The N-Judah Chronicles

No one would debate the fact that our Mighty N is having a tough time of it these days. If you’re downtown you see a conga line of Ms, Js and Ks going by while you wait forever for an N that shows up late, and is often too full to board.
Other times, you are stranded if you’re going to the Outer Sunset, kicked to the curb at 19th, and you have to walk 20 blocks to get home. Between these, the traffic, delays when cars double park, and the overall decline of Muni under Nat Ford and crew, well, it’s not a great time to be riding the N.
However, examining this proposal to create “express buses” for the N (PowerPoint file here) demonstrates once again that Muni would rather throw away the $3 million Transit Effectiveness Project, which laid out the plan to improve the whole system, and instead implement gimmicky “solutions” to make Muni’s owners feel like something’s being done, and get the owners’ other employees (i.e. the electeds). Just like with plenty of Muni’s other gimmicks, it is a “looks great on paper” solution.
Before we get to it, let’s take a breather and remember how we got here, since it’s clear Muni would like to have you forget that the State of California illegally looted hundreds of millions of dollars from it (and all transit agencies). With the various deals cut by Democrats in the Legislature and the former Governor, the gas tax no longer helps fund roads and transit like it did in the past.
Despite being illegal, that money is gone for good. There has never been a serious proposal by Nat Ford or the MTA to replace this with a new funding source. Instead they’ve downsized the system, and they’ve refused to even consider real revenue measures. Instead they want to parking ticket the city to death, and use other “couch cushion” measures. They simply are out of their league at this point. The fact that they’re dreaming that “operator pay” is the only reason they have money problems just underscores the fact they don’t know what they’re doing.
Likewise, there’s both a huge backlog of maintenance and assorted outdated work rules that are creating problems too. The fact that the MTA can’t hire an out-of-work LRV operator from elsewhere to fill gaps in the workforce is significant too, as is the fact that when Muni wastes money on golden parachutes and big pay for management and big benefits, we then don’t have the money to hire good people we need anyway, union rules or not.
Anyway, now that’s out of the way, let’s look at what is being proposed. As always I have to be a bit suspicious, since Muni’s management hasn’t been that honest with the public. Basically what we have here is an express bus that would serve the Outer Sunset between 19th and 48th, then use an alternate route to get downtown. They claim it would be 1 minute faster inbound and 2 minutes faster outbound. (This is the part where you can tell this was done based on a spreadsheet, and not on any real studies).

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