The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) new Equity Toolkit aims to help the agency improve Muni service for the area’s most transit-dependent residents and essential workers.
Using data layered with mapping, the agency can improve access to jobs and key destinations by identifying and fixing gaps in service.
The toolkit focuses on San Francisco’s nine neighborhoods identified by the Muni Service Equity Strategy, including the Inner Mission, Outer Mission/Excelsior, Visitacion Valley, Bayview/Hunters Point, Oceanview-Ingleside, Chinatown, Tenderloin, Western Addition and Treasure Island. It’s part of SFMTA’s Transportation Recovery Plan for rebuilding the transportation system for a strong, lasting recovery that is more just and equitable for historically marginalized communities.
The Equity Toolkit uses transit service data from the six regional transit agencies – SFMTA, Bay Area Rapid Transit, SamTrans, AC Transit, Golden Gate Transit and Caltrain. The data includes routes, schedules and frequencies. This shows how far a customer can get within 30, 45 and 60 minutes from key neighborhood locations within neighborhoods identified by the Muni Service Equity Strategy. SFMTA can compare job access for transit riders before and during the pandemic, and gauge how service changes affect access. SFMTA can also now detect gaps that it couldn’t before and make better decisions for future Muni service.
So far, the Toolkit shows that access to jobs and services via public transportation is down in nearly every neighborhood in the city since SFMTA started the Muni Core Service Plan in March. That plan prioritized service for high-ridership Muni routes, transportation-dependent populations and connections to essential jobs and services. As a result, people living in neighborhoods identified by the Muni Service Equity Strategy currently have more Muni service than people in other neighborhoods, who generally have more alternatives to public transit.
For example, in the Bayview, where there is a high concentration of essential workers, the existing Core Service Plan has made essential jobs within a 30-minute commute 12 percent more accessible than before the COVID-19 pandemic. Jobs within a 45-minute commute are 55 percent more accessible. The Equity Toolkit shows that SFMTA still has work to do to ensure adequate Muni service for those who need it most right now and will continue to use what it learns to improve the Core Service Plan and increase access to essential jobs and services for San Francisco’s most vulnerable communities.
