We're celebrating 10 years of Muni Forward! Pick up a limited-edition Muni Forward Passport at a Transit Month event or participating business while supplies last during the month of September 2024. Use the passport to explore ten of Muni Forward’s project corridors, including the 27 Bryant.
Tenderloin, SoMa and Mission residents depend on the 27 Bryant. It’s a neighborhood route that can feel like a family station wagon, connecting key destinations like affordable housing, hospitals, senior centers and grocery stores. Before Muni Forward improvements, parts of the 27 Bryant were among Muni’s ten slowest segments. In the Tenderloin, the streets along its route were on the city’s high-injury network, the San Francisco’s streets where most of the city’s severe crashes occur.
Now, getting to the bus stop is safer, thanks to shorter street crossing distances, better visibility at corners and longer crossing times for people walking and rolling. The 27 Bryant has a more direct route with transit lanes on several blocks to reduce delay. Wider sidewalks at bus stops mean no delays pulling into and out of traffic on streets like Hyde Street and more space for people using mobility devices to navigate. Together, these improvements have attracted more riders to the 27 Bryant.
- Completed
Planning and outreach for the 27 Bryant Transit Reliability Project launched in 2017 with a focus on making improvements on the route north of Market Street in the Tenderloin and Nob Hill neighborhoods where the bus experienced the most delay and slowest travel times. The project’s goals included making the route more reliable and improving traffic safety for people walking and rolling along the route in the Tenderloin and Nob Hill.
The 27 Bryant is a route that residents depend on to commute to work and connect to other transit lines. It is also a neighborhood route that many use to reach grocery stores, hospitals, affordable housing, senior centers and more. A key bus connection that serves people from a variety of backgrounds, the 27 Bryant was identified as a priority route in the Muni Service Equity Strategy to address neighborhood transit needs.
Over two years, the project team engaged over 500 community members to better understand community priorities for improvements along the route. These community members included riders, residents and merchants of different cultural backgrounds, ages and abilities – many with limited English language skills. Outreach strategies included a walk/ride audit, open houses, meetings with community organizations, canvassing of local merchants, email updates and a project webpage – all with an emphasis on multi-lingual engagement. Watch our short video to learn more about the outreach process that won an IAP2 USA Core Values Award for Respect for Diversity, Inclusion and Culture.
In April 2019, the SFMTA Board of Directors unanimously approved the proposed improvements. Just four months later, in August 2019, the SFMTA began implementing the approved project. These early changes were followed by capital construction, including improvements like transit bulbs, which was completed by spring 2023.
After service on the 27 Bryant was suspended early in the COVID-19 pandemic, it returned to service in January 2021 with a temporarily modified route in SoMa on 7th and 8th streets. This modified route uses the transit lanes on 7th and 8th streets to improve service reliability and build on the foundation of the 27 Bryant Transit Reliability Project. In December 2021, after receiving feedback from community members and evaluating the performance of the 27 Bryant on the transit lanes, the modified route was made permanent upon approval by the SFMTA Board of Directors.
