by Zusha Elinson, The Bay Citizen
For the first time in more than a decade, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency released a report on the on-time arrival rate of its buses and trains without inflating the numbers.

Muni’s vehicles were on time 57.2 percent of the time in August, leaving passengers waiting, and waiting, at bus stops and train stations, according to the report released Friday. That number was slightly down from July when the on-time rate was 60.4 percent, according to the report, which covered the first eight months of 2012.
Muni’s willingness to use accurate on-time numbers came after The Bay Citizen reported in July that Muni officials were using accounting maneuvers to boost the reported on-time rate by as much as 18 percent since 2001, according to an internal memo. The transit agency has been under pressure to improve timeliness since 1999, when San Francisco residents approved a ballot measure requiring the transit agency to be on time at least 85 percent of the time.
“These are the straightforward, on-time performance numbers,” SFMTA spokesman Paul Rose said in interview.