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    • Home
    • Muni Diaries
    • Dear Bike Rider
    • Morning Sickness
    • Finding Zen in SF
    • Packed Stacked Racked
    • Art for bare walls

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  • Home
  • Muni Diaries
  • Dear Bike Rider
  • Morning Sickness
  • Finding Zen in SF
  • Packed Stacked Racked
  • Art for bare walls



The Art of Driving a Bus



The Art of Driving a Bus
At the Muni SF Railway Museum

Step up please

There's much to see here. So, take your time, look around, and learn all there is to know about getting around in San Francisco on a trolleybus. Hope you had a trolley, jolly, Christmas. Tap the Rudolf red button for the Balboa Press version, newly minted!

Boom boom Ciao! Happy Destiny!
Updating Paddle

Not a Bus--A person driving a bus

One of the most frustrating aspects in the bustle and tussle of a large, dense city is just missing a connection. Your desire to catch that trolley bus actually hinges not on the caricature of one massive entity called a Municipal Transit Agency, but rather, an individual seated behind the wheel of a car. 

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Check out my framed prints here:

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Rail Transit Blog

-- Or A person Riding a bus

The Dao of Doug and the Art of Riding a Bus--The Plea Bargain


This was used in the movie "Speed." Annie makes it to the doomed bus as Sam the bus driver jokes that this boarding point is not at the bus stop. I have expanded this with the train and plane analogy of questions. " Where to you catch a train?"  "At a train station." "Where to get on a plane?" "On a jetway at an airport." "And where to we get a bus?"  Some of you latecomers are so puffed up with pride, you may never get on a bus. But if you pronate yourself as if praying to the Muni God of Nigh, the Transit Operator, Grace has been known to open the back door! (occasionally.) This would be a good chapter for a movie. I wish I could call up some clips on the plea bargain. The plea bargain came come silently with the eyes, or with a huge, loud, profane word!  The more over-the-top, the better!

The history and layout of San Francisco Streets

Daniel clearly captures the layout of San Francisco described in my 'Weird Curve' chapter in the Dao of Doug.

Marion-Herrington 1956 Trolleybus passes the Clay Theatre

Historic Trolleybus on Fillmore St.

The San Francisco Municipal Railway has many classic buses.

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My Project My Book

Check out this great video collage with historic trolleys.

Why Be a rider?

If your awareness extends to run number, car number, cap number, and line number, then your status is elevated to that of a Muni God.  By reading this book, you too, can be elevated unto that Heavenly Status.  Gods can get angry.  Gods can cause major damage.  Gods can cause a rush of change.  But when they are benevolent as angels,  good things can happen!   

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Photo Gallery

New Crosswalks and Curb Clears on Hayes & Ashbury St. in NOPA district, San Francisco.
Track 6 Stencil in bus yard.
Overhead wires.
Bike rider on Sacramento Street in San Francisco on the 1 California Line on Muni.
Track marker and breaker mark at Potrero Bus Division in San Francisco.
Van Ness BRT under construction with a reflective open door view from a Muni bus.
Classic bus seating.
Overhead trolleybus wires at Potrero Bus Division in San Francisco.
Not a Bus, a Person Driving a Bus.
Douglas Meriwether in the aisle of an historic trolleybus.
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PDF Training Vault driver's education

Sit Back and Watch the Show

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Line Trainer Handouts

Get the juice of two decades of experience in just a few pages in living color! (Resolution is 300 dpi and takes awhile to download on three bars or less wifi.)

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Lost and Found

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Thanks for reading-thanks for riding!

Original 60's Livery

SFMTA Livery Logo from the 1960's.

These colors remain bold to this day.

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The Trolleybus of Happy Destiny

https://www.scribd.com/book/394533286/The-Trolleybus-of-Happy-Destiny

End of the Line

From Trolleybus of Happy Destiny

“Last Stop People.” Another day closes. I can pull in knowing I passed the test in avoiding collisions with other cars, trucks, pedestrians, skaters, and cyclists. Most important, I didn’t make contact with any rideshare drivers looking down at their phone and inattentive. The thousands of ride share cars coming in daily from out-of-county was not a development I wanted to see in my last years approaching the retirement ribbon. The wandering homeless and mentally ill drifters add spice to travel when a salt and pepper diet may not be desired. Especially when traveling home after a tiring day at work. 


Dealing with the tour buses taking techies to San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties was annoying at first, in the mid-2000’s when the large 45 foot shuttles hogged our bus zones, but we overcame this by adjusting our times and learning how to stop behind them, or to wait for them to clear. The Horse of a Different Color is the rush of small rideshare vehicles clogging Market and stopping anywhere and everywhere after abrupt lane changes and U-turns!


The Last Stop is that of the subsidized Light Rail fantasy being promoted now in San Antonio, Nashville, and Tampa. Voters have more than once signaled they don’t want to pay for underground tunnels or light rail systems, yet the boondoggle continues. 


Now that rideshare vehicles are but a phone click away, ridership on all bus systems is down. Detroit, Sacramento, and Memphis have shown a 30 percent drop since 2010. Austin, Cleveland, Louisville, St. Louis, and Virginia Beach-Norfolk are down over 20 percent. Low gas prices could be to blame. Unfortunately, traffic delays are up, costing 300 billion a year in the U.S., and average of $1,400 per driver. Even in sacred transit friendly Portland, OR, only eight percent of the commute population uses transit, down from ten percent in the 1980’s.


The Institute of Transportation Studies at U of Davis, California, documents a six percent reduction in transit and shows half of all ride-hail trips would not be made at all if walking, using a bike, or taking transit. Perhaps this missive written from my point of view as a Transit Operator will become more of a sentimental historical document, rather than a crowd-breaking move to more transit riders. Indeed, the only thing breaking is transit infrastructure!


The good news is Stockton Street will soon reopen and our first new streetcar has passed certification in our underground tunnel. A new Central Subway tunnel and Rapid Transit Lanes are under construction to keep our fleet moving faster than traffic. This shouldn’t be so hard to do!

I have been blessed to keep end of the line problems to a minimum by waking sleepers as soon as I see them slump, and by knowing where they want to get off. The key is to issue a wake-up call by leaving the seat and gently announcing their stop. Allowing them to fall into deep sleep costs valuable terminal break time, or when pulling-in. 


Having a hospital at our new outbound terminal has been a curse and a blessing. Persuasive powers come into play to follow their distracted thoughts to check in to detox or the emergency room. Encouraging inflections of tone in my voice will probably fall on deaf ears with hospital security, and all to often I face the full-blown mental crisis up the hill on my terminal when attempting to leave! Dropping off an alcoholic in his cups to a hospital emergency room is not unlike a bouncer trying to push a problem drinker onto a bus driver.


Thank God Golden Gate Park is next to the Hospital, and the dealer’s den on Haight street are also close by as a distraction to alcoholic ranting and raving from a rider in the back seat, lest he decide he needs to go downtown, and not detox after all.


The deal is: don’t let them stay on before we go around the block to our terminal. Our terminal should be a time of refuge of peace and quiet. This can only be attained by: popping the brake, and assisting our dear rider off the bus before we go around the block. They can then disappear into the night like rodents that scuttle away when the lights come on. I have friends wishing to study to be a drug and alcohol counselor, and I believe bus drivers could use some classes! Trying to tell an alcoholic what to do is not an option. Being suggestive and prayerful works. Maintaining dignity and respect is the only key that works in the lock.


The Road to Happy Destiny at the End of the Line can come with experience, not just from more money in the budget for new rail lines.

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