Muni

Another brilliant driver got his car stuck in the Sunset Tunnel Saturday night at about 8 p.m., bringing Muni's busiest line to a dead stop. A train full of N-Judah riders had to walk along the tracks out of the eastern portal. One of them was Streetsblog reader Sean Rea, who captured the walk in a video posted on YouTube (see below).

Muni plans to launch a new bus line this month to beef up service along eastern 16th Street, connecting the BART station at Mission Street to the soon-to-open University of California SF hospital at Mission Bay. The 55-16th Street route would complement existing 22-Fillmore service on 16th, extending beyond the 22's endpoint all the way to the east end of 16th and then north on Third Street towards its terminus at UCSF.

We've now lost count of how many times Muni has delayed the launch of "double berthing" in its Metro stations. Last we heard, it was promised to launch tomorrow, but the agency now says it needs one more week of testing before two trains can simultaneously board on the same platform.

Muni's 38-Geary riders may get some relief even before bus rapid transit lanes come to the line's Richmond segment in 2019. The SFMTA and SF County Transportation Authority are developing plans to install "early" improvements over the next few years, like bus bulbs, extended transit-only lanes, and transit signal priority.

Families are loving "Winter Walk SF," the temporary holiday plaza filling two blocks of Stockton Street in Union Square. As CBS reporter John Ramos put it, the on-street downtown play space "represents the San Francisco everyone wants it to be."

The nascent prospect of extending the Central Subway beyond Chinatown gained steam this week with the release of a preliminary city study [PDF] that lays out some conceptual proposals to bring the subway further into the city's northern neighborhoods.

Two years after Muni launched all-door boarding, the agency continues to report [PDF] quicker boardings and lower rates of fare evasion.

Muni could launch "double berthing," or boarding two trains simultaneously in its Metro stations, as early as next weekend -- if all goes well in a live test this Saturday, SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin told an agency board meeting today.

Muni's notoriously sluggish 30-Stockton line is finally set to get some upgrades that will give buses higher priority on streets through the dense neighborhoods of Union Square, Chinatown, North Beach, and near Fisherman's Wharf.