[UPDATE: Here's the other shot of these two in action.]
You kids might be too young to remember, but the annual Bay to Breakers footrace used to run wild on the streets.
As here, from back in The Aughts.
At this point, race-leader Caroline Rotich (#2) must have been thinking how different things are here compared with Kenya:
Click to expand – this one gets extra big
Ah memories…
Remember that whole deal about how taxi drivers were fighting the sainted SFMTA, the worst-run agency in town, over those 5% credit card fees and rear seat Passenger Information Monitors (PIMs) and electronic waybills and whatnot?
Well, some people at the SFMTA thinks that the SFMTA should get a piece of the ad revenue pie.
See?
Read all about this from driver John Han at Taxi Town SF:
“The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) may explore ways to get a share of taxi advertising revenues in the future.
Recently, the United Taxi Workers (UTW) filed a public information request, and obtained materials regarding the City’s regulation on 5% credit card fees, rear seat Passenger Information Monitors (PIMs), and electronic waybills.
Included in the material was a copy of an email sent by MTA Deputy Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi dated March 25th, 2011, and addressed to Sonali Bose, the agency’s chief financial officer, and other recipients.
In that email, Hayashi responds to two questions being posed at her by Nathaniel Ford, who was the MTA chief at the time, and backed up by Sonali Bose, regarding the distribution of ad revenues generated by rear seat PIMs.
Bose’s first question to Hayashi was, “Who negotiated the 90%-10% split and under what authority?” Her second question was, “Why isn’t the MTA getting a portion of the ad revenue?”
The following is an excerpt from the email in which Hayashi answers Bose’s two questions…
“As to the question of ‘who negotiated the deal,’ I guess my response is that it’s not a deal so much as a regulation – while I did my due diligence and circulated a draft memo to the TAC, it comes from a place of regulatory authority, not negotiation. The SFMTA has no privity of contract with the equipment providers – Veriphone, Wireless Edge and CMT have contracts with the taxi companies.
Why 10% to the Driver Fund? Because, like the medallion sales program, I felt it important to be able to point to some benefit to drivers in order to make the very unpopular change go down more smoothly.
If he question is why not a share to the SFMTA, I guess my answer is that this is equipment that is owned by third party vendors and being installed at no cost in privately-owned vehicles driven by independent contractors. We come at it as a regulator, and the permit fees we receive are supposed to cover the cost of administrating our program. I think that I would have gotten tremendous resistance from both companies and equipment vendors if I tried to demand a slice of advertising revenues for the SFMTA as part of the price for a company to get a waiver from the regulator. It would be like granting a building permit on the condition that the Planning Department could have a share of the advertising revenues from the building.
Of course, as we have discussed previously, there may be a place for bringing taxi advertising generally into the SFMTA, but if we do it would have to be a cooperative situation with the companies, where we agree to bear the administrative burden and use our greater negotiating power to increase their revenues in exchange for a share. That is a distinct possibility that we can continue to explore. I think the companies would embrace it if we can improve their advertising yield and reduce their administrative costs. I think I mentioned to you that the good time to broach this would be when we propose uniform top lights for all taxis with uniform advertising space that we could manage on behalf of the companies. That is something we accomplish during the next fiscal year if that is the policy direction.
I hope I have explained a very messy situation. Let me know if you have further questions.”
A scanned version of the emails text (sometimes hard to read because it’s scanned) is available and can be viewed by CLICKING HERE“
Well well.
A messy situation indeed.
Well, here you go – in four short days, McAllister will become a fully two-way street.
This should speed up the #5 Fulton inbound, huh?
And now there’s even less excuse to use the Wiggle bike route (as McAllister and Divisadero make up a superior route to and from the Panhandle, sorry for saying that over again but it’s totally true.)
The News of the Day:
“The SFMTA Announces Reconfiguration of McAllister Street
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which oversees all surface transportation in the City, including the Municipal Railway (Muni), today announced that, effective Thursday, Aug. 4, McAllister Street east of Hyde Street will be reconfigured. Also, Charles J. Brenham Place (7th Street north of Market) will be converted to two-way. The traffic reconfiguration and correlated completion of the overhead contact system (OCS) rehabilitation in this area mean that the nearly 16,000 annual 5 Fulton Muni trolley bus customers will now have a more direct trip downtown. The change will save the Agency more than $200,000 a year in operating expenses.
Effective Aug. 4, the new configuration will allow Muni, commercial vehicles and bicycles to travel eastbound on McAllister Street between Hyde Street and Charles J. Brenham Place. All other eastbound McAllister traffic will continue to turn right at Hyde Street. Only bicycles, taxis and Muni vehicles will be allowed to turn east on Market Street from McAllister Street. All other traffic will be required to turn right onto Market Street. All traffic will be able to make a right turn from northbound Charles J. Brenham Place (7th Street north of Market Street) onto eastbound McAllister Street to access the block between Charles J. Brenham Place and Jones Street. The attached maps show the changes in the traffic configuration.
The current 5 Fulton route requires inbound vehicles heading downtown to make a right on Hyde Street and then a left on Market Street. The new route, made possible by new overhead wires in the eastbound direction, will allow buses on this route to go straight to Market Street, saving up to three minutes per trip. The changes to the 5 Fulton route will take effect after the testing of the new OCS in August.
The SFMTA’s Capital Investment Program includes the rehabilitation of the aging trolley bus OCS in various parts of the City. This vital work includes replacing existing poles and overhead wires. Rehabilitation of the OCS improves safety and service reliability and helps keeps Muni in a state of good repair. The OCS construction began last summer and was part of the 21 Hayes Pole Replacement project.”
Hurray?
Hurray!
This semi-official “Neighborhood Ambassador” of the 100th running of the Bay to Breakers event somehow got the idea that she should start shutting down the annual after-party on Fell Street all by herself.
She spent a while hectoring these street youth until one of them proffered his hand for a high-five good-bye. (You see, he was too polite just to walk away during the haranguing session.) She left him hanging for a bit with his hand fixed in the air but eventually she responded in kind and then the kids, the Future of America, the people who were doing nothing wrong, felt free to walk away without appearing to be too disrespectful.
The scene on Fell – what happens when you try to end an afternoon party at lunchtime:
Click to expand
Some of the “Ambassadors” felt it was their job to prevent people from walking across the Panhandle to get to the other side, you know, the same way residents of Fell Street do the other 364 days of the year, However, the citizens of SF mostly managed to ignore these brownshirts.
Good times.
See you next year in 2012, Bay to Breakers!
This bus ad doesn’t say The Streets of San Francisco, oh no, it says The Treats of San Francisco.
See? (The fine print in the ad says that MUNI has permission from CBS to run to use the SoSF logo, so everything’s nice and legal.)
Click to expand.
Isn’t this ad kind of a rip-off of Greg Dewar’s N Judah Chronicles?
Signs point to yes.
Speaking of whom, here’s MUNI’s Death Spiral from Greg Dewar and Joe Eskenazi. (Boy, the head of MUNI at the time just flipped out, I mean, really flipped out over this bit in the SF Weekly from last year. He hosted a big meeting in response to this one article. It was epic, I’ve been told.)
Anyway, do you know what that “treat” is, the one referenced in the MUNI ad?
It’s the price increase what starts today.
Hurray!
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.
Click to expand
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…
Here’s the news from Your Senator Leland Yee, the current front-runner in the race to become Your Next Mayor:
“SAN FRANCISCO – Senator Leland Yee (D-San Francisco) issued the following statement in response to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency approving a $384,000 severance package for their outgoing executive director:
I am deeply disappointed that MTA would approve a nearly $400,000 golden parachute for an outgoing city executive. At a time when our budget is cutting critical social services for our kids and the most vulnerable in our city, we can ill-afford to be paying excessive payouts to administrators who are no longer working for the public. I have fought these exorbitant sweetheart deals at UC and CSU, and as mayor I will reform these practices.”
OK then.
WWMD with the SFMTA?
This was the one I was thinking of originally:
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:
Click to expand
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…
Pretty much.
The thing is is that if you are going to Montgomery Street as your final destination anyway, then the Nx might be for you.
Or, if you feel guilty about sitting down on an N Judah streetcar while you’re passing by those Cole Valley suckas, then the Nx might be for you.
Otherwise not so much.
Per jallenhere:
“The N judah is racing the new N judah Express and the N judah is winning. The experiment failed.”
Ooh, harsh.
Now here’s panicpandapanic:
“Tried the N-Judah Express today. Nice not having a bunch of stops but it took about the same amount of time due to the walk from Bush St.“
And here’s Madge707:
“Caught sight of the n Judah express this am. It was moving fast. Too bad it ends at Montgomery 
“
What MUNI needs to do is to get its act together.
This band-aid approach, this NX Judah Express does not constitute getting your act together, MUNI.
Just saying.
Now here’s my question for people living way out there in the West Bay – is it your patriotic duty to wait for the new Nx Judah Express instead of taking the N-Judah streetcar, you know, to free up more space for people living in the InSet, the Inner Sunset?
‘Cause if you fix on the idea of taking the bus everyday from the 48th Ave. or La Playa area, it’s going to take you longer to get to work, some of the time, anyway. Transit First
So, even though the bus line is just for you, you personally won’t benefit all that much from it. Consider taking this bus as your patriotic duty to benefit those poor devils who live in the Inner Sunset or Cole Valley and might get passed up up by a totally full N Judah streetcar.
Oh well.
In other news, the CultureBus is considered a success by the people at MUNI, still.
Oh well.
Now here’s my question for people living way out there in the West Bay – is it your patriotic duty to wait for the new Nx Judah Express instead of taking the N-Judah streetcar, you know, to free up more space for people living in the InSet, the Inner Sunset?
‘Cause if you fix on the idea of taking the bus everyday from the 48th Ave. or La Playa area, it’s going to take you longer to get to work, some of the time, anyway. Transit First
So, even though the bus line is just for you, you personally won’t benefit all that much from it. Consider taking this bus as your patriotic duty to benefit those poor devils who live in the Inner Sunset or Cole Valley and might get passed up up by a totally full N Judah streetcar.
Oh well.
In other news, the CultureBus is considered a success by the people at MUNI, still.
Oh well.
