You may remember that in November 1996 Muni started printing a "lite",
aka "more relaxed", version of its schedules for distribution to the
public. (Chronicle 18 November 1996 page A15; Examiner, 2 December
1996 page A1) Instead of saying that a bus would arrive at the corner
of 11th and Market at 0520, 0535, 0545, 0555, 0610, 0624, and so
forth, they now read "0520 THEN APPROXIMATELY EVERY 15 MINUTES
UNTIL..."
This provides a way for Muni to completely miss bus runs without ANY
accountability. An outsider cannot know precisely how many buses were
scheduled to pass a point in a certain period, and hence cannot know
how well Muni is performing, and hence cannot hold Muni's "bright and
energetic" head Emilio Cruz and its transit-hostile Mayor Willie Brown
accountable in any measurable fashion.
This removes assessment of Brown's campaign promise to "Fix Muni, even
if I have to drive the buses myself" (Chronicle, 2 November 1995) from
something which the public can objectively measure to something
contested via sound bites ("it's fixed!" "is not!")
I do not think it is a coincidence that the switch to the "more
relaxed" timetables occurred just after the Rescue Muni group was
formed, with one of its guiding principles being that Muni must be
held accountable. (See the Examiner, 14 October 1996, page A1)
The interesting and disturbing recent development is the following:
The full Muni timetables _were_ still available to interested
passengers via the World Wide Web. The _invaluable_ Bay Area Transit
Information Project's web pages (http://www.transitinfo.org) provides
complete schedules for more than fifty different transit agencies and
operators in the Bay Area. That is, it DID provide complete schedules
for all operators, but now there is an exception. Recently, by order
of Muni's Department of Communications, it replaced Muni's actual
schedules, derived from the same computer systems which assign bus
drivers to bus runs, with the "more relaxed" public-fiction
schedules.
They have thus removed the last potential source of public
accountability for running buses on street from the public realm.
While it may be possible to claim that the "more relaxed" printed
schedules are acceptable (because they convey much of the information
which a bus passenger needs in a booklet about half as thick) there is
NO EXCUSE for not providing full information electronically.
Muni's management and its political master continue to rely on secrecy
and spin-control rather than making on-street improvements.
Ignorance is Strength,
Richard.