What a Year It Has Been! Let the Celebration of Transit Month Continue

What a Year It Has Been! Let the Celebration of Transit Month Continue
By Erin McMillan

49 Van Ness/Mission using the brand new bus rapid transit lanes on opening day in April.

During Transit Month this September, we’re continuing the celebration by looking back to more of the work we’ve done over the last year— some that has been less obvious to Muni customers, but critical to a well-functioning system and other work that is more front and center.

Fix It! Week and Continuing State of good Repair Work

Muni is an impressive transit system. Moving thousands of people on rail and buses every day takes a lot of coordination and a lot of work. Dealing with unique challenges like San Francisco’s geography and shifting travel patterns, we also have to deal with issues related to the Muni system’s age. Proper care and maintenance of a transit system many decades old takes strategic planning as regular maintenance needs to happen while continuing to provide service. Typically, regular Muni Metro maintenance work occurs each night after subway service hours, SFMTA maintenance crews work to maintain the tracks and equipment underground. On most nights, this gives crews only about two hours to get work done. This two-hour window sometimes isn’t enough to complete critical maintenance tasks, so beginning in April, we started Fix It! Week, a quarterly week of planned maintenance that occurs during extended, overnight shifts when trains aren’t in service.

This year Fix It! Week provided 63 total work hours during which several SFMTA teams completed over 2,000 hours of maintenance and inspections. On the busiest nights, the maintenance teams had up to 55 staff in the tunnel from West Portal to Embarcadero delivering safety improvements, station and tunnel enhancements, subway track and wayside equipment maintenance, and traction power upgrades.  

In addition to finding new and creative ways to maintain the system more efficiently, we also had to entirely reimagine the service network to accommodate changing travel patterns and in response to the pandemic. Over the past year alone we’ve increased Muni service multiple times as the impact of the pandemic has eased and we’ve slowly been able to hire new operators.

Trip patterns have changed over the last two years with a noticeable shift in San Francisco residents traveling neighborhood to neighborhood instead of the peak period downtown-centric travel pattern that was prevalent pre-pandemic. And we’ve adjusted. Service is slightly over-supplied so that there is capacity when it is needed. Anticipating how people will move in the future is difficult, but our service planning team is hard at work tracking ridership, customer feedback and operator availability to do our best to accommodate how folks want and need to move around the city. We are working to build back our ridership by providing high-quality, reliable service that people can count on.

Our response was the 2022 Muni Service Network which was developed through an extensive outreach process. Throughout the COVID-19 emergency and recovery, the SFMTA prioritized restoring service to these, and other neighborhoods identified in the Muni Service Equity Plan.

On the more visible side of our work, in April we started bus rapid transit (BRT) service on Van Ness Avenue as part of Muni’s Rapid Network, which prioritizes frequency and reliability for customers. Muni and Golden Gate Transit customers are already experiencing shorter travel times. With dedicated transit lanes in the middle of the street, enhanced traffic signals with Transit Signal Priority, the Van Ness BRT is the fastest way to travel north-south in this part of San Francisco, and riders are noticing. Since the BRT corridor opened on Van Ness Avenue in April, ridership on the 49 Van Ness/Mission has nearly doubled and is exceeding pre-pandemic ridership by 13%.

In other major capital and service news, last October service started on Geary in its new transit lanes after the completion of the Geary Rapid Project. Pre-pandemic, the combined Geary routes had one of the highest bus riderships in the country, with more than 56,000 daily customers relying on the 38 Geary and 38R Geary Rapid. As riders return, they are experiencing a faster, more reliable ride thanks to transit improvements like red colorization and dedicated transit lanes, bus stop optimization and signal retiming that were made along the three-mile stretch of Geary. These quick-build improvements alone resulted in 38R Geary Rapid travel time savings of up to 20%. 

And last but certainly not least, you may have heard we have officially announced the opening of Central Subway! Weekend service starts Saturday, November 19 and will give customers a chance to check out its four new stations, and also allow our operators and crews to work out any kinks while operating. We’re looking forward to welcoming you aboard!

Wishing you a Happy Transit Month! 

Published September 29, 2022 at 10:37AM
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Celebrating BART at 50: A Critical Link for San Francisco

Celebrating BART at 50: A Critical Link for San Francisco
By Jeremy Menzies

This month, our sister agency BART, celebrates its 50th anniversary. BART service changed transportation in the Bay Area forever, connecting communities in a way that hadn’t been done before. For San Francisco, the construction of BART not only provided new travel options within the city and to the East Bay but also built the Muni Metro system.

Here’s a look at some of BART’s history through the SFMTA’s historic photos.

This conceptual drawing from around 1960 shows the combined BART and Muni Metro subway underneath Market Street at Powell.

The story of BART goes back decades before the opening in September 1972. It wasn’t until the early 1960s that a plan and funding were in place for BART to come to fruition.

Originally, five counties formed the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. In a 1960 engineering report, proposed route maps showed lines extending both north across the Golden Gate into Marin and south down the Peninsula to Palo Alto. After Marin and San Mateo counties withdrew from the district, a final plan was drawn up to serve mainly the East Bay and San Francisco.

Students with white shovels were on hand for the groundbreaking ceremony for BART/Muni Metro at Market and Powell streets on July 25, 1967.

Groundbreaking on construction for San Francisco’s Market Street Subway took place in July 1967. This construction not only included the main BART stations downtown but also stations for Muni Metro at Church, Castro, and West Portal. Forest Hill Station was modified with new platforms and equipment to fit Muni’s incoming light rail vehicles. The funding and planning power of the BART District brought to life an idea that had been floated since at least 1913.

An overhead view looking at the construction of Castro Station in October 1973.

Construction along Market Street was extremely disruptive for the city’s busiest corridor. During construction, Muni streetcars and buses had to navigate constantly shifting reroutes, wooden plank roadways, and sinkholes on top of all the usual street hazards. One of the most dramatic engineering feats was a temporary bridge built over a huge open pit at Collingwood Street. Here, streetcars traveling towards West Portal crossed over top construction on Castro Station to enter the Twin Peaks Tunnel. The temporary ramps built to access the tunnel still exist today and are used for emergency and maintenance needs.

The first passengers pass through Powell Station fare gates at the opening of BART in the city on November 3, 1973.

BART opened in San Francisco on November 3, 1973. For the first time ever, San Franciscans could travel from downtown to the outer reaches of the city on an underground subway system. Service across the Bay opened ten months later in September 1974. BART gave San Franciscans from Balboa Park to downtown improved access to jobs, shopping, and education as well as connections around the region.

San Francisco Mayor Moscone speaks at the opening of Embarcadero Station at Market and Drumm Streets.

Embarcadero Station, which was not part of the original plan, was built after the main subway. It opened on May 27, 1976, with Mayor George Moscone giving a speech at the end of the California Street cable car line. Today, Embarcadero Station is the busiest in the system, with over 27,000 entries and exits logged in August 2022.

A mime holds up an oversized Muni/BART Fast Pass in Powell Station at the launch of the program on March 24, 1983.

In the early 1980s, Muni and BART partnered to improve transit within the city through a combined Muni/BART monthly Fast Pass. Muni customers could ride BART between Embarcadero and Balboa Park on the same pass, making transfers between the two systems seamless.

Today, BART is a critical part of our regional transportation network. Construction of BART in the mid-century also brought better service to the hundreds of thousands of Muni Metro riders within San Francisco.

As one of our regional transit partners, we congratulate BART on their golden anniversary and look forward to another 50+ years of serving the Bay together!  Read more about BART’s first 50 years and check out some amazing historic documents and a timeline 1947-1991.

Published September 28, 2022 at 02:56PM
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Let’s Celebrate During Transit Month this September

Let’s Celebrate During Transit Month this September
By Erin McMillan

The 38R Geary Rapid reaping the benefits of the Temporary Emergency Transit Lane on Geary Boulevard.

Today marks the start of Transit Month! Every year we look forward to celebrating Transit Month by looking back at all the successes of the previous year—and also by thinking of our upcoming opportunities to continue to improve Muni.

Over the past year, we have made a series of improvements through our Muni Forward program that reduced travel times, wait times and crowding:  

• Reduced travel time by up to 31% on key bus routes as part of  the Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes program, giving more riders the benefit of the transit lanes faster.  
  
  • 10 miles of transit lanes were made permanent benefitting the T Third, 1 California, 14 Mission, 19 Polk, 27 Bryant, 38 Geary, 43 Masonic and the 44 O’Shaughnessy. This cool animation shows how transit priority is improving Muni travel times citywide!
  • As part of the TETL program, last October, the San Francisco Transit Riders gave us an award to honor the “Fastest Expansion of Transit Lanes in San Francisco History.”
• Started bus rapid transit service on Van Ness Avenue, with initial weekday travel time savings of up to 35% on northbound trips, equating to 9 minutes a trip. And southbound, up to 22% travel time savings, or 5 minutes on a trip.   
• Completed the Geary Rapid Project, which improved one of the city’s busiest corridors with much-needed safety improvements and more reliable bus service for the 38 Geary and 38R Geary Rapid’s over 56,000 daily customers.
• Installed the one of a kind urban high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes along Park Presidio Boulevard and Lombard Street that expands the capacity of those streets to carry more people with the same number of lanes.  
• Reduced collisions on California Street by 64% for all modes and 89% for transit as measured in the evaluation of the California Street Safety Project.
• Began implementing spot improvements to the top ten corridors where Muni experiences delay as part of the Transit Delay Hot Spots Program. The improvements feel small but benefit the full route.
• Continued construction of transit reliability improvements on 19th Avenue, Taraval Street, 16th Street, Mission Street in SoMa, and along the 27 Bryant in the Tenderloin.

To see locations where Muni Forward improvements have been made across the city, check out this interactive Photo Map. Whether targeted spot locations, or along major corridors, improvements to the Muni network benefits everyone.

And looking ahead, we have started planning for Muni Forward improvements to the J Church, K Ingleside, M Ocean View, N Judah, 29 Sunset and 38 Geary. For some Muni lines, we hope to implement quick-build improvements as soon as next year! To support this work, and other work across the SFMTA, we were recently awarded $116 million from the California State Transportation Agency of the Transit and Intercity Rail Capital Program (TIRCP). Be on the lookout for more improvements coming soon!

Of course, that’s not all we’re doing to improve transit: we’ve been restoring service across the system, rehabilitating our subway system, and we’re putting the final touches on the Central Subway. Read more about our progress on enhancing transit service and safety in San Francisco.

Happy Transit Month, Muni riders! And for more information on the San Francisco Transit Riders Ride Along & Rally Wednesday, September 7  from 8 am - 10 am, please visit San Francisco Ride Along & Rally.

Published September 01, 2022 at 11:19AM
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