Sections OriginalTransit

Monday morning Muni meltdown prompts hearing

Muni riders were scrambling Monday morning to find a way to get to work or school because of a computer glitch that brought subway trains to a halt.

The most recent subway delay has prompted Supervisor Scott Wiener to reconvene his hearings on the state of the subway service:

“Unfortunately these kind of disruptions, while not as extreme as the one as from yesterday, are all too common and it’s very frustrating to riders and frustrating to me not just a rider, but as a person who represents many riders.”

Wiener said at Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting that it was unclear why trains were not at least put in manual mode to get riders to work.

The transit agency said it had bus shuttles in place, but many riders just gave up and decided to walk to work as evident in many of the tweets on Twitter Monday morning.

John Haley, director of transit operations, issued this apology and an explanation about the delay to riders on the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency website:

“The disruption to this morning’s Muni Metro service was due to a failure in the train control system. This incident was inexcusable and we apologize for the severe inconvenience suffered by Muni customers. We are working with the manufacturer to determine the cause of these incidents and to ensure a solution is in place. We strive to increase reliability and we clearly did not take a step towards that objective today.”

Wiener also mentioned another subway delay incident on Feb. 15 involving a homeless man hit by a train at Powell Station when the Chinese New Year Parade was about to begin.

He said many riders were told to use shuttle buses, but none were present for quite some time.

The hearing will take place in about a month, Wiener said.

Last modified February 28, 2014 1:52 am

Jerold Chinn

Jerold serves as a reporter and San Francisco Bureau Chief for SFBay covering transportation and occasionally City Hall and the Mayor's Office in San Francisco. His work on transportation has been recognized by the San Francisco Press Club. Born and raised in San Francisco, he graduated from San Francisco State University with a degree in journalism. Jerold previously wrote for the San Francisco Public Press, a nonprofit, noncommercial news organization. When not reporting, you can find Jerold taking Muni to check out new places to eat in the city.

This website uses cookies.