Brightly Colored FastPass To Be Replaced By TransLink

The End Of An Era: Brightly Colored FastPass To Be Replaced By TransLink: News: SFAppeal: "The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will replace all existing fare gates at its Muni underground stations with TransLink-only fare gates by fall 2010 at the earliest, according to a memo sent to the Board of Supervisors."

Oh, I can smell the meltdown from here. Every onboard has to tag the Twiki box? That's going to make for some ugly scrums at busy stops, much less a busted box making people run up and down the stations/trains.

Coming Soon: MUNI/BART to Track Your Every Move: "And how will this work for out-of-town visitors and other people who don't use Muni? There's also the whole Big Brother aspect of our every move being documented on some database."

SFist: MUNI Wants to Know What Love Is

SFist: MUNI Wants to Know What Love Is: "Transit Effectiveness Project are taking this whole 'listening to the people' thing to a whole other level . Mainly they now have an online survey for you, the rider, to fill out and tell them how you feel about MUNI. It's fun too. And the best part? There's a whole section where they want you to write anything that you wanted to say to MUNI."

Heh, that's going to leave a mark.

The SFCron says that a Muni deficit is projected, but fares will hold steady "Muni has raised fares twice since 2003, with the cost of a regular adult fare now at $1.50 -- a 50 percent increase. Going back for a third fare increase would not be politically palatable, particularly in a year when Mayor Gavin Newsom will be running for re-election and Muni's service reliability is slipping.

Muni is the Bay Area's busiest public transit system with about 618,000 boardings each day. But by the agency's own measures, vehicles are overcrowded, service is slowing down and missed runs are the norm."

It's even better that Office of the Mayor sez that "Newsom sponsored legislation implementing Rescue Muni's reform plan and helped put our Municipal Railway on the road to recovery."

Now, about that Central Subway ...

SF Muni: Central Subway

SF Muni: Central Subway

Ugg. So Dumb. Looks like they might actually connect to existing metro stations via tunnels. They don't even make it up to Stockton or North Beach, just dump 'em off at the Lion Gate.