City takes hard look at Muni lines’ future
of Supervisors spent much of a fivehour Friday hearing questioning transit agency leaders over how much influence Walker will have in crafting service plans, and whether permanently getting rid of some bus routes is already a foregone conclusion.
Supervisors Dean Preston and Connie Chan both want Muni to commit to fully restoring prepandemic service by the end of the year and passed a symbolic resolution for the full board to consider. Agency officials have said repeatedly that a full restoration is not doable without more permanent funding sources and would cost the agency an additional $85 million in ongoing money to sustain.
In a hearing that exposed deep tensions over the fate of San Francisco’s transit system, Preston and Chan criticized agency officials for what they characterized as a lack of transparency and communication to the public over how they’re deciding to restore services.
“Rough draft” planning documents from the agency obtained by transit advocates through public records requests added to Friday’s tension and an increasing sense of distrust from some riders that some bus lines could be on a permanent chopping block.
The documents showed, for example, that the “highaccess network” option that aims to boost frequencies on core routes would do so by eliminating lines such as the 2Clement and 21Hayes.
Transit agency Director Jeffrey Tumlin said any changes the Board of Directors decides on this year would be for only the next two years as Muni recovers from a pandemic that exacerbated the agency’s longstanding budget and personnel challenges. The pandemic has reshaped commute patterns, Tumlin said, and the agency is trying to think about how to better serve its riders given its constraints.
“There’s no plan to eliminate these lines,” Tumlin said.
Tumlin later told Preston: “It is shocking to me that you’re suggesting that we should not be asking basic and fundamental questions about the future of Muni, that that’s somehow impermissible or underhanded. We’re asking questions out loud, and we’ve been upfront and transparent about them.”
With consultation from Walker, Muni is working on what it’s described as a “sweet spot” strategy toward restoring services. Tumlin said last week that the agency risks entering a transit death spiral that would plummet ridership and doom Muni service in the long run if it restores services too slowly or too quickly.
Preston said he is alarmed by the agency’s hiring of Walker, an internationally renowned transportation consultant who in a blog post suggested that boosting frequencies on more trafficked lines could come at the expense of gutting others with lower ridership.
“I remain very concerned that prolonged suspensions of line will eventually become permanent,” Preston said. “And I think if we’re all being really honest, I think we know that, right? It’s been 16 months for some of these (suspended) lines. Now we hear that many won’t come back for another 18 months . ... We should not be and cannot be pitting neighborhoods against each other.”