Last week, city transit officials offered yet another indicator of an ailing San Francisco. On the Muni routes that move people to the downtown core, ridership remains low.
But for routes that don’t rely on downtown commuters, there was a different story altogether. Buses are full, or nearly so. Routes like the 14R Mission and 22 Fillmore are back to at least 90 percent of 2019 ridership, and others like the 9 San Bruno and 49 Van Ness/Mission have surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
The 10 routes with the highest recovery all have something in common: They take students to school.
As Muni faces dire budget shortfalls — and the prospect of quiet downtown rides for the long-term future — the agency is considering big changes to the so-called “neighborhood” routes, and how they can serve their riders better. But students are not waiting for the agency to act; they want a say.
Of all the lines serving the city’s schools, the 29 Sunset hasn’t rebounded quite as much; it’s at 70 percent of pre-COVID ridership. Its lack of speed and reliability is keeping ridership down, transit officials say, and they have pledged to make changes.
Along its nearly 14-mile L-shaped journey, the bus rumbles within shouting — or at least walking — distance of more than two dozen elementary, middle, and high schools, plus SF State and City College.
It can take a while to get somewhere on the 29 Sunset. Average wait for a bus is nine minutes, but packed buses might bypass a stop. En route, many factors slow each trip. For example, on the southern stretch, the bus navigates several narrow, winding streets; on the west side, it stops at every block along Sunset Blvd., an alphabetical snail’s pace. Just the western half of the route can take up to 100 minutes round trip, according to Muni project manager Steve Boland, who is in charge of the 29 Sunset changes.
The 29 Sunset is chockablock throughout the day, with student riders trying to make their first period bell between 8 and 9:30 am, then piling on again when schools let out in the afternoon.
This combination of route length and serving many schools contributes to longer wait times at the bus stop, reports Hayden Miller, a Lowell High School junior, public transit aficionado, and regular 29 rider. “Even with the bus running every nine minutes, each one is just packed, and then bus after bus passes already full,” he tells The Frisc.
Lowell students have been leading the charge for 29 Sunset improvements for more than five years. SFMTA, the agency that runs Muni, has added “school trippers” — more buses during peak school hours — but the bus route needs other changes, say students, including rapid service similar to the Geary, Van Ness, and Mission corridors. (The Frisc reached out to students and representatives of other schools along the route, including Balboa High, June Jordan School for Equity, and City College, but has not received replies yet.)
There was momentum before the pandemic, with a a social media campaign to gather rider experiences via photos and posts sent to #FixOur29. But COVID hit, schools closed, and Muni service was cut.
Now that students are a big part of Muni’s recovery, transit planners have returned to the 29 Sunset improvement project, and street-level adjustments could come this year. But an overhaul, similar to the “rapid” lines elsewhere in the city, could run into a fiscal wall.
Budget woes and trade-offs
Service changes that involve major additions have a $214 million obstacle. That’s the size of the deficit Muni could face by 2026, according to agency officials at a Feb. 7 budget meeting.
The agency’s current top revenue source — SF’s general fund — is shrinking due to the anemic downtown recovery. Muni also depends on people moving around the city for money, but overall, weekday transit ridership is only 55 percent of 2019 levels, and revenues from parking, which SFMTA also collects, are 85 percent of pre-COVID levels. Federal rescue funds that have propped up the agency during COVID are set to end in two years.
Add to all this the gut punch delivered last June when Proposition A — a $400 million bond to fund Muni service, reliability, and street safety — fell short of the required two-thirds majority by less than 2,000 votes. A November measure, Prop L, helped fill that void to a small extent.
That means SFMTA is limited in what it can do. “The agency is talking about trade-offs more often,” says Michael Chen, chair of the agency’s citizens’ advisory council. Adding a new line, like a 29 Rapid, would mean taking resources (such as bus drivers, also in short supply) from another line, Chen points out.
At a public meeting last night, Muni’s Boland said money for a 29 Rapid line would require a voter-approved bond, and the earliest election would be November 2024.
[Update 3/7/23: SFMTA spokesman Stephen Chun clarified that the agency might pursue a “revenue measure” for the 29 Rapid project, but it would not be a general obligation bond. GO bonds are not eligible to pay for operational budget items like the hiring of drivers, which is “the main obstacle” to a Rapid line, Chun said.]
Maybe students wouldn’t mind walking an extra block or two, but I’m interested in what other respondents had to say.
SFMTA citizens’ advisory council member Stephen Cornell, discussing a 29 Sunset rider survey at a February meeting
For now, planners can speed up the bus with changes around the margins that could cut travel time on the western half of the route by 15 percent, said Boland.
They include sidewalk bulb-outs along Sunset Blvd. and Lincoln Way to let buses stop without having to pull back out into traffic. Another subtle change: moving stops to the far side of intersections with traffic signals, so that buses can make the light before picking up passengers.
One particular proposal, eliminating some stops along Sunset, led to pushback at the Feb. 2 meeting of the citizens’ advisory council. The idea had support in a 2021 rider survey with 444 respondents. When asked if they’d be willing to walk a little more to reach a stop if it meant better service, 45 percent said yes and 33 percent said no.
Half of the survey-takers were students, and council member Stephen Cornell wondered at the meeting if the results were unfairly skewed. “Maybe students wouldn’t mind walking an extra block or two, but I’m interested in what other respondents had to say,” said Cornell, who was appointed to the council by Mayor London Breed.
“If you have mobility challenges, you’ll feel differently than a 25-year-old able-bodied person. We are sensitive to this difference,” Boland said in response to Cornell.
Miller, the junior at Lowell who is also on the city’s Youth Commission, felt some council members were dismissive of students’ needs. “We don’t rely on the bus only for getting to school,” he said, explaining that he also takes the 29 to see friends and commute to his job at Sava Pool on weekends.
Before any improvements happen, SFMTA will conduct more outreach, including among seniors and persons with disabilities. A proposal for a first phase of improvements focused on the west side is slated to go before the full SFMTA board around Memorial Day, according to Boland.
While the southern part of the route runs through several lower-income neighborhoods, which Muni has pledged to prioritize for better service, the western route will see changes first because the agency wants to coordinate with a big repaving project along Sunset, said Borland.
In the meantime, everyone — students, seniors, and everyone in between — will just have to wait.