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Maybe not coincidently my whole family had bad Muni experiences yesterday:<BR>
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My son, Eugene, was passed up by the J he was waiting for. My wife Pam ran after a bus that she would have caught if it had stopped at its designated stop instead of just driving by. And I ran for a J that I knew from NextBus was going to arrive in 3 minutes. I got to the Powell Street platform and there was a streetcar waiting, but the sign on it said it was a K. Only after its doors had closed did I look up to see on the platform sign that it really was a J. A K arrived just after. I took it, got off at Church and again just missed the J. The next one was supposedly in 17 minutes based on the NextBus sign in the kiosk, so I started walking home. When I was at 17th and Church, another J passed by, one that NextBus had missed.<BR>
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Between the incompetence and the cruelty of Muni employees, the Muni "system" really sucks. But as long as we've got elected officials who ride around in their limos, and as long as most "important" San Franciscans wouldn't be caught dead on a bus, we're going to have shitty transit "service".<BR>
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David Fairley<BR>
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<SPAN STYLE='font-weight: 700'>On Wed Jan 9 11:33 , Eric Brooks <brookse32 @aim.com=""> sent:<BR>
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<BLOCKQUOTE STYLE='border-left-color: #f5f5f5; border-left-width: 2px; border-left-style: solid; margin-left: 5px; margin-right: 0px; padding-left: 5px; padding-right: 0px'><DEFANGED _body="" bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> The Mayor just got rid of a strong alternative transportation advocate on the MTA.<BR>
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See lower down in this SF Guardian Article;<BR>
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<A class="moz-txt-link-freetext" target="_blank" href="http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=5385">http://www.sfbg.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=5385</A><BR>
<H1>Heads roll</H1><P><SPAN STYLE='font-style: italic'>Newsom accepts more than two dozen resignation letters</SPAN></P><P>By Steven T. Jones</P><P>In the week leading up to Mayor Gavin Newsom's Jan. 8 second-term inauguration ceremony, he accepted more than two dozen of the resignation letters he demanded Sept. 10, 2007, from his senior staff.</P><P>"Today I am proud to introduce a new team of 27 people that is a blend of fresh talent, extensive policy expertise, and proven experience in government," Newsom wrote in a prepared statement released at 5 p.m. on Jan. 4, a Friday, which is not considered the spot in the news cycle for "proud" announcements.</P><P>"Other than the very unfortunate firing of Susan Leal from the [general manager job at the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission] — who, by all accounts, has been doing a good job — the rest of the changes are fairly perfunctory and far from the bold or audacious move he promised," Board of Supervisors president Aaron Peskin told us.</P><P>Yet the changes — which the <SPAN STYLE='font-style: italic'>Guardian</SPAN> discusses in more detail in Editor's Notes, the editorial page, and our politics blog — do seem to signal that Newsom is placing a high value on personal loyalty and political pragmatism.</P><P>Some examples are the promotions of inner-circle members Mike Farrah (new director of the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Services), Ben Rosenfield (controller), and Wade Crowfoot (now the newly created director of climate protection initiatives) and the hiring of former United States attorney Kevin Ryan, a conservative Republican, to head the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice.</P><P>But gone are Leal and Metropolitan Transportation Agency board member Leah Shahum, the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition director who has chided the mayor for not supporting alternative transportation. "The Mayor's Office was none too pleased that the SFBC did not endorse him," she told us, noting that she is urging Newsom to fill the spot with another advocate for sustainable transportation. "I hope this is not a sign of what's to come." </P><DIV class="entry_created_on">Wednesday January 9, 2008</DIV><BR>
<PRE class="moz-signature" cols="72">-- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." – Che Guevara</PRE></SPAN></HTML>
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