BUT...if you would like to do some Metro Monitoring on your own between now
and next Saturday night, that would be GREAT...and much appreciated! The more
data, the better as this allows us to examine more and more segments of
performance by having enough data points to be statistically meaningful. We
only request that you do it for periods of 30 minutes or more. This allows
enough movement of streetcars to get a picture of what the service was.
All you need to do is get a sheet of paper (one sheet is usually good enough
for one hour of service from my experience doing a lot of this myself the past
week). Draw a line down the middle and label the left side INBOUND and the
right side OUTBOUND. Then under each heading make a column for TIME, CAR
#(s), and LINE.
Next, go to a station where you can watch both sides of the platform easily
and record the vehicle #'s (this is used to calculate how long it is taking
for the cars to go inbound and back outbound). Stations that are best for
this are Van Ness and Embarcadero. The time actually flies by as you keep
pretty busy at any time of day.
30 minutes zips by quickly and even an hour isn't that bad.
If you have a friend who wants to help out as well, one useful method is to
have one person doing this at Embarcadero and another at Van Ness (synchronize
your watches!!) as this allows us to examine the inbound and outbound times.
When done, just mail them to me @
RESCUE Muni
Attention Ken Niemi
P.O. Box 190966
S.F, CA 94119-0966
If you have the time, access to Excel, and interest, you're welcome to type
them into a spreadsheet and just e-mail the results to me.
Thanks for your help on this if you even have 30 minutes anytime the Metro is
open between now and Saturday!
Ken Niemi
RESCUE Muni