CA: Muni is cutting service on five S.F. bus lines. Here's when the changes go live

Beginning Saturday, transportation officials in San Francisco will cut service along five bus lines, consolidating two of them and ending the other three routes at Market Street.

Once the changes take effect, the 6-Haight-Parnassus and 21-Hayes buses will combine to form the 6-Hayes-Parnassus. Buses on this new route will loop back at the Market and Hyde Street stop near Civic Center. On weekdays, the 5- Fulton and 9- San Bruno will also turn around at Market, an adjustment Muni made because each of them have parallel lines that are largely redundant.

Additionally, Muni will pare back the 31-Balboa route so that it runs from Cabrillo and La Playa streets near Ocean Beach to Fifth and Market streets downtown.

These austerity measures will save $7.2 million, a small piece of the transit system's budget deficit that's expected to balloon to $322 million next fiscal year. If the city doesn't find new sources of revenue to patch that hole, Muni's next round of cuts could be crippling, warned SFMTA director of transportation Julie Kirschbaum.

"We are making small changes now to avoid devastating long-term cuts and changes," Kirschbaum said. She and others are confronting worst-case scenarios in which the city drastically slashes transit service, leaving commuters stranded and causing nightmare traffic jams.

Yet, even a relatively cautious reduction to bus service faced pushback in San Francisco. The new turnarounds will force some commuters to make transfers to reach their destinations, an inconvenience that could stymie people with mobility issues. Critics often note that transfers also create a psychological barrier that dissuades people from riding transit.

During an April 15 public hearing at which the SFMTA Board of Directors approved the new service plan, transit advocates warned that it sent a grim message to the public.

Many people would perceive the cuts as a sign of weakness, and intuit that "public transit is not in the ascendancy, it is in the decline," advocate Cyrus Hall said. He urged the board to postpone any claw-backs to service as city and state leaders rally public support for tax measures to bolster Muni and other transit systems.

Kirschbaum said her agency is being pragmatic and minimizing pain for riders. For example, Muni will preserve resources by merging the 6-Haight-Parnassus and 21-Hayes routes, as both individual lines have underperformed since the pandemic. Data from SFMTA shows a 21% ridership recovery for the 21 when comparing April this year to the same month in 2019. The 6 recouped 56% of ridership across the same period.

Transfers "are really the only trade-off that customers are making at this point," Kirschbaum said, noting that the current plan cuts costs while maintaining all bus connections and frequency.

"Making this small 2% change today will help fortify us as we face this larger challenge," Kirschbaum said.

Meanwhile, SFMTA staff are scrounging up money in other ways, such as raising the price of metered parking, pausing some capital projects and ending certain contracts. As budget officials trim around the edges, politicians aim to put multiple transit tax measures on the ballot next year, imploring voters for help.

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