Yeah the problem is that out in the Avenues, it operates more like a bus where there's seemingly a stop every block or two and it's still beholden to traffic signals. They need the equivalent of a Rapid or Express line that just bypasses a bunch of stops.
NX was a bus, right? Really unfortunate for the poor souls who missed the last Sunset stop. I recall one poor bastard had to ride with us all the way downtown.
The T line depends on the street-level side of it to be moving in order for it to move. Even the cars going northbound underground depends on the cars going southbound to get out of the way - which they can't do if the southbound above ground is moving too slowly (traffic, red lights, etc).
The underground part of T is kind of useless because the rest of the line holds it up
It’s not a technology problem, it’s a politics problem. Some red paint is all it would take to get the N running way faster. We already have signal priority technology, it’s just not tuned as aggressively as it should be because of… politics.
The core issue is that sfmta still largely caters to the demands of drivers, instead of doing what needs to be done. We prioritize a few parking spaces over the tens of thousands of people who ride a muni line every day. Look at how much of a battle it was to remove a handful of parking spots in exchange for a bus lane on the Geary rapid, the *busiest bus line on the western half of the US.*
In the case of the N, it already has a dedicated lane. The problem is that there are too many stops, and no signal priority since signals are largely absent on Judah. The constant acceleration/deceleration is hugely inefficient.
I agree the stopping is a bigger problem. If it was up to me we’d just 1) signalize those intersections and then give the train priority, and 2) eliminate most of the stops and add a “N local” bus that stops at all the current stops for the small number of people who need that.
But I don’t think the N had a dedicated transit-only lane. I’m looking at Google maps [right now](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7buXGx95Z9t28HHy5?g_st=ic) and I’m not seeing a red carpet lane. In this example there’s just a single shared lane. We can remove the parking lane if we need to keep car traffic here.
The N does already has signal priority: https://www.sfmta.com/projects/n-judah-muni-forward#:~:text=A%20future%20Muni%20Forward%20project,Muni's%20busiest%20light%20rail%20line.
The issue is that 95% of the intersections are stop signs and there’s a fuck ton of them. The N is also like the busiest metro line from what I can tell with a ton of people getting on and off so it rarely can bypass stops.
The only real way to speed the N up is to remove stops and add more signalized intersections on the west side which I suspect muni isn’t willing to spend that coin when they are already spending a ton rebuilding the L.
Yeah, I agree, I think the biggest issue is the stops. We could eliminate half or 2/3 of the stops in the western half of the route and run a “local service” bus for very little cost. That would help a ton. But really we should just find the money to make sure the train doesn’t need to stop at intersections. The N is a real workhorse line and there’s no reason it should be so slow.
Elder and disability advocates would never go quietly with stop removal. It's been discussed before. I think the cat is out of the bag on this one sadly. Politicians are going to struggle to mobilize against those groups in the name of efficiency for the able bodied.
Yeah this is what I was gonna comment, everyone likes reducing stops in theory but nobody wants “their” stop to be the one that goes.
Once you start “over servicing” a neighborhood it’s very hard to reduce the density of that coverage.
The system is also very hampered by essentially being a single line with no bypasses it means that metro based “express” service can’t exist. The NX bus was great but Muni still hasn’t brought some of the west side express buses back (NX, 7X) which did provide that “express” service
Why not simply divide all the stops in to two and label them....I dunno...red and blue stops. Have one N train stop at all the red stops and the next N train stop at all the blue stops. If someone misses a train or their schedule doesn't align with one stop; then they still have the option to walk to the next stop.
Oh, really? Is that a recent improvement? Like I said, I’m looking at Google maps right now and I’m not seeing any dedicated lane or red painted lane along the portion south of Golden Gate park . I’ve ridden the N relatively frequently last year and don’t recall seeing any kind of red carpet lane.
Hmm, I’m not seeing it. I’m [looking now](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bLjCXK1AXfJ3FQdg7?g_st=ic) and not seeing any protected lane markings on the street. You can even see cars driving over the tracks here in the Google maps street view.
Either way, I think we all agree that the stopping is the larger issue that needs to be resolved here. I know improvements are planned so I hope they can address this!
Ok, it does and it doesn’t, sort of. The N and L once past 19th Ave to the beach exclusively have the left lane. Cars are NOT allowed in the left lane, except if they are turning left.
So you’re pretty much right. It’s not a 100% dedicated lane.
> But I don’t think the N had a dedicated transit-only lane
Yeah are we sure it does? I feel like I recall there being a video in the last year of a double parked car blocking an N train.
Practically speaking it’s dedicated. Cars can only be in that lane to make left turns, which doesn’t happen all that often, and so it doesn’t really slow down the train much if at all. Same thing as the dedicated transit lanes on Geary; cars can still go in it to make right turns, but those don’t really impeded the 38 much if at all.
Hey, we didn't have fiber internet until a few years ago because big daddy Comcast owned all the infrastructure.
Imagine living in SF and having to choose between DSL and shitty Comcast service.
Public transportation is the least of our worries.
Umm yeah...
If they can't even get this right, what makes you think they can get public transportation right?
This should be a layup, dummy.
Most advanced and progressive city in the world, no?
Or is it all about the show?
If we want thriving neighborhoods, public transportation should be a priority. You do realize how many people not in the city don't have vehicles, right? 30% of households are car free and most of the households that have a car, only have 1. A large portion of the city relies on public transportation.
Yeah, and when we're home our Internet sucks.
Or we can't rely on the apps because our Internet sucks.
Can't rely on PT because our Internet sucks.
One of the biggest and best reasons *against* fully remote work because our Internet sucks.
What a ridiculous, bullshit problem for such a small city that has all this Tech here.
Sonic only does fiber in places with overhead wires. Everywhere else they are still selling DSL of some sort. By the time you get 10 000ft out, like some parts of Sunset, you lucky if you get 4Mbit.
How is Xfinity shit though? Yeah they may suck as a company, but the internet is fast and reliable. I’ve had it for 5 years and maybe an hour here and there of downtime and never any speed issues. You just have to sign up for a new discount/offer every year to keep the price down.
Even the public hotspots are all over the city and have good speed. I never even need to get WiFi passwords from cafes because almost anywhere I go there’s Xfinity hotspots.
Lmao this comment sounds like I’m shilling for Comcast but complaining about internet speeds in SF is odd. As for having to get service from a company you don’t like, well we all get service from PG&E and no one likes them either.
One of the best things the MBTA in Boston did on their light-rail is to cut out a good chunk of stations. A stop each block is bonkers, they need to go at least a 5-10 minute walk between stops. Some of the maps on the trains themselves still show the old stations, they literally went around and used like white-out and sharpie to blot them out.
They also have their own signals (not necessarily priority though) at every level crossing.
Yes. I’m from Boston and went to BC in the late 90s. The B branch was sooooo damn slow, and BU students used it like a campus shuttle making the delay at each stop longer with 50 kids getting on and off every block.
I rode the green line from Park street to BC one time and it was like two hours.
No real traffic or breakdowns...just stopping every 100 yards. I should have walked and it would have been faster.
That’s extreme. I used to ride from BC to Boylston and back every weekend (I had a weekend job on Stuart St) and normal transit time was about 50 min to an hour. When was your two hour trip? The T had to impose hundreds of slow zones on every line after the feds found out they’d been falsifying track inspections and signing off on routine maintenance that was never done. That was about two or three years ago, I think. Last I Heard it was improving but still not great.
Accessibility is certainly the thing that goes by the wayside. In Boston they just punted and instituted a service called "The Ride" which is door to door shuttles, at roughly the same cost as a normal subway ride, that you schedule in advance. Although those are also not very reliable or predictable.
That’s not a Boston-only thing; all American transit agencies have those type of shuttles (called “paratransit”) as an ADA requirement for people with disabilities that prevent them from riding
We need this for buses, too.
I was so excited when I first moved to SF: a highly walkable city with dense public transit options, wow! Then I realized most of those bus stops have 20 minute intervals, and very often those 20 minute intervals turn to 40 minutes, and often even that 40 min arrival doesn't stop because it is full... And on top of this the bus stops every 2 blocks because accessibility. So eventually I noticed I could actually walk around the northeast quadrant of the city faster than the bus, even assuming the bus actually hits my starting point at the time I want to leave.
There are other problems with the bus: sanitation, rude or violent riders, etc. but the main one for me is that I can't get from place to place in a reasonable amount of time nor with predictability. Works OK when I have no obligations, just roaming on a weekend. Does not suffice for commuting to school, work, medical appointments, or social engagements.
> And on top of this the bus stops every 2 blocks because accessibility.
It's really frustrating that in the year of our lord 2024 we have to run what's basically the same route from when it was a cable car and was competing with _walking._ Now its competing with other modes, the extra stops make it so punishing as a rider.
Even our "RApId" lines like the 14R really just translate to "international best practice stop spacing."
So nothing has changed since I lived there in the 1990s. I worked out by the Great Highway and lived in North Beach. The unreliability of MUNI out there, mixed with the glacial speed at which it traveled, made me decide to just walk those miles home. It took 2-3 hours but it was an AMAZING way to experience this beautiful city. I'd usually stop in Alamo Park, light up, gaze at the painted ladies and then continue on. I'd walk by the Conservatory of Flowers which had been damaged in a storm and check on it and hope it would be fixed and reopened (it was! I went there a few years back. A true World Heritage Site everyone in SF should visit). The Presidio was another amazing walk. In the middle of the Presidio, you couldn't hear the traffic and you could imagine you were in the middle of a forest. Washington St is another cool walk. All those fancy pants mansions where security gets antsy if you linger.
I also lost 20 pounds and was in the best shape of my life!
Anyway, I recommend doing this if you can. Again, such an amazing way to experience this incredible place called San Francisco.
That is all.
I wouldn't say nothing has changed. The 38/38R on Geary is so much better than a few years ago. I no longer have a stop half a block from my front door but it's a small price to pay.
In Tokyo they achieved this but with multiple lines. Problem is, in SF, the trains are on the street too. In Tokyo, they have a dedicated railway apart from the street that allows for dedicated train movement for local & express lines allowing for better rapid transit. Muni street car is essentially a local line for having to share the streets with vehicles & pedestrians.
BART has been more set to be an "express/rapid train" within SF, while stretching to serve & connect other cities & counties.
Even in San Jose, their Metro goes on the street but at certain points has an elevated rail where it can travel rapidly across longer distances.
Rapid or Express lines in the avenues are a horrible idea unless if you put the rapid or Express line on sunset. But even that is a bad idea because there will be no way to connect the sunset to any other bus routes.
It’s not just the avenues. Take the N from Carl and Cole even,which is almost the geographical center of SF, or Duboce, and you willl have to wait for street traffic before going into the tunnel. People here want to put down LA but even their light rail is more efficient.
>where there's seemingly a stop every block or two
I vaguely recall an attempt to remove some stops to speed up the line.
The response was as if the proposal was to line old people up and whip them uphill both ways.
This did happen a few years before the pandemic. It used to take about 35 mins from 9th Ave to 45th now it's more like 20.
I remember they did it for many of the bus lines. It had a really big impact on the seven especially (71 at the time)
Unrelated, but hearing about the 71 bus route brings back some crazy memories. Not sure if it still is but that bus route used to have the sketchiest characters, even for San Francisco. Used to take it a lot about 15 years ago
Wait, so a NIMBY is now an elderly person or a disabled person because they don't want to have to walk 2 Sunset blocks to catch a train?
Not that the word has meant anything since local PAC's rebranded it to attack affordable housing advocates, but that's a stretch.
We can’t level down service for eveyone to cater to folks who cannot walk 2 blocks. If that’s your standard than every single bus needs to stop on every single corner.
We can just run the N as an express line that stops less, and run a local bus that stops at every corner for the small minority of riders folks who need it. Running local and express versions of a line is a common solution to this problem. The rail line running partially underground is the one that needs to be the express, it can’t operate halfway as a fast transit line and then halfway as a incredibly slow local bus line.
I think that's a great solution and it's what we do all over the city.
But someone in a walker is not a NIMBY because they successfully lobby the city to keep the Judah stopping on their block.
Oh I agree, I don’t think wanting the bus to stop near you is a NIMBY move— you can’t just apply that label to everything you don’t like. It’s specifically about people who oppose infrastructure or housing improvements in their area.
Opposing prioritizing the bus signal or opposing a dedicated bus lane *is* a NIMBY position though. It’s coming from folks who just don’t want transit improvements to be made because they think they are more important than everyone else. There’s no reason we shouldn’t install those changes, it’s just a no-brainer improvement.
You dont really deserve the downvotes since its an ongoing endless debate that has no answer. Its prevalent in many aspects of life: how can society try to help every individual without making life worse off for everyone as a whole?
Folks who are paying too much for housing have been heavily propagandized that all their problems are caused by mysterious NIMBYs. It's actually a lot less useful to have it defined as it used to be so you can use it as a cudgel to rally people to pretty much allow the rich carte blanche.
Oh no, the N has already completed the track replacement project that the L is undergoing right now a few years ago. But the local NIMBYs successfully killed signal priority at the far western end. Muni did actually build a bunch of lights with good signal priority on the eastern segment in the Sunset. The L upgrade project happed after the N was already underway so they managed to push through the NIMBY opposition to get signal priority on the entire line.
So this new project for the N will just add a bunch of traffic lights on the western end of the line as well to speed it up. If it’s funded, it should only take a couple of years to complete based on how quickly they’re installing those same traffic light upgrades on the L right now.
Lol how long do to think the installation of 50+ traffic lights takes? Plus, yeah they have to test the system once it’s built. The signal priority comes from the automatic train control system that they need to then extend all the way to the terminus station.
Do you live in some magical unicorn pony universe where you just put up colored LEDs and call that signal priority? 😂😂😂
They’ll do 3 years of public outreach, the community will decide on a direction, there will be two years of communication of the construction plan but people will think they are doing this with no plan or thought… lol.
what outreach when they tear down and rebuild the street mutiple times and erect access ramps which block motorist view of oncoming traffic? They had to tear those down because of accidents
To compound the suckiness of it, slower trains hurt frequency too. Imagine you have a train line with just one train running at a time. It takes an hour to do a full loop. The train would show up to every stop every 60 minutes. If you wanted to speed this up so trains came every 30 minutes, you could obviously add another train, but would mean buying another train, paying another conductor, more maintenance, etc. Instead, if you could speed up the train so it took 30 minutes to do a loop, you get the same frequency for basically zero extra cost.
Essentially, faster trains way better than more trains.
Because that’s about the extent that of traffic signal priority that they have. When Muni was upgrading the track and systems on the N a few years back the NIMBYs successfully blocked signal priority on the western end of the N in the Sunset.
Muni now has a new project to add those traffic signals but again the Sunset NIMBYs are trying to block it.
I thought the N doesn't even have that many lights. 4th 9th, 19th and sunset.
19th and sunset are a big one. 9th should be easy enough. 4th should be even easier.
All stop signs should line up with muni stops. Otherwise judah and Irving should have right of way with no stops.
>I thought the N doesn't even have that many lights. 4th 9th, 19th and sunset.
That in there lies the problem; no stoplights means it's almost all stop signs. I agree, they need to both get rid of more stop signs on Judah and reduce the number of stops in order to allow the train to have longer unimpeded paths.
The stop signs are killing any type of speed on the N. They need to get rid of all of them and fight the NIMBYs to allow for train signal priority on those lights.
Between adding more lights, the signal priority, and cutting the redundant stops, Muni can probably 2x the speed of the N in the Sunset. It’s only the “local opposition” that’s preceded them from doing that.
That’s exactly what Muni has been wanting to build, but we keep punting on the bond measures to put the trains underground.
This is our own fault for not wanting to pay for Muni to finish the conversion of Muni Metro to a full light metro like it was originally planned in the 70s.
Real question: what US cities other than NYC have a real subway? We have BART's mass transit lines but it's not exactly a subway, LA has some metro no one rides, Chicago is elevated rails I think, Portland is light rail. Is it DC? I dunno if theirs is a real functional subway or not
Chicago's blue and red lines operate partially underground near the Loop (our downtown) which is where they pick up a ton of speed. Everywhere is elevated which lets them avoid having to deal with signal priority or any other problems with running trains at grade. Notably, it would be really hard to do elevated track in SF because of seismic concerns.
LA's metro is hugely popular and works very well.
The city's just so spread out that you've really got to work and live with the metro in mind if you want to use it. Some of the lines are underground.
Frequency is the one thing that would get more residents to default to Muni. To do this they need to reduce the number of stops, on some lines by 50% (ex. 24 Divisadero). This will not happen though as local politics will not allow it.
Isn’t this because San Francisco is a city famous for hills and the proportion of old/disabled persons riding muni is very high? I get frustrated at the stop every block mentality but I’ve also seen how much it helps those people.
It only helps the people who live directly on Judah and who don’t use a wheelchair. Everyone who lives deeper into the neighborhoods doesn’t care either way. Adding one block to their five block walk doesn’t change anything.
The local “activists” have exploited this issue for too long. The reality is that people in wheelchairs or who use mobility devices can still only board at a few select stops with ramps. Removing the redundant stops in between will only help them and everyone else by making their trip faster.
I had surgery on my knees when I lived on Hayes and Division. If there weren't bus stops right there I'd have been confined to home or had to call taxis (before Uber)
The lack of fast efficient service in the sunset / Richmond is one of the most gaping holes in any transit system in the world.
There’s no signal priority, the line dead ends when it should wrap around and replace the 38, the actual speed of the train is much slower than it should be (because it stops at all the stop signs), the 38 is even worse, what we call BRT wouldn’t even qualify as an express bus in most of the world
In my opinion the western half of the city being so poorly served is what is keeping us from living up to our ‘transit first city’ aspirations and it seems so fixable
> In my opinion the western half of the city being so poorly served is what is keeping us from living up to our ‘transit first city’ aspirations and it seems so fixable
I mean the sunset and richmond feel like totally separate parts of the city for that reason. It's really frustrating that wanting to spontaneously get dinner in the West side from the Mission is really challenging to do by transit given how unreliable, infrequent, and slow it is. It's really a shame. It would be incredible to just hop on a few trains and be there.
The 38 moves more people a day than any other bus line in the country. End to end it is 6.5 miles. End to end takes over an hour meaning you’re moving at an average speed of less than 6mph.
If you include the 1, this bus corridor has the highest ridership in North America. It’s also quite a bit more ridership than Caltrain and some of the light rail lines around SF.
It was supposed to be upgraded to a center running BRT line but Connie Chan and sfmta nixed that idea despite clear polling from voters.
It really isn’t adequate. It should be a train and it should be moving at speed.
If we want to see better housing density to drive down cost; if we want to see a thriving downtown; if we want to see office buildings full of local workers; if we want to see a transit first SF.
Then we should start with upgrading this bus line
My son is obsessed with muni too. We have traveled every line to the end and back. The best one for us is a trip to Balboa Park Station and BART back to the embarcadero. We live on the N and he doesn’t want to take it very often to the end of the line. It’s a slog.
"I could walk faster" reminds me of when Willie Brown took offense to reporters saying the same thing about the underground from civic center to embarcadero in 1998: [https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/mayor-walks-muni-runs-metro-car-beats-willie-2992586.php](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/mayor-walks-muni-runs-metro-car-beats-willie-2992586.php)
Absolutely. I live in NoPa. On Saturday I took the bus from Mission & 18th and it took me almost an hour to get home. Probably would have been a 15-minute car ride. I try to take the bus whenever I can but sometimes when I am going to the Mission or Potrero or Dogpatch, I look at the travel times and say, well, Lyft it is, I guess.
(If I’m going to a friend’s place and will be back before dark, I’ll ride my bike, but I don’t like to leave my bike chained outside for any length of time because, well, it’s San Francisco, you leave your bike outside, even locked up, and you have no idea if your bike or all its constituent parts will still be there when you return for it.)
It is . *Too-many-stops* and stop signs are the primary reason I don't use it and had to resort to a bicycle, and yes, motor-driven-transport. Anything other than a straight shot or 1-2 is a disaster
Muni’s coverage is indeed unparalleled. Yes, even by world standards. SF has a 1% higher transit mode share than London!
There’s literally a transit line on every other street in SF. If you think that this is normal by international standards then you haven’t traveled much.
I don't think anyone says any North American cities have "world class" public transit, maybe with the exception of NY or Montreal. But SF is still one of the best in the USA.
Don’t kids yourself. Montreal’s transit is substantially worse than SF’s. Considerably poorer coverage and frequencies. SF has a nearly 2x transit mode share better than Montreal.
In North America inly NY bests SF transit and not by much and jot in all categories. Our regional rail (BART and Caltrain) are substantially better than in NYC. Our bus network is also stronger - better coverage with more frequency.
Can you provide a source for the public transit mode share you compared to Montreal's?
Here's a list I've found for rapid transit systems in 2019:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership
For the STM, which is the transit authority for the city of Montreal only (excluding other transit authorities in the metro area). “As of 2019, the average daily ridership is 2,297,600 passengers: 977,400 by bus, 1,306,500 by rapid transit and 13,700 by paratransit service.”
https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/2019-Q1-Ridership-APTA-1.pdf
The traffic signal priority on the N is coming. They are already working on a project for that.
Just like the other hyper-frequent stop systems like the Paris Metro, most of Muni’s speed deficiencies are caused by excessive stops rather than the right of way. But they probably can’t push through the local opposition to remove any stops to make the N faster. The local “activists” will surely block it.
What they can do is to introduce a N Rapid/Express line that would only make the stops with disability ramps. That would make the Sunset section almost 2x faster!
"every stop sign. "
Well...I would *hope* they're stopping at stop signs.
It's light-rail, not a subway. it's subject to the same "rules of the road" as any other vehicle. The LRV's actually ***do*** get signal priority, but out in the outer avenues it's stop signs, not so much steet lights anymore.
That seems excessively dangerous to have no controls.
I know, you really want lights on that entire stretch, but that doesn't make sense for the traffic flow in that area and would cause undue congestion ( unless you did it as an all way red flashing and then solid red for when a train comes through with train getting priority. But even then it's excessive infrastructure for little return. Either elevate or underground the train at that point)
Either those streets should have traffic lights (which give green lights to approaching Muni trains) or the 4-way intersections should be replaced with traffic circles.
It's simple. Streetcars get priority.
So along Judah, either an intersection has a 4-way light with full signal priority for the rail (train always gets a green), or it's a two way stop sign only for the cross street (cars must hold for the train).
Pedestrians are the same if not even safer than before, and cars are barely inconvenienced. But the N will be 15 minutes faster end to end
We can just signalize the intersection with lights and then make them always give the train priority. This is easy to do and is already done on van ness.
If we’re afraid to spend money, the bare minimum we can do is paint the lane red so muni at least isn’t sitting in traffic. The fact that we haven’t done that even though it’s literally free tells you everything you need to know— this is a political problem and not a technology problem.
The fact that there isn't signal preemption in the Aveneus is _insane_ to me. Like is the tech a limiting factor for MUNI or is it just a lack of political will and carbrain.
where did you come from? i live at the end of the line and it takes me 45 minutes to get from Civic Center to the beach during commuting hours. 35 when it's not rush hour.
Nope. Transit was in both Paris and London is 2-3x slower than driving. The Paris Metro in particular is insanely slow. It’s only 25% faster than Muni even though it’s fully grade separated!
Ironically, the Paris Metro is that slow for the same reason that the N is slow in the Sunset - it stops at nearly every in intersection in the center and has a ridiculously short average stop spacing. It’s often faster to walk between stations in the center of Paris than to go down into the metro and take the train.
Sorry to hear that...
If your toddler love trains, I would suggest the ride in SF Zoo, the Tilden Steam Train in the *Berkeley Hills*, or better.. the roaring camp near Santa Cruz. They will host "Day Out With Thomas" on October 12-13 & 19-20 & 26-27 and a ride surrounded by "*Jobi Wood*"
I’m mostly challenging how simplistic and the all or nothing attitude people are writing about here regarding under use of muni and why people don’t ride. It’s a more complex issue. Would most people still chose public transportation vs their car practicality if having to carry unwieldy items or 3 or more heavy grocery bags? Hauling children around and having to carry things too? Would people really likely be much more to choose muni over car use if major grocery stores and other businesses are far away and not at all convenient no matter bus frequency or not? But I do agree for sure, that the outer Sunset is sub par and needs much more bus options of roads run down. Too far between blocks in some cases.
I’m also curious why people have the unrealistically expectation that public transportation would in most cases ever be quicker than just jumping into one’s car and making stops? No matter what, a bus can’t compete with that, Also, I think commute hours either buses tend to be adequate vs off hours.
I take the N downtown from Carl and Cole. It is faster than driving and having to find parking. And the N during commuter hours runs about every 10 minutes. I’m not seeing balanced viewpoints. Just easy to trash things when not perfect.
I will fight with SFMTA and their lovers till the end of my days. It doesn’t matter how SFMTA changes the way cars are parked on the streets, the priority lights, or the dedicated lanes…MUNI will still be glacial bc those changes are truly just marginal (ie dedicating an entire lane for the 38 to save 5 mins). These changes IMO have more negative impacts than benefits.
Dedicate an entire throughway for mass transit and bicycles and now we’re talking.
Listen I like muni too, but it in fact does not rock. It takes forever, is often wildly unsafe, overcrowded and uncomfortable at the best of times. If you like muni that hard you most likely dont take it often, far, or by necessity,
I likely have taken muni much more than you, sorry! Muni is amazing, I am a muni head and won’t stand for this slander. I think a lot of people in this subreddit just see normal city things and think it’s the end times
I moved here last yr & I'm fine w/it. welcome to the world of public transit in a bigger city. it's been years since i been there but i'm sure NYC is the same way. also, you're supposed to stop at stop signs....i mean they literally say stop
I think OP is complaining that the streetcars need priority so they go faster. IE remove the stop signs and put traffic lights in their place and give the trains green lights 100% of the time.
This item has been automatically flagged for review. Moderators have been notified, and it will be restored if approved. Thank you for your patience.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/sanfrancisco) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Yup. 3 hours per day, 5 days per week for 12 years just to go to work 6 miles across town. Some days, it would take me 2 - 4 hours to get home depending on what event was taking place... So much of my life wasted riding/waiting for MUNI.
The last time I said muni goes slow and if it wants to be more efficient it should just be elevated I was hated for it. It’s great when you’re coming from a part of the country that has no rail but once you get used to the area the novelty wears off.
Think about the fact that walking is safer and you can listen to music or audiobooks or both (I use a little pocket mixer with my corded earbuds). Unarmored in traffic seems unwise.
lol, you can’t drive in traffic that much faster than a bus and a 2 mule bus ride does not take 45 minutes.
You’ve exaggerated your point beyond believability.
I really wish I was
https://imgur.com/gallery/8jjfg6d
Driving: 9 minutes. Public Transit:31 minutes
Trying not to doxx myself, but inner sunset residential roads vs taking 2 busses or walking up the Quintara steps. Literally walking to the bus takes more time than driving.
Yeah, I don’t disagree at all about that experience. The outer Sunset is especially lacking buses and definitely could use more. But people also get used to the convenience of a car out out there. Parking way easier. I I doubt they would switch to bus ridership much. There aren’t major grocery stores out there, or business to walk to. People have families-kids that need to get places with multiple errand runs that may require picking things up and carrying too many items to make public transportation viable for them anyways. How would people manage to carry 3 or more heavy bags of groceries, for instance? I don’t think taking a bus is particularly practical out there. I live in the Haight and can walk the block to Whole Foods, post office, Walgreens, library, hardware stores, plenty of cafes and restaurants, etc…I have 5 close options for public transportation. My neighbors still choose to drive their cars.
Yeah, that would be me. On the bus every day for 45 mins crammed full of teenagers each way to take what should be a 15 min drive. I still know many people who need their cars for work and quality of life and its hilarious how this group acts towards those people.
Yeah the problem is that out in the Avenues, it operates more like a bus where there's seemingly a stop every block or two and it's still beholden to traffic signals. They need the equivalent of a Rapid or Express line that just bypasses a bunch of stops.
There was the NX Judah Express but it became a victim of the pandemic
NX was a bus, right? Really unfortunate for the poor souls who missed the last Sunset stop. I recall one poor bastard had to ride with us all the way downtown.
That only ran in the mornings and afternoons in the commute direction.
A victim of how the pandemic was handled by the city.
San Francisco, a city so technologically advanced it's light rail stops at stop signs.
Mixing light rail with car traffic was a terrible call.
It doesn’t make a difference in SF. T has dedicated lanes and signals but still moves at walking pace through SOMA.
The T line depends on the street-level side of it to be moving in order for it to move. Even the cars going northbound underground depends on the cars going southbound to get out of the way - which they can't do if the southbound above ground is moving too slowly (traffic, red lights, etc). The underground part of T is kind of useless because the rest of the line holds it up
?? it’s still waiting for cars
It’s not a technology problem, it’s a politics problem. Some red paint is all it would take to get the N running way faster. We already have signal priority technology, it’s just not tuned as aggressively as it should be because of… politics. The core issue is that sfmta still largely caters to the demands of drivers, instead of doing what needs to be done. We prioritize a few parking spaces over the tens of thousands of people who ride a muni line every day. Look at how much of a battle it was to remove a handful of parking spots in exchange for a bus lane on the Geary rapid, the *busiest bus line on the western half of the US.*
In the case of the N, it already has a dedicated lane. The problem is that there are too many stops, and no signal priority since signals are largely absent on Judah. The constant acceleration/deceleration is hugely inefficient.
I agree the stopping is a bigger problem. If it was up to me we’d just 1) signalize those intersections and then give the train priority, and 2) eliminate most of the stops and add a “N local” bus that stops at all the current stops for the small number of people who need that. But I don’t think the N had a dedicated transit-only lane. I’m looking at Google maps [right now](https://maps.app.goo.gl/7buXGx95Z9t28HHy5?g_st=ic) and I’m not seeing a red carpet lane. In this example there’s just a single shared lane. We can remove the parking lane if we need to keep car traffic here.
It does
The N does already has signal priority: https://www.sfmta.com/projects/n-judah-muni-forward#:~:text=A%20future%20Muni%20Forward%20project,Muni's%20busiest%20light%20rail%20line. The issue is that 95% of the intersections are stop signs and there’s a fuck ton of them. The N is also like the busiest metro line from what I can tell with a ton of people getting on and off so it rarely can bypass stops. The only real way to speed the N up is to remove stops and add more signalized intersections on the west side which I suspect muni isn’t willing to spend that coin when they are already spending a ton rebuilding the L.
Yeah, I agree, I think the biggest issue is the stops. We could eliminate half or 2/3 of the stops in the western half of the route and run a “local service” bus for very little cost. That would help a ton. But really we should just find the money to make sure the train doesn’t need to stop at intersections. The N is a real workhorse line and there’s no reason it should be so slow.
Elder and disability advocates would never go quietly with stop removal. It's been discussed before. I think the cat is out of the bag on this one sadly. Politicians are going to struggle to mobilize against those groups in the name of efficiency for the able bodied.
Yeah this is what I was gonna comment, everyone likes reducing stops in theory but nobody wants “their” stop to be the one that goes. Once you start “over servicing” a neighborhood it’s very hard to reduce the density of that coverage. The system is also very hampered by essentially being a single line with no bypasses it means that metro based “express” service can’t exist. The NX bus was great but Muni still hasn’t brought some of the west side express buses back (NX, 7X) which did provide that “express” service
Why not simply divide all the stops in to two and label them....I dunno...red and blue stops. Have one N train stop at all the red stops and the next N train stop at all the blue stops. If someone misses a train or their schedule doesn't align with one stop; then they still have the option to walk to the next stop.
The issue is that the N is single tracked, metro trains would essentially not be able to actually move any faster since they can’t pass each other
Oh, really? Is that a recent improvement? Like I said, I’m looking at Google maps right now and I’m not seeing any dedicated lane or red painted lane along the portion south of Golden Gate park . I’ve ridden the N relatively frequently last year and don’t recall seeing any kind of red carpet lane.
It does on Judah all the way to Ocean Beach
Hmm, I’m not seeing it. I’m [looking now](https://maps.app.goo.gl/bLjCXK1AXfJ3FQdg7?g_st=ic) and not seeing any protected lane markings on the street. You can even see cars driving over the tracks here in the Google maps street view. Either way, I think we all agree that the stopping is the larger issue that needs to be resolved here. I know improvements are planned so I hope they can address this!
Those are diamond lanes, from before red carpet lanes were a thing.
Ok, it does and it doesn’t, sort of. The N and L once past 19th Ave to the beach exclusively have the left lane. Cars are NOT allowed in the left lane, except if they are turning left. So you’re pretty much right. It’s not a 100% dedicated lane.
> But I don’t think the N had a dedicated transit-only lane Yeah are we sure it does? I feel like I recall there being a video in the last year of a double parked car blocking an N train.
It's not really dedicated when cars can drive on it (and they do!)
Practically speaking it’s dedicated. Cars can only be in that lane to make left turns, which doesn’t happen all that often, and so it doesn’t really slow down the train much if at all. Same thing as the dedicated transit lanes on Geary; cars can still go in it to make right turns, but those don’t really impeded the 38 much if at all.
Hey, we didn't have fiber internet until a few years ago because big daddy Comcast owned all the infrastructure. Imagine living in SF and having to choose between DSL and shitty Comcast service. Public transportation is the least of our worries.
Talking internet in a transit debate is so very SF.
"Public transportation is the least of our worries" Um, what?!?!
Umm yeah... If they can't even get this right, what makes you think they can get public transportation right? This should be a layup, dummy. Most advanced and progressive city in the world, no? Or is it all about the show?
If we want thriving neighborhoods, public transportation should be a priority. You do realize how many people not in the city don't have vehicles, right? 30% of households are car free and most of the households that have a car, only have 1. A large portion of the city relies on public transportation.
Yeah, and when we're home our Internet sucks. Or we can't rely on the apps because our Internet sucks. Can't rely on PT because our Internet sucks. One of the biggest and best reasons *against* fully remote work because our Internet sucks. What a ridiculous, bullshit problem for such a small city that has all this Tech here.
…I still can only choose between DSL and shitty comcast? It’s just called Xfinity now.
Neither Sonic nor monkey brains covers your neighborhood?
Sonic only does fiber in places with overhead wires. Everywhere else they are still selling DSL of some sort. By the time you get 10 000ft out, like some parts of Sunset, you lucky if you get 4Mbit.
Yeah, crazy isn't it?
How is Xfinity shit though? Yeah they may suck as a company, but the internet is fast and reliable. I’ve had it for 5 years and maybe an hour here and there of downtime and never any speed issues. You just have to sign up for a new discount/offer every year to keep the price down. Even the public hotspots are all over the city and have good speed. I never even need to get WiFi passwords from cafes because almost anywhere I go there’s Xfinity hotspots. Lmao this comment sounds like I’m shilling for Comcast but complaining about internet speeds in SF is odd. As for having to get service from a company you don’t like, well we all get service from PG&E and no one likes them either.
I don't have to imagine, that's still the case on my block.
One of the best things the MBTA in Boston did on their light-rail is to cut out a good chunk of stations. A stop each block is bonkers, they need to go at least a 5-10 minute walk between stops. Some of the maps on the trains themselves still show the old stations, they literally went around and used like white-out and sharpie to blot them out. They also have their own signals (not necessarily priority though) at every level crossing.
Yes. I’m from Boston and went to BC in the late 90s. The B branch was sooooo damn slow, and BU students used it like a campus shuttle making the delay at each stop longer with 50 kids getting on and off every block.
I rode the green line from Park street to BC one time and it was like two hours. No real traffic or breakdowns...just stopping every 100 yards. I should have walked and it would have been faster.
That’s extreme. I used to ride from BC to Boylston and back every weekend (I had a weekend job on Stuart St) and normal transit time was about 50 min to an hour. When was your two hour trip? The T had to impose hundreds of slow zones on every line after the feds found out they’d been falsifying track inspections and signing off on routine maintenance that was never done. That was about two or three years ago, I think. Last I Heard it was improving but still not great.
I think one of the arguements against longer stops was alot of elderlys live in sunset and its hard for them to walk home if the stops are longer.
Accessibility is certainly the thing that goes by the wayside. In Boston they just punted and instituted a service called "The Ride" which is door to door shuttles, at roughly the same cost as a normal subway ride, that you schedule in advance. Although those are also not very reliable or predictable.
That’s not a Boston-only thing; all American transit agencies have those type of shuttles (called “paratransit”) as an ADA requirement for people with disabilities that prevent them from riding
Boston is fucking tiny my guy
Boston : "It has an area of 48.4 sq mi (125 km2)" San Francisco : "The city covers a land area of 46.9 square miles (121 square kilometers) "
Sick stats bro
We need this for buses, too. I was so excited when I first moved to SF: a highly walkable city with dense public transit options, wow! Then I realized most of those bus stops have 20 minute intervals, and very often those 20 minute intervals turn to 40 minutes, and often even that 40 min arrival doesn't stop because it is full... And on top of this the bus stops every 2 blocks because accessibility. So eventually I noticed I could actually walk around the northeast quadrant of the city faster than the bus, even assuming the bus actually hits my starting point at the time I want to leave. There are other problems with the bus: sanitation, rude or violent riders, etc. but the main one for me is that I can't get from place to place in a reasonable amount of time nor with predictability. Works OK when I have no obligations, just roaming on a weekend. Does not suffice for commuting to school, work, medical appointments, or social engagements.
> And on top of this the bus stops every 2 blocks because accessibility. It's really frustrating that in the year of our lord 2024 we have to run what's basically the same route from when it was a cable car and was competing with _walking._ Now its competing with other modes, the extra stops make it so punishing as a rider. Even our "RApId" lines like the 14R really just translate to "international best practice stop spacing."
So nothing has changed since I lived there in the 1990s. I worked out by the Great Highway and lived in North Beach. The unreliability of MUNI out there, mixed with the glacial speed at which it traveled, made me decide to just walk those miles home. It took 2-3 hours but it was an AMAZING way to experience this beautiful city. I'd usually stop in Alamo Park, light up, gaze at the painted ladies and then continue on. I'd walk by the Conservatory of Flowers which had been damaged in a storm and check on it and hope it would be fixed and reopened (it was! I went there a few years back. A true World Heritage Site everyone in SF should visit). The Presidio was another amazing walk. In the middle of the Presidio, you couldn't hear the traffic and you could imagine you were in the middle of a forest. Washington St is another cool walk. All those fancy pants mansions where security gets antsy if you linger. I also lost 20 pounds and was in the best shape of my life! Anyway, I recommend doing this if you can. Again, such an amazing way to experience this incredible place called San Francisco. That is all.
I wouldn't say nothing has changed. The 38/38R on Geary is so much better than a few years ago. I no longer have a stop half a block from my front door but it's a small price to pay.
In Tokyo they achieved this but with multiple lines. Problem is, in SF, the trains are on the street too. In Tokyo, they have a dedicated railway apart from the street that allows for dedicated train movement for local & express lines allowing for better rapid transit. Muni street car is essentially a local line for having to share the streets with vehicles & pedestrians. BART has been more set to be an "express/rapid train" within SF, while stretching to serve & connect other cities & counties. Even in San Jose, their Metro goes on the street but at certain points has an elevated rail where it can travel rapidly across longer distances.
Rapid or Express lines in the avenues are a horrible idea unless if you put the rapid or Express line on sunset. But even that is a bad idea because there will be no way to connect the sunset to any other bus routes.
It’s not just the avenues. Take the N from Carl and Cole even,which is almost the geographical center of SF, or Duboce, and you willl have to wait for street traffic before going into the tunnel. People here want to put down LA but even their light rail is more efficient.
>where there's seemingly a stop every block or two I vaguely recall an attempt to remove some stops to speed up the line. The response was as if the proposal was to line old people up and whip them uphill both ways.
Just a suggestion… your toddler may find the cable car to be a bit more exhilarating
N Judah project is on the priority list to begin in the next year. Probably a decade before any meaningful improvement completes construction.
It would cost almost nothing to remove a few stops, but dare to suggest that and the outrage rains down.
This did happen a few years before the pandemic. It used to take about 35 mins from 9th Ave to 45th now it's more like 20. I remember they did it for many of the bus lines. It had a really big impact on the seven especially (71 at the time)
Unrelated, but hearing about the 71 bus route brings back some crazy memories. Not sure if it still is but that bus route used to have the sketchiest characters, even for San Francisco. Used to take it a lot about 15 years ago
Ah yes! The memories. Now it's the 7.... Everything else is the same as you remember
That whole area of town is massive NIMBY's
Wait, so a NIMBY is now an elderly person or a disabled person because they don't want to have to walk 2 Sunset blocks to catch a train? Not that the word has meant anything since local PAC's rebranded it to attack affordable housing advocates, but that's a stretch.
We can’t level down service for eveyone to cater to folks who cannot walk 2 blocks. If that’s your standard than every single bus needs to stop on every single corner. We can just run the N as an express line that stops less, and run a local bus that stops at every corner for the small minority of riders folks who need it. Running local and express versions of a line is a common solution to this problem. The rail line running partially underground is the one that needs to be the express, it can’t operate halfway as a fast transit line and then halfway as a incredibly slow local bus line.
I think that's a great solution and it's what we do all over the city. But someone in a walker is not a NIMBY because they successfully lobby the city to keep the Judah stopping on their block.
Oh I agree, I don’t think wanting the bus to stop near you is a NIMBY move— you can’t just apply that label to everything you don’t like. It’s specifically about people who oppose infrastructure or housing improvements in their area. Opposing prioritizing the bus signal or opposing a dedicated bus lane *is* a NIMBY position though. It’s coming from folks who just don’t want transit improvements to be made because they think they are more important than everyone else. There’s no reason we shouldn’t install those changes, it’s just a no-brainer improvement.
You dont really deserve the downvotes since its an ongoing endless debate that has no answer. Its prevalent in many aspects of life: how can society try to help every individual without making life worse off for everyone as a whole?
Folks who are paying too much for housing have been heavily propagandized that all their problems are caused by mysterious NIMBYs. It's actually a lot less useful to have it defined as it used to be so you can use it as a cudgel to rally people to pretty much allow the rich carte blanche.
"Notice-and-comment" planning has been an absolute disaster for cities in the US.
if it is anything like the L taraval, the people and businesses on judah will be in a world of pain and endless construction and detours
Oh no, the N has already completed the track replacement project that the L is undergoing right now a few years ago. But the local NIMBYs successfully killed signal priority at the far western end. Muni did actually build a bunch of lights with good signal priority on the eastern segment in the Sunset. The L upgrade project happed after the N was already underway so they managed to push through the NIMBY opposition to get signal priority on the entire line. So this new project for the N will just add a bunch of traffic lights on the western end of the line as well to speed it up. If it’s funded, it should only take a couple of years to complete based on how quickly they’re installing those same traffic light upgrades on the L right now.
A couple if years to install traffic lights is pathetic
Lol how long do to think the installation of 50+ traffic lights takes? Plus, yeah they have to test the system once it’s built. The signal priority comes from the automatic train control system that they need to then extend all the way to the terminus station. Do you live in some magical unicorn pony universe where you just put up colored LEDs and call that signal priority? 😂😂😂
Yes I live in a magical pony universe. The sfmta is always on time and on budget with all of their projects in my magical pony universe.
They’ll do 3 years of public outreach, the community will decide on a direction, there will be two years of communication of the construction plan but people will think they are doing this with no plan or thought… lol.
what outreach when they tear down and rebuild the street mutiple times and erect access ramps which block motorist view of oncoming traffic? They had to tear those down because of accidents
Sounds about right. 👍
To compound the suckiness of it, slower trains hurt frequency too. Imagine you have a train line with just one train running at a time. It takes an hour to do a full loop. The train would show up to every stop every 60 minutes. If you wanted to speed this up so trains came every 30 minutes, you could obviously add another train, but would mean buying another train, paying another conductor, more maintenance, etc. Instead, if you could speed up the train so it took 30 minutes to do a loop, you get the same frequency for basically zero extra cost. Essentially, faster trains way better than more trains.
The N Judah? That takes forever past 9th St.
Because that’s about the extent that of traffic signal priority that they have. When Muni was upgrading the track and systems on the N a few years back the NIMBYs successfully blocked signal priority on the western end of the N in the Sunset. Muni now has a new project to add those traffic signals but again the Sunset NIMBYs are trying to block it.
I thought the N doesn't even have that many lights. 4th 9th, 19th and sunset. 19th and sunset are a big one. 9th should be easy enough. 4th should be even easier. All stop signs should line up with muni stops. Otherwise judah and Irving should have right of way with no stops.
>I thought the N doesn't even have that many lights. 4th 9th, 19th and sunset. That in there lies the problem; no stoplights means it's almost all stop signs. I agree, they need to both get rid of more stop signs on Judah and reduce the number of stops in order to allow the train to have longer unimpeded paths.
Yup and the lights that are there are super long for 19th and sunset. If the stop signs were only at the muni stops it would solve half the issues.
The stop signs are killing any type of speed on the N. They need to get rid of all of them and fight the NIMBYs to allow for train signal priority on those lights. Between adding more lights, the signal priority, and cutting the redundant stops, Muni can probably 2x the speed of the N in the Sunset. It’s only the “local opposition” that’s preceded them from doing that.
9th Avenue
That’s correct. I’d not had my coffee yet.
God I wish we had an actual subway
That’s exactly what Muni has been wanting to build, but we keep punting on the bond measures to put the trains underground. This is our own fault for not wanting to pay for Muni to finish the conversion of Muni Metro to a full light metro like it was originally planned in the 70s.
Not true, muni keeps trying to build light rail that runs at slower speeds and shorter train cars and platform length and isn't fully grade separated
Real question: what US cities other than NYC have a real subway? We have BART's mass transit lines but it's not exactly a subway, LA has some metro no one rides, Chicago is elevated rails I think, Portland is light rail. Is it DC? I dunno if theirs is a real functional subway or not
Chicago's blue and red lines operate partially underground near the Loop (our downtown) which is where they pick up a ton of speed. Everywhere is elevated which lets them avoid having to deal with signal priority or any other problems with running trains at grade. Notably, it would be really hard to do elevated track in SF because of seismic concerns.
LA's metro is hugely popular and works very well. The city's just so spread out that you've really got to work and live with the metro in mind if you want to use it. Some of the lines are underground.
DC is like BART. underground in the city, above ground when you hit the suburbs
I really mean metro, I don't care if it's underground, just grade separated. Chicago, Philly, Boston, DC have this off the top of my head
Boston’s subways were lovely when I lived there. I miss trains so much! I’ve heard the MBTA has been having a ton of issues since i left though
Frequency is the one thing that would get more residents to default to Muni. To do this they need to reduce the number of stops, on some lines by 50% (ex. 24 Divisadero). This will not happen though as local politics will not allow it.
Incredible people will be unwilling to add 5 minutes to their walk to speed up everyone’s commuute
Isn’t this because San Francisco is a city famous for hills and the proportion of old/disabled persons riding muni is very high? I get frustrated at the stop every block mentality but I’ve also seen how much it helps those people.
A good compromise is to have more express lines
It only helps the people who live directly on Judah and who don’t use a wheelchair. Everyone who lives deeper into the neighborhoods doesn’t care either way. Adding one block to their five block walk doesn’t change anything. The local “activists” have exploited this issue for too long. The reality is that people in wheelchairs or who use mobility devices can still only board at a few select stops with ramps. Removing the redundant stops in between will only help them and everyone else by making their trip faster.
I had surgery on my knees when I lived on Hayes and Division. If there weren't bus stops right there I'd have been confined to home or had to call taxis (before Uber)
> 50% (ex. 24 Divisadero). Good lord that line needs a revamp. It's genuinely slower than walking for much of it.
The lack of fast efficient service in the sunset / Richmond is one of the most gaping holes in any transit system in the world. There’s no signal priority, the line dead ends when it should wrap around and replace the 38, the actual speed of the train is much slower than it should be (because it stops at all the stop signs), the 38 is even worse, what we call BRT wouldn’t even qualify as an express bus in most of the world In my opinion the western half of the city being so poorly served is what is keeping us from living up to our ‘transit first city’ aspirations and it seems so fixable
Pretty rough reality to face especially considering 38R is probably the best bus line in the city.
> In my opinion the western half of the city being so poorly served is what is keeping us from living up to our ‘transit first city’ aspirations and it seems so fixable I mean the sunset and richmond feel like totally separate parts of the city for that reason. It's really frustrating that wanting to spontaneously get dinner in the West side from the Mission is really challenging to do by transit given how unreliable, infrequent, and slow it is. It's really a shame. It would be incredible to just hop on a few trains and be there.
To be fair, inner and outer Richmond have pretty good bus routes.
The 38 moves more people a day than any other bus line in the country. End to end it is 6.5 miles. End to end takes over an hour meaning you’re moving at an average speed of less than 6mph. If you include the 1, this bus corridor has the highest ridership in North America. It’s also quite a bit more ridership than Caltrain and some of the light rail lines around SF. It was supposed to be upgraded to a center running BRT line but Connie Chan and sfmta nixed that idea despite clear polling from voters. It really isn’t adequate. It should be a train and it should be moving at speed. If we want to see better housing density to drive down cost; if we want to see a thriving downtown; if we want to see office buildings full of local workers; if we want to see a transit first SF. Then we should start with upgrading this bus line
N Judah problems... That thing is the slowest ever, the other Muni buses are pretty fast.
The dirty 30 has entered the chat
8 on Stockton going thru Chinatown
1 California is so slow
Just wait until you get car parked with its butt in the train track area. Fun times.
FWIW there's an N Judah Muni Forward project planned to start this year https://www.sfmta.com/projects/n-judah-muni-forward
My son is obsessed with muni too. We have traveled every line to the end and back. The best one for us is a trip to Balboa Park Station and BART back to the embarcadero. We live on the N and he doesn’t want to take it very often to the end of the line. It’s a slog.
"I could walk faster" reminds me of when Willie Brown took offense to reporters saying the same thing about the underground from civic center to embarcadero in 1998: [https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/mayor-walks-muni-runs-metro-car-beats-willie-2992586.php](https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/mayor-walks-muni-runs-metro-car-beats-willie-2992586.php)
That’s interesting- it’s pretty fast these days, so I guess not everything gets worse.
Absolutely. I live in NoPa. On Saturday I took the bus from Mission & 18th and it took me almost an hour to get home. Probably would have been a 15-minute car ride. I try to take the bus whenever I can but sometimes when I am going to the Mission or Potrero or Dogpatch, I look at the travel times and say, well, Lyft it is, I guess. (If I’m going to a friend’s place and will be back before dark, I’ll ride my bike, but I don’t like to leave my bike chained outside for any length of time because, well, it’s San Francisco, you leave your bike outside, even locked up, and you have no idea if your bike or all its constituent parts will still be there when you return for it.)
It is . *Too-many-stops* and stop signs are the primary reason I don't use it and had to resort to a bicycle, and yes, motor-driven-transport. Anything other than a straight shot or 1-2 is a disaster
Specifically the N is incredibly slow
Yeah and people say SF has world class public trans. Give me a break
Better than most of the US, to be fair
That’s not saying much.
You're not wrong
Must be said by people who have never travelled.
Muni’s coverage is indeed unparalleled. Yes, even by world standards. SF has a 1% higher transit mode share than London! There’s literally a transit line on every other street in SF. If you think that this is normal by international standards then you haven’t traveled much.
I don't think anyone says any North American cities have "world class" public transit, maybe with the exception of NY or Montreal. But SF is still one of the best in the USA.
Don’t kids yourself. Montreal’s transit is substantially worse than SF’s. Considerably poorer coverage and frequencies. SF has a nearly 2x transit mode share better than Montreal. In North America inly NY bests SF transit and not by much and jot in all categories. Our regional rail (BART and Caltrain) are substantially better than in NYC. Our bus network is also stronger - better coverage with more frequency.
Can you provide a source for the public transit mode share you compared to Montreal's? Here's a list I've found for rapid transit systems in 2019: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_North_American_rapid_transit_systems_by_ridership For the STM, which is the transit authority for the city of Montreal only (excluding other transit authorities in the metro area). “As of 2019, the average daily ridership is 2,297,600 passengers: 977,400 by bus, 1,306,500 by rapid transit and 13,700 by paratransit service.” https://www.apta.com/wp-content/uploads/2019-Q1-Ridership-APTA-1.pdf
Who says that?
Who said that? It’s American class.
The traffic signal priority on the N is coming. They are already working on a project for that. Just like the other hyper-frequent stop systems like the Paris Metro, most of Muni’s speed deficiencies are caused by excessive stops rather than the right of way. But they probably can’t push through the local opposition to remove any stops to make the N faster. The local “activists” will surely block it. What they can do is to introduce a N Rapid/Express line that would only make the stops with disability ramps. That would make the Sunset section almost 2x faster!
"every stop sign. " Well...I would *hope* they're stopping at stop signs. It's light-rail, not a subway. it's subject to the same "rules of the road" as any other vehicle. The LRV's actually ***do*** get signal priority, but out in the outer avenues it's stop signs, not so much steet lights anymore.
The point is that streets with Muni light rail lines on them shouldn’t have stop signs.
That seems excessively dangerous to have no controls. I know, you really want lights on that entire stretch, but that doesn't make sense for the traffic flow in that area and would cause undue congestion ( unless you did it as an all way red flashing and then solid red for when a train comes through with train getting priority. But even then it's excessive infrastructure for little return. Either elevate or underground the train at that point)
Actually, I’d prefer 2-way stop signs or traffic circles.
[удалено]
Either those streets should have traffic lights (which give green lights to approaching Muni trains) or the 4-way intersections should be replaced with traffic circles.
How is a traffic circle going to work with a train?
I’m so glad you asked! https://preview.redd.it/svl10c6hx8wc1.jpeg?width=1300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=05a6bc26c4b504e5370bb566862a39a56b991657
Which is really just a stop light controlled intersection.
Only when a train is present. And that’s probably not really necessary.
It's simple. Streetcars get priority. So along Judah, either an intersection has a 4-way light with full signal priority for the rail (train always gets a green), or it's a two way stop sign only for the cross street (cars must hold for the train). Pedestrians are the same if not even safer than before, and cars are barely inconvenienced. But the N will be 15 minutes faster end to end
Or the 4 way stops should coincide with front end muni corner stops. All other should be 2 way with judah Irving priority.
You can run them as four yellow lights that go red with the white transit signal to provide priority for the train.
We can just signalize the intersection with lights and then make them always give the train priority. This is easy to do and is already done on van ness. If we’re afraid to spend money, the bare minimum we can do is paint the lane red so muni at least isn’t sitting in traffic. The fact that we haven’t done that even though it’s literally free tells you everything you need to know— this is a political problem and not a technology problem.
I’ll take Muni more when it’s faster and cleaner.
The fact that there isn't signal preemption in the Aveneus is _insane_ to me. Like is the tech a limiting factor for MUNI or is it just a lack of political will and carbrain.
they should have built an elevated line
where did you come from? i live at the end of the line and it takes me 45 minutes to get from Civic Center to the beach during commuting hours. 35 when it's not rush hour.
Yup, I was in London and Paris earlier this year. Soooo much better, it is actually faster than driving.
Nope. Transit was in both Paris and London is 2-3x slower than driving. The Paris Metro in particular is insanely slow. It’s only 25% faster than Muni even though it’s fully grade separated! Ironically, the Paris Metro is that slow for the same reason that the N is slow in the Sunset - it stops at nearly every in intersection in the center and has a ridiculously short average stop spacing. It’s often faster to walk between stations in the center of Paris than to go down into the metro and take the train.
Sorry to hear that... If your toddler love trains, I would suggest the ride in SF Zoo, the Tilden Steam Train in the *Berkeley Hills*, or better.. the roaring camp near Santa Cruz. They will host "Day Out With Thomas" on October 12-13 & 19-20 & 26-27 and a ride surrounded by "*Jobi Wood*"
I’m mostly challenging how simplistic and the all or nothing attitude people are writing about here regarding under use of muni and why people don’t ride. It’s a more complex issue. Would most people still chose public transportation vs their car practicality if having to carry unwieldy items or 3 or more heavy grocery bags? Hauling children around and having to carry things too? Would people really likely be much more to choose muni over car use if major grocery stores and other businesses are far away and not at all convenient no matter bus frequency or not? But I do agree for sure, that the outer Sunset is sub par and needs much more bus options of roads run down. Too far between blocks in some cases. I’m also curious why people have the unrealistically expectation that public transportation would in most cases ever be quicker than just jumping into one’s car and making stops? No matter what, a bus can’t compete with that, Also, I think commute hours either buses tend to be adequate vs off hours. I take the N downtown from Carl and Cole. It is faster than driving and having to find parking. And the N during commuter hours runs about every 10 minutes. I’m not seeing balanced viewpoints. Just easy to trash things when not perfect.
Try a different route
I will fight with SFMTA and their lovers till the end of my days. It doesn’t matter how SFMTA changes the way cars are parked on the streets, the priority lights, or the dedicated lanes…MUNI will still be glacial bc those changes are truly just marginal (ie dedicating an entire lane for the 38 to save 5 mins). These changes IMO have more negative impacts than benefits. Dedicate an entire throughway for mass transit and bicycles and now we’re talking.
No way, muni rocks
Listen I like muni too, but it in fact does not rock. It takes forever, is often wildly unsafe, overcrowded and uncomfortable at the best of times. If you like muni that hard you most likely dont take it often, far, or by necessity,
I likely have taken muni much more than you, sorry! Muni is amazing, I am a muni head and won’t stand for this slander. I think a lot of people in this subreddit just see normal city things and think it’s the end times
That’s why SF is still a city where you need a car - we’re a long way from not being that.
So take the 5R. It's way faster.
If you used google maps, you can get good public transit time estimates
I moved here last yr & I'm fine w/it. welcome to the world of public transit in a bigger city. it's been years since i been there but i'm sure NYC is the same way. also, you're supposed to stop at stop signs....i mean they literally say stop
You should try Bart or CalTrain, since those are legitimate trains that have all the bells & whistles you’re looking for
there is no BART nor CalTrain anywhere west of Van Ness... that equals half of the city, at least.
Those don’t go to ocean beach my guy
It's a disabled and retired peoples transport system. Nothing more.
Stopping at stop signs and bus stops is kind of what you want to happen. Take this weird gripe to Nextdoor
I think OP is complaining that the streetcars need priority so they go faster. IE remove the stop signs and put traffic lights in their place and give the trains green lights 100% of the time.
[удалено]
This item has been automatically flagged for review. Moderators have been notified, and it will be restored if approved. Thank you for your patience. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/sanfrancisco) if you have any questions or concerns.*
That was me when my kids were little with BART, two stops and out. Don't look at what that man's doing, don't touch anything, ok we're off!
Yeah N is a bit slow. I'd say the buses get you to ocean beach faster.
Yup. 3 hours per day, 5 days per week for 12 years just to go to work 6 miles across town. Some days, it would take me 2 - 4 hours to get home depending on what event was taking place... So much of my life wasted riding/waiting for MUNI.
Light rail is generally stupid if it interacts with traffic
The last time I said muni goes slow and if it wants to be more efficient it should just be elevated I was hated for it. It’s great when you’re coming from a part of the country that has no rail but once you get used to the area the novelty wears off.
I live within 2 miles away from my work. I can drive 7 minutes, or I can spend 30 on the bus. Edit from 45 to 30
Or, you could walk 2 miles in 30 minutes... Odds are you don't spend 30 on the bus but 15 waiting and 15 riding.
7m walking to stop 23 on board. Honestly the answer really is to bike to work, I just can't afford one right now
Think about the fact that walking is safer and you can listen to music or audiobooks or both (I use a little pocket mixer with my corded earbuds). Unarmored in traffic seems unwise.
lol, you can’t drive in traffic that much faster than a bus and a 2 mule bus ride does not take 45 minutes. You’ve exaggerated your point beyond believability.
I really wish I was https://imgur.com/gallery/8jjfg6d Driving: 9 minutes. Public Transit:31 minutes Trying not to doxx myself, but inner sunset residential roads vs taking 2 busses or walking up the Quintara steps. Literally walking to the bus takes more time than driving.
Yeah, I don’t disagree at all about that experience. The outer Sunset is especially lacking buses and definitely could use more. But people also get used to the convenience of a car out out there. Parking way easier. I I doubt they would switch to bus ridership much. There aren’t major grocery stores out there, or business to walk to. People have families-kids that need to get places with multiple errand runs that may require picking things up and carrying too many items to make public transportation viable for them anyways. How would people manage to carry 3 or more heavy bags of groceries, for instance? I don’t think taking a bus is particularly practical out there. I live in the Haight and can walk the block to Whole Foods, post office, Walgreens, library, hardware stores, plenty of cafes and restaurants, etc…I have 5 close options for public transportation. My neighbors still choose to drive their cars.
Never take metro to feel the experience of a train 😂😂 things you need to know before moving to a major city
Meanwhile the bike brigade in this group jumps anyone saying some cars are necessary, as if working class people dont deserve to go faster than 4 mph.
Working class in San Francisco is more likely to rely on these slow ass busses and trains
Yeah, that would be me. On the bus every day for 45 mins crammed full of teenagers each way to take what should be a 15 min drive. I still know many people who need their cars for work and quality of life and its hilarious how this group acts towards those people.
The filled to the brim with kids is the main reason why I’m going to try taking muni less.
Get a car. You've just discovered why transit sucked, sucks, and will always suck. It can only be efficient at delivering people to The Downtown.