News about MUNI hasn’t been much fun lately. What with the big accident on Saturday, the downed power line on Sunday, and so on, well, I think this is just the beginning of a wave of fail, especially since the State of California is going to go to broke transit agencies and take more money away, just so the Governor can power up his jacuzzi some more.
Monday I got this email from some Loyal Readers I know from elsewhere on the Internet who report a rather troubling situation at Carl and Cole:
Hi Greg…we just saw an incident on the N at Carl and Cole.
We were riding the N a few minutes ago and when the train came out of the tunnel the stairs didn’t go down on the back car, 1505B. It arrived at 4:57 or thereabouts. ( I didn’t catch the car number on the front car.) The doors opened with the stairs still up and a man jumped down to tell the driver. The driver seemed totally unaware of the situation, and when we contacted him to be let off the train (the doors had closed again) he said something to the effect of “Yeah, what do you want?” It took another minute to get the stairs down and the doors opened.
When the doors first opened, a lady fell out of the back car and injured her knee. The driver seemed not to care and he had no idea that anybody had fallen from the train, and the train drove off.
A few passers by helped the injured lady up and found her an ice pack from the Burger Meister, and we reported the situation to the next N that came out of the tunnel.
Would it kill people at MUNI to behave like civilized folks once in a while? Yes stressful job and all that but with the big pay, pension and lifetime employment guarantee, I’d say you should be willing to put up with a little more stress and be a little more courteous to the people who just saw fares rise to cover such expenses. Especially when someone gets hurt.
Next, we have an email I got this morning from another Loyal Reader, again relating an experience that just shows what happens when you teach people it’s ok to be lawbreakers in San Francisco
Hi
Here goes another one of many gripes about our beloved njudah…
Last night about 8:30pm, my outbound njudah train starts to round the corner at 9th avenue in front of the donut shop,gets to judah and is stopped for almost an hour!
A “juvenile disturbance” that required a police report kept a full 3 car train stuck there and caused 3 more outgoing trains packed with people to sit there and wait with no reroute info-no clear announcements and of course no info from 311 system either.
Quite a chaotic scene at that busy corner as loads of people searching for any other way to get home and no cabs in sight. It was almost an hour before any cop showed up and yet that corner was full of police in their cars passing by the whole while. Im sorry to go on but it was a ridiculous incompetence on someone’s part or dysfunctional protocol that led to such chaos for a monday night.
(Insert John Stewart headshake and hitting of head on desk here).
Remember, if you would like to send in an extended tale of woe or win, you can email me here at the site. We do not publish names or emails (although some people don’t mind us printing a first name), and no matter who asks, we ain’t telling no one your private info. Just be concise, polite, and as always, keep an eye out for the things that make living in SF awesome as well those that make it annoying!
Oh Muni drivers… too passed out to notice serious problems.
If someone injures themselves as a result of the train driver, and the train takes off… hit the emergency brake button. Stop the train. Call the police.
Okay, I really appreciate the effort here, but the quality and attention given to this article seems very minimal:
“big accident on Friday”? You mean Saturday?
“kept a full 3 car train stuck there” You mean 2 car? We don’t run three car trains since the last time the NTSB was investigating, after that 3rd car when bowling for platforms on Ocean in 1998.
@david: whoops! fixed.
Do bear in mind that I have a day job, and these last few posts have had to be thrown up without the usual spell/fact checking, but the day job takes priority over blogging on weeks like this and in the rush to post something, I put the wrong day down. Apologies to all, and refunds, of course as well.
As for the content of the email, I simply printed what someone wrote in. You’ll have to take up the criticism of that part with the letter writer, it did sound a bit odd but I figured I’d let the readers discuss.