![]() ![]() ![]() Yet those downtown trying to make it to the meeting, held at a recreation center a short walk from a J-Church stop, left work that night to discover the next J-Church trains wouldn't arrive for 28 to 30 minutes. The red lanes will be exclusively for buses, emergency vehicles and taxis.Monday night the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency held a meeting in Noe Valley to present to the public its proposal for speeding up service on Muni's notoriously slow J-Church subway line. To speed that line and three others (the 19-Polk, 43-Masonic and 44-O'Shaughnessy), the city recently approved " temporary emergency transit lanes" on those corridors. However, the decline isn't even across lines: the 14R-Mission Rapid, for example, is at 75% of normal ridership. "But looking further ahead, future service increases depend largely on additional revenue and the potential relaxation of COVID-19 distancing requirements."Īs of mid-July, overall Muni ridership was down 63%. "We may be able to introduce some additional service changes in the fall," an SFMTA representative wrote in a blog post. Earlier this month, SFMTA director Jeffrey Tumlin said that as many as 40 of Muni's 68 bus lines won't return anytime soon, due to fiscal shortfalls from lack of ridership and the city's overarching budget crisis. Many Muni lines are still offline, though. Some lines are seeing significantly higher ridership than others. Median passenger counts at each Muni stop on Saturday. And the 49-Van Ness/Mission will get bigger buses, upgrading from 40- to 60-foot coaches to promote distancing. Heavily trafficked existing lines, including the 8-Bayshore, 9-San Bruno and 14/14R-Mission, will see more bus frequency. On August 22, Muni will restore the full 7-Haight/Noriega, 44-O’Shaughnessy, 45-Union/Stockton, 54-Felton and 67-Bernal Heights routes, and extend some currently shortened routes, like the 12-Pacific and the 30-Stockton. Other have endured long waits for buses that can't stop because they're already at the maximum distanced capacity. The first issue is particularly pressing, as many riders have complained about overcrowded buses that make it tough to socially distance. ![]() | Image: SFMTAīringing the metro rail back into service will also free up buses that are currently in use for the shuttles, allowing Muni to reduce overcrowding, open some bus lines back up, and increase the frequency of buses. The new light-rail routes will go into effect next month. The J-Church and K-Ingleside lines can only support one-car trains at some of their surface-level stations - whereas all the stops on the N-Judah, M-Ocean View, T-Third and S-Shuttle can accommodate two-car trains.ĭue to social distancing, it takes three times as many train cars to move the same number of people as it did pre-pandemic. In addition to those changes, the K and L are being combined into a single line, which will transfer to a bus shuttle for the L at Taraval Street and 32nd Avenue (eastbound) and Wawona Street and 46th Avenue (westbound).Īs the agency explained in a blog post last month, these restrictions are due to train size. Riders will also be able to transfer between the N-Judah and J-Church trains at Church Street and Duboce Avenue. Instead, they'll have aboveground transfer points at West Portal station (for the K/L) and Church and Market streets (for the J). When the Muni metro reopens on August 22, the L-Taraval, K-Ingleside and J-Church trains will no longer enter the tunnel to service underground stations (Embarcadero, Montgomery, Powell, Civic Center, Van Ness, Church, Castro, and Forest Hill). Now, the trains are coming back - with some significant changes. When the shelter-in-place order came down in March, the SFMTA suspended all of Muni's light-rail lines, replacing them with bus shuttles.
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