The Wreckoning - April 18, 2008

Public transportation, mystified.

While working on a film earlier this year, I spent two months living in downtown San Francisco. With my car sitting dormant back in Los Angeles, a paltry per diem of $60 and a nightly penchant for getting blindingly drunk with my coworkers, I quickly became a user, and before long a fully-green, civic-minded, tree-hugging advocate, of public transportation. San Francisco's BART/Muni system has its problems, but it is relatively cheap (and a downright bargain compared to shelling out for cabs or parking), gets you where you need to be with a healthy, but not onerous, amount of walking and proves you can survive in a West Coast city without your own wheels.

Yet its efficiency is marred by a glaring, under-reported fact: San Francisco's mass transit system, like that of Los Angeles, London and many other cities, is not aimed at visitors. It is for the locals. And that means navigating an often obtusely difficult and unwelcoming puzzle of regulations, ticket vending machines, city geography and coin hoarding in order to use the system effectively. It isn't just that it's difficult to learn the ins and outs, it's that the difficulties are intentional. One gets the unavoidable feeling that the designers of the system are, as the English say, taking the piss.

Welcome!

My very first ride on the Muni subway brought down the hammer of bureaucracy and showcased publicly funded customer service in all of its odiferous splendor. Trying to get from Union Square to Civic Center Station, only two short stops away, I accidentally put a BART ticket into the Muni turnstile. As the ticket disappeared awkwardly and irretrievably into the slot, a middle-aged dragon lady arose from within the glass booth thirty feet away and bellowed at me through her squawk hole.

"Did you just put a BART ticket in there?!" Her contempt was so deep, so palpable her rage, it was as though I had launched a specific assault on her person with venal and malicious intent. I had no choice but to instantly fall into apologetic, plaintive culpability.

"Ma'am, I believe that I must've done just that."

"Here's a hint. If it says BART, it's for BART. If it says Muni, it's for Muni!" The fire from her throat nearly melted the defenseless microphone.

"I'm terribly sorry. It's my first time riding your system. I don't know the difference between the two." She glared at me, not because I was some stupid yahoo tourist, which I was, but because I wouldn't return even the slightest whiff of hostility--a phenomenon she clearly wasn't used to. She huffed a bit, looked down at her computer, then complained some more.

"Oh, and the BART ticket cost more. You've gone and wasted fifty cents. Oh! Just..Just go on through." She buzzed me through the gate without looking up. Score one for being nice.

I figured out the system relatively quickly, it is, after all, public transportation. But even after several rides there was always a groan that escaped my mouth at the most egregious junctures of ridiculousness. Here's how a ride on the Muni subway from my hotel at Union Square to points elsewhere would work.

Step 1. While still at hotel, in fact, at every restaurant, liquor store and cashpoint of any kind: collect quarters! You'll need six of them for subway or bus. On the subway, they don't give change and they don't take bills. If you have six quarters skip to step 5.

Step 2. Walk down the non-functioning escalator of the Powell St. station. Avoid countless individuals aggressively asking for spare change. Very few of them are able to break a twenty.

Step 3. Even though you are going to ride the Muni system, go directly to the BART ticket machine to get the required six quarters. There is no sign telling you to do this. You just have to know.

Step 4. Magically know that you have to hit Button "H", which says "make change". DO NOT put your two perfectly crisp, flat dollar bills (the only kind it will accept) in the machine BEFORE hitting Button H, as this will stop the whole transaction and cause deserved consternation from the line of antsy passengers already forming behind you.

Step 5. Take quarters from machine and proceed to the Muni side of station. Turnstiles await you. There is a slot for your quarters. Sometimes the slot is inexplicably sealed shut. If not, drop them in slowly, one at a time. Anything else brings a stalled transaction and wrath of said dragon lady.

Sound confusing? Try doing it after a round of Absinthe shooters with a bunch of twenty-two year-olds. Seriously, when did that paint thinner become legal again?

Others have tried to decipher the Muni system as well.

The whole quarter rigmarole can be avoided by purchasing a Fast Pass. This highly losable slip of paper costs $45 and is good for all public transportation within the city (no outlying areas), including the cable cars, but even the rules for buying this liberating little card are hindering and seemingly random. It is only good for that calendar month and can only be purchased from an official kiosk or Walgreens* starting the last five days of the previous month and up to the "first few days" (according to the website) of the month in which it is valid. Cash only. The pass itself is your receipt. Much like owning the Oyster card in London, however, nothing made me feel more like a knowing resident or saved more time than possessing one of those multi-colored bad boys.

Once you're downstairs in the windowless, disorienting boarding area. There are two sets of tracks. If you look closely, buried between the advertisements are two small signs, one on each side of the concourse, that say Outbound and Inbound. You will have to know which one applies to you. (Seriously, outbound of what?) I'm staring at a Muni "map" as I write this and still can't figure out the distinction. What is obvious to the local resident is inscrutable to the first-timer. That you understand that Muni trains end (or begin) at Embarcadero station and flow to the outer areas of the city is implicit, but far from obvious. Only when placed in the more accurate and to-scale map of the city do the terms outbound and inbound make sense in context of the peninsula that is San Francisco.

Once the train pulls up, you can't see the sign anymore. And don't look for help from the train itself. The train will be marked by a letter, and not a helpful one. "J" for instance is for Church. Okay, if you happen to know Church Street, that's easy enough. But how about "N" for the Judah line, or "L" for Taraval? Taraval isn't even the terminus of that train. The last stop is the San Francisco Zoo. How about calling it the "Z" line? Perhaps that would make it too comprehensible.

BART trains are even worse. There will be only one small identifying sign on the very front of the train near the driver. It will have only the name of a town such as Richmond, Millbrae, or Dublin/Pleasanton which is the terminus of that particular line. So if you don't know in which directions these towns lie, you don't know what train is meant for you. Thus, not only do you need to know which cardinal direction you want to go (reasonable enough), you have to know which little burg lies at the end of the line, even if you are only going a few stops to say, the Mission District.

But aside from that first-timer flummox, my riding history in San Francisco was reasonably quick. I even discovered one destination, the bank where I deposited my paychecks, that was best served by taking the cable car. More about spectacle and charm than convenience, the cable cars ARE for tourists, while the bus, street car and trains are for the locals. How can you tell? Price. One way on a cable car is a whopping $5 ($11 for all day), while other modes are less that $2.

And despite the little annoyances, I grew to love taking mass transit--so much so that when I returned to Los Angeles, I was determined to keep the habit alive--come hell or Hollywood Hills.

In the next installment of The Wreckoning, I leave the sportscar in the driveway, hop on the bus or Red Line and scoff drunkenly at the letters D - U - I.

* So the story goes. The concierge at my fancy hotel ensured me that a Fast Pass was easily purchased at "any" Walgreens. Yet when I went to my local Walgreens and asked the man behind the register for one, he looked at me like I was speaking Klingon. You can also buy a Fast Pass online via credit card and have it mailed to you, but only between the 10th and 22nd of the previous month. I kid you not.

Posted by Aaron Black at 8:14 AM