SF began 2025 with a new mayor and a new transit director, but they faced the same problem that’s been looming for years: Muni’s deep budget crisis. The new administration also inherited the 10-year “Vision Zero” failure to curb traffic deaths, and 2024 was one of the period’s worst: 24 pedestrians were struck and killed by drivers.
SF’s years-long attempts to make streets safer haven’t resulted in lower deaths or fewer injury collisions, fueling a backlash from drivers and others who feel cars are getting squeezed from roads with little justification.
The year brought several heated instances of the expanding tug-of-war over street use.
The biggest headline came from the Sunset District, where residents recalled Sup. Joel Engardio over his campaign to close the Great Highway to cars.
In the Mission, the Valencia Street bike lane controversy got its third — and likely final — do-over. In what was supposed to be a watershed year for bike lane expansion, the Valencia compromise was one of a few projects that the city completed this year.
And downtown, Mayor Daniel Lurie ordered Market Street open part-time to Waymos and high-end Uber and Lyft cars, upsetting those who fought to close it in 2020.
It’s been a whirlwind — with more to come as voters make big decisions in the new year. Until then, here’s a rundown of what 2025 brought for San Francisco streets and transit.
Transit funding crisis
SFMTA started the year with a short-term $50 million budget hole. Its patchwork fix included reducing the frequency of several bus lines and shortening routes. There were also administrative layoffs and higher parking fees.
Quick fixes won’t help next year. The agency faces a $300 million deficit for three big reasons. Federal COVID funds will end. SF’s general fund, currently the biggest source of SFMTA’s revenue, is in trouble, due to the city’s struggling economy. Rider fares and parking fees have yet to recover to pre-COVID levels.
Severe cuts are a possibility, but two ballot measures next year could help. One is a Bay Area regional sales tax measure that SFMTA estimates would generate $160 million a year. In SF, the measure would dedicate a one-cent sales tax to transit.
The second measure is a local property tax that’s proving difficult to pin down. It’s Lurie’s plan, but transit advocates, labor and business representatives, and city officials continue to negotiate. An initial version was projected to raise $150 million, but advocates said it wasn’t enough.
A second version leans more on large property owners. For example, single-family homes with fewer than 3,000 square feet would pay $129 annually. But owners of large homes would pay $129 for 3,000 square feet plus 42 cents per square foot up to 5,000 square feet, then $1.99 per square foot beyond that.
The new proposal would bring in more money: $150 million to close the deficit and $22 million more to restore and expand service. But transit advocates also want to raise or lift annual caps on large property owners. The current proposal caps payments at $400,000 from commercial owners and $250,000 from owners of residential properties with more than 837,000 square feet.
At a Dec. 8 rally, Sup. Jackie Fielder proposed doubling the commercial cap to $800,000.
Another sticking point is whether landlords can pass the parcel tax along to tenants. Roughly two-thirds of San Franciscans are renters, and those who are Muni riders are “already paying with the service cuts and fare increases,” said SF Transit Riders community and policy manager Dylan Fabris. “Everybody in the city should be pitching in, including homeowners and big businesses.”
Even if voters approve the regional and local taxes in November, the money wouldn’t start flowing until mid-2027. Local transit needs state funding before then, and negotiations between regional representatives and Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office have been off, on, and uncertain through the fall. In early December, Newsom told Politico he would be willing to shift funds from long-term capital projects.
A key negotiator, state Sen. Scott Wiener, objected to pitting vital infrastructure improvements against short-term operational needs. Wiener’s communications director Erik Mebust said in an email to The Frisc that the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission is discussing the proposal with Newsom’s administration.
Careful out there
After last year’s decade-high toll of traffic deaths, this year has seen 25 more deaths and counting. In September, SF lawmakers approved a kind of Vision Zero 2.0 — new goals and ideas called the SF Street Safety Act, which includes an order for SFMTA to come up with new traffic-calming strategies by December 2026. (Speeding is the top cause of injury collisions in SF.) This week, Lurie created an oversight group to make sure SFMTA, the police, and other agencies work together and meet milestones.
A civil grand jury put some blame for unsafe streets on SFPD’s lack of enforcement. A commander said the drop in citations was due to staff shortages and a 2015 law meant to curb racial profiling.
The city turned more this year to automated enforcement with its first speed cameras in 33 locations. Early results were encouraging, but the cameras are part of a five-year pilot program. There won’t be an expansion anytime soon.
As The Frisc reported, low-tech speed bumps are a proven way to slow drivers’ roll. But SFMTA has been overwhelmed with resident’s requests for bumps on their blocks and paused the program in June. It recently began working through the backlog but isn’t accepting new applications.
Market maneuvers
Lurie began the year with a move that angered street safety advocates. Citing the need to bring more visitors and workers downtown, he ordered a section of Market Street, which has been closed to all cars except taxis and commercial vehicles since 2020, to reopen for Waymos and high-end Lyft and Uber cars. It began with limited hours. Waymo was the only one with daytime hours (9 am to 4 pm), but all three had access 7pm to 6am.
In November, SFMTA’s Citizens’ Advisory Council called on the agency’s board to close Market Street again and end the experiment. But the board said recently that service expansion was still on the table once more data came in.
An initial SFMTA study, from July to October, showed the ride-hail services, averaging 25 trips a day, didn’t impact Muni ridership or travel times on Market. Scooter and bike trips increased 10 percent. The study showed eight injury collisions in July and seven in September.
Whether or not they’re eventually allowed to cruise Market at all hours, all-electric Waymos seemed to be everywhere this year. Replacing gas-powered cars with EVs is a major goal in SF. But Waymo’s role replacing drivers in the age of AI — and the unfortunate killing of a well-known neighborhood cat — gave some skeptics plenty of ammunition. It also didn’t help EV optics in deep-blue SF that Tesla founder Elon Musk became President Donald Trump’s “Department of Government Efficiency” hatchet man.
But the city continued its push for public chargers, part of a goal to have EVs make up a quarter of private vehicles in SF by 2030. Officials say they’ve installed about 70 percent of the 1700 chargers they need for that 2030 mark, mostly in lots and garages.
The campaign for curbside chargers has barely gotten started, with the first two installed this year, but the city says it only needs about 100 in coming years. The state’s new daylighting rule has removed thousands of parking spots across the city. The practice paints an extra 20 feet of curb with “no parking” red to improve sight lines and street safety.
But as this year showed, fights over SF’s street spaces and infrastructure are just as fierce as debates over housing — what to build, where to build it, and whom to build it for.