Ever had one of those days where you finally get a moment to sit down and ask “just what is in the water around here?”
I am in the process of having one right now, and a bit of it seems MUNI related. Today I had a day where I was up early and had a laundry list of errands, work-related and not, all over the place. You know, the kind of day that’s just perfect for a rock-solid system like MUNI. So I got out of the house and started down the list.
Eventually, I had to take an N to Church/Duboce. So far so good, everything went fine. In fact, I had time to sit down and get a coffee and watch the infamous J Church cars go by. Well sort of – it seemed like at least 1/2 were out of service for training, and the rest weren’t making all their stops. In fact I got to watch a mini-revolt of people who patiently waited for an oncoming J car at a major stop and wave their fists in the air as it sped on by, ignoring them.
After taking care of a personal errand at mid-day, I had a whole host of stupid little work-related errands, all of which had to be done quickly, and, well, you can guess how that went. If anyone wants to know why the J Church line gets delayed so much, the interminable wait I had at the end of the line while all the trains stacked up is one clue.
Finally, I made it back to Duboce and Church to head back home and do more work. As you can see in the pictures I took, for some reason the stairs wouldn’t go down on the second car, so they had to uncouple the cars, do something, then hook them back up, all the while more trains (including a second N) stacked up behind it.
Now, fortunately they were able to fix it, but I decided to get on the next N, since I knew it would not be crowded. That’s also when things got really weird.
As I and a few other citizens boarded, we were treated to an unitelligble noise on the PA system, presumably from the driver. Since this was a MUNI car, it’s not like we could understand much beyond something about “a lot of wrecks” and a general comment about “hiring out of town managers.” The others on the N and I looked at each other and once we got through the Sunset Tunnel (where, at one point we actually went backwards), we began to wonder if we should get off, lest this be our ride on the train driven by the person who’s decided to “check out” and doesn’t care who they take with them.
Eventually I made it back to the Irving/9th intersection, where the lack of response to the safety campaign by MUNI and the Mayor reared its ugly head as both a car and an old lady almost got killed by all the mayhem at the green light. After going to the post office where I got more annoying news, I decided to park it, post a blog entry, and take an hour for myself to just relax, before heading out and doing another 2 dozen stupid errands.
How about you? See any MUNI breakdown drama today? Post in the comments below!
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I got out just before the shutdown and was lucky enough to be able to catch BART home. But I sure felt sorry for the people caught in the mess.