The Muni Metro Capacity Study looks far out into the future to prepare for potential Muni Metro ridership growth, exploring changes we could make, if necessary, so we can continue to provide reliable, timely service without crowding, delays, or pass ups.
Positioning the SFMTA for a federal grant program design for systems like Muni Metro
This Study is a crucial step to help the SFMTA identify a program of capital projects that would be competitive for up to $1 billion from a federal Capital Investment Grant to expand capacity. This grant, administered by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA), is perfect for systems like Muni Metro that have aging infrastructure overdue for replacement and need to expand capacity for growing ridership at the same time.
By including new capacity-enhancing versions of outdated infrastructure into a Core Capacity grant program, we believe we stand a strong chance to get much needed resources for long overdue, service-critical Muni Metro maintenance work, while also preparing Muni Metro to serve more people.
FTA’s Capital Investment Grant program has traditionally enjoyed bipartisan support in Congress and was extended for another year in the recently approved federal spending bill. After completing this Study, we aim to take the initial steps to enter the grant’s pipeline and position ourselves to receive a grant and commence construction in the early to mid-2030s.
Where we are in the process and how we’re getting public input
So far, we have done the following:
- We developed forecasting to understand how many more riders Muni Metro may need to accommodate in the future, including a range of possible futures.
- We assessed the feasibility of different ways to expand capacity in the Muni Metro system, such as
- Using longer trains
- Building new boarding platforms to make more Metro stops accessible for people with wheelchairs, walkers and strollers
- Restructuring Metro routes
- Implementing transit priority improvements like transit lanes and better traffic lights that give priority to Metro trains
- We talked to Muni Metro riders in focus groups and held a series of meetings with the Metro Capacity Study Community Working Group to learn more about what riders think about the strategies we are studying.
We will soon provide updates on the Study to both the SFMTA Board of Directors, the SFMTA Citizen’s Advisory Council (CAC), the San Francisco County Transportation Authority Board (SFCTA) and the SFCTA Citizens Advisory Committee.
Members of the public are welcome join these meetings to learn more or provide public comment. The update to the SFMTA CAC is confirmed for Thursday April 3. We will update our Study website as the dates for the other meetings are confirmed.
Next step: Draft recommendations coming this summer
We are now working on developing a set of draft recommendations that we expect to share in the coming months. Recommendations will identify:
- Which strategies we think we should pursue for different parts of the Muni Metro system
- Which strategies we should not pursue
- And which strategies we should only consider if ridership growth in the coming years is very high.
We will let you know when these draft recommendations are ready to share and how you can provide feedback.
Then, with what we hear, we will refine the draft recommendations and create a final report that we will present to the SFMTA Board for acceptance later this year.
This Study is just the first step in a larger planning effort, and recommendations for different parts of the Muni Metro system would go through traditional community-based planning processes to develop more detailed proposals that would still need to be approved.
Got input now?
To learn more, feel free to review the materials in the Reports and Documents section on the right side of the project webpage and email us with any feedback! For this Study, please email your thoughts, concerns, questions or ideas to TellMuni@SFMTA.com with the subject: Muni Metro Capacity Study.
While the main opportunity for public feedback will be once we share our draft recommendations this summer, any member of the public is always welcome to reach out to us with feedback at any time.
We are also always happy to meet with community groups interested in learning more or sharing their feedback.