Muni Metro lines may speed up
By: Mike Aldax
January 12, 2009
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| Muni trains could increase their speed through the tunnel from West Portal to Forest Hill station. (Cindy Chew/The Examiner) |
SAN FRANCISCO — Hold on to your seats, Muni riders: Plans for speedier streetcars are threatening to zip you to work on time.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, oft-criticized for its sluggish light-rail vehicles, is looking at ways to increase the speed limit on a stretch of Muni subway track between West Portal and Forest Hill to 50 mph. The top speed there is now 40 mph.
The only existing portion of subway in which the speed limit reaches 50 mph is the straight shot between the Castro and Embarcadero stations, according to the transit agency.
Two agency directors have expressed even more lust for speed. At the transit agency’s board meeting last week, Malcolm Heinicke and Cameron Beach said they wanted to raise the limit to 50 mph on another stretch of typically slow track. The directors were referring to a 35 mph inbound stretch from the Forest Hill station to a curve in the track before the Castro station.
“Why are we not looking at 50 [mph there]?” Beach asked Kenneth McDonald, the transit agency’s chief operating officer, at Thursday’s meeting.
Speeds of 50 mph, McDonald said, would create wear and tear on the streetcars as they brake before the Eureka Curve. Beach and Heinicke were skeptical of the answer, saying there appears to be enough distance to justify 50 mph along the stretch.
“The brakes supply the same weight whether you are going into West Portal outbound or into the Eureka Curve inbound,” Beach said.
Speeding up trains between Forest Hill and the Eureka Curve “will have a much greater commute benefit than increasing speeds on shorter segments,” Heinicke said.
A decade ago, Muni, which carries more than 700,000 riders per day, was mandated by voters to reach a systemwide on-time performance of 85 percent — a tall order the transit agency has yet to deliver. In the past four years, Muni’s overall on-time performance has hovered around 70 percent, according to its latest data. Vehicles are considered off schedule if they are more than one minute early or four minutes late.
Along with increasing speed limits for light-rail vehicles, Muni is in the middle of a massive project to rehabilitate its tracks, which meet federal guidelines in much of the tunnels but are substandard on city streets, McDonald said.
The transit agency said it’s also progressing on projects to time traffic signals on city streets to favor Muni vehicles, as well as on a long-awaited overhaul of its route system — known as the Transit Effectiveness Project — which includes increasing bus and streetcar service on the busiest routes, including the popular N-Judah, J-Church and M-Ocean View lines.
How fast can Muni vehicles travel?
The City’s transit agency is hoping to increase the speed limit on one line.
Current Muni speed limits for subway:
- Between Embarcadero to Castro stations: 50 mph
- Between Castro station and Eureka Curve: 30 mph
- Between Eureka Curve and Forest Hill: 35 mph
- Between Forest Hill and West Portal: 40 mph
Proposed speed limit changes:
- Between Forest Hill and West Portal: increase to 50 mph
