Streetsblog San Francisco

Supervisor Scott Wiener, who has pledged to make transportation issues a priority, today called for a hearing to address a growing number of complaints about unreliability from riders on the J-Church line.

“It’s a major line that carries a lot of people, and it’s very unpredictable for reasons I do not understand and want to understand,” Wiener said. “I want the current, up-to-date information from the MTA in terms of what’s going on with the J-Church and what they have been doing recently to try to improve service.”

He cited known physical challenges presented by the turn from Church onto 30th Street, “stops and starts” on Church Street, “inconsistent frequency”, and seemingly “random” NextMuni arrival predictions, which he said doesn’t seem to be as much of a problem on other lines.

He expects to have the hearing within 30 to 60 days and may even propose some physical changes to improve the line.

Wiener, who represents District 8, said he will work with D11 Supervisor John Avalos, whose district also encompasses the J line. Avalos has also expressed concerns about Muni reliability, and recently called for a hearing on the problem of switchbacks on the 14-Mission line.

“Over the last few months we’ve seen improved service reliability due, in part, to preventing sander hoses from severing the signal cable, upgrading system software to improve the switch from manual to automatic, and addressing maintenance issues, such as switches and other mechanical issues,” said SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose. “We will continue to work with the Board of Supervisors to further improve service in the future.”

The series of frustrating and consistent delays that have plagued the Muni Metro system for the last few months have been narrowed to three causes that SFMTA Transit Director John Haley told the SFMTA Board yesterday have mostly been fixed for now.

Still, according to Haley, it’s “too early to declare victory” on a problem with the sander hoses under the Breda light-rail vehicles that have been tearing the automated signal cables that sit between the rails.

Haley, who updated the board at the request of SFMTA Director Malcolm Heinicke, explained that the vast majority of delays have been caused by signal failures with the Automated Train Control System (ATCS) when the trains have to switch from manual to automatic as they exit the surface streets and enter the underground tunnels at West Portal, the Ferry Building and Church and Duboce streets. Problems with the ATCS have persisted since Muni first acquired the system 11 years ago.

On average, the ATCS failed to get a signal from trains more than 200 times each month in September and October. Every time that happens, the system “fails safely,” and slows down every line.

“The cause of that is either something in the wayside or something in the vehicle,” said Haley. “The impact of that from a service perspective is when the train’s not recognized it puts it in manual. There’s a restrictive set of procedures that must be followed. The safety spacing is increased so the system is slowed down.”

Haley said the agency has been working in concert with the signal manufacturer, Thales, to try and resolve the problem. Last month, the ATCS got a software upgrade and since then the signal failures have decreased by more than 50 percent.

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SFMTA Chief Nat Ford was joined by members of the SFMTA Board, representatives from AnsaldoBreda and federal officials at an unveiling today of the first Muni light-rail vehicle to be refurbished using federal stimulus funds, part of a $56 million project to upgrade the agency’s fleet of 143 LRVs.

“It’s going to help us keep our passengers safer and make the system more reliable,” said SFMTA Director Cheryl Brinkman, who added that Muni’s LRVs serve 160,000 passengers a day and 50 million passengers a year, or 20 percent of Muni’s overall ridership.

The “LRV Doors and Steps Reconditioning Project” is using $9 million in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (AARA) funds, and the project was expected to result in “60 new hires or jobs retained.”

While Muni riders won’t notice anything new when they step onto the interior of car 1412, the steps and doors system, automatic couplers and air supply units have been rebuilt, and the articulation pins and wire harnesses have been replaced. For passengers, Ford said it will mean a more comfortable ride.

“We will have more reliable vehicles with more distance between failures,” said Ford. “That really increases our fleet in some aspects, so where we’ll have a percentage of our vehicles in the shop because they failed while in service, there will be less of that type of situation and on top of that, for example, when they do make a repair, it’s much quicker and it’s faster.”

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Taking advantage of a long weekend, a capital construction crew of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which runs Muni, spent three frenzied days working around the clock to replace aging J-Church tracks at the intersection of Church and 30th streets.

The work on the intersection cost $1 million and was part of the SFMTA’s Rail Renewal Program, a $141 million effort to rehabilitate ten key sections of Muni’s more than 70 miles of track much of which is more than 30 years old.

The tracks at the intersection had worn down substantially, leading to increased wear on the trucks and other equipment on the Breda light rail vehicles (LRVs) and noisy conditions with each passing vehicle. The SFMTA hoped that by working 24 hours a day over a holiday weekend, when many people would be out of town or spending the beautiful late summer days at the beach, the clamor of construction wouldn’t too greatly inconvenience the neighborhood.

“San Francisco’s infrastructure is at the core of our quality of life,” SFMTA boss Nat Ford had said in a statement leading up to the construction. Ford also thanked businesses in the construction zone for their patience and encouraged neighbors to frequent them during the project. “The SFMTA will continue to aggressively prioritize keeping Muni in a state of good repair in order to provide safe and reliable service to our customers.”

As a resident living very nearby (30th and Church is my regular J-Church stop), I received one of 8,000 direct mail inserts that were sent out weeks in advance of the project. I knew there would be some traffic and Muni service disruptions, but I had no idea the process of digging up the tracks and replacing them would be so interesting and involved.

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The SFMTA Board last week approved a $32 million, six-year contract (PDF) with AnseldoBreda to repair and rebuild seven damaged light-rail vehicles, including four LRVs described as “piles of rubble.” At least one board director, however, Malcolm Heinicke, wanted to know if the agency would be better off buying new LRVs, instead of spending all that money to repair damaged cars.

“The additional thing that concerns me about this is six years. That’s six years or up to six years with seven of our…LRVs that it could take to repair versus buying them new. I realize you don’t just go down to Cal Worthington’s LRV lot and drive seven home,” said Heinicke.

Carter Rohan, the director of SFMTA’s capital program and construction projects, responded by saying a new LRV might cost about $4 million, but only if it were part of a bigger deal. Minneapolis, he pointed out, recently approved a $153 million contract with Siemens to build 41 LRVs at its light-rail manufacturing plant in Sacramento. SFMTA Chief Nat Ford said purchasing only seven LRVs wouldn’t make much sense, and might even cost more and take longer, considering the RFP process, the design and the engineering.

“You really don’t get the economies of scales on these rail cars until you get to the 40, 50 and above number. So, we’re in a very difficult situation here as it relates to these seven cars,” said Ford, who added that he also wanted to make sure the agency had enough vehicles in time for the 2018 opening of the Central Subway.

The LRVs sent in for restoration include two vehicles involved in last year’s West Portal crash that injured dozens of passengers, one damaged in a June 15, 2008 collision at 4th and King streets than sent 12 people to the hospital, an M-line LRV involved in a crash with a garbage truck on April 20, 2006, two LRVs that collided on the M-line on June 3, 2004, a J train involved in a September 23, 2003 crash, and two LRVs that collided at St. Francis Circle in 2002.

Rohan said three of the LRVs will be repaired for $2 million each and should return to service “within 20 months.” The remaining four vehicles could take up to six years to rebuild. At least two of them will get new propulsion systems.

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Right now, Seattle is making as serious a commitment to transit as any city in the nation. Recently, Streetfilms got to take a tour of the newest addition to the city's network -- the 13-station Link Light Rail, which opened in mid-2009.

The route is beautiful, swift, and has great multi-modal connections. Service is frequent, with headways as short as 7 minutes during rush hour, and never longer than 15 minutes. And like many of the newest American light rail systems, the stations feature copious art.

Seattle has a lot of car commuters, but in a sign that many are looking for more efficient and environmentally friendly ways of getting to work, the new light rail line will be followed by several more additions to the city's transit network. As Seattle's Sound Transit CEO Joni Earl told us:

[Voters] in November 2008, by 57 percent -- which was a thrill in a recession economy -- voted to expand our light rail system, and our commuter rail system, and our buses... to add another 36 miles of light rail in the region. And to add 65 percent more capacity to our commuter rail system.

We'd like to thank everyone who talked to us for this shoot, especially Bruce Gray from Sound Transit, and Andrew Schmid for arranging it all. And of course a big shout out to the intrepid scribes over at Seattle Transit Blog, who cover the local transportation scene with zeal and gusto.

The American Public Transportation Association (APTA) got the mainstream media’s attention during the holiday season after reporting
that the dismal economy had helped push transit ridership down by 3.8
percent during the first three-quarters of 2009, when compared with the
previous year.

But
amid the bleak data from cities such as Cleveland, where rail ridership
fell by more than 14 percent during the first nine months of 2009, and
Miami, where the funding-starved Tri-Rail system saw more than 10 percent fewer riders during that period, the APTA report found some transit success stories.

Los Angeles’ Metro subway, one section of which topped
2020 ridership projections in its first year of operation, saw
ridership grow by nearly 6 percent during the first nine months of 2009.

Baltimore’s
light rail grew by an even greater margin, according to APTA, with
unlinked passenger trips topping 6.7 million during the first
three-quarters of last year. That represents a 13.9 percent increase
over the same period in 2008, when riders took an estimated 5.9 million
unlinked trips.

The SEPTA light rail system in the
Philadelphia area also climbed higher in APTA’s report, tallying more
than 21.2 million unlinked trips during the first three-quarters of
2009 after marking 18 million during the same period in 2008 — an
increase of 17.5 percent.

Among commuter rail networks, New Mexico’s much-anticipated
Rail Runner extension from Albuquerque to Santa Fe helped ridership
more than double during the first nine months of 2009, and Boston’s
system reported a ridership increase of more than 2.3 percent compared
with the same period in 2008.

The situation was much
bleaker for the country’s biggest bus systems, which saw an overall
ridership drop of nearly 5 percent during the first nine months of
2009. San Francisco was the only major city in APTA’s report to mark an
increase in bus travel, with unlinked passenger trips rising by about 1
percent.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors is expected to vote tomorrow to approve up to $217,634 to repair two damaged Muni Metro light rail vehicles. Muni currently has ten LRVs that are out of service due to damage from crashes, roughly one-fifteenth of its 151-vehicle light rail fleet.

Both the vehicles slated for repair, numbers 1451 and 1502, have been out of service since at least this March, when an MTA presentation (PDF) identified them, along with two other LRVs, as having "medium damage." Four other vehicles were listed as having "major damage," with the total estimated cost of repair for all eight LRVs listed at $18 million.

Vehicles with anything more than "minor damage" generally cannot be repaired by Muni in-house. Given the relatively low cost of repairing numbers 1451 and 1502, which have "medium damage" and account for only a small fraction of the $18 million sum, the heavily damaged vehicles are certain to have multi-million dollar repair costs.

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Transit advocates and community groups have filed a complaint (PDF) with the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), charging that BART has not complied with federal civil rights obligations in its planning of the Oakland Airport Connector (OAC). The move by Public Advocates Inc. on behalf of TransForm, Urban Habitat and Genesis, comes after concerns over the controversial project fell on deaf ears at both BART and the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. 

In its current form, the 3.2-mile OAC is projected to cost between $522 million and $552 million, with a six-dollar one-way fare, and no stops between its start point at the Oakland Coliseum BART station and its terminus at Oakland International Airport. 

Since BART will be using federal dollars to pay for the project, including stimulus funds, it is required to comply with the FTA's civil rights regulations. The complaint argues that BART has not properly considered the financial impact the project will have on low-income residents near the proposed airport train, and has not adequately reviewed alternatives, including a proposal by TransForm to run a bus rapid transit line through the corridor instead, at a capital cost of $45-60 million, with a low fare or no fare and one intermediate stop.

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A collision this morning between an M-Ocean View Muni Metro light rail vehicle and a male bicyclist has left the cyclist in the hospital with serious injuries.

The collision occurred around 10:30 a.m. at the intersection of Randolph and Arch Streets, and authorities were still clearing the scene until noon, said MTA spokesperson Judson True. The cyclist, whose name has not been released, was taken to San Francisco General Hospital.

According to a Muni service alert, the bicyclist was "reportedly travelling southbound (downhill) on Arch Street and struck the right side of the M Ocean View LRV as it travelled inbound (westbound) on Randolph Street through the intersection." The intersection is controlled by four-way stop signs. SFPD and the MTA are investigating the collision.

Service on the M-Ocean View has been restored. We'll have more information as we get it.

Updated 12:52 p.m.