Muni Forward improvements like transit lanes help Muni move through traffic. This makes the system more efficient and reliable.
This year, we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of Muni Forward. That’s our program to make Muni service fast, frequent, reliable and safe. And you can join that celebration with the latest episode of our Taken with Transportation podcast.
“Moving Forward on Muni” covers the history of the program and some of the specific improvements we have made. The episode also takes you on a bar crawl with transit lovers.
“I was born and raised here, and I depend on Muni 24-7,” Annmarie Wong tells Taken with Transportation Host Melissa Culross while on the Muni Forward Bar Crawl. “I took Muni to my first job, to prom, basically everywhere.”
Muni Forward Bar Crawlers enjoy a stop at the Kung Fu Action Theatre bar.
The origins of Muni Forward go back to 2007 when we began studying ways to make Muni more reliable and cost effective. SFMTA Transit Director Julie Kirschbaum led that study when she started at the agency. “At the time, we were experiencing a lot of crowding and other operational challenges,” she says. “And we found that there were a lot of opportunities to make the service better.”
“The reliability of the system was the number one problem that people saw with Muni 10, 12 years ago,” adds Sean Kennedy. Kennedy is Muni’s chief planning and implementation officer.
So, we began making changes a decade ago. A lot of them.
“We’ve made about 100 miles of corridor improvements since 2014,” says SFMTA Transit Priority Manager Michael Rhodes. “From Church Street to Mission Street to Taraval Street, Geary and some lesser-known corridors like Hyde Street or 7th and 8th streets.”
Ten years later, riders have noticed, and small business owners like Juliemarie Suas have noticed. Suas owns Thorough Bread and Pastry on Church Street and says the Muni Forward improvement project in front of her shop has made a difference.
“At first, we were a little skeptical ‘cause it did take away a lot of our parking spaces,” she explains. “But it actually brought in a new generation of people. It’s like a nice hub now.”
“Moving Forward on Muni” also features Transit Engineering and Intelligent Transportation Systems Team Manager Cheryl Liu. Liu’s team worked with operators to learn about navigating buses and trains across the city. That helped the team design more effective infrastructure improvements.
Liu’s work is also personal for her. “I grew up in Shanghai. Riding bikes and [taking] buses were my way of getting around” she says. “Having the opportunity to transform San Francisco’s transit system is really near and dear to me.”
You can find “Moving Forward on Muni” and all our Taken with Transportation episodes at our podcast webpage (SFMTA.com/Podcast) and on our YouTube channel. We’re also on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and other podcast directories. If you’d like to learn more about Muni Forward and read our in-depth report on the first ten years of the project, go to our Muni Forward project webpage (SFMTA.com/MuniForward).