Muni is facing a crisis. Federal pandemic aid is running out and inflation is continuing to increase operating costs, so the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Agency (SFMTA) expects to run up to a $322 million deficit by fiscal year 2026–2027. Failure to address this deficit would unleash immeasurable harms upon our city and region, with service cuts and fare increases leaving hundreds of thousands of daily transit riders from across the Bay Area stranded at the curb. As San Francisco continues to recover from the effects of the pandemic, the shock of a Muni meltdown is a cost our city cannot afford to bear.
Recognizing the urgency of this issue and the importance of Muni to the city’s economy, the San Francisco Controller’s Office convened the Muni Funding Working Group. This group, which includes San Francisco Transit Riders, the Mayor’s Office, the Board of Supervisors, SFMTA leadership, advocates, labor, transit professionals, and other members of the public, will gather public input, identify solutions, and provide recommendations to address Muni’s fiscal cliff.
Over the next several months San Francisco Transit Riders will keep its blog updated with the latest from the working group, covering each of the four main categories that are proposed to address the deficit:
- Efficiency Improvements: How can the SFMTA streamline systems and processes to decrease operating costs?
- Service Cuts: Should the agency reduce transit and other services to decrease operating costs?
- Revenue Enhancements: How should the SFMTA increase fees, revenue, or taxes to increase its overall revenue?
- Service Enhancements: How can the SFMTA enhance services to win voter support for new revenue?
This post will focus on the working group’s October 17 meeting, which outlined potential efficiency improvements for the agency.
How to make the SFMTA more efficient
The working group’s October 17 meeting focused specifically on improvements that can be implemented to increase the SFMTA’s efficiency, leading to cost savings—questions about new revenue and service cuts will be left for future meetings. Four efficiency options were presented: two related to street design, and two related to parking enforcement. All told, these four options total up to less than $14 million in cost savings for the agency, so more solutions will be needed to plug the full $322 million hole.
We support a quick and thoughtful implementation of all of these proposals but want to highlight a few concerns and suggestions that the city and SFMTA should consider first.
Proposal: Accelerated Work on Muni Forward
Revenue impact
Decreases expenditures up to $5 million per year.
Implementation time frame
Short-to-medium term. Planning and implementation would begin immediately and continue over the next 2–3 years.
What it is
Muni Forward is the SFMTA program that installs transit priority improvements to speed up public transit and make transit more reliable. Some of the tools in the Muni Forward toolkit include installing transit lanes, giving transit priority at traffic signals, combining or removing stops to speed up service, and converting all-way stop signs to two-way to allow transit vehicles to pass through intersections more smoothly.
The proposal presented to the working group is to implement more Muni Forward projects using a quick-build approach to test improvements and deliver benefits immediately, yielding savings at least two years earlier than a traditional approach. Specific routes identified for expedited treatments include the 1 California, 22 Fillmore, 29 Sunset, 38 Geary, 38R Geary Rapid, 44 O’Shaughnessy, and N Judah.
The SFMTA expects that these improvements will allow the agency to remove buses from service on these routes while preserving frequency, saving up to $5 million per year.
What we think
This proposal is our favorite of the bunch.
We have been advocating for faster, more reliable buses for years, and Muni Forward has been instrumental in making strides towards that vision.
The program has already been successful at increasing the reliability and frequency of buses and improving pedestrian safety along Muni routes, leading to a 35% reduction in travel times, up to 51% more reliable transit service, and lower rates of automobile speeding and collisions on routes that underwent treatments. As Muni reopened post-COVID, routes with new Muni Forward improvements recovered ridership faster than on routes that did not, with several routes like the 22 Fillmore, 49 Van Ness/Mission, and 19 Polk drawing in more riders than they did before the pandemic.
Unfortunately, transit priority projects have sometimes been bogged down by lengthy public outreach, revisions, and public outcry from drivers. While it is understandable that people would be concerned about the impacts of transportation changes in their neighborhood, we already have the data and testimonials to show that Muni Forward treatments are good for our city. Providing better transit service gets more people on transit and connects them with more of the things they need and love, which is good for our city’s recovery.
During the height of the pandemic, the SFMTA responded to the emergency by speeding up the process for creating “Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes” to facilitate essential trips. Muni is now facing another existential emergency, and the SFMTA should be compelled to take similar emergency measures to address its budget deficit.
To expedite Muni Forward implementation, the SFMTA should leverage the lessons it has learned over the past decade of Muni Forward projects to shorten the public outreach process and better communicate the benefits that Muni Forward can bring.
The agency should work with advocates to set common standards for bus stop, stop sign, and parking space removals. Concerns about bus stop accessibility (especially for elderly and disabled people) and about street safety at intersections should be taken seriously, but in order to implement Muni Forward benefits quickly, decisions on where and when to implement these changes should be made based on predetermined standards rather than on an ad-hoc basis with multiple rounds of community input and modification.
Given the nature of Muni’s funding emergency and the current abundance of parking spaces in San Francisco, SFMTA should also have the authority to remove parking spaces where necessary to prioritize Muni’s speed and reliability. Expectations around parking removal should be established up front, without rehashing every edge case for every project.
The SFMTA should also apply expedited Muni Forward improvements to more than just the seven transit routes identified in the original proposal. Starting with those routes as the top priority makes sense, but the agency should continue adding transit-only lanes and transit priority treatments to all routes where feasible, prioritizing high ridership routes and routes that serve equity communities. Transit priority treatments have the proven benefit of speeding up routes and making transit more reliable, which can help grow ridership and revenue even if the time savings is not large enough to reap the savings of removing an entire bus from a route.
One other note for our readers is that given the current fiscal challenges, these Muni Forward improvements will not come with the full suite of benefits that we are used to. Normally, Muni Forward projects come with frequency improvements due to time savings, but that won’t necessarily be the case for these lines. Instead of running the same amount of buses at a higher frequency, the SFMTA will use the time savings to pull buses out of service while maintaining the current frequency. This allows them to run the service we’re used to but at a lower cost. The projects will still include speed and safety enhancements that help riders and will leave the possibility open for future frequency improvements when more sustainable funding is secured.
Proposals: Mailed parking citations; Automated parking enforcement
Revenue impact
Mailed parking citations: Increases revenue and decreases expenditures by a total of approximately $740,000 per year
Automated parking enforcement: Increases revenue by $3.5 million to $7 million per year
Implementation time frame
Mailed parking citations: Medium-term. Would need to pass state legislation in 2025 and could begin implementation in early 2026.
Automated parking enforcement: Medium-term. May be implemented by early 2027 pending approval from the state legislature and signing of third-party contracts.
What it is
Mailed parking citations
State law currently requires Parking Control Officers (PCOs) to print parking citations and place them on car windshields.
Amending that law would allow PCOs to instead send citations to the registered address of the vehicle, allowing PCOs to spend more time patrolling the streets and issuing more citations.
Automated parking enforcement
In addition to allowing mailed parking citations, state law can be amended to allow PCOs to automatically enforce parking violations via photo or video (like with transit or bike lanes), instead of typing each citation out manually. This change would significantly speed up enforcement, allowing PCOs to cover more ground and spend more time patrolling the streets. Other cities that have implemented automated parking enforcement have seen increases in their citation issuance, including a 30% increase in Amsterdam and a 40% increase in Calgary.
What we think
We support mailed parking citations and automated parking enforcement, with some concerns that should be addressed. First, SFMTA should work with labor to establish a shared understanding of the effect that automated enforcement will have on union jobs. Care should be taken to ensure automation is used as a tool to improve working conditions, rather than as a justification to replace workers.
We also have concerns about how the rollout of this plan may harm low-income people. Ahead of the change to mailed parking citations, SFMTA should broadly communicate the change and remind drivers to update their address with the DMV to ensure receipt of parking violations. For a set period, SFMTA should also allow late fees to be waived if fines are sent to an out-of-date address. SFMTA should also expand access to its low-income Payment Plan & Community Service Program.
Finally, while we support both mailed parking citations and automated parking enforcement, we have concerns about the political feasibility of quickly getting State approval for automated parking enforcement, especially given potential privacy concerns related to license plate cameras. The SFMTA should move forward with both mailed citations and automated enforcement simultaneously, but state legislation for mailed parking citations should be separate from legislation for automated parking enforcement. That way, if legislation for automated parking enforcement gets delayed, the agency may still be able to move ahead with implementing mailed citations on a quicker timeline.
Proposal: Transit/HOV lanes on State right-of-way
Revenue impact
Decreases expenditures by $700,000 to $1 million per year
Implementation time frame
Medium-term. Implementation of 19th Ave HOV lanes can be done in 3 to 4 years, following Caltrans repaving of 19th Avenue.
What it is
This proposal would implement new high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes on state-owned highways like 19th Avenue, and make the existing temporary HOV lanes on the Park Presidio and Lombard Street corridors permanent.
Muni buses are able to use HOV lanes. These improvements would reduce travel time on route 28 19th Avenue, with the potential to remove one bus from operation while maintaining current transit frequency.
What we think
Caltrans and the SFMTA should move ahead with these plans as soon as possible. While we would prefer using these lanes as transit-only lanes to get buses completely out of the way of congestion on busy corridors, we understand the need to work with existing frameworks, especially on state-owned roads where more innovative changes may be harder to implement.
What else is the SFMTA doing to improve efficiencies?
While the agency is looking for broader approval to implement the proposals above, they have already begun implementing other efficiencies to prepare for the upcoming deficit. For example, the agency has slowed hiring and made the process of hiring new employees more efficient. It has also become more efficient in its spending and energy use.
With these changes, the SFMTA has reduced spending since FY18–19 by 16%, adjusted for inflation, but even these reductions are not keeping pace with deficit growth.
The SFMTA is doing what it can to address its deficit internally, but to address the full Muni deficit and prevent a catastrophic failure of our transit system, we need to come together as a city to demand that Muni is properly, sustainably, and equitably funded. Stay tuned into this blog for more updates as we discuss proposed service cuts, revenue options, and service enhancements in the coming weeks.
What do you think of these proposals? How would you improve the efficiency of the SFMTA? Is there anything we’ve missed? Leave us a comment below or email us at info@sftransitriders.org.
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Dylan Fabris is Community & Policy Manager for the San Francisco Transit Riders. This post originally appeared on the San Francisco Transit Rider's Medium page and is reprinted here with permission.
