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Muni inspired virtual backgrounds By Sophia Scherr Whether you’re telecommuting, teaching or learning online, or staying home and riding Muni for essential trips only - do it in style with these Muni virtual backgrounds. Download, save and use them for any of your preferred video chatting platforms. For the latest COVID-19 related transit updates please visit  SFMTA.com/COVID-19 .  Published April 29, 2020 at 02:37AM https://ift.tt/3cQpcTo

COVID-19 Ambassadors Help You Ride Muni Correctly By Mariana Maguire If you’re taking Muni for essential trips along Market Street you might see SFMTA’s yellow-vested Ambassadors wearing face masks or coverings and directing customers to maintain safe physical distance at curbside bus stops and boarding islands. What you can’t see are their smiles behind their masks as they work throughout the day to help San Francisco “flatten the curve.” COVID-19 Ambassadors at a bus stop on Market Street. Last week, the SFMTA launched our COVID-19 Ambassador Program. Although overall ridership is down, during peak times in certain areas we sometimes still see crowding at bus stops and on buses. If a bus is too crowded, our operators will stop picking up new passengers until there is enough room for more. We know that this and other changes are tough on everyone. That’s where our Ambassadors come in. Their aim is to encourage customers to practice good public health behavior throughout the entir

Budget Outreach and Engagement By The Coronavirus pandemic and current shelter-in-place order have changed our daily routines. The timeline for the SFMTA budget approval has been extended to August 1st. However, we are moving forward with the budget because we need a reference point for where the Agency intends to go. As such, we are taking steps to ensure we continue to engage in a thoughtful and comprehensive community process in light of the current circumstances.  If you would like to comment on the budget, please email sfmtabudget@sfmta.com , call 415.646.2222, or post on our  Facebook  page or  Twitter  using #sfmtabudget. You can also visit our  budget webpage.  The SFMTA Board of Directors will be voting on the budget during their regularly scheduled hearing on Tuesday, April 21st .  This is the fourth in a series of blogs exploring the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA’s) budget process and proposal for Fiscal Years 2021-2022. The first blog provided a

Slow Streets Program to Help With Social Distancing By With Muni service temporarily reduced during the COVID-19 health crisis, many San Francisco residents need to walk and take other modes of transportation to make essential trips. However, sometimes it is difficult to maintain 6’ of social distance on many sidewalks, park paths, and bikeways. This can be especially true when passing lines outside grocery stores and other essential services. Because of this, many pedestrians are choosing to walk in the street, exposing themselves to swiftly moving vehicle traffic. The SFMTA is implementing a new program, Slow Streets, to close some streets to through traffic and allow roadways to be used more as a shared space for foot and bicycle traffic. Throughout the city, corridors have been identified for Phase 1 Slow Streets. Beginning this week, some of these streets will be closed to through vehicle traffic to prioritize walking/biking and to provide more space for social distancing duri

Muni Updates: Restoring Some of Our Service By Erin McMillan Since April 8, Muni has been operating a COVID-19 Core Service Plan to support essential trips that cannot be made any other way. With fewer operators, car cleaners and maintenance staff available during the shelter-in-place, Muni service has been significantly reduced. Our initial network of 17 key lines was informed by our data on where ridership is highest, our Muni Equity Strategy to provide transportation for those with the fewest options, locations of essential services like hospitals and groceries, and to provide coverage across the city. Over the past week and a half, SFMTA has seen a small increase in the number of available key personnel, allowing us to expand our service based on ridership trends and public feedback during the pandemic. On April 25, we will be modifying Muni’s Core Service by adding back some modified routes and increasing the frequency of buses on others. This additional bus service was infor

A New Way Of Generating Prediction Times By The last month has brought about dramatic changes in virtually all aspects of our lives, including how we use our Muni transit system. When we implemented our Core Service Plan that focused our limited resources on 17 lines that were serving the majority of our customers, we also transitioned our service operation from a schedule-based system to a headway or frequency-based system. This means vehicles depart their terminals at regularly timed intervals instead of at specific times. In so doing, we also had to make adjustments on how this information was processed by NextMuni to generate reliable arrival time predictions. Up until now, if a Muni vehicle departed the terminal before its scheduled departure time, it would register on NextMuni as being on break and would not generate predictions, even though it was on its regular route. When we transitioned to a headway-based system, and as the buses experienced fewer delays on their routes,

Vision Zero Monthly Highlights By Vision Zero SF is the City’s road safety policy that will build safety and livability into our streets, protecting the one million people who move about the City every day. From education to traffic engineering, from enforcing traffic laws to changing public policy, Vision Zero SF is driving an agenda to change the way we think and act on San Francisco streets. This month, we’re featuring some improvements to benefit motorcyclists, bicyclists and pedestrians. Here is a list of what we’ve been working on this past month: Safe Streets in the Year of the Rat Safety Improvements to Page Street New Daylighting and Crosswalks Published April 18, 2020 at 05:03AM https://ift.tt/2RPMCQW

SFMTA Budget: Policy Objectives and Funding Priorities By The Coronavirus pandemic and current shelter-in-place order have changed our daily routines. The timeline for the SFMTA budget approval has been extended to August 1st. However, we are moving forward with the budget because we need a reference point for where the Agency intends to go. As such, we are taking steps to ensure we continue to engage in a thoughtful and comprehensive community process in light of the current circumstances. If you would like to comment on the budget, please email  sfmtabudget@sfmta.com , call (415) 646-2222, or post on our  Facebook  page or  Twitter  using #sfmtabudget. You can also visit our  budget webpage.  The SFMTA Board of Directors will be voting on the budget during their regularly scheduled hearing on Tuesday, April 21st .  This is the third in a series of blogs exploring the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA’s) budget process and proposal for Fiscal Years 2021-2022. T

Essential Trip Card: Helping Older Adults and People with Disabilities Navigate Reduced Muni Service By Bradley Dunn With a shortage of operators, car cleaners and other key personnel, Muni has implemented  significant reductions to Muni service . We know that for many older adults and people with disabilities, walking farther to an alternate bus or paying for other transportation simply isn’t possible. To address this need, the SFMTA is announcing the Essential Trip Card (ETC) to help older adults and people with disabilities pay for essential trips in taxis. We are thankful that taxis have stepped up to serve this critical need.  The ETC will provide two to three round trips per month at only 20 percent of the cost of a regular cab fare.  All taxis in San Francisco will accept the card to pay for essential trips like going to the grocery store or the doctor during the shelter-in-place period.  Customers who pay $6 will receive $30 value or $12 for $60 value for taxi trips on a de

Update: Route and Stop Changes By Bradley Dunn With a shortage of operators, car cleaners and other key personnel, Muni has implemented  significant reductions to Muni service . The COVID19 pandemic has disrupted many parts of everyday life, including transit. As everyone is getting used to our new  Muni Core Service Plan , some key routes are continuing to run but are using different stops. And, other changes have been made in response to customer feedback.   As a reminder, during this public health emergency, we are asking San Franciscans to:  Comply with the shelter-in-place directive  Only make essential trips  Use Muni only for those essential trips that can’t be made in other ways  The following changes went in effect on Wednesday, April 8. All of these are in place until further notice with mulit-lingual signs-up at all stops detail the service.  K Ingleside Bus Temporarily Discontinued, T Bus Operating to Castro  The Muni Core Service Plan temporarily susp

Director of Transportation Report: April 8, 2020 By In this week's Director's Report from the SFMTA Board of Director's Meeting, Jeffrey Tumlin gave updated on the following topics: Coronavirus Response Department Operations Center (DOC) activated March 13, using an incident command system responsible for planning and implementing our responses to the COVID-19 public health emergency. Priority is reducing health risks for staff and passengers while continuing to provide critical access. DOC team has developed policies and standard operating procedures informed by the Department of Public Health (DPH) to reduce risk of transmission in our system, ensuring we have systems and protocols in place before we need them. We now need San Franciscans to do their part by complying with the shelter-in-place orders, making only essential trips. And we need people to use Muni only for those essential trips that they cannot make by walking, biking or other modes of transportation

Navigating the New Muni By Today we’re rolling out a new service plan that will operate 17 Muni core routes from 5 a.m. – 10 p.m., plus expanded evening-late night or Owl service. We are making these changes to ensure that the limited resources we have are used to provide service for essential trips on our busiest lines with the highest demand with adequate space for passengers. We appreciate your understanding as our agency has been working diligently and as quickly as possible to develop and communicate this plan. Our blog posts on the essential core routes and the expanded Owl service have more details on these changes and our COVID-19 webpage has more information and resources, including updated service maps. We understand that usually each of us has our preferred method for tracking our bus or timing the train we catch. We wanted to let you know what to expect from our schedules and NextMuni in the coming days. Again, we appreciate your patience as we implement these

Muni Core Service Plan Now in Effect By Bonnie Jean von Krogh Muni service is undergoing dramatic changes in response to COVID-19. Many critical Muni staff including operators, mechanics, and car cleaners are more vulnerable to coronavirus due to their age or preexisting health conditions, so they are sheltering in place in accordance with the city’s order. This has made it difficult for us to fully staff all our routes. Muni’s Core Service Plan now in place focuses SFMTA’s limited resources on providing service on our busiest lines with the highest demand during this crisis. Although we are running only about 20% of our transit lines (17 of 79 lines), last week those 17 lines carried approximately 80% of our passengers due to changing trip patterns. This core service is in support of essential trips that cannot be made in other ways. We are asking all San Franciscans to help us maintain adequate space on buses for social distancing by staying at home except for essential trips.