Muni

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.

As the November election draws near and the bunkers are dug on either side of San Francisco's Proposition G, the Fix Muni Now ballot measure spearheaded by Supervisor Sean Elsbernd, the rhetoric is escalating, with Mayor Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco Chronicle's Editorial Board and Elsbernd on one side decrying Muni operators for taking raises during a recession, while the San Francisco Bay Guardian and the Muni operators union have focused on Elsbernd, implying he's a racist pawn of downtown business interests on a mission to erode the power of unions.

It will probably be some time before we find out exactly what caused last week's crash in the Inner Richmond that killed 22-year-old Derek Allen. From accounts posted by friends on Streetsblog, Derek was staying with some friends in the Richmond and was on his way to get dim sum on his bicycle when he was fatally struck by a Muni bus on 6th Avenue.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, these thousands of pictures are worth exponentially more. Ken Murphy, who lives on 30th Street at the intersection of Church Street, made this time-lapse movie of the Muni rail replacement project and set it to a decidedly Wes Anderson-esque score. No matter if you read the post I wrote earlier today, I recommend you watch this. It's a strange insect-like dance, condensing nearly three days into 13 minutes.

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.

An SFMTA task force charged with figuring out how to fully restore last May's Muni service cuts is narrowing its list of actions and strategies to reduce travel time on the system, and bus stop consolidation, or "optimization," is likely to be adopted as a recommendation. As Streetsblog has reported, stop optimization could greatly improve service, a move long pushed by transit advocates and SFMTA staff as one of the quickest and cheapest ways to speed Muni.

UPDATED Friday, 9:05 a.m.

SFMTA Chief Nat Ford presented his "State of the SFMTA" [pdf] report to the board of directors at a special workshop today, a mostly glowing assessment of the past few years but one that acknowledged the pains of its funding crises and the many challenges the agency faces as it looks to the future.

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.