When asked about San Francisco public transit during his mayoral campaign, Daniel Lurie sometimes preferred to make a public safety statement.
In response to a debate question about Muni, he talked about seeing a guy with a pit bull, smoking on the 49 Van Ness, to suggest that this wasn’t the “safe, reliable, atmosphere that we want our kids riding on.”
The campaign is over. Mayor-elect Lurie soon must pivot from campaign stories to hard financial choices. SF’s public transit network, like the entire city, is reeling from seismic changes in downtown commuting and faces a massive budget deficit. Deep cuts could be coming.
An emergency interagency group spent three hours yesterday hearing how the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, might drastically cut bus and train service if it can’t find new sources of revenue to boost its $1.4 billion budget.
“This is what we want to avoid – the cuts we’re discussing are deep and terrifying, but also potentially real if we don’t do our work,” SFMTA executive director Jeffrey Tumlin said at the meeting, alluding to the need for new revenue sources. (Though two mayoral candidates called for Tumlin’s firing, Lurie did not.)
Compounding the fiscal gloom, a tax on the November ballot to boost Muni’s finances failed to gain enough votes.
Lurie says he owns an e-bike that he uses to get to work, attend events, and ride around with his family. He’s aware of SF’s street safety problems and its promise to expand its bike network.
But funding is going to be at the top of Lurie’s list of streets and transit problems. Fewer routes, less frequent service, and overcrowded buses are the worst-case scenario for Muni – not the occasional guy with a pit bull.
Here are the new mayor’s three main street and transit challenges.
Saving Muni
Pandemic-era federal relief that has propped up local transit is running out, and ideas to replace it keep meeting resistance. In 2023, state Sen. Scott Wiener proposed a regional bridge toll increase, but some cities said no. This year, Wiener’s bill to place a regional funding measure on the November 2026 ballot was put on hold.
The latest setback wasn’t exactly a loss. Prop L on SF’s November ballot aimed to tax ride-hailing companies and put that money – potentially $25 million a year – into Muni. It won 57 percent of the vote but has been nullified because another tax measure, Prop M, passed with a higher vote tally. Prop L’s grassroots backers say the Prop M “poison pill” caught them off guard.
Prop L funds were meant to be a bridge to longer-term solutions. Now “there’s little runway left” for the agency, says transit advocate Cyrus Hall, who helped write the measure.
In the 2026-27 fiscal year, transit officials expect a deficit of more than $300 million if they don’t raise new revenue or local and state economies don’t improve. Deficit spending is not an option.
To stretch dollars, the agency has periodically redistributed drivers and buses from low ridership routes to heavily traveled routes to ease crowding and reduce wait times.
SFMTA has had some success under trying circumstances. While weekday ridership remains about three-quarters of pre-COVID levels, weekend use has nearly recovered. A few key lines – the 49 Van Ness, 22 Fillmore, and 14 Rapid Mission – now have passenger counts above 2019 levels.
Dedicated lanes on streets like Van Ness have boosted reliability and frequency by keeping buses separate from private vehicles. In a San Francisco Transit Riders questionnaire, Lurie said he wanted more dedicated lanes and could continue to improve efficiency.
He also said he would address cost overruns or delays on capital projects like the L-Taraval overhaul that angered so many Sunset District residents.
In yesterday’s meeting of the interagency Muni Funding Working Group, SFMTA presented four scenarios of possible cuts – emphasizing that these were ideas and options, not concrete plans.
One scenario would cut less-used routes like the 2-Sutter that have parallel routes (the 1-California), or like the 36-Teresita, a “hill topper” route that connects hard-to-reach streets with busier routes.
A second scenario would reduce by up to 50 percent the frequency of buses and trains along the highest ridership routes, such as the 38 Geary and 5 Fulton.
A third scenario would suspend cable car and historic F-Market street car service.
A final category of cuts would end Muni’s regular schedule at 9 pm and start the overnight “Owl” service earlier, which means reduced routes and longer wait times for night time workers and people going out on the town.
Well before the election, Lurie told the SF Transit Riders that he’d advocate for state and federal funding but make contingency plans. Those contingency plans are more important than ever. An aide to Sen. Wiener said yesterday that his boss remains committed to a regional transit funding measure in 2026. Mayor-elect Lurie can’t wait that long.
Safer streets
While San Francisco drug overdoses get a lot of attention, there’s another deadly epidemic city leaders haven’t been able to stem. SF is 10 years into the “Vision Zero” era – a promise to eliminate traffic deaths by now – but 2024 has been the second deadliest year of the decade.
As of Nov. 7, 32 people have died in traffic collisions on SF streets, 21 of them pedestrians. One incident hit the city particularly hard. In March, a couple and their two young children were killed by an out-of-control SUV driver while sitting at a West Portal bus stop.
Often, the pedestrian victims are elderly, like the 70-year-old man crossing on a green light, killed by a dump truck, on Parnassus Street near UCSF.
SF has focused on its high-injury network, the 12 percent of streets with the majority of injury collisions. But the West Portal tragedy and other fatalities this year were not on high-injury streets.
It poses a huge problem for the incoming mayor. Lurie wrote in a Mar. 22 Standard editorial that his administration would “look to evidence and metrics and invest in proven ideas.” SFMTA says it’s already doing that.
Lurie also said the agency should move faster to install concrete and “strong bollards,” instead of relying on the paint and plastic posts that come with temporary Quick Build projects. Yet Quick Build has allowed the city to try new measures cheaply first to see if they work – a way to prevent wasteful spending.
Nonetheless, he may have support. In September the Board of Supervisors, acting as the SF County Transportation Authority, approved nearly $3.5 million for Vision Zero projects that include “potential bikeway hardening” – concrete medians – and $1.1 million for daylighting intersections, which permanently reshapes curbs.
Other traffic-calming measures already in motion could help Lurie too. No right turns on red is the law across much of downtown and the Tenderloin. Although the SFMTA board tabled a vote in August to ban right-on-red citywide, board chair Amanda Eaken and others would like to see the ban come to fruition.
Next month, SFMTA will begin installing 33 speed cameras throughout the city. This is part of a pilot program to curb speeding, the cause of about 30 percent of traffic fatalities in California. In the West Portal tragedy, the 79-year-old driver was traveling between 62 and 75 miles per hour in a 25-mph zone. The agency plans to turn on the cameras in February.
SF Bicycle Coalition executive director Christopher White calls all these measures “life-saving and proven street safety improvements,” and he expects to see them “continued and expanded.”
Biking, rolling … and driving?
In one part of the SF Transit Riders questionnaire, Lurie wrote, “I will bring together people who take transit, bike, walk and drive” to move beyond demonization.
He will have no greater test than the city’s updated bike network, known as the Biking and Rolling Plan. A first draft is being unveiled next week.
The Valencia Corridor Merchants Association admitted the new Valencia bike lanes ‘could be an improvement’ upon the center lanes, then doubled back to say ‘we find this solution equally problematic and cannot endorse it.’
It’s not just bike lanes. It’s supposed to be a rethinking of San Francisco’s mobility. For two years, SFMTA has been workshopping ideas and gathering feedback. It’s not been without controversy.
Proposed bike lanes in Chinatown caused a furor. “Bikes and scooters shouldn’t be running in Chinatown. SFMTA never reached out to us,” Chinatown Unified Merchants Association chairman Ed Siu told The Frisc in August.
Siu and allies will apparently get what they want. As of now there are no plans to extend the bike network there, according to SFMTA.
Merchants in neighborhoods including the Mission, Potrero Hill, and West Portal have protested street changes that remove parking and slow traffic to encourage cycling and protect pedestrians.
Ground zero for this tension is Valencia Street, where SFMTA tried an experimental center-running bike lane over eight blocks. It lasted a year, but seemed doomed from the start.
SFMTA worked with merchants on a replacement plan to run bike lanes along curbs, but with slalom-like swerves to get around parklets.
Despite its work with SFMTA, the Valencia Corridor Merchants Association (VCMA) complained this week about the new plan.
The open letter admitted the new lane “could be an improvement” upon the center lanes, then doubled back to say “we find this solution equally problematic and cannot endorse it” because “nearly half of the parking/loading spaces will be lost” and it prohibits left turns.
The VCMA says the center lanes “forc[ed] a choice between bike safety and business activity” and claims that drivers will find the new plan “frustrating.”
Like many small businesses around town, some Valencia merchants have felt economic pain. A June report from the SF controller found Valencia has had the second weakest recovery among SF neighborhood corridors, but said there is “no statistical basis” connecting the bike lane with weak sales.
The new design could eliminate 40 percent of current parking spots, according to SFMTA. Under the new plan, however, merchants can add back some spots by adjusting their parklets. (Only three have chosen this so far.) Or they can tear down their parklets. (Two have done so.) The other 21 parklets remain as-is.
There’s another matter putting pressure on the curb: daylighting. Starting January 1, SFMTA will begin enforcing a state law that prohibits parking within 20 feet of a stop sign or crosswalk, a measure meant to improve pedestrian safety. It also eliminates 14,000 parking spots citywide.
The VCMA letter acknowledged there was no consensus among its members on what to do next. Some want to return to the 2019 bike lane setup (which SFMTA has said is not an option), or move the lane to a parallel street, or create a new plan that “maximizes functionality and parking” and “minimizes how much we’re trying to do on this incredibly busy corridor.”
However, the association is also signaling that money might be the ultimate solution. Should the SFMTA board at its Tuesday meeting approve the new side-running plan “and it tanks sales again,” SF will need to “pour money into the corridor,” a VCMA spokesman told The Frisc.
City funds could help with marketing, point drivers to nearby garages, and provide grants to help merchants “get through back-to-back challenges.”
But as the latest forecasts for Muni show, cash for anything related to San Francisco streets and transit is likely to be in short supply.
Correction, 11/14/24: This story previously misstated the name of the San Francisco Transit Riders.
Correction, 11/18/24: The story has been clarified to note that Lurie wants to address SFMTA delays as well as cost overruns. SFMTA says the L Taraval project came in on time and budget. In earlier documents, however, the agency said it would be finished in 2021. The project was completed in 2024.
The article refers to cost overruns on the L-Taraval project (which also included significant non-Muni related work on water and sewer infrastructure). SFMTA claims that the project was completed on budget. What’s the basis for stating that there were cost overruns on that project?
Thanks for the note, Chris. Due to an editing error, the sentence should have included read “cost overruns or delays on capital projects like the L-Taraval overhaul.” SFMTA says the L-Taraval project came in on budget. The agency also says it came in on time. But in earlier documents, the agency said it would be finished in 2021. The project was completed in 2024. We have updated the story.