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Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

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Re: Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

#21

Post by blaines »

oneweirdtrick wrote: post #17
timr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g.…

nextmuni.com is pretty good as far as real-time position information goes. I don't think I've even looked at a published schedule for the last decade.

I agree, but it's useless at the beginning or end of routes as drivers don't depart on time.

Re: Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

#22

Post by spacehome »

timr wrote: post #14
dougmccune wrote: post #8

Trying to compare against the published schedule isn't all that useful. As a resident of SF, I long ago gave up the idea that you could look up the scheduled arrival of a bus and plan around that. However, if a bus is supposed to be running every 12 minutes, that's the number you can plan around (or use to benchmark the performance of a bus line). So instead of trying to show how the times compare with the theoretica…

It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g.…

> arrivals are essentially a poisson process.

The funniest thing I've heard all week.

Re: Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

#23

Post by dekhn »

dougmccune wrote: post #18
timr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g.…

I don't know if you rode Muni before they had GPS tracking vs after, but you're right in that it's the only thing that makes the system at all usable. I used to use Muni for my daily commute back before they added GPS to the vehicles and it was an absolute nightmare. At the end of my work day the bus line I took was supposed to run every 15 minutes. It was fairly common for me to have to wait 45 minutes for that "15…

Agree 100%. I used to work at UCSF Medical Center (Parnassus) and take N Judah from Outer Sunset.

Typical case was I would start walking towards work (or, towards home in the evening) when I didn't see a train. Although the N-Judah schedule was "every 15 minutes", there were often ~45min-1hour delays ,which was enough time to quickly walk from Parnassus to Outer Sunset. Of course, it didn't help that many trains stopped at 19th or Sunset and turned around rather than going the whole way (which meant you'd have to wait another 15-45 minutes for the next train, if it didn't turn around).

Another problem was at the turnaround at La Playa- drivers would disappear into the Muni bathroom there for half an hour, and block all the subsequent trains. Eventually (this was ~2000) Muni put a full time supervisor on site who "watched" the drivers and knocked on the door to get them to go back to their trains. Eventually they started using the switching in the track to skip a few trains in front of slow ones, as well.

More recently I've gone back and the psychological advantage of knowing how long I have to wait has improved the experience a bit.

Re: Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

#24

Post by timr »

justizin wrote: post #19
timr wrote: post #2

Looking at some of the bus routes confirms something I've suspected about MUNI for a long time: most of the "delays" happen at the beginning of the route. I've watched bus drivers sit there for 10+ minutes past the departure time on many occasions, and there appears to be no penalty for the behavior. I don't know if the drivers are taking a mandated minimum break, waiting in response to orders from dispatch, or just…

What is likely the cause of this is that the previous bus left late due to external delays you weren't aware of, and the next bus waits to leave, even if it will leave late, so that the time between the two will be roughly the same. I'm relatively confident Muni drivers are not intentionally leaving 10min early, since running an entire route 10min late makes it nearly impossible for them to use the restroom during th…

If you look at these graphs, you'll consistently see horizontal lines in front of the first bus of the day, or on busses that run an hour apart.

That's not a delay due to the previous bus being late.

Re: Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

#25

Post by timr »

dougmccune wrote: post #18
timr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g.…

I don't know if you rode Muni before they had GPS tracking vs after, but you're right in that it's the only thing that makes the system at all usable. I used to use Muni for my daily commute back before they added GPS to the vehicles and it was an absolute nightmare. At the end of my work day the bus line I took was supposed to run every 15 minutes. It was fairly common for me to have to wait 45 minutes for that "15…

Yep. And it's more than just psychological: say I have to be somewhere that's 15 minutes away by bus, and 30 minutes away by foot (this is common for me). A random 20 minute delay in the bus arrival means that it's now more reliable for me to just allow the time to walk where I'm going.

I routinely find this to be true even for the underground lines on Market. It's absolutely pathetic that walking is more reliable than taking a subway, but that's the state of MUNI today.

Re: Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

#27

Post by martinald »

justizin wrote: post #15
timr wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g.…

Muni's on-time percentage has actually improved in double-digits over the past couple of years, while the number of private buses blocking their stops has grown dramatically. In general, SF is not an automotive friendly city, and Muni buses have to compete with lots of _epic_ _horrible_ drivers. As both a cyclist and a pedestrian, I feel much safer around Muni drivers than around tourist, shuttle, and other private b…

But London or Edinburgh are far, far less car-friendly than SF yet they don't have 59% on time performance.

Something is seriously wrong somewhere if they are honestly averaging 59%.

Re: Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

#28

Post by andrewfong »

timr wrote: post #14
dougmccune wrote: post #8

Trying to compare against the published schedule isn't all that useful. As a resident of SF, I long ago gave up the idea that you could look up the scheduled arrival of a bus and plan around that. However, if a bus is supposed to be running every 12 minutes, that's the number you can plan around (or use to benchmark the performance of a bus line). So instead of trying to show how the times compare with the theoretica…

It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g.…

I noticed that certain lines on AC Transit in Berkeley would routinely have the three back-to-back buses problem and wrote a post on it a while ago: http://andrewfong.com/blog/2009/11/12/bus-scheduling/

Long story short, having a slew of people trying to board and disembark at the same time creates a lot of delay. It seems like the sort of thing you could address by having trailing bus(es) during peak hours. But if you're just naively running one bus every X minutes that stops at all stops along a given route, you'll inevitably have back up issues.

Re: Show HN: San Francisco MUNI Transit Delays, Visualized

#30

Post by iamdave »

timr wrote: post #14
dougmccune wrote: post #8

Trying to compare against the published schedule isn't all that useful. As a resident of SF, I long ago gave up the idea that you could look up the scheduled arrival of a bus and plan around that. However, if a bus is supposed to be running every 12 minutes, that's the number you can plan around (or use to benchmark the performance of a bus line). So instead of trying to show how the times compare with the theoretica…

It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule, but MUNI can't seem to manage. I've ridden buses all over the world, and MUNI is absolutely the worst at scheduling or latency. It's almost like they aren't even trying. And even if you drop the requirement of "stick to the schedule", they still suck: you can have two lines running the same route up a major thoroughfare (e.g.…

>It's pretty remarkable how buses in other cities manage to adhere to the published schedule

Avoid Austin Texas at all costs then. We don't have a transit system, we just have these strange oblong boxes that look like buses. Some of them even bend and go really fast, but I refuse to call them busses just like I refuse to call the governing body that oversees them a "Transit Authority".

CapMetro is HORRIBLE.

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