The T Line

So the new T line is up and running now down 3rd street.  I was comming home from SFO and I decided that I could take BART to the Montgomery stop and then trasfer to the T-line which is supposed to be free on the weekends in January.  If I couldn't pick it up there, I figured I could always just take the 15 at 2nd street.

When I got to the Montgomery stop and asked if the T was running, the attendant said it was, but I would have to pay if I got on at that station.  I didn't have any quarters to make the $1.50 I needed, and the change machines don't break $20, so I went above ground and bought something at walgreens to make the change.  I was close to 4th street so I decided that I'd take one of those busses to 4th and King so that I could still give the T-line a try, rather than just catch the 15.

When I got to the T-line station, a train going the opposite direction just rolled up.  The platform had about 10 MUNI employees and about 3 passengers waiting for the train.  I joined them and waited.

And waited.

And waited.

A 15 bus turned the corner on to King street, but the nearest stop was near the ballpark and I could never have made it.  A bit later another 15 came and went.  I also counted about 4 N-Judah trains in both directions pass by.  I couldn't have taken the N, but for some reason, it was running and the T was not.

Finally I asked one of the many MUNI employees milling around if she knew when the next train would be.  She walked over to the LED sign (that only faces the back quarter of the T-stop) and read me the next train time.  "19 minutes.  But these signs are a little off, so it will probably come sooner".

For the next 10 minutes I tried to enjoy her level of optimism, that maybe she had inside information about why, if the sign was wrong, the train would come sooner rather than later.  Finally I decided that I needed to go.  I had heavy bags, but I had just spent 9 hours on a plane and another hour traveling into this transit barren city and I just wanted to get home.

As I walked away from the T-line stop, I saw another T-line train bound for the wrong direction.  It was full of people and it was stopped, stopped, in the middle of the street, about a block from the station.  The people on this train were trapped inside, while some insane rule kept this train from rolling another 100 feet to the stop.  My guess is that it would have been too early at this stop.  So rather than let these people off immediately and wait at the station, it was letting people cook in the sun, while within site of their destination.

My walk home took about 20-25 minutes.  I did not see a single T-line train in either direction the whole time.  Just as I got to what would have been my stop if I was riding the 15, two 15 busses in a row drove by.  This is what amazes me about MUNI in SF.  We have some of the best busses and trains in the nation; electric, non-poluting, modern and well built. However, MUNI seem incapable of figuring out how to run them.  Its as if they were cavemen and someone from the future appeared and said "Here's some mass transit!"

Anyway, so far the T-line is a complete disgrace.  Its more than a year late (and I can confirm that over the last 6 months absolutely no construction was being done to this line) and now that its running it will remain empty because nobody will wait for it, and if they caught it, nobody wants to be trapped in the middle of nowhere for 15 minutes to make some failed schedule work.

Comments

[Lisa Phillips]

welcome home!

[Garth]

Thanks!  I guess I should have prefaced this post by saying I had just returned from Tokyo which has arguably the best transit system in the world.

[miyagawa]

Muni metro timetable looks like a complete mess. When I wait for a line at Civic Station to get the N-judah inbound, I waited like 25 minutes, and meanwhile I counted 10 or so other trains coming outbound, but no single inbound train. It was just a mid of the day and the platform had a messy lot of crowd waiting for inbound.

[Yann]

ahah. I had a flat tire this week-end, so I let my bike at the office the time to purchase a new tube, well, to make a long story short, I had to go to the office from my new place. I crossed the T-line and thought about waiting the train. I didn't gave this think a long shot. I told myself that public transportation here just doesn't work and I'd better go by foot -- which I hopefully did!

I didn't see a single inbound train!

[Jamison]

The T-Third Street is in beta until April, so expect problems.

It sounds like the train you were waiting for was stuck in the Market Street tunnel for some reason. That tunnel is a single point of failure where a delay of any single train impacts all 6 Muni Metro lines, with such narrow headways between trains there isn't even room for people blocking the doors from closing.

Then you have Metro delays on the surface. Every line except the T-Third Street spends a lot or most of it's time in mixed traffic with cars. The N-Judah is one of the worst because as it runs through Cole Valley it's on a two a two lane street where just this weekend a truck double parked in front of a store delayed my boyfriend's train 15 minutes and led too another train ending up right behind it, instead of the 15 minute intervals it's supposed to have. Again it's a single point of failure, but it also means there's no way to order the trains as they enter the tunnel.

So while the T-Third Street has it's own private lanes almost the entire route (and the section where it doesn't traffic is so light and the way it's designed, the trains will delay the cars instead of the cars delaying the trains) except it will still have to share that tunnel where the other lines can screw it up.

As for that downtown train you saw stuck across the intersection from the station, my guess would be it was getting a red signal by mistake and the computer wouldn't let the train move, not because the train was a ahead of schedule (right now they are having a 5 minute or so layover so riders can pay and transfer, and the driver gets some time to stretch his legs and take a break)