I read your article on Municipal Railway problems. I lived in the San
Francisco Bay Area all my life until moving to Washington, DC 11 years ago --
mostly in San Francisco itself, and I used the Muni extensively.
In 1997 we came back to visit. The kids wanted to ride the cable cars. We
got on line on a Sunday evening at 9:00 pm at Hyde Park. There were several
empty cars, some up by the Buena Vista -- in all of them, the operators were
leaning back, drinking coffee and reading The Chronicle. Every 10-15 minutes
or so they would deign to operate a car for the crowd. It took almost an hour
before we got to board, and, with so few cars running, they are packed leaving
the terminals, so city residents who live along the line have no room to get
on to, what to them, is still public transit rather than an amusement ride.
An inside Muni source said that the cable cars make maybe half their runs, as
shown in the schedule book. When management tries to make the workers adhere
to the schedule, labor throws a hissy fit at their political cronies, and Muni
has to back off. The inmates are definitely running the asylum here, running
the cars for their convenience, undoubtedly figuring the passengers are mostly
tourists who can be made to wait.
I sure wish I had a job that had breaks like that.
It's becoming more and more apparent that to fix Muni someone is going to have
to hold the line and endure a strike to get rid of these obscene work rules
and goof-off practices. Muni needs more workers like Peter Ehrlich who like
their jobs and want to provide good service to the passengers.
Carleton MacDonald
Third Generation Native San Franciscan in Exile
Washington, D.C.