San Francisco Citizen

These days, there’s no need to wonder when the next Nx Judah Express is coming, as you can see them queuing up betwixt First and Second streets on Market.

Anyway, MUNI has a starter directing bus traffic on the evening drive starting at 4:00 PM, so the drivers are keeping schedule down to the minute.

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Yesterday’s Nx’es appeared to be rather full with riders, so that means that this program is more successful than the CultureBus already.

That’s the update for now…

Well here it is, the debut of the Nx Judah Express, designed to whisk people to the fog-enshrouded West Bay, you know, to give a little more elbow room for the denizens of San Francisco Proper – the Inner Sunset and Cole Valley.

All right, Chapter I: Know Your Nx.

Anterior. Rather a bright bleu, non? Redolent of the bright orange-wrapped CultureBus one might think:

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Lateral. Rather patriotic, redolent of the 1976-era bicentennial scheme:

Posterior. Rather less blue, but that solid-colored rectangle is your visual cue to start running for the Nx before the driver takes off.

I don’t see a bunch of people clamoring to get into these things just yet. We’ll see.

All right Chapter II: Empty by Design.

After the drivers drop off passengers way out there near La Playa or 47th Aveneue or whatever, they turn around and head back to the Financh empty.

What? Really. The plan is for the drivers to “dead-head” on back downtown sans passengers.

(Wonder if you could get on at the last stop outbound with the intent of coming into the Financial without any stops at all? That would be the Nx Judah Express to the Second Power, or something. But, they’d probably kick you off, so oh well.)

Like I say, this program reminds me of the failed CultureBus, which Nat Ford still hails as a success.

Obviously, you can’t have an N Judah streetcar run an express route on the same tracks as regular N Judah service. And obviously, the SFMTA just can’t add more N’s, for whatever reason. Oh well.

And in mitigation, MUNI’s not out there cheerleading for this saying how great an idea it is, you know, the way it happened with Gavin Newsom’s CultureBus. And, when I checked the Next MUNI today, those Nx’es looked verily like rabbits, easily outpacing the N Judahs that started at about the same time.

On Time Will Tell how bad this latest SFMTA program is…