Health And Fitness

The Lasting Legacy of the 1913 Bion Arnold Report By Jeremy Menzies Looking back at San Francisco’s transportation history, one study from 1913 has impacted the city’s transit system for over 100 years. Commissioned by city officials, the “ Report on the Improvement and Development of the Transportation Facilities of San Francisco ” by engineer Bion J. Arnold , is a comprehensive study of transit in the city. The 450-page report covers everything from rush hour congestion to plans for a Market Street subway. This document is essential to understanding our city’s transportation history and some of its recommendations are still in use today. This 1910 view of Market and Sutter streets shows just some of the complex issues that the Arnold report addressed.   Building Muni One section of the report is entirely dedicated to specifications for building and improving the city’s cable and street cars. Muni’s very first streetcars, frequently called “Arnold” cars, were specified based o

Details on Expanded Bus Service Coming July 9 By Mariana Maguire Photo caption: The 6 Haight-Parnassus is one of the Muni bus routes that will be brought back into service July 9, 2022 after being temporarily suspended since March 2020. On July 9, the next phase of the 2022 Muni Service Network plan will go into effect, focused on expanding bus service including the return of the 2 Sutter, 6 Haight-Parnassus and 21 Hayes (with some route changes), as well as other route extensions and modifications. Public feedback helped us prioritize bringing back routes and connections many communities rely on. Read more about what we heard from the public and how we incorporated feedback into the 2022 service proposal. As resources allow, our service changes will continue prioritizing service linking neighborhoods identified by our Muni Service Equity Strategy to essential destinations like hospitals and neighborhood commercial corridors, accommodate changing travel patterns and getting the

What’s next after the loss of Prop A? By Andrea Buffa On Tuesday, June 17, the San Francisco Department of Election posted the final results of the June 7 election. Proposition A, the Muni Reliability and Street Safety Bond, received 65.11%, well over 50%, but short of the 66.67% share of the vote that’s required for passage.  If passed, the bond measure would have provided $400 million for transportation infrastructure projects, including: $250 million on the repair and renovation of SFMTA bus yards, facilities, and equipment $26 million on traffic improvements, such as new traffic signals, wider sidewalks at bus stops and dedicated traffic lanes $10 million on improvements to the Muni train system, including the train communication and control systems $42 million on traffic signal and street crossing improvements, such as more visible traffic and pedestrian signals, curb ramps and signs $42 million on street redesigns that include wider sidewalks, raised crosswalks, protect

Golden Gate Park: Spring 2022 Update By Eillie Anzilotti Credit: Lauren White Since the San Francisco Board of Supervisors voted to keep three miles of roadway through Golden Gate Park—including the JFK Promenade—free of cars, the San Francisco Recreation & Park Department and the SFMTA project team have been hard at work implementing the over 40 programmatic efforts to support safety, equity, accessibility, and mobility in the Park. Curious about what we’ve been working on? Read on for recent highlights: New accessible parking options in the Bandshell lot At the end of May, the new Bandshell lot was officially completed and opened for use! The renovation opened up 20 new accessible parking spaces and four spaces for accessible vans, along with new curb ramps and direct, accessible paths of travel to the Japanese Tea Garden and Music Concourse. Credit: Chava Kronenberg The community shuttle program rolls on Since February 2022, Rec & Park has been running a community

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In-Person Pride Parade & Celebrations Return This Month! By Pamela Johnson The SFMTA is happy to join San Francisco Pride celebrations when they return to in-person events this month as the city continues its recovery from the pandemic. This year’s theme is “Love will Keep Us Together.” The Trans March is happening on Friday, June 24 and the Pride Parade is on Sunday, June 26. SFMTA staff are, of course, an important part of the LGBTQIA+ community that keeps SF moving with Pride. Pride is an opportunity for us to demonstrate our continued support of the LGBTQIA+ community, promoting our core values of respect, inclusivity and integrity.  History/Background of SF Pride   San Francisco had its first Pride celebration in 1970. For more than three decades the LGBTQIA+ community and their allies have been moving San Francisco forward to become a better, safer, and more equitable world for the LGBTQIA+ community and the city a better place for people to live, work and enjoy.    His

Improving Safety on 16th Street By John Gravener Construction on Phase 2 of the 16th Street Improvement Project began May 9, 2022. 16th Street is part of the city’s High Injury Network , where 75% of the city’s severe and fatal traffic incidents occur on just 12% of the city’s streets. This project, in addition to improving reliability of the 22 Fillmore line, has several pedestrian safety features that will make 16th Street a safer place for all modes of transportation. For people who walk on 16th Street: One of these safety elements is the installation of 2 new pedestrian bulbs at Guerrero Street and South Van Ness Avenue. These bulbs shorten the crossing distance between the corners of an intersection and make people who are about to cross the street more visible to drivers. The bulbs also require vehicles to slow down when making right-hand turns. High-visibility crosswalks will be installed. These make it easier for people driving to see people crossing the street, and als

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Muni Metro Fix It! Week Improves Rail Service, Safety and Reliability By Jessie Liang Overhead Line Department replacing wire and custodians cleaning metro station during Fix It! Week, April 19, 2022 A new quarterly effort to increase work time to accomplish necessary Muni Metro system maintenance in April 2022 was a resounding success. Here is a behind-the-scenes video recap . The maintenance initiatives aimed at making subway operations more reliable and preventing feature breakdowns. The maintenance teams were able to perform an entire month of work within the 10 days when subway service was substituted by bus service to provide SFMTA workers the extended Fix It! Week work window.  Every night after Muni Metro subway service hours, SFMTA maintenance crews work to maintain the tracks and equipment underground. On most nights, this gives our teams only about two hours to get work done. During the first Fix It! Week, from April 14 to April 23, 2022, buses provided substitute servi

Muni Adding More Service July 9 By Mariana Maguire The 6 Haight/Parnassus was temporarily suspended in March 2020 and will be brought back into service July 9, 2022, along with the 2 Sutter and 21 Hayes.  As the SFMTA prioritizes service equity and responds to changing travel patterns, we are planning to bring back additional routes that have been temporarily suspended since March 2020: The 2 Sutter (formerly 2 Clement), 6 Haight/Parnassus and 21 Hayes. The 6 Haight/Parnassus will return to its full pre-pandemic route, while the 2 Sutter and 21 Hayes will return in response to community feedback with changes to make the most of limited resources. System improvements like transit-only lanes and subway upgrades have helped us make transit service more reliable overall as we keep restoring routes.   These changes are part of the 2022 Muni Service Network plan . Read more about what we heard from the public and how we incorporated feedback into the 2022 service proposal.    The 2 Sut

Muni Forward Gets San Francisco Moving By Shalon Rogers A new, red transit lane on Stockton Street  The SFMTA’s Muni Forward program is delivering transit reliability improvements that are transforming the Muni system and enhancing the customer experience. With 80 miles of upgrades since 2014 that often bring travel time savings of 20% or more, Muni Forward is making a big difference in how San Francisco moves.  These upgrades, which can be seen in this Muni Forward Photo Map , draw from a “toolkit” of over 20 reliability and customer experience improvements, such as transit lanes that provided dedicated space for Muni vehicles to cut through traffic, transit bulbs that reduce delays at transit stops and traffic signals with transit priority that give the green light to transit vehicles as they approach the intersection, when possible. The recently completed Van Ness Improvement Project thrust Muni Forward back into the spotlight with San Francisco’s first Bus Rapid Transit

Emergency Response Transit Lanes Program Shows Long-term Success By Erin McMillan After the Temporary Emergency Transit Lane program used a quick-build approach to install over 15 miles of emergency-response transit lanes in about 18 months, we have the numbers that show its success. Here is the program evaluation summary.   During the early months of the pandemic, with traffic at an all-time low, Muni routes saw a 15% reduction in travel time on average and as much as 50% on certain corridors. Building off this analysis, the SFMTA identified key routes that could benefit from transit lanes that would preserve those speed and reliability improvements. These transit lanes improved reliability along the entire line, improving rider experience in Muni Service Equity Strategy neighborhoods and throughout the city. This allowed us to provide more frequent and less crowded service at a time when resources were very limited. We launched the Temporary Emergency Transit Lane (TETL) pr