New America Media, First Person, Donny Lumpkins, Posted: Sep 08, 2011

SAN FRANCISCO -- A friend of mine came over to my house the other day and looked bummed out like someone who just got a parking ticket or lost something important. She told me she had been stuck on MUNI for 45 minutes and made to crawl over some pipes to get out. She said she had an anxiety attack but thanks to a fellow rider who helped her calm down, things didn’t get too bad.

Almost everyone I know has a horror story about either BART or MUNI and sometimes both.
Whether it be unruly people on the trains and buses, those disgusting cloth BART seats (YUUUUCK), or the broken locks on the back of the bus window that swing open and crash down violently every time the bus jerks and screeches, something is always wrong. I have a huge problem with the way BART and MUNI are operated in such disrepair.

And then there’s the employees.

I feel like a lot of the time the drivers on MUNI are really rude and sometimes downright nasty. I understand it’s a stressful job driving around the city all day but I would think if you got a job working with the public you should at least like being around people. I was on a bus once where the driver refused to move until one passenger exited. I’ve seen the MUNI police hop on every door of the number 14 at once and pull entire families off the bus to ticket them for not having transfers. There are no options or understanding for those people who need to get somewhere but can’t afford the bus money.

The BART police are no better. I see them walk down the BART aisle with their K9’s sniffing at the knees and ankles of everyone sitting or standing on the train like a contraband check at prison. I always feel my body tense up and just hope the dog doesn’t stop on me. I don’t feel safe around these police and I’m almost positive that I’m not.

After the murder of Oscar Grant on BART and the slap on the wrist Mehserle got for it, I don’t feel like the BART system really has its riders’ best interest at heart. The image of a young man oozing blood from the mouth feet away from a train stop surrounded by cops is burned in my mind forever.
It seems that as the prices for a ride get higher on the MUNI and BART, the actual service gets worse and worse.

A few weeks ago, when “Anonymous”, the mischievous Internet hackers broke into BART’s systems, BART turned its cell phone service off leaving passengers stuck on the train without knowing what was going on and cut off from the world.

With all the delays on MUNI and BART, I wonder how bad it has to get for passengers before things start to get better.

I do anything I can to avoid taking pubic transportation. Most of the time now I ride a bike around the city so my only concern with the bus is whether the drivers forget to use their mirrors and accidentally swerve into my lane. Still, sometimes I have to break down and pay the fee and take public transportation. But it’s always begrudgingly.

I think it would do the city well if it improved the state of its public transportation system. Though BART, when working correctly, is a fast and easy way to get around the Bay, it hardly ever seems up to par. The same goes for MUNI. BART seems to be building stations all over they Bay but they don’t really take care of the ones that are already around. MUNI keeps jacking prices but some lines still have ratty old buses from way before the millennium.

I’ve never had a driver’s license and really don’t think it’s a good idea to drive in the city. Still, if things don’t start to get better for public transportation riders I might have to give up on it all together and get behind the wheel myself.

God help us all if that happens.