Measuring Muni

This morning's Examiner has an article about Muni's poor ontime performance. It talks about bus lines and owl lines and light rail and bonuses for Muni brass. What it doesn't talk about is common sense.

Of course night owl buses run on time. There's no traffic then!

Of course the obscure 81X Caltrain Express has a terrible ontime performance. It's running to and from a train station that's situated next to a freeway. That means traffic.

These "on time" statistics make no sense to me. In these days of 511.org and Nextmuni, printed schedules are just not that meaningful. We can easily check when the next bus/train/etc. is due (more or less) and plan for that.

Frequency is the thing. You want to measure performance - ask riders HOW OFTEN their bus comes, now when. It doesn't matter if the 24 is "on time" if it's a half a block behind the one that's "late." And for the passenger who waited twenty minutes for a bus instead of ten, it doesn't matter that the second on is on time. It's just irritating.

As for me, my rides over the past few weeks have been just fine. Even as the rains come and people start carrying giant shopping bags onto the trains and buses, I'm still a satisfied Muni rider.

I just wish that I could think of a way to get all that Prop A money into the public schools. I'm still rankled by our sell-out progressives.

Today's Stats:
Wait time: 1 minute
Ride time: 15 minutes
Muni Reading: What is the What, by Dave Eggers. And if reading about hundreds of frightened, malnourished boys crossing souther Sudan on foot doesn't fill you with gratitude (even for Muni), I don't know what could. But really. Read this book. A compelling story brilliantly told.