If you’re a Muni rider heading downtown, you may have to hoof it — or hop another bus — to get to your final destination.
In lieu of cutting bus lines across the city, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors directed staff in a 3-2 vote to shorten routes for buses headed downtown.
From the Western Addition to the Mission, the Tenderloin to the Richmond, bus lines all over San Francisco were previously on the table for service cuts this summer.
Under the modified plan greenlit by the board, a bevy of bus lines that previously took riders from the west and south sides into downtown will now terminate at Market Street. The buses will turn around instead of carrying commuters deep into the city’s business and civic centers. Impacted buses include the 6-Haight/Parnassus, the 5-Fulton, the 9-San Bruno, and the 31-Balboa.
While seemingly minor, the redirects could be significant. Transit officials noted riders tend to stop taking Muni when they have to take more than one bus.
SFMTA Board of Directors Chair Janet Tarlov warned her colleagues that slashing Muni comes with consequences.
“If we cut service it makes our job harder,” said Tarlov, who voted in favor of the modified plan. “The popularity of the agency takes a hit. Trust is eroded. These are real concerns that don’t go unnoticed.”
The board technically didn’t vote on any budget plans, rather it merely directed staff on how to prepare the budget for future approval. Still, the vote was consequential. Ahead of the board’s meeting, more than a hundred people rallied to protect Muni service on the steps of City Hall.
People of all ages, from children to seniors, chanted “Fund the bus!” One protester, Luca Despota, a 13-year-old, said he worried his grades would be negatively impacted if service cuts slowed his commute to school across the Mission.
“I’d have to get up earlier, walk, or somehow find another way to get there,” Despota told The Standard.
The funding shortfall doesn’t just impact people who ride the bus. Muni’s fiscal cliff threatens San Francisco’s downtown recovery, too. Empty office buildings and subsequent shrinking tax revenue have spurred an $840 million budget deficit in the city’s coffers.
San Francisco needs a functioning Muni system to make downtown thrive, Supervisor Bilal Mahmood said at the rally. Terminating some bus lines at Market could “cut vital direct links” between his district and the downtown, Mahmood said.
The city’s transit funding woes are twofold: in the short term SFMTA needs $50 million for the summer, and looking ahead two years, it’s facing a roughly $320 million shortfall. The agency’s Chief Financial Officer Bree Mawhorter said the deficit is partly due to the agency spending big in 2023 based on expected revenue growth from a downtown revival that hasn’t yet materialized.
“We built a hot girl summer budget,” she said. “That hot girl summer prediction didn’t come out quite as we hoped it would.”
SFMTA’s financial woes come as city and state officials scramble to save public transit both in San Francisco and across the region.
Earlier this month, state Sen. Jesse Arreguín and Assemblymember Mark González made a $2 billion state budget request to support transit shortfalls across California. State Sen. Scott Wiener has said he’s in favor of the measure. Gov. Gavin Newsom has not yet commented on the proposal.
San Francisco meanwhile is rallying behind the idea: Supervisor Jackie Fielder authored a statement that, if passed, would record the city’s support for that budget request. Mayor Daniel Lurie has also written a letter in favor of it.
But he’s going to seek funds specifically for San Francisco, too.
On Tuesday, Lurie revealed he’s working on a ballot measure to help shore up SFMTA’s budget shortfall. But in his statement on the measure, he also hinted at a need to right-size the agency’s spending.
“The pandemic and challenges downtown hit Muni particularly hard, but the funding crisis we face today had been anticipated for years and necessary changes were not made. That ends now,” Lurie said. “We are actively identifying the necessary reforms to bring a new era of accountability and reliability to Muni.”
The structural changes needed may be murky.
Transit use is down compared to pre-pandemic levels but rising. Ridership now sits at 74% of pre-pandemic levels. Perhaps counter-intuitively, a lack of bus ridership isn’t the only factor in Muni’s budget woes. There’s also a lack of drivers.
SFMTA’s budget relies heavily on parking garage revenue. Work-from-home policies have reduced the number of people parking in city garages, and it isn’t clear if that revenue will ever return.
It isn’t for a lack of trying — the board is even kicking around the idea of developing pickleball courts on top of the lesser-used garages.
SFMTA has scraped together most of the immediate $50 million shortfall by skipping some bus maintenance, reassigning some staffers who make street signs to other departments, increasing meter and garage rates, and spending less on certain contracts.
Board director Steve Heminger told his colleagues they may have dealt with the short-term deficit, but the $320 million shortfall still looms. If Muni sees massive cuts, it could run downtown’s revival down under its wheels.
“This is a small problem,” Heminger said. “The one behind it is killer.”