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or, better yet, give him a job."
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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

The Strangest Muni Permanent Route Change (44 O'Shaughnessy)


I noticed a tweet today from Jerold Chinn, a reporter for the SF Public Press, and he mentioned about a new Muni 44 O'Shaughnessy reroute and provided a link with the details on the SFMTA/Muni's website.

Muni says the re-route is for the inbound direction of the 44 line (going north). The old route to make the turnaround to go back outbound (southbound) was to turn left from 6th Avenue to Clement, right turn to 7th Avenue, right on California, and a final right on 6th Avenue. Basically, the route is to just go "around the block." See map below:


View Larger Map

But the new route Muni mentioned will instead have the bus continue down Clement to Park Presidio, make a right onto Park Presidio, and right on California.


View Larger Map

From crunching the numbers, that's a 15 block permanent re-route for the line. I feel this permanent reroute is just a joke, why make a bus waste extra fuel driving 15 blocks when it can really just go on its normal route?

Also, why make it go all the way down Clement to Park Presidio? Clement is just as congested as Irving Street on a normal weekday with double parking and heavy traffic. And making it turn onto Park Presidio is not a great idea, what happens if traffic is heavy due to an accident ahead? Is the bus going to attempt to make a wide turn on one of the busiest corridors in the city?

San Francisco's City Government at its "Best" - McDonald's Toy Ban


So our Board of Supervisors (or what I call the Stupidvisors) approved a law where fast food restaurants that serves higher than a set standard on fat, sugar, and other content, cannot give away free toys with their meals. Basically, the is targeting the McDonald's "Happy Meal," but can also affect other fast food chains in the city as well.

But from what this article from the Chronicle says, the owner of a majority of the McDonald's in the city found a creative way to go around it, just have the toy sold as a separate item.

I've known that this law is a joke from the start. Instead of selling a $5 Happy Meal with a free toy, just sell the meal itself for $4.99 and charge the customer an additional one cent to "purchase" the toy." In the end, it's still $5 for the meal and the toy.

Here's another way to look at the argument: Let's say buying a pack of cigarettes comes with a pack of matches free; a city law similar to the Happy Meal toy ban makes it illegal to give away the matches for free, so therefore a business can easily just "sell" the matches for a penny. If the law was different where selling matches was banned, then one can argue in court that a cake shop can't sell them too so customers can light birthday candles on their cake.

So Board of Supervisors... what's the point of the "ban" on giveaway toys in kids meals, when the way around it is so simple? Is this just a way to encourage us San Francisco citizens to go across the border into Daly City (San Mateo County) and pay a smaller sales tax?

Monday, November 28, 2011

Standing in Line for Four Hours for Giants Tickets on Black Friday

Crazy Crab

Can you believe it? We are less than a month away until Christmas. Time does fly fast, doesn't it?

Well... time doesn't fly as long as you stand in line for four hours with only twenty people in front of you to buy Giants tickets...

The Horror of Buying Giants Tickets on Black Friday
Did any of you get any Black Friday bargains? For me, I'd say yes, but here's what happened when I was in line buying Giants tickets on the first day of early sales...
  • On Black Friday, Giants tickets went on sale at 10AM, and in order to buy tickets without paying the outrageous surcharge, I went to AT&T Park's Giants Dugout store to buy my tickets.
  • I stood in line at 9:30AM with 20 people ahead of me and was expecting to get in the door at 10AM, stand in line for no more than 20 or 30 minutes, and get out as quickly as possible. But the horror came when the line was hardly moving...
  • Why? They only had one computer working to sell tickets. Their other computer wasn't operational. With only one computer, it took the average person 10 to 15 minutes to buy the tickets they wanted, and a good majority of the fans was unprepared, thinking on the fly on what games they wanted to see.
  • To make matters worse, the Dugout store realized after two hours, they needed extra workers to run the other ticket computers at the glass window sales booths on King Street. One they got those working, they decided to mishandle the next in line customers by allowing the people in the back of the line to get to the glass window booths first, therefore someone like me, #20 in line, got royally screwed over in this fiasco.
  • In the end, I stood in line for FOUR HOURS just to buy twelve Giants tickets.

Okay, so the Giants Grinch got me again, Giants management making me waste many hours of my life because they were too stupid to use common sense by being prepared for the masses waiting to get game tickets.

On a better note, let's all remember something important:
The holidays are not the same because John Toomey, a.k.a. Santa Claus whom was fired from Macy's Union Square and hired by Lefty O'Doul's, died in late July.

During his stint last holiday season at Lefty's, the message put out showed that us citizens should be generous and donate to needy people in the Bay Area. I decided last year to buy some toys and bring it to Lefty's to donate it to the SF Firefighters toy program, and I was stunned to see the barrel overstuffed full of toys from great people of our city.

This year, I will make sure to donate again, because I know that while I'm thankful to have a job and income, the less fortunate may not be able to buy a toy for their child.

I
want to propose a challenge to you readers, make a donation, whether it be a toy, dropping off food at the local food bank, or even spend time at a program like Glide to serve food. Make sure to share the holiday spirit with others, and I'm sure someone out there will appreciate what you have donated.

Friday, November 18, 2011

Clipper Card Transition of BART High Value Discount (HVD) Tickets is Poorly Thought Out

BART Gate & Clipper Card

If you are a regular commuter of BART and use High Value Discount (HVD) tickets to save a little money on your trips, you are aware the classic magnetic strip tickets will be going away at the end of the year to be a Clipper only product.

But while you may think, "wow, Clipper will make it so easier!" Ha! Time for a reality check.


The old way to buy HVDs:
  • Any BART ticket sales window at major stations. Accepts cash and commuter benefit checks.
  • Vendors around the Bay Area, including some grocery stores. Accepts cash and sometimes commuter benefit checks.
  • Mail-in tickets to BART sales office. Personal checks and commuter benefit checks accepted.

The Clipper way to buy HVDs:
  • A Clipper card user must register their personal credit/debit card, or use a commuter benefit debit card. Once registered, the user must sign-up for autoload where the card will have $32 in HVD value, and when it dips below the $10 threshold, the card will be automatically replenished with $32 more HVD dollars.

For more information about the HVD transition, click here.

For some of you, this new method might be an okay option to charge your personal credit/debit card to automatically purchase HVD value for BART. But if you like buying your HVDs in cash, you'd be grumpy too.


For those who uses commuter benefits, your options are SEVERELY LIMITED. Here's how it sucks for all of us:
  • Commuter benefit checks/vouchers cannot be claimed for HVDs.
  • You must use a commuter benefit debit card. Some of you have told me your employer doesn't give you one, and you only get vouchers. Basically, you are screwed.
  • You can only use autoload only. If you use a commuter debit card, you must be very strict on your BART spending, otherwise your card can get blocked if you don't have sufficient funds on your commuter debit card.
  • If you still want to use vouchers or a debit card without the stupid rules about autoload, you can only claim them for e-cash (universal Clipper cash fund), but you will NOT receive the 6.25% HVD discount.

Now you know why this really sucks.

As a long time blogger writing about Clipper, I highly DO NOT recommend Clipper's autoload program. It has a bad reputation and if for some reason your card gets blocked (even by accident), your card is unusable for a number of days until the system can resolve it.

For me, I'm very uncomfortable about giving out my credit card number to Clipper. For the fellow wary folks out there, there needs to be better options for all of us to get BART HVDs on Clipper, regardless if you use commuter benefits or just like paying cash to your favorite grocery store for the magnetic stripe card. MTC has said in the past that making other options to obtain HVDs is cost prohibitive, but I think it's very necessary to gain the public's trust in the program.


Here's my recommendations BART, Clipper, and MTC should do to make it easier for all for this Clipper card transition:
  1. HVDs remain available with autoload.
  2. Passengers can purchase HVDs without the autoload commitment at any Clipper ticketing machine (including Muni metro's), BART ticketing machines, and all Clipper card vendors.
  3. Passengers have the right to purchase a single HVD with cash at any location selling Clipper.
  4. Passengers have the right to use their commuter benefit voucher to buy a HVD at Clipper vendors that are willing to accept them.
  5. Passengers have the right to use their commuter benefit card to purchase a HVD at any self-service Clipper card machine, Muni metro ticket machine, and any BART ticketing machine.

If BART is willing to accept this idea instead, I'd say, run with it:
  • Since seniors, disabled, and youth card users automatically gets their discount without the need to have a separate BART pool of funding (they use their regular e-cash), why don't extend the idea to adult Clipper card users by giving every person using a Clipper card a 6.26% discount? By doing it this way, MTC, BART, and Clipper doesn't have to spend millions on reprogramming every single ticketing machine, vendor machine, and rewriting software; they just rewrite the BART fare table by subtracting 6.25%.

What's your opinion? Leave a comment.

Central Subway - The Subway to Nowhere

Muni to Chinatown Station?

When you think of the Central Subway, how do you feel? In my point of view, I think the subway is a poorly thought out project.

It's truly a "subway to nowhere." Why would the city decide to build a subway that ends in Chinatown? Sure, it helps the infamous overcrowding of the 8X, 30, and 45 lines, and the horrifying traffic on Stockton, but that's mostly it.

Just Chinatown?
Why doesn't the line go any further than Chinatown? The city is installing a stop in tourist infested Union Square, but what's the use of stopping there when tourists have only one place to visit, Chinatown?

Can't the line go further to end at Fisherman's Wharf?

Getting to the Wharf from downtown is a total pain in the ass, you either have to wait at a Cable Car stop and pay an outrageous $6 fare or be sardine packed on the F-Market streetcar. By having a light rail line going underground from Union Square to the Wharf, tourists and residents alike can get between these areas in record time, and it helps reduce the overcrowding on the F-Market and Powell cable car lines.

If you can shuttle more passengers to the places they need to go, Muni stands to make a bigger cut of money from their farebox revenues and get people from end to end in record time. Even the residents of North Beach and Wharf areas would benefit too with quick metro service to downtown.

Common sense! A lot of the general public has it, except for most of our city politicians and people coordinating the subway project.

Monday, November 14, 2011

14 Realistic Vision Statements for Muni

Muni to Chinatown Station?

Muni's vision starting in the year 2013 is:
"San Francisco: Great City, Excellent Transportation Choices." (PDF document)

What a classic! We the public believe that!
I think I just peed in my pants.

I thought to myself, let's make some real vision statements for Muni... here we go!
  1. "We continue to suck, and the public knows it."
  2. "Proposition G saved us millions, and we used it to pay for the central subway."
  3. "On time to us means if we never show-up, we don't get in trouble."
  4. "We think fare hikes is an easy way to fix our budget."
  5. "Slow is our middle name."
  6. "Central subway will solve all of our problems."
  7. "NIMBYs rule our agency."
  8. "Preventative maintenance is our tenth priority over other items such as my big fat salary and pension fund."
  9. "Our reputation is like our graffiti problem, we can never get it clean."
  10. "Fail, on top of fail, on top of more fail = fail sandwich."
  11. "We don't suck as bad as AC Transit, but they got cooler looking buses."
  12. "Screwing the public everyday."
  13. "There's no such thing as a guarantee, except fare hikes and cuts in service."
  14. "We love cameras, including the malfunctioning ones operating on our entire fleet."

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Akit Voted - His Opinions on the Results

San Francisco Proposition B Fail

Voting, a time for us citizens to make serious choices, and tell politicians we like them or hate them with the stroke of a pen; instead of opening our wallets.

It turned out a lot of my picks on the ballot didn't turn out the way I wanted it to go. So here's my views about it:

Mayor Ed Pak, I meant Rose Lee, sorry, Ed Lee wins
Great... just great. If you read my twitter feed, I don't like the guy. I didn't put him as any of my choices on the ranked choice ballot. What's so bad about the ranked choice ballot is if you pick three candidates and they don't make it into the last round after most people are eliminated, basically, your vote doesn't count for one of the last two survivors.

District Attorney Gascon wins
Not a bad choice. But I wouldn't pick Fazio because he was the lawyer for Ed Jew whom is now enjoying time in a federal prison camp.

Sheriff Ross wins
Interesting, real interesting. Not much to say, but from meeting him in person, he's a nice guy.

Proposition A wins
Bonds to refurbish schools is okay for me. If I have kids, I'd send them to SF public schools and are well maintained and not at risk of falling down in an earthquake.

Proposition B wins
Fixing potholes with bond money. I voted no because we never need bonds to fix our streets. Shouldn't the extra money saved from Proposition G (a.k.a. "the public seeks revenge on Muni employees") and money from the general fund be enough to fix our streets?

Proposition C beats D
Oh god. I picked D over C because we could have saved an extra $300 million in ten years by going with D. Hey, $300M could keep our streets nice and smooth instead of potholes every day. But give some credit to Adachi, if he didn't speak up and demand pension reform, proposition C wouldn't pass.

Propositions E and F
Annoying propositions about inactive laws and "campaign consultants." Nobody really cares.

Proposition G Loses
Raise the sales tax by 0.5% to 9%. Um, that just encourages me to shop more in Daly City and Colma where the tax is a nice 8.25%!!!!!!!! I totally voted no on this one.

Proposition H Wins Loses
The school district assignment proposition barely wins loses with just 115 votes making the difference. The controversy about neighborhood schools has always been a hot topic in this city, and I'm going to bet within five years, this issue is going to be raised again.


I love voting... it's an opportunity for average folks to give the middle finger to the city government.