Beat the traffic and celebrate July 4th with Muni!

Beat the traffic and celebrate July 4th with Muni! 
By Jonathan Streeter

The Fourth of July fireworks are back this year, thanks to COVID-19 vaccines and the city’s ongoing reopening! The show will start at 9:30pm over San Francisco’s historic waterfront.

Muni wants to get you to the festivities and back, quickly and safely, on Independence Day. The State of California strongly recommends that anyone planning to attend the Fourth of July fireworks be fully vaccinated, obtain a negative COVID-19 test prior to attending the event, or wear a face covering. Customers must wear face masks while riding transit or using transit facilities, per federal mandate.

Getting There

Before the show, from 3 to 9 p.m., Muni will provide extra service to connect people from the Muni Metro Subway, BART, Ferries and Caltrain to the fireworks viewing area. Along the Embarcadero, Muni will have two shuttle routes to Pier 39.

• From the Ferry Building, board at Steuart & Mission and at historic streetcar stops along the Embarcadero.
• From the Caltrain Depot, board at the 47 stop on Townsend Street west of 4th Street and from the Ferry Terminal onward, board at historic streetcar stops along the Embarcadero.

Getting Back

After the show, from 9 to 11:30 p.m., Muni will have two express shuttles providing express service from Pier 39 to the Ferry Building and Caltrain. These buses will use transit-only lanes to avoid traffic wherever possible.

For details, please visit our Fourth of July extra service webpage.

Published July 02, 2021 at 07:24PM
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Public Participation Improves the J Church Transfer

Public Participation Improves the J Church Transfer
By Jonathan Streeter

As a part of the SFMTA’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we implemented a number of temporary emergency projects designed to maximize Muni service in light of newly constrained resources. For example, we brought back the J Church in December 2020 as a surface only rail route between Balboa Park and Duboce Avenue as the first train service to be re-started since shelter in place began in March 2020. Throughout these efforts, we have worked with the public to modify and improve their design.

A 22 Fillmore bus and J Church light rail vehicle travel northbound on Church Street at Market

To provide better connectivity between the J Church and other Muni Metro lines, we created a temporary boarding island and ramp on Church Street south of Market, and added a temporary ramp to the island on Church Street just south of Duboce Avenue. This now serves customers transferring to the re-opened subway.  We implemented this change after a public outreach process that included contacting every merchant in the project area, as well as neighborhood groups, elected officials and other stakeholders. The public was able to review our design and provide feedback regarding their questions and concerns.

The design for the new temporary transfer point for the J Church initially closed Church Street between Market and 15th streets to through traffic in both directions. In the southbound direction, closing Church Street to through traffic was necessary to accommodate the temporary boarding island and ramp, while in the northbound direction, the curb lane was closed to through traffic in collaboration with the citywide Shared Spaces program. This gave businesses on Church Street the opportunity to utilize the curbside lane to operate outdoors while indoor retail was either restricted or prohibited. We also provided commercial and passenger loading zones for residents, patrons, delivery vehicles and others to have continued local access to all of Church Street.

Since the project was implemented in August of 2020, we heard from a variety of businesses and residents that prohibiting northbound traffic across Market presented challenges. In addition to requiring alternate routes for reaching destinations north of Market Street, the lane closure also meant that any vehicle using a navigation app was unable to program pick-ups and drop offs on Church Street, despite the fact that it remained open to local traffic.

When the initial Shared Spaces permits expired on June 30 this year and businesses vacated parklets in the northbound curbside lane of Church Street, we canvassed merchants and other stakeholders and determined that the lane could now be reopened.  We have sent orders to our sign shop to have the signage changed and have communicated with the navigation companies our plans to have the lane reopened. Beginning in mid-July, northbound through traffic will once again be permitted in the curbside lane on Church Street.

As a temporary emergency project, the new transfer point for the J Church is authorized until the city’s emergency order is lifted, at which point the project must be removed within 120 days unless it receives permanent approval through additional outreach and legislation. We are now evaluating whether and how this transfer might be made permanent and welcome the public’s participation in our J Church Transfer Project Survey.

Published July 02, 2021 at 05:41AM
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Transit Lanes Keep Muni Moving on Mission Street in SoMa

Transit Lanes Keep Muni Moving on Mission Street in SoMa
By Erin McMillan

The full-time transit lanes on Mission Street downtown installed as a temporary emergency measure during the pandemic will be made permanent. The first of the city’s Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes to get permanent authorization, they were unanimously approved by the SFMTA Board of Directors at their June 15, 2021 meeting. This shows how a quick-build project can be installed, evaluated, and refined in a relatively short amount of time.  

Thousands of daily riders have already felt the impact of the full-time transit lanes since they were first temporarily installed last summer. Now, riders of the 14 Mission, 14R Mission Rapid, and many SamTrans and Golden Gate Transit customers will continue to benefit from the transit time savings we have seen with the implementation of these lanes. Mission Street in SoMa has been a major transit corridor for years, serving regional commuters, local residents and workers that support the downtown area. With the Bay Area reopening, the diverse group of transit riders that travel this corridor from all over the region will be able to get to their destination faster and more reliably thanks to keeping these full-time transit lanes in place.

So far, the lanes on Mission Street have achieved their goal–keeping transit moving even as traffic threatens to slow it down. Traffic has risen 20% since the summer of 2020, yet transit times are staying relatively consistent, demonstrating that the transit lanes are effective in protecting buses from getting caught in traffic.

In addition to our technical evaluation, we collected feedback from the community on the transit lanes, loading zones and parking. Outreach for this project was extensive, including a range of public engagement tactics from posters on the street to direct phone calls to businesses to collect their feedback. While the majority of public survey respondents supported making the transit lanes permanent, we did hear from businesses with significant concerns about loading zone and parking changes. As a result, many modifications were made after the initial temporary transit lanes were installed to help manage the tradeoffs that affected all folks along the corridor, from business owners to transit riders. The advantage of the quick-build approach is that we are able to make modifications like changes to commercial and passenger loading based on real-time feedback.

What’s next?

The temporary project restriped the roadway between 5th and 11th streets and made transit lanes full-time between 3rd and 11th streets. Modifications to the temporary project, including restriping and making transit lanes full-time between 1st and 3rd streets, and extension of bus zones are anticipated for fall 2021.  Additional changes, such as sidewalk widening, are being planned for future phases.

Published June 30, 2021 at 05:26AM
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