Transit

After two MTA board meetings filled with passionate though civil debate over the alignment of the shortened 2-Clement, the MTA has finally settled on a terminus for the line. Instead of the two options that brought out well-organized opposition at previous meetings, 2-Clement buses will layover at an existing bus stop on the south side of Clement Street, just west of 14th Avenue - but only for six months. After that, the MTA will review the terminus location, and hopes to replace the line with an electric trolley bus that would run on California Street instead, taking advantage of existing overhead wires on Sutter, Presidio, and California Streets.

Members of Congress remain intensely focused on health care this fall, but as the unemployment rate hits double digits in more states, their No. 2 priority is best summed up in three words: Jobs, jobs, jobs.

There are plenty of eye-popping statistics in the MTA's new proof-of-payment study [PDF]: 9.5 percent of Muni riders don't have valid proof-of-payment, costing the agency $19 million in missed revenue annually. The fare-evasion rate is even higher among riders who illegally board buses through the back door: 55 percent don't have valid proof-of-payment. As the MTA looks to address the problem with back door boarding, staff has its eyes on another illuminating statistic in the report: on average, about 70 customers board any given MTA bus each hour - more than any other large transit system in the nation.

The MTA had some good news to announce today about Muni amidst a deepening budget shortfall, service cuts, and fare increases: the agency is launching a pilot program to allow senior and disabled customers unlimited access to BART within San Francisco and all Muni transit services with a single pass. At least during the pilot phase, the pass will cost $15, the same price as the regular Senior/Disabled Pass.

With several well-publicized violent incidents on Muni buses recently, including two brutal attacks and a videotaped fight, security has become a hot issue for the MTA. Though the agency actually reported a slight decrease in crime over the past fiscal year, it hasn't matched the 13 percent citywide drop in the most serious crimes over the first half of 2009. The San Francisco Police Department responded in late September with a one-day sting called "Operation Safe Muni," and the MTA has scrambled to test its onboard camera equipment, which has failed during several incidents, including the stabbing of a young boy in September and the West Portal light rail vehicle crash in July.

At one point midway through yesterday's Brookings Institution forum on metropolitan planning, moderator Chris Leinberger quipped that Portland was deliberately not represented. It's not that Portland isn't a model of sustainability, he explained, but that "we all have Portland fatigue" -- that urban policy thinkers are eager to expand the models of local development beyond Oregon.

An eye-opening report recently released by AARP , Reconnecting America and the National Housing Trust identifies the Bay Area as a national leader in placing affordable housing near high-frequency transit, but also points out that tens of thousands of subsidized units are at risk of being lost in the next five years.

This week has brought news of a brewing compromise on the Senate climate change bill, introduced last month amid signals that the upper chamber would give only a bit more to clean transportation than the House's meager 1 percent set-aside of revenue from cap-and-trade carbon regulations.

It's a familiar scene for many Muni riders: standing in a huge crowd on a Muni Metro station platform, scrutinizing the archaic-looking map on the mounted LCD, hoping for a two-car LL or a one-car J. Since those displays first went up at Embarcadero station in the late 1990s, and the other eight stations in 2007, they've given waiting customers something to ponder while waiting for a particularly tardy train, but have been far too cryptic to reach their full potential in keeping riders informed. Within the next few months, however, displays in all nine Muni Metro stations will switch over to a much more legible map.