aside and let somebody else do the job she wasn’t interested in.
Are some of the service “difficulties” at Muni partly the result of the Governor’s freeze on state public transit spending?
I have no idea. I’m just a rider. I elected somebody to be my representative to figure this crap out. They’re not representing me. It’s almost insulting that they haven’t even attempted to pass the buck to the Governor. The major difficulties I see right now aren’t budget-oriented or service-oriented; they’re communication oriented. The mayor isn’t engaged in the problem so he’s not communicating what’s going on to his constituents. The service cuts aren’t about fixing the problem; they’re about keeping MUNI alive long enough that they can dump a still breathing carcass on the next administration. I have no reason to believe money would fix the problem; they’d just create a mess on a larger scale.
How would you improve service on Muni?
Again; I’m just a rider. I elected someone to take care of this. I run a small local business. We have clients. We try not to miss deadlines, but sometimes it happens. You get on the phone as soon as you think it might happen and reset their expectations, you take the hit, and you move forward. But above all; you communicate. And if the people you’ve put in charge of something aren’t handling it correctly, you roll up your sleeves and you get involved.
How does an unreliable Muni affect the livability of San Francisco?
The bare-bones basic requirements for a city are roads and sanitation. Pack people this close together and they need to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible. When a city can no longer move its citizens around in an orderly fashion the city can’t function. And with all the pieces in SF as interconnected as they are, a small break anywhere will bring the entire structure to a halt.
As for sanitation; I’m addressing that in my next project.
