Richmond Blogger Proves Power of the Press

Believe it or not, more service

​It's not often that Muni gets good press. So here it goes.

As the Examiner reports today, Richmond resident Aaron Kitashima was sick and tired of the crappy and non existent bus service along 48th Avenue. So he did what every pissed off person does -- he complained about it in his own blog, titled Akit's Complaint Department.

Kitashima rants and raves about the lack of service to residents on weekends, especially, during busy Saturday hours.  On Jan. 5, 2011, the local blogger writes a post about the two-hour gap in bus service on the 38-Geary line at Point Lobos. There was no inbound bus service from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. every Saturday, making it difficult for passengers to get to downtown.

"Sometimes I see a handful of people between those two times just sitting there and waiting for the next vehicle. I kinda feel sorry for them that there's no bus that's going to take them toward downtown with such a huge gap in service," he writes in his blog.
He continued to blast the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency for leaving passengers stranded for more than two hours every Saturday afternoon.

By some miracle, Muni listened. Last weekend, Kitashima declared victory on his blog, after noticing that MTA started running 38-Geary express buses every 10 minutes for inbound service.

"The victory is super sweet today because Muni added extra 38L-Geary limited buses to pick up passengers on Saturday evenings from 5:37 to 8:02 p.m.," he writes in his blog. 

Paul Rose, spokesman for Muni, was quoted in the Examiner, saying:  "He was definitely one of the voices we heard in the community. We appreciate all of their concerns and thank them for helping us take corrective action."

Thanks, Muni.

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