Traveling inbound in the morning, I definitely would stay on the PCC on the
surface all the way downtown. If you get off, you have to walk down to the
subway and wait. When the train shows up, it will be very crowded. And
the train may not show up at all. Reliablility is more important than 10
minutes for me. The PCC also avoids the turnback bottleneck at Embarcadero.
Going outbound in the afternoon, I would take the subway to Church St and
transfer to the surface PCC if I got on at Embarcadero or Montgomery. I
would take the surface route all the way if I got on at Powell or later
because the Breda's are packed at this point.
Of course, running 2-car N's to Caltrain with hardly any passengers is also
a waste of Breda car capacity.
By the way, the Examiner has been publishing daily Metro stats showing the
average headway between trains leaving Embarcadero during the afternoon
commute. The trains are listed by J,K,L,M or N. The Metro seems to be
running much better. When Muni receives 50 new Breda cars in a few years,
there might actually be enough room for all the passengers to get on board.