A Quick Update From the Mayor’s “Town Meeting on MUNI” AKA Fake Question Time and a WTF on NextMuni

Loyal Readers: I attended the Mayor’s “Town Hall Meeting” (aka what some people call Fake Question Time) this morning. I will write more later, but for now, I have posted some short raw videos at my YouTube account – the video quality is cameraphone-esque, but the audio is OK. I also have a few photos up at my Flickr account”

There were many ironies surrounding this meeting – from the chaotic traffic mess on Stockton Street I ran into, trying to get back to Market St. to the following email from Reader Melissa, regarding some oddities with NextMuni. Here’s what she had to say:

Hi,

Nasty surprise on a Saturday morning: arrival times at Carl & Cole are no longer available on NextBus.com

I had come to depend on real time predictions at my stop in order to deal with over crowded and delayed trains. If there was a gap of more than 10 minutes between trains, I knew the train would be too crowded to board by the time it reached Carl & Cole. I could take a bus, a taxi, or call into my 9am meetings from home.

After talking with a 311 rep this morning, I learned that NextBus, not Muni, decides which stops to use when reporting data.

If anyone else is interested in suggesting that NextBus add their stop to the real time predictions website, contact NextBus directly.

If my stop isn’t added back, I will probably start driving. 🙁 I’ve had it with Muni. 😉

Melissa brings up an interesting point, ironic, especially when everyone at the meeting was falling all over themselves to talk about how great expanded NextMuni is. I personally had an odd little hiccup when I tried my usual N-Outbound bookmark on my phone, and found it nl longer worked, since it seems they’ve made some adjustments now that the N goes back to Caltrain.

I also noticed they now mark two stops for inbound trains at Duboce and Church: one is the famous Duboce and Church Stop but the other is new to me on NextMuni, the Tunnel Entry Point Near Church, whose stop is one minute away from….Duboce and Church?

It would seem like the interruption at Carl and Cole is temporary, but if anyone has more complete information, please let us know. I would have been happy to put this in the question pile at FQT, but alas, I’d left before this message arrived.

However, given that they didn’t answer any of my questions about the missing scramble signals at 9th/Irving and 9th/Judah, and my question about a potential shortage of streetcars once the Central Subway is built…well, you get the idea…sigh….

UPDATE: Reader Melissa sends us this update, with some notes from NextBus/NextMuni:

Hi Greg,
I hope other people whose stops have been removed will be able to convince NextBus to add them back.
I thought about canceling my plans today so that I could attend Newsom’s Muni meeting. From your description, it sounds like it’s a good thing that I didn’t. 😉
FYI below is a response I received from NextBus.
Cheers,
Melissa
Thank you for alerting us to the problem. Do to a configuration problem
for the N-Judah, predictions are not currently available for stops at Carl & Cole and Carl & Stanyan.This will be fixed as soon as we can receive corrected data from Muni.
Michael Smith
NextBus


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6 Responses to A Quick Update From the Mayor’s “Town Meeting on MUNI” AKA Fake Question Time and a WTF on NextMuni

  1. Mark Ballew says:

    I’d also like to add that trains were running “manually” around noon time, creating massive delays.
    That’s not the only thing that is broken on Nextbus, but it sounds like they are on top of the problem(s).
    From the rescuemuni mailing list:
    From: Michael Smith (msmith at nextbus.com)
    Mark,
    As part of a very large configuration change, there are 3 stops on the N-Judah that did not make it into the configuration. There are probably additional missing stops that we do not know about yet. This of course will be fixed ASAP.
    With respect to the 6-Parnassus, what are the exact symptoms? We haven’t seen any problems with that line, including on the WAP site.
    Mike

  2. Huntington G. Curare says:

    I’ll verify the noontime delays on the N — I got to the 19th Ave. stop at noon and it took me the better part of an hour to get from there to Powell on a packed train.

  3. Mike says:

    Looks like all my bookmarked URLs will need to be redone. At least it appears that they have listed combined output on stops which serve multiple routes (e.g., Castro Inbound shows LM along with my requested KT line).

  4. Nancy says:

    I’m glad that we are keeping up the heat on Da Mayor. I’m concerned about what’s going to happen to the K; I go to City College and the changes to the K line are very confusing. I’ll just bet that they are going to use this to eliminate more K cars even though there must be thousands of people who use that line to commute to City. I’ve never seen MUNI in such a mess in all the 40+ years that I’ve lived here.

  5. Muhathefrog says:

    “DO to a configuration problem”? Looks like Michael Smith doesn’t know how to spell. How can you expect him to run Next Bus with such amazing skills?

  6. MIchael Smith says:

    NextBus definite doesn’t decide which stops are predicted for. We show all stops that we have data for. Unfortunately, as part of a very large configuration change that was made on Saturday, the data for several stops, including Carl & Cole was not available. This will be fixed within a couple of days. Sorry for the inconvenience.
    Michael Smith
    Director of Engineering
    NextBus

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