Slowly Slicing Muni Out of My Life
September 8th, 2006 @ 11:50 amIn a way, most Muni stories are slightly trivial. I mean, they’re just about how much the bus sucks, retellings of inconveniences that pale in comparison to local social and political turmoil or any of the international crises of the day. But when you’re just trying to live your life and get from place to place with relative efficiency and Muni incompetence sets up a barrier, in those moments, these are to you the most important things on the planet.
A week ago, I had to go play a soccer game out at West Sunset (aka Jim Lucey Fields) at 39th Ave and Quintara. I had never been, but based on the Muni system map and the schedule on 511, the L-Taraval was my best bet. It went straight from the financial district where I worked (from Embarcadero station) out to an L-Taraval stop at 40th Ave and Taraval, a mere four blocks from the field. Getting home looked promising, with the 48-Quintara traveling right from 39th and Quintara to half a mile from my home. Unfortunately, when I looked up the 48’s schedule, I discovered it stopped running between those points at about 6:45 p.m., which fits, of course, with Muni’s bizarre determination that rush hour is long over by then. But I figured I could take the L to Forest Hill Muni Metro Station, which is what I do (going outbound) to get home every day, and there are four buses I can take, one that gets me 3 blocks from my home and three that get me half a mile from my home, followed by a relatively easy walk.
Knowing that 511.org estimated a 43 minute trip (including walking time), I left work at 5:45 and booked it to the Embarcadero station, knowing that either the 5:51 L or the 5:57 L would do the trick, but also knowing that 511.org and the Muni schedule are both kind of full of crap. In a stroke of Muni luck, I only had to wait through one train before an L pulled up. The first sign of trouble, though, was when the destination signs read “Sunset Blvd.” instead of “47th Ave-Zoo.” I recalled Sunset’s location from the map and guessed it was probably an extra block’s walk and would be a fine end of the line for me. I boarded and took a seat.
The second sign of trouble was that the car kept stopping in the tunnels - more than usual. And going really slow. The last couple weeks, the Muni Metros have been crawling along between Castro and Forest Hill, requiring me to leave work about 5 minutes earlier every day to avoid missing the connecting bus and either waiting in the cold or trekking from Forest Hill. But this ride was different in that we were slow and stopping between every station, though not a peep about it came from our driver. However, by the time we left Castro, every in-tunnel stop, which sometimes felt as if they were as little as a few yards apart, was met with a collective exasperated sigh from the passengers.
When we got to West Portal, I was a little excited. I’d never been out that far on the L line, though I’m not sure why I was such a dork about emerging from the underground into the sunlight. I’ve taken the N to Golden Gate Park a million times from downtown and the J all over when I used to live in Noe Valley. But alas, this was new territory on the L. I relaxed and sat back to enjoy the ride as I realized there was a long way to go.
Unfortunately, the stop and go nature of our trip did not change once we were out on the street. At first I chalked it up to the fact that the road equals cars and traffic and stop signs and stop lights and pedestrians, but clearly something else was up. That something was never revealed to the passengers, but at 24th Ave and Taraval the driver announced that he was turning around and we all had to get off the streetcar. No explanations, no apologies, just get off the bus. That collective exasperation had morphed into a slightly more hostile irritation and frustration by this point, but there was nothing we could do other than disembark and watch as the train backed up, switched to the tracks on the other side of the double yellows, and receded from view.
I surmised it was too far to walk and I had seen another L close behind us a few blocks earlier. It eventually caught up to us, and we boarded. We eventually made it to 40th and Taraval, and I walked the four blocks to the field, arriving a little over an hour after I started my journey and cursing the L to anyone who would listen.
After a lovely time playing soccer until the sun went down, I trudged back to 40th and Taraval to catch the inbound to Forest Hill. I got there at 8:17 p.m., allegedly just missing the 8:16 L with one scheduled to arrive at 8:28 and another at 8:43. I know the Muni schedule cannot even be considered loosely associated with reality at most points in time, but at night when the traffic is a little less heavy, Muni can sometimes hew a little closer to its published timetables. Though not so much this time.
I knew the L was supposed to come every 15 minutes, and seeing none just missed down the road I was optimistic, also supported by the fact that there was another person already waiting. I have no idea where this naïveté sprung from, but it was knocked out of me in due course. I waited. And then I waited some more. Five, ten, fifteen minutes went by without a hint of an inbound L. Then twenty, then twenty-five. Finally, after approximately 30 minutes in the cold and about 12 minutes after I decided I should spend my time listening to Nightcrawler and getting to love it and twenty minutes after I decided to stop calling Matt to bother him, the L rolled up to the stop. The best part, as you may suspect, about all this was that there were four outbound Ls that roared by in the other direction. Four!
Of course, the ride to Forest Hill on the empty, nearly nine p.m. streets of Parkside was s . . . l . . . o . . . w. We eventually made it to the station, and I was lucky enough to wait only briefly for a 43-Masonic, which got me halfway home, and walking through the door just after 9:30 p.m.
So to recap, I spent about 130 minutes of Muni related transit to get about 70 minutes of soccer in. Not very practical or efficient. I love soccer, but if over two hours of transit time is required, I better be crossing a bridge or at least the city limits.
So this past Wednesday, I had to make the trek to West Sunset again. Swearing off the L, which may be dead to me now, I chose to thumb my nose at the bus system I would desperately love to support, but can’t because that would require me to sacrifice my own sanity. I parked as close as I could without getting into permit parking territory to Glen Park BART Station (about an 8 minute walk) in the morning, and jumped in my car after work, having left just after 5:50 p.m. Total transit time to the park was just under 50 minutes, but about 5 of that involved me turning the wrong way after being freaked out by a minor traffic jam and having to double back. After playing, I was home in less than half an hour (which included chatting afterwards), which drive interestingly also involved a wrong turn, that might actually have been a short-cut, but it was really foggy so I could never reproduce the effort.
In the end, I learned my lesson. How could I forget that this is the same Muni that can’t figure out how to not inconvenience thousands of people on Giants’ game days, the same Muni whose drivers I have witnessed yelling at young kids and old people and blowing by women with babies at stops, the same Muni that is so unpredictable that I rarely bother to check the schedule before standing out on the corner, the same Muni that at least once every week-and-a-half or so I give up on and walk the steep 20 minutes to Glen Park in the morning rather than wait out the bus? If only they wouldn’t make it sound so damn easy to just hop on the bus and go.
