Muni problems

The mayor of San Francisco has recently appointed a panel to help him solve the problems with the SF Muni, the transit system here in SF.

I have some basic things that would help with funding MUNI or at least make people want to ride MUNI more.

Make it easier to buy MUNI passes. – If you have ever tried to buy a weekly or monthly Muni pass in SF you know what a horrible experience it is. Its hard to find a list of where you can buy them, once your do find a place they will probable be OUT of stock. I did a survey around where I work and found that of the 5 places that were on the Muni website as selling Muni passes near me. NONE of them had Muni passes to sell. And this was within the first week of the month. Nice planning. How about selling them over the web? Oh thats right, they already do that, but they can only sell them to you on certain days of the month and they charge you and extra Fee, nicely called a “Conveinience Fee”. The key here is to make it “easier” not harder for people to be able to pay to ride MUNI.

How about selling a yearly MUNI pass?
How about a 3 month pass?
How about selling MUNI passes out of kiosks right on the street? Just like the BART kiosks!

Maybe people would ride more if they could tell where the buses were? There is a site where you can track how long a bus will take to get to a certain stop on its route. But this site does not cover all the bus routes. Bart tells its riders when the next train will be at the station and even how big the train is. How about a Google mashup of some basic GPS and a Google map that shows all the buses and their positions around the city? Helpful?

Muni pay. Pay for performance. For management as well as drivers. Enough said.