Oh My God, It’s Finally Here: The Transit Effectiveness Project Report….

For the better part of a year, news of the ongoing Transit Effectiveness Project has been kicked around as meetings, studies and whatnot have been devoted to try and figure out where and what MUNI needs to change in order to be useful to San Francisco’s citizens. I’ve always encouraged people to get involved in the process, mostly because if people just let the geniuses run the show, the result is likely a mess.
The Chronicle has a recap of the report’s release, and you can go to the TEP site itself and download copies of the various reports. There’s so much here that it’s hard to really comment on it without reading it, so for now I’ll hold off any big postings until I read it for myself. If any of you have comments as you check it out, please feel free to discuss in the comments section.
And remember: while some of the report inevitably is a bit of the No Duh Institute variety (gawrsh Mickey, folks want the buses to run on time! We needed a study to tell us that), some of the other parts of the study I saw a while back were kind of interesting in showing how people use the system as of today.
MUNI hasn’t updated its routes in 20+ years, and let’s face it, 20 years ago there were plenty of parts of the City where no one lived, that now house thousands of people, and we still have many “legacy” routes that are the lineal descendants of streetcars (and streetcar companies) long gone.
Enjoy the transit-y goodness, fellow citizens!
UPDATE: The good folks at the Transbay Blog did a nice quick summary of the changes in the TEP. Go check it out!

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3 Responses to Oh My God, It’s Finally Here: The Transit Effectiveness Project Report….

  1. transit troublemaker says:

    lots of platitudes, not much real improvement. tinkering with the route structure might improve service here and there, but the hard issues of 10% of service never running, drivers taking a meal stop st will arenot addressed. promising signal preempts doesn’t explain the ones in place now but not used.
    Adding diesels on Mission is a BAD IDEA!
    Where is transit lane enforcement on the currently designated streets?
    Plans for the 38/L are exemplary, shifting the mix toward more Ltds. doesn’t take an 18 month study, but it hasn’t happened yet.

  2. mike says:

    tt – I disagree. This isn’t just more 38Ls, it’s a h*ll of a lot more limited service across the board. I, for example, live on the 71 but rarely ever take the 71L because I leave and return after its normal hours. Under TEP, I would have 71L service at all times of day except late night.
    Furthermore, there will be a 5L where there was no limited service before. 14L? Expanded to run all day (at real frequencies, not the infrequent one right now). 28L? Expanded. There will be a 49L where there was none before. Just these additions alone, which are basically cost nothing, would constitute a major improvement (the 5, 14, 28, 38, 49, and 71 combined carry a total of 30% of MUNI’s bus ridership – in fact, they carry more than all the LRV lines combined). And if priority signaling gets implemented, that will be even better. Furthermore, as buses run faster, each bus/driver will be more productive (in terms of completing more runs in a given shift), and headways/service will improve.

  3. M37 says:

    I wholeheartedly agree with tt.
    Besides, the whole point of rerouting the buses under the pretext that “o, the horror, there are two buses serving this three-block stretch” is ridiculous. Given the schedule issues, I’d take two buses over one any day – at least I’d have two different equally unreliable options instead of being dependent on only one unreliable option.
    Another thing is, this plan, if approved, would undoubtedly make many MUNI users take two or three buses instead of one or two, respectively. This would increase travel times and, putting it mildly, general happiness of the commuters. I am ready to deal with a hassle of changing buses once; two different transfers would make me switch to driving.

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