AC Transit’s new website (www.actransit.org) is an improvement. However to make AC Transit’s 158 line network of bus lines more useful to riders and would-be riders, additional work is needed:

Under “About Us”, “Facts and Figures”, there is an easy-to-understand set of graphics showing six measurable indicators of system efficiency and operating effectiveness. Included are On-time Performance, Mean time between Road Calls, Customer Complaints, Weekday Ridership, Annual Ridership and Fare box Recovery. Also needed are Weekday Transbay Ridership, Average 24-hour bus speed, and Operating and Maintenance Cost per Transit Trip.

Unfortunately these charts only go back a few months. It should be possible to see the trends in at least the 7 key indicators shown below for the last one year, five years, ten years and twenty years. Performance measures help gauge the effectiveness of any organization and should be easily accessible from website Home Pages.

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BATWG Newsletter Issue No. 30​

Here is “Citizen/Taxpayer” Michel O’Rourke’s refreshing and painfully accurate response to SFMTA Director Maguire’s uninformed opinion about the Central Subway, as quoted in the SF Chronicle on November 15, 2020:

In an apology for yet another delay of the benighted Central Subway, Mr. Tom Maguire, MUNI director of ‘Sustainable Streets’ gave us the following bromide:

“It is frustrating…” “We made the decision to build the Central Subway long before COVID, and it was the right project, bringing subway service to Chinatown and the most congested part of the city. And it’s still the right project.”

We felt compelled to inform Mr. Maguire that not all of the citizenry share his point of view. As follows:

Greetings Mr. Maguire

Right project? No, Mr. Maguire. I am sorry to disabuse you of fantasy, but is not the right project, it’s the wrong project. Always has been.

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BATWG Newsletter Issue No. 30

The impact that COVID-19 has had on transit and rail service differs widely depending on where in the world you choose to look. Certainly in the United States and Europe transit ridership is down by 70 to 90% but in Asia, after brief but complete shutdowns, it’s near normal. This is largely due to the different approaches used to treat the pandemic. Asian countries like China, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan were able to use a very affective test/trace/isolate approach developed from their experience with previous pandemics like SARS, Bird Flu, H1N1 and Ebola. The Western World, but for a few exceptions (Denmark, Germany, Norway), lacked adequate testing, which is not mandatory and has allowed COVID-19 to spread to such a point that tracing is now both more onerous and less useful.

Even now test results of PCR tests still take days to be returned while not covering the whole population.

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