Look, we're always thankful for Muni drivers — they navigate San Francisco's hills, its double-parked Ubers, and its occasionally unhinged passengers with more patience than most of us could muster. But gratitude doesn't fix a system that's chronically under-resourced and over-promised.

This isn't just a weekend problem. The structural issues plaguing Muni's bus network are year-round and deeply embedded. Take the 24 Divisadero as a case study in municipal transit dysfunction. As one SF resident put it bluntly: "The route is just too popular for the resources it gets. It's a complicated route with a small bus and no dedicated lanes. School crowd is also a mess."

That's the core issue across multiple lines — demand consistently outstrips supply, and SFMTA's answer is usually a shrug and a service alert. Another local noted the fundamental catch-22: "We need more buses. To do that, we need more money. To make it faster we need less cars blocking the bus. To do that we need better transit. Back to money and funding."

Here's what frustrates us: SFMTA's budget isn't small. The agency spends billions. Yet somehow the basics — enough buses on popular routes, dedicated lanes to keep them moving, schedules that reflect actual ridership — remain perpetually out of reach. Money keeps flowing into the bureaucracy, but the rider experience barely improves.

Divisadero is a perfect microcosm. As one rider observed, "It is on a street that does not have another major street nearby that goes where it goes." There's no alternative. Riders are captive, and SFMTA knows it.

So yes, be kind to your Muni operators this weekend. They're doing their best with what they've got. But save some of that energy to ask why a city this wealthy and this supposedly progressive can't run a bus system that actually works.