It's no secret that Muni is facing a significant shortfall in its July 2025 to June 2026 budget, which, if not filled, will result in service cuts starting this summer. From an SFMTA report:
We’re facing a $50 million budget shortfall because parking revenue, transit revenue and General Fund reimbursements are lower than we’d expected. We’ve cut spending, increased transit fare enforcement, become more efficient and paused most hiring. But it’s still not enough to close the gap.
We won’t be able to afford to replace transit operators, maintenance or cleaning staff starting in July. So, in summer 2025, we’ll have to cut Muni service by about 4 percent, which will save about $15 million. We’ll make up the other $35 million in other ways, including improving fare compliance and optimizing our parking programs.
To address this, the agency proposed three alternatives at Tuesday's SFMTA board meeting:
- Suspend lower-ridership routes when a parallel route exists
- Reduce service frequencies on "Rapid" corridors and "circulator" buses
- Reduce service and suspend routes outside of "equity neighborhoods"
Readers can find out more details about these strategies on the SFMTA's web page. Of course, it could also be a mix of these approaches, but these are the general strategies staff brought to the board.
The board wasn't exactly thrilled.
As reported by KQED's Dan Brekke, Director Steve Heminger said that even though the proposals had been presented as choices, “the choices are ‘cut transit service, cut transit service and cut transit service.’ I think we need a couple of options that don’t involve cutting transit service.”
Advocates weren't satisfied with these "choices" either.
"Each of the scenarios presented here assume service cuts," said the San Francisco Transit Riders Dylan Fabris. "Staff should also present scenarios that show what it would look like to address the deficit with no service cuts so we can have a public discussion about the tradeoffs before balancing the budget on the backs of transit riders."
Advocates want to find ways to carve more funds out of the overall city budget. Look at "capital fund transfers at the CTA, a special election, or something else," said Fabris. "If they can help find money for free parking and transit for New Year, they should be able and expected to help find funding for this deficit as well."
From Streetsblog's view, Fabris is right—the city always manages to find money for free parking. How much did they just spend to paint curbs gray and shorten a bunch of bus stops on Balboa to provide a few more private car parking spots on the backs of bus riders? And Muni still wastes money turning away riders from its trains because of its ridiculous bike ban. There's probably other steps the agency can take before asking riders to suffer.
"Every one of these cuts will hurt riders who depend on Muni to get around the city and access city life," said Fabris.
SFMTA, meanwhile, is taking comments on the proposed service cuts via an online survey form.
