Everyone in the city knows about the major service changes happening on Saturday, December 5th, unless if you don't understand English such as the Chinese Americans in Visitation Valley who didn't learn about it until Marlene Tran started rallying the troops.
(On a side note, Ms. Tran is a really great person to meet. I met with her during my first semester in Graduate School when she was teaching ESL on behalf of City College)
What really scratches my head is that both 511 and Google Maps (for public transit) does not have any information whatsoever about the route terminations and changes.
Here's a particular example: on Google Maps, I want to go from 33rd Avenue and Geary Blvd. to Lake Merced and Font Blvd and arrive at 8:00AM on 12/7/09. Easily, the 18-46th Avenue is the route I will have to take to directly get there (even if the line gets re-routed). Instead, Google Maps suggests I take the 38-Geary and the 91-Owl at 4AM to get to SF State three hours early. Google basically deleted every bus and train route that is being changed and kept the ones that will not be changed.
UPDATE: 11/26: Google maps updated their Muni routes for after 12/5/09 including time schedules. What you see below in this updated Google map shows the revised route for the 18-46th Avenue.
View Larger Map
Full description including what times I have to catch the bus are posted here.
In 511's trip planner program, the route changes and schedule changes have not been fixed. If I were to take the exact trip as I did for Google, it will tell me to take the 18-46th Avenue, but it takes the pre 12/5/09 route that goes around the Cliff House.
The public wants a time schedule NOW. Not everyone takes a major bus line that comes around every 5-10 minutes; I wait up to 20 minutes for the 18-46th Avenue and I have the right to know when my bus is scheduled to arrive so I can minimize waiting in the freezing cold.
If a time schedule does not get released soon, Google Maps and 511 will become USELESS.
Lastly, Muni should get their staff out into the streets putting up notices of line terminations or major changes at bus stops that will be affected NOW. There's a little more than one week left.
The public wants a time schedule NOW. Not everyone takes a major bus line that comes around every 5-10 minutes; I wait up to 20 minutes for the 18-46th Avenue and I have the right to know when my bus is scheduled to arrive so I can minimize waiting in the freezing cold.
If a time schedule does not get released soon, Google Maps and 511 will become USELESS.
Lastly, Muni should get their staff out into the streets putting up notices of line terminations or major changes at bus stops that will be affected NOW. There's a little more than one week left.
2 comments:
I'm getting the same results with the 17. The only change to the 17 is that its hours will be scaled back in the middle of the night. But if you try to predict a trip between West Portal and Park Merced for any day after Dec 5, it says that there's no way to get from one to the other and suggests that you drive.
I heard from a Muni IT friend that scheduling data was submitted last week and Google said they needed about 2-3 weeks to debug before posting.
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