»Belly-aching on the N-Judah.

This morning I stood at the counter of Coopers, drinking my "regular" (or, as Jeremy, the Monday-morning barista, calls it: "a medium double shot") and counting MUNI LRVs. A confusing number passed through the already-confusing intersection of Steiner, Duboce, and Sanchez. The 7.41, as expected; and then, close on its heels, another 2-car N. I checked the clock and then figured to catch the next, since it'd be the 7.55, and that would get me to my Caltrain connection well before its departure time of 8.37. But behold! a mere five minutes later, another N rolled past, and I polished off my drink and decided to walk down to the stop to catch the next one. And barely had I walked out into the rainy Monday morning when I heard the familiar uphill rumble of the train leaving the Duboce Park stop.

I dashed to the head of the train ("Riders paying cash fare must board front door of first car") and waited as it jerked once, then twice, to a stop.
The congestion (four Ns in under 20 minutes) led to a bottleneck in the Market Street Subway: we paused for a minute in the tunnel before Van Ness, and then again before Civic Center: a K-Ingleside was sitting on the tracks in front of us. Finally the driver opened the doors as we sat at the west end of the platform. A very large passenger covered in a blue tarp (to keep the rain off?) huffed as she climbed on to the train. "This is the improved MUNI service?" she bellowed to no-one in particular.
Her mutterings grew louder when we sat on the tracks again before the Embarcadero stop, where she invoked curses against the new $45 FastPass; she cast aspersions upon the station-agent at the Embarcadero ("he can't be on a break already! It's only 8.15!") and then against the driver of our car itself ("not even an annoucement! This is our tax dollars? This is our fare money?!") when we sat for quite some time in the tunnel before The Embarcadero. (There was a signal failure, as the driver announced once he got the word over the radio.) She variously cursed the FastPass at $25 and then at $45, but never spoke too loudly. A sympathetic face appeared at Folsom Street, and she began railing against the people of the land of the brave: "This is what passes for a train system in this country. In any other country, people would raise a ruckus." The sympathetic face grew despondent and turned to me for an escape, but I raised my newspaper higher and left the face to deal on its own.