Help us ride every Muni route in a day
Project seeks to re-create 1980 feat by Cal grads
It all started, as so many crazy ideas do these days, with a tweet.
In December, I tweeted a photo of my 4-year-old son typing every Muni bus line in numerical order into my husband’s computer. He loves transportation, he loves numbers, and, in what must set him apart from 99 percent of his fellow San Franciscans, a Muni bus is his Shangri-La.
His favorite screen time? Using my phone to scroll through the NextBus app. He doesn’t have to actually be waiting for a bus. He’s thrilled to know that someone, somewhere has to wait just 18 minutes for the 1California outbound or six minutes for the 21Hayes inbound, and he wants to make sure that everybody within earshot knows it, too.
“Mommy! Mommy!” he’ll yell, his inside voice be damned. “The 5-Fulton Rapid inbound to the Transbay Terminal will be at McAllister and Van Ness in 15 minutes!” It doesn’t matter that we’re in our living room in Glen Park with no plans to catch the bus.
Anyway, my colleague Peter Hartlaub — The Chronicle’s pop culture critic, Twitter aficionado and fellow parent of two young sons — saw my tweet about my Muni-obsessed boy and responded with a tweet of his own. It was an image of a Chronicle sto-
ry from Aug. 30, 1980, written by the late Harry Jupiter that began, “Two young San Francisco men spent yesterday riding the Municipal Railway. All of it. Seventy one bus, streetcar and cable car lines.”
Hartlaub included a challenge with the photo. “Up for being a hero to your 4-yearold and repeating this stunt in 2018?”
I emailed Hartlaub that I’d try to replicate the feat if he did it with me, hoping, if I’m being honest, that would jettison the plan. Sitting through interminable Board of Supervisors debates is one form of on-the-job torture. Riding every Muni bus line in one day would be quite another.
But Hartlaub called my bluff by responding, and I quote, “Hell, yes, I’ll do it!!”
So we agreed, with varying levels of enthusiasm, that we’d be up for the challenge, in theory. But we need help. And that’s where you, dear readers, come in.
The odds of us coming up with a solid route are about as good as every Muni bus showing up on time on the day we try this. So if you’re a public transportation nerd, a math genius or great with geography, we need your help. Keep reading for the parameters of this totally pointless — yet, we hope, totally fun — endeavor and how you can help make it a reality.
We’ve already solicited some help, namely from the two guys who did this 37½ years ago. You’ll recognize the name of one: Larry Baer, president and CEO of the San Francisco Giants, who would go on to accomplish the even more unlikely feat of overseeing three World Series championships in five years.
Back then, Baer’s aspirations were a little more downto-earth. He and his friend, Andrew Coblentz, had just graduated from UC Berkeley and were whiling away their summer when they hit upon an idea. They would ride every Muni bus line in one day and call it the Total Muni Experience. Why, you ask? Well, why not?
“We just did it to get all of them done,” Coblentz said the other day. “I think we just thought it would be fun.”
Wearing matching big hair, big grins and T-shirts reading, “The Total Muni Experience 8-29-80,” the two rode Muni for many, many hours. Like the size of a fish recalled after you catch it, the number of hours they rode Muni buses seems to be in a bit of dispute. Coblentz said it took from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m., while Jupiter’s story says it took from 5:20 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Baer, being a great sport, agreed to come to The Chronicle’s offices to record an episode of Hartlaub’s “The Big Event” podcast with us about that long-ago, grueling day. Baer, sporting a suit and his most recent huge, gold World Series ring, played it cool as he stepped over the corpse of a cockroach to reach the recording equipment in our dingy basement archive.
“1-California, 2-Clement, 3-Jackson ...” Baer began, ticking off the Muni bus lines in order and sounding a lot like my son but with a deeper voice. “I was like that, like your son. There was some fascination with Muni.”
Baer took care of marketing the Total Muni Experience, notifying the media, scheduling a news conference and crafting those shirts with iron-on letters. Coblentz, now a science teacher in Daly City, spent eight hours figuring out the route, armed only with a Muni map and printed schedule.
“It was an ode to an institution we loved and still love,” Baer said of Muni, while acknowledging that he doesn’t ride it much anymore.
He said it’s certainly possible to re-create the Total Muni Experience and pledged that he would join us aboard a bus if we’re able to pull it off. Note to Baer: Bring Lou Seal, too! Can you imagine the photographic potential?
It seems that Baer is still the optimistic marketing guy, while Coblentz is far more by-the-book. Asked whether he thinks it’s possible to recreate the Total Muni Experience, Coblentz said, “Just make sure you have your logistics together . ... There’s the planning aspect, but once you get out into the world of traffic and all that, who knows?”
In some ways, the stunt will be harder now. In 1980, there were about 680,000 residents of the city, and now there are about 870,000. More people, more traffic and more construction means slower buses.
But according to John Haley, Muni’s transit director, there are a lot of reasons that it will be easier in 2018 than it was in 1980. All-door boarding, wider doors and Clipper cards make boarding faster.
While some riders would have a hard time believing this, Haley says Muni buses are a lot more reliable than they were back then, so there’s less of a chance of a breakdown. Transit signals that give Muni buses priority and the red lanes created especially for them also help them to move faster.
He recommended tackling the routes that operate only as Owl service (1 to 5 a.m.) in the predawn hours, then heading to Powell and Market streets, where you can ride cable cars, streetcars and some buses back and forth for a block, knocking out a lot quickly. Go to other hubs, he said, including the Transbay Terminal and Union Square, where you can check more off the list. And then fan out around the neighborhoods.
He said he thinks it can be done in 12 hours.
“Our money’s on you, Heather. We know you can do it,” Haley said, sounding like my own personal Obi-Wan Kenobi. “Preparing a good plan will help you succeed in terms of how you do it . ... A few years ago, I would have said, ‘Bring a lot of coins,’ but now just bring your Clipper card, and you’ll be able to sail.”
Here are some specifics for anybody willing to help us craft a route. We need to ride a particular bus to only one stop for it to count. They can be ridden in any order. We’re hoping to hit all the bus, streetcar and cable car lines. We have to ride each numbered route only once. In other words, we don’t have to ride the 14-Mission, 14R-Mission Rapid and the 14X-Mission Express. Just any one of the 14 buses will suffice.
Questions? Comments? Suggestions? A route? Email us at hknight@sfchronicle.com and phartlaub@sfchronicle.com. Our Twitter hashtag will be #TotalMuni2018.
I figure that if we can actually pull this off, the payoff will be big. I’ll have a good story, and the perfect comeback for when my currently adorable 4-year-old grows up to become a sullen teenager who won’t do anything I ask him to.
“But I rode every Muni line in one day for you,” I’ll tell him dramatically. It will be so worth it.