Fixing San Francisco's Public Transit

"The cable-car fleet — run by the city's municipal railway, known as Muni — recently fell so drastically off-schedule that locals have abandoned them as reliable transport, relegating them to what the late newspaper columnist Herb Caen dismissed as "tourist toys." When the on-time rate dipped below 20 percent, voters passed an initiative to press officials to step up the reliability of the city's buses, cable cars and light rail. And officials now must meet the first deadline mandated by Proposition E, improving local public transit to a 65 percent on-time rate. That rate must reach 85 percent by 2003. Activists say merit raises for transit workers are tied to on-time performance."

Thanks to Christian Peralta