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Muni streetcar no. 1079 arriving at Noe & Morket on a gray morning.

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In an effort to speed up one of Muni’s busiest bus routes, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors Tuesday approved permanent transit-only lanes along a stretch of Mission Street.

The transit-only lanes between 11th and First streets were first established on a temporary basis but will now be permanent fixtures to benefit Muni passengers using the local 14-Mission and its rapid route, which carried 33,600 boardings per day in April, or 71 percent of the pre-pandemic ridership, according to a SFMTA staff report.

Transit-only lanes were added to Mission Street south of 11th Street several years ago as part of the 14 Mission Rapid Project, but were only extended to First Street as a temporary measure as part of the emergency pandemic response.

The emergency transit lanes and many of the changes instituted during the lockdown will expire 120 days after city officials lift the local emergency order. SFMTA will be required to remove or revert any changes that do not undergo the standard required planning and approvals process.

Steve Boland, a transportation planner with the transit agency, said while evaluating the temporary transit lanes on Mission Street, staff found travel times were lowered between 18 and 20 percent:

“Of course part of this is due to reduced traffic, but they’ve remained steady since last summer even as traffic volumes in the corridor have increased by about 20 percent.”

The changes will permanently remove 175 parking spaces, about 130 of which were already removed as part of the temporary changes.

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The Bay Area is on the fast-track to fully reopening, and the region’s nightlife is reawakening from a 15-month slumber. California will lift most pandemic restrictions Tuesday.

But options for getting around at night and in the early morning hours will probably be minimal or costly. The effects will be felt acutely among those without cars, and even more so for the region’s workers who depend on public transit yet have endured more than a year of reduced service.

Currently, BART closes at 9:00 pm while Muni switches from already-reduced normal service to stripped-down overnight Owl service at 10:00 pm, rather than 1:00 am.

BART will restore service to near pre-pandemic level on August 30, with late night and weekend service until midnight, but SFMTA will likely continue running reduced Muni service for another year or more.

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Back in service again, one of the historic F-line streetcars boards in the Castro before starting a return trip to Fisherman's Wharf.

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Transit workers are our nation’s frontline warriors for urban mobility. And their workplace can be dangerous, with maintenance workers handling heavy machinery and large moving vehicles and operators facing traffic and, increasingly, unhinged and sometimes violent passengers.

But what happened in San Jose yesterday morning at the Valley Transportation Authority light rail yard is another dimension entirely.

A little after 6:30 in the morning yesterday, an employee of the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) murdered nine co-workers in a shooting spree before taking his own life at the agency's light-rail maintenance yard in San Jose.

Eight people died at the scene, one was taken to the hospital but succumbed to his injuries later.

Words fail us at the horror, so we will let President Biden say it for us.

There are at least eight families [now nine] who will never be whole again. There are children, parents, and spouses who are waiting to hear whether someone they love is ever going to come home. There are union brothers and sisters – good, honest, hardworking people – who are mourning their own. Every life that is taken by a bullet pierces the soul of our nation. We can, and we must, do more. God bless all those whose lives were lost today, and all those who loved them.

President Joe Biden, May 26, 2021

VTA has suspended light-rail service while the maintenance yard remains an active crime scene.

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More Muni routes will roll out on Aug. 7, with a focus on restoring service to hillside neighborhoods and supporting the return of many students to in-person learning next school year.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency announced its roster of returning routes at the Board of Directors meeting on Tuesday. Conspicuously absent was the M-Ocean View line’s restoration, which serves San Francisco State University.

With the service changes and restored lines, SFMTA says about 98% of San Francisco will be within 2-3 blocks of a Muni line, though most lineswill return with reduced service hours and frequency.

The lack of light-rail on the M-Ocean View line raises concern because SFSU is slated to resume in-person classes on August 23 and has traditionally been a major transit destination.

“The M will start as soon as we can, but we do not have a definitive date,” said Julie Kirschbaum, SFMTA Transit Director.

Supervisor Myrna Melgar, whose district includes SFSU, reiterated her belief that running light rail vehicles on the M-Ocean View is essential to the recovery of one of The City’s signature academic institutions as well as the employees, students and businesses tied to it.

“SF State is going back in person in the fall, and we still have no date for M light rail service restoration,” she said.

Buses will also continue running the L-Taraval line as construction continues on the Taraval Street improvements. Rail service will return when the L-Taraval Rapid Project completes in 2022-2023.

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The Muni Metro subway, along with the N-Judah and full KT-Ingleside/Third Street lines, re-opened this weekend.

Certainly, Muni riders are pleased the subway is back. But it remains astonishing that the agency considered shutting down the subway completely for over a year to be an acceptable option.

As Streetsblog has pointed out previously, lots of transit systems are old, or cash strapped. All had to deal with COVID. But there’s not another system in the world, including North American systems with similarly aged legacy streetcar routes (think of Boston, Toronto, or Philadelphia) that allowed anything remotely equivalent.

Technically the subway has not been closed for over a year, but it just underscores the problem. The Muni Metro system re-opened in August 2020 for only two days before a series of mechanical failures lead to the SFMTA shutting the system down again for nearly another 9 months.

Somehow closing core automobile routes for such a duration would never be considered–think of the eastern span of the Bay Bridge, which was left operational for two decades after it was determined that it could collapse in an earthquake.

But the Muni subway is closed over and over again, this time for over a year, while maintenance is done (or, as it turns out, sometimes not done)?

The culture at Muni management and, frankly, San Francisco’s political elite, has to change.

The subway and the Muni Metro light-rail system in general, are a critical means to get around the City that need be addressed.

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Muni streetcar no. 1040 makes a test run up Market Street to the Castro ahead of the F-Market & Wharves line's re-opening on Saturday.

For now, the F-line will be running reduced hours, but Saturday will also see the re-opening of the Muni Metro subway, N-Judah rail service, and the full KT-Ingleside/Third Street line.

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You may have seen some out-of-service F-Market cars rolling on Market Street in recent days, as the SFMTA trains or retrains operators and prepares for the May 15 return of the historic streetcar service between the Wharves and the Castro.

F-line service was suspended in March of 2020, along with the Muni Metro light-rail system, but was not replaced with shuttle buses. This weekend will also see the return of subway service on the N and K/T lines.

While tourism may take some time to return in the city, the historic streetcars will once again provide a connection between Fisherman's Wharf and the Castro for Bay Area tourists and whoever wants to ride on them again — and merchants on Upper Market and the Castro are eager to see them return.

"SFMTA staff worked closely with Castro Merchants, SF Travel, Community Benefit Districts including Mid Market, Yerba Buena, Fisherman’s Wharf, Castro Upper Market, as well as district Supervisors and other key stakeholders in the effort to bring the F Market & Wharves back into service in time for the summer season," the SFMTA says in an announcement.

The F-line will run seven days a week, but with reduced hours because SFMTA only has resources and staffing to provide a single daily operator shift. Service to the Wharf will run from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. while return trips to the Castro will run from noon to 8 p.m.

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BART and Caltrain essentially do the same thing: they carry people great distances around the Bay Area. They’re both supported, to different extents, by taxpayers. So why should each have its own governance, ticketing, and schedules that make it difficult if not impossible for riders to use them both in any kind of seamless manner?

The answer from voters and taxpayers is clear: they should not be separate.

The Bay Area Council, an organization focused on the region's economic development, recently polled a sample of registered voters about the idea of merging Caltrain and BART.

The Bay Area Council Poll found 83% of respondents support combining BART and Caltrain into a single integrated system. Support rises to 86% when respondents are told that a merged system “would provide for a more efficient, convenient and better service and allow continuous rail around the bay.”

Merging transit agencies poses a lot of changes, risks, and simply putting everyone in a room together doesn't guarantee efficiency. Some counties, cities, and communities could see resources diverted to the major population centers or congestion points.

Seemless Bay Area has focused on the idea of an integrated system where responsibilities might be split between the separate transit agencies and a central planning and coordination authority.

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SFMTA has a series of posters onboard the buses celebrating pioneering women in San Francisco transit history. This one onboard an N-Judah bus honors entrepreneur and abolitionist Mary Ellen Pleasant:

In the 1860s, she challenged San Francisco's segregated streetcars, taking her fight all the way to the California Supreme Court–and winning. Join us in recognizing her victory against segregation.

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Clipper Card is now available on iPhone and Apple Watch with an express mode that lets you just tap and pay without having to unlock your phone first.

SFist took a rather dour tone and paints the Bay Area as late a late adopter when only a few dozen cities and regional transit systems around the world so far support Apple Pay, with or without the express mode feature.

At last, a couple years behind other cities, San Francisco now has added Apple Wallet and Apple Watch paying capability on mass transit, with Android capability on the way soon.

As SFist reported in February, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) and the intramodal Clipper Card finally got around to adding mobile payments during the pandemic. Now, as of Thursday, riders on BART and Muni can just wave their iPhone or Apple Watch over a Clipper reader to pay fares on trains and buses. Clipper Cards can be added to the Apple Wallet, and be managed using a new Clipper Card app.

A mobile app and payment system were among the $194 million worth of upgrades included in the 2017 renewal of the Clipper Card contract and scheduled to be complete by 2023.

Last week's launch isn't even off the original promise of a beta by the end of 2020 and a full launch within 1-2 years. It's easy to imagine the beta testing – which must still be underway for Android devices – was just done privately by staff and a limited pool of testers because of COVID-19.

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Muni Metro’s K-Ingleside train will return on May 15, more than six months ahead of schedule.

Mayor London Breed and District 7 Supervisor Myrna Melgar announced the news on Friday, citing the restoration of train service to the line as a key part of The City’s economic recovery as residents continue to get vaccinated and halt the spread of COVID-19.

SFMTA had previously announced plans to restore rail service on the N-Judah line and extend the T line to West Portal (trains are currently turning back at Embarcadero) next month but also that it was unlikely to return rail service on the K, L, and M lines before January 2022.

“The return of the K is an important step forward in bringing back the type of Muni service that San Francisco needs as we emerge from this pandemic” Breed said in a statement. “This last year forced us to change so much about how our city operates, and one of the hardest parts was the impact it had on our public transit.”

The announcement didn't include details on what has changed to make this possible, or how the line will operate, but the answer to both is likely that the K will return to running as part of a combined KT-Ingleside/Third Street line.

As a short extension of the T-Line, it requires fewer vehicles, maintenance, operators, and support staff than restoring the K-Ingleside to a full line of its own running the length of the subway to Embarcadero.

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Two members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors announced plans Tuesday to make Muni fares in the city free for all this summer, and this time it’s not a joke.

The proposal introduced by Supervisors Dean Preston and Matt Haney at Tuesday’s board meeting would appropriate $9.3 million in one-time funds to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to offset the costs of piloting free public transit for all for three months.

Supervisor Preston told the SF Chronicle in an interview that he wants to gauge interest in permanently funding fare-free Muni service, but even a one-time three-month reprieve would be a help in hard times.

“If it passes and goes into effect, we’d have a fare-free period, which would have the immediate benefit of putting money in riders’ pockets during a time when people are really struggling in the city,” Preston said. “I think people would really benefit from that.”

Offering fare-free Muni service, if only for a limited time, might help a little to draw back riders understandably wary of COVID-19.

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Under normal circumstances, there are only a few hours each night for all the maintenance that needs to be done in the subway before it's time to get it ready to re-open again.

The COVID-19 lockdown and extended shutdown of the subway gave SFTMA an unexpected opportunity to get a lot of overdue and planned work done while everyone was away. An opportunity they did not let go to waste.

The recent wave of major subway repairs is finally wrapping up and customers can expect smoother, more reliable rides when Muni Metro reopens. New wayfinding signs and art projects are in place at Castro and West Portal stations, and – drumroll, please – Wi-Fi availability, thanks to routers installed in stations and cellular antennas installed in the tunnels.

Safety certification for the subway repairs was approved on March 11, paving the way to reopen the subway and phase in more rail service in May.

Many of the repairs and improvements are focused on making trains run more reliably, but some of the changes are geared to making it easier and more pleasant to ride Muni.

This includes new art installations and even rethinking the terminology used to talk to customers. Castro and Church will receive new wayfinding and directional signs throughout the stations as part of what SFMTA says is a bigger effort to improve wayfinding across the Muni Metro system.

With this new signage, we are moving away from the confusing and outdated use of “inbound” and “outbound” wording in the subway. Instead, we will use a combination of route endpoints and cardinal directions (north, south, east, west), that are easier for customers to navigate and consistent with rail systems and stations in most major cities worldwide.

When the subway re-opens in May, only T-Third Street trains will be running the full length between West Portal and Embarcadero. N-Judah trains will return as well, running the full route from Ocean Beach to 4th & King, which includes the five shared subway stations between Van Ness and Embarcadero.

J-Church trains will continue running a shortened route, however, turning back at Duboce & Church. The K, L, and a shortened M line will also continue being served by buses for the foreseeable future.

Source: SFMTA / News

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Karl Aguilar has helped run Papenhausen Hardware in West Portal for more than 20 years. He says he hasn’t seen as much business over the last year as fewer familiar faces stepped off the train and into his store.

While Aguilar can’t be certain, he blamed some of the decline in sales on the closure of the Muni Metro subway. The shuttle buses that replaced the light rail vehicles must navigate around subway tunnels rather than going through them, leading to delays and cumbersome connections.

Papenhausen Hardware sits just a few hundred feet from West Portal Station, where the K, L, M, T, and sometimes S lines provided frequent service.

Further complicating matters, the M-Ocean View bus is running a shortened route, as are many running Muni lines operating reduced hours, routes, and/or frequencies.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency hasn’t run Muni Metro train service since March 2020, save for a botched attempt at reopening the downtown tunnel in August.

Though the agency plans to run the N-Judah and T-Third lines underground beginning in May, the return of additional rail service isn’t expected until at least early next year as the agency faces budget restraints and crushing vacancies.

That means outer neighborhoods that once relied on the L-Taraval, M-Ocean View and K-Ingleside train routes will continue to be without easy access to the underground for months to come, leaving many merchants worried for the future of their businesses, workforce and commercial corridors.

Under the SFMTA's plan to restart subway service in May, T-Third Street trains will begin running the full length on the subway from Embarcadero to West Portal Station. Trains are also set to resume running the full N-Judah line, including five subway stations between Embarcadero and Van Ness.

While it's a far cry from K, L, and M trains providing direct subway service to Downtown San Francisco but bringing (some) subway service back to West Portal is a step forward. As more people are vaccinated and feel confident riding transit, business should begin picking up again for merchants like Papenhausen Hardware.

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The J-Church was the first Muni Metro rail line to return to service after the COVID-19 shutdown, but running a shortened route that turns back at Duboce & Church rather than entering the subway and continuing downtown.

A few months ago, the T-Third Street returned to service as well, but similarly running only as far as Embarcadero Station.

Operating trains only on the surface portion of the lines (or only as far as the first station in the subway) allowed SFMTA time to make extensive repairs to the subway, even adding wifi.