The San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency said ridership rose 25% in 2023 to its highest level since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020, which officials credited to improved ridership experiences on buses and subways while adapting to new travel patterns.
Officials said Wednesday that Muni’s daily ridership increased by 25% in 2023 compared with 2022. The agency’s renewed focus on routinely cleaning and inspecting its fleet of trains and buses has helped, officials said, while greater coordination between the SFMTA and law enforcement has deterred criminal activity in and around Muni stations.
SFMTA Director Jeffrey Tumlin acknowledged at a press conference Wednesday that the agency’s financial crisis is its worst, and that San Francisco stands out as one of the cities most affected by changing remote-work policies throughout the last four years.
Ridership at downtown Muni stations, such as the Embarcadero or Montgomery locations, is still at only 35% of its pre-pandemic levels. To find some stability, he said, the agency changed its approach in moving people around The City.
“We have succeeded in retooling Muni for today’s current travel patterns, and the results have been far more successful than we had thought possible,” Tumlin said.
During the last four years, the SFMTA built 25 miles of transit-only lanes. Now, lines such as the 49 Van Ness/Mission, Tumlin said, are so much faster than they were pre-pandemic that some riders have complained about arriving too early for appointments or missing their stop after momentarily checking their phone.
Other efforts — such as the agency’s “Fix It Week,” which involves shutting subway stations down early for a few days every quarter so that crews can make repairs — have reduced 75% of subway delays.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Mayor London Breed also noted that commutes have shifted within The City, with more riders going to destinations in their free time rather than downtown workspaces. Despite the changes in people’s lives, Breed said, a functional transportation system remains crucial in helping stage The City’s economic recovery.
The SFMTA said that in order to recover ridership, it had to move away from solely relying on downtown traffic and instead focus on connecting riders between neighborhoods, especially since data shows a steady demand. For example, weekday ridership for the 14 Mission Rapid in 2023 was up by 106% compared with pre-pandemic levels, while the 22 Fillmore recouped 139% of its pre-pandemic traffic.
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“There are people who love Muni,” Breed said. “There’s also people who completely rely on Muni.”
“For those seniors and those kids trying to get to school and everyone in between, we want to make sure that every single day what we are doing is improving this system to serve you,” she added.
Muni mechanics are using data to perform maintenance on buses and subways well in advance of them breaking down, SFMTA Director of Transportation Julie Kirschbaum said. She also said Muni operators have access to better digital information regarding other lines, meaning that drivers can see how close they are getting to the vehicle in front of them and make incremental adjustments to reduce vehicles bunching up together.
Operators have also been trained on customer service, Kirschbaum said, so that they can help locals and visitors alike navigate through The City.
When vehicles aren’t in service, the SFMTA said that its crews are committed to around-the-clock cleanings. Every vehicle is inspected before it returns to service to ensure that riders have a pleasant experience.
“This combination of faster and more reliable together is San Franciscans are making transfers,” Tumlin said, noting that he has seen more people make connections to get to neighborhoods such as Japantown from other parts of The City.
The SFMTA has also worked to deter crime in and around its stations. Video surveillance teams track up to 11 cameras on every Muni vehicle, as well as up to 100 cameras in every station. The agency said it is working with the San Francisco Police Department and the San Francisco’s District Attorney’s Office to ensure that every crime reported on Muni is investigated and prosecuted.
Tumlin said those efforts have resulted in the reported crime rate on Muni being a quarter of what it was a decade ago.
