Bring back the MUNI 15-Third Bus line

No 15 stop in front of Ferlinghetti's City Lights.

No chance to visit Museums near Moscone.

Just go shopping at the Ferry Building. Yawn.

Cheese and crackers, anyone?

Sounds like you were predisposed to hate the light rail line all along.

Give it a chance, it just opened.

Any line is geared to bring the people to work or take them to their destination on time.

The T-Third Light Rail is a joke. Just ride it and I know changes can be made - but by whom and when. It adversely affects those that can read the mind of MUNI that is making changes without informing the public. The line serves the public not some idiots that work for MUNI.

The T-Third Light Rail was dumped on the Bayview Hunters Point by Willie L. Brown Jr. and he was there spewing his diatribe as usual. Watch what will happen to the Geary Blvd. Light Rail - I doubt it will move at all.

As another rider has expressed many important stops have been eliminated. The line is catering to some class of people far away from the Bayview Hunters Point and speaks to gentrification:

http://www.franciscodacosta.com/articles/bayview107.html

Francisco Da Costa

Mass transit gets built and people are hollering for the return of a disabled system without actually working to make the new system get up to speed. What a way to make an effective transit system. If more people that threw bombs on websites like this attended public meetings on a regular basis (which is difficult given how busy we can be and some non-convenient meeting times) there would be far better public input into things like public transit. As it is now, corporate interest get the lion's share of rewards from projects like these because they show up and get to know those who make the decisions.

The problems we've seen with the T-third this week cannot be excused because the line has just opened. When spending over $600 million on a major project such as this, someone should've spent the time to do some sort of scale model or computer test. Such a test would've easily revealed that there were going to be problems running this system. The fact that traffic lights give priority to cars, while delaying trains up to 20 minutes and causing ripple delays throughout the rail system is completely inexcusable. The fact that two separate boarding platforms were built for trains with the same downtown destination at the Caltrain station, forcing passengers to guess which platform will have a train depart first, is inexcusable. The fact that the switching mechanism designed to prevent collisions between trains from the J and T lines hasn't been properly calibrated and delayed trains is inexcusable. The fact that the traffic lights all along the Embarcadero have been equipped to give priority to trains, yet have never had that feature implemented, resulting in trains stopping and waiting at traffic lights is inexcusable.

Clearly Muni is not capable of designing and running a light rail system. If there is to be any benefit at all from the T-third, it must eventually be faster for most passengers then the 15 line that it replaced. Muni has no concept of people's time. What good is light rail if it's slower then the buses they replaced?

Does anyone trust Muni to build the much hyped central subway? As a frequent passenger on the 30-45 along stockton, i feel that the central subway will actually add to everybody's commute time just as the T-third did.

-Ziggy

How many meetings must I attend? I have attended numerous meeting at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA), at the MTA, the MTC, the SFCTA Commission, the Citizens Advisory Committee to the SFCTA and many more meetings.

This is a very expensive project with total lack of planning.

The two bridges one at 3rd and Cargo will fail and so will the bridge at 4th and King. The SF Department of Public Works bid on these bridges thinking they could do the job. When they found out the foundation were made of wood pilings they made a change order and gave the job to Mitchell Engineering.

Both these bridges will fail in course of time.

The alignment of the tracks have damaged several trains. Who do you think is responsible for this?

The schedule is out of whack and already graffiti is all over the place on the brand new trains and cars. Who do you think it responsible for this?

During the trial runs and some days ago - the cars have jumped the track. Who do you think is responsible for the Safety of the passengers?

The bottom line is that this line does no good to the constituents of Bayview Hunters Point.

And taking it to Castro does no good either - the line stops in the middle of no where at Visitation Valley. One would have thought this line would have been connected to Mission Street Street and further.

Some of us have paid due diligence participating at meetings and giving pertinent input - but you really cannot make sense when Bevan Dufty, Sophie Maxwell, and Jake McGoldrick - all think and believe this T-Third is functional. It is not.

We must not forget the inept SFCTA and the MTA.

The T-Third was dumped on the constituents of Bayview Hunters Point by Willie L. Brown Jr.

Over eighty percent of the 3rd Street merchants lost money during the T-Third Street Light Rail project.

Over fifty percent of the merchants on 3rd Street closed their businesses for good.

While merchants on Market Street were compensated for their loss by the Department of Transportation - thanks to the dumb, inept, arrogant Sophie Maxwell and Willie L. Brown - businesses on 3rd Street and beyond linked to the T-Third Street Light Rail were NOT compensated.

This is pure gentrification. Go take a ride and talk to the folks from the Bayview Hunters Point.

Many Asian passengers are opting to use the 9 San Bruno, the 9 Express, moving towards Mission Street to catch the 14 Mission, walking distances to catch the 44, 54 and the 23 and the 24. All buses but not the T-Third Light Rail.

It is just a matter of time when some cars will jump the tracks. Now, do not tell me that this too has to be tweaked?

Trains have been damaged and this is known in many circles. How do we tweak this fact. The trains have been damaged because of lousy alignment of the tracks costing millions to repair - only to get damaged again and again.

Francisco Da Costa

Ziggy & Francisco make lots of good points and it helps all of us to read them. This is certainly a gentrification project and it also appears to be a Muni privatization project as it was clearly designed to fail. After all, the engineers went to school to do things right so how come it was clearly done wrong? One explanation is that the City can throw up its hands and say, oh well, it is too expensive for us to fix, so let's give the entire bus and train system to a private contractor, which will certainly cause an increase in fares and corresponding decrease in service, thus causing people from areas far from downtown, like Bayview, to drive to downtown or to work outside San Francisco. This is insane of course because every City needs a labor force. The help wanted signs in many restaurants, bars and retail businesses are an indication that there is insufficient workingclass housing for the workingclass, and thus an insufficient labor force already. Clearly, the 15 bus needs to be restored until the problems with the T line are fixed. You will notice that the Sunday, April 15, 2007 article advertising Democratic Board of Supervisor Aaron Peskin's attack on the bus and train drivers with his proposed ballot initiative that has the support of 3 other Democrats was changed from the Saturday night version, which mentioned that safety features were "finagled" to make the system work more smoothly in the second to last paragraph where it states "While some of the problems were smoothed out midweek..." So now, people's lives are endangered and if there is ever an accident, the City is liable for tampering with any safety features. Peskin is of course a leading politician of the local Democratic Party machine and his attack on labor is part of a privatization program that we have heard discussed at least since the days of Mr. Election Fraud, organized crime thug, Willie Brown, and occasionally before. Mr. Election Fraud Democratic "mayor" Gavin Newsom could put this on the ballot himself to go with his mayoral campaign, but so far has declined. Peskin needs 2 other supervisors or he could go the signature route. This all mandates (1) the Green Party run a candidate for mayor and against Peskin's charter amendment and (2) everyone stop voting for the worthless Democrats who are exactly the same as the Republicans, paid for by the same corporations to promote the same capitalist agenda. The Chronicle article is at:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/15/BAGBAP8VRE1.DTL For out of towners, if you have any doubts about the horror of the Democratic Party machine of San Francisco, please carefully read the websites:
http://www.brasscheck.com/stadium
and
http://www.brasscheck.com/jonestown