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SFMTA Recommends Transformative Muni Service and Route Changes

Friday, March 14, 2014

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), which manages all surface transportation in the city, including the Municipal Railway (Muni), today announced at its Board of Directors meeting the formal recommendations for Muni service and route changes as part of the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP). Through a significant community input gathering phase, the SFMTA was able to modify and improve several of the proposed network changes. Along with the forthcoming capital investments, the proposed route and service changes will allow San Francisco to recalibrate the Muni network in order to meet our existing customer demand as well as adapt to emerging travel patterns.

Citywide, the TEP will reduce travel times on rapid corridors by up to 20 percent, restructure the network to increase service up to 10 percent, and increase service between neighborhoods.

“The TEP will modernize Muni and make it more efficient, reliable, safe and comfortable for 700,000 daily transit boardings,” said Tom Nolan, Chairman of the MTA Board. “These modifications will bring citywide benefits to our transportation network by focusing on transit-dependent communities with the greatest needs and emphasizing connection between our neighborhoods.”

“The proposed route and service changes will allow San Francisco to improve the Muni network in order to better meet our existing customer demand, as well as adapt to emerging travel patterns,” said Ed Reiskin, SFMTA Director of Transportation. “These changes have been shaped through years of public input, and they are based on an unprecedented and ongoing route-by-route analysis of Muni operations.”

One of the greatest strengths of the TEP is the quantity and quality of public input that has been received throughout the process. Since 2008, TEP proposals have been developed through more than 100 community meetings throughout the city. The outreach process also has involved extensive staff input, Community Benefit Organization outreach, customer engagement, targeted stop and merchant canvassing, and partnering with other key agencies.

In the latest round of public outreach from January to March 2014, the SFMTA focused solely on the proposed service and route changes. SFMTA staff hosted twelve neighborhood-specific community meetings and two citywide meetings, where line-specific feedback was obtained and analyzed. Additionally, an online public engagement tool was launched for people to provide feedback without having to attend a meeting. In total, more than 1,500 comments were received on a variety of the service and route change proposals.

The multi-year public outreach effort has resulted in substantial changes to the original TEP proposals. Whenever possible, SFMTA staff has identified design solutions that address community concerns while still achieving the overall goals of the TEP. In situations where community concerns cannot be resolved at the staff level, the feedback has been summarized in the presentation to the SFMTA Board of Directors for their consideration as part of their overall decision process.

Following the March 14 informational hearing, the SFMTA Board of Directors will consider whether to implement the proposed service and route changes at its special March 28 meeting. The Board also may consider the certification of the TEP’s Final Environmental Impact Report (FEIR), which is scheduled for review at the March 27 Planning Commission meeting.

The SFMTA has published A Community Guide to the Transit Effectiveness Project that will accompany the FEIR. The Community Guide provides an understanding of the transit planning process embodied in the TEP, summarizes the conversations that have taken place, highlights the proposals that have emerged, and continues the conversation by acknowledging and addressing public comments received most recently in response to the Draft Environmental Impact Report, published on July 10, 2013. It specifically addresses concerns related to route restructuring, stop consolidation, parking removal, and trade-offs for those traveling by private automobiles.

About the Transit Effectiveness Project

The TEP represents the first major evaluation of San Francisco’s mass transit system in thirty years, bringing together people, process, and technology to better understand and thus better solve the issues facing Muni. During this multi-year process, the SFMTA collected data on ridership patterns and operating conditions at an unprecedented route-by-route level of detail. This data provided deep insights into who Muni’s customers are, where they come from, where they want to go, and how reliably they are getting there.

The overall objective of the TEP is to modernize Muni ─ the backbone of San Francisco’s multi-modal transit network. Through services changes that better reflect today’s travel patterns and capital projects along high ridership corridors, the TEP will improve service reliability, reduce travel time on transit, and improve customer experiences and service efficiency. Citywide, the TEP will reduce travel times on rapid corridors by up to 20 percent, restructure the network to increase service up to 10 percent, and increase service between neighborhoods.