San Francisco, CA – Mayor London Breed and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) announced the start of another Fix It! Week – a quarterly maintenance initiative that has helped dramatically reduce subway delays for Muni riders.
The quarterly effort to increase work time on the subway tunnels to accomplish necessary system maintenance was launched in April 2022 and has proven successful. This proactive maintenance effort, along with the new Muni Metro fleet, has reduced major subway delays by 76% since 2019 and short subway delays by 89% since 2019. The SFMTA reported a 25% increase in Muni ridership in 2023, with growth continuing into 2024.
During Fix It! Week, the SFMTA closes the Market Street Muni Metro Subway early each night, beginning today at 9:30 p.m. and provides supplemental bus shuttle service The early maintenance closures will be between the West Portal and Embarcadero stations through Friday, March 15, 2024. With this early closures, SFMTA crews can perform 30 days of maintenance in just seven days.
“We are working hard to make Muni reliable, clean, and safe,” said Mayor London Breed. “Fix It! Weeks are one way we’re being smart and proactive in how we prioritize transit and our riders. By keeping our transportation infrastructure in good shape before breakdowns happen, we are significantly reducing delays and encouraging more people to take Muni. When Muni thrives, San Francisco thrives.”
These improvements in subway reliability are part of a larger improvement for Muni reliability overall, including:
- Muni delivered 12.2 million passenger trips in January 2024, with weekday ridership growing by 56,000 trips per day since January 2023
- The most frequented buses are arriving on time 90% of the time, decreasing gaps and increasing reliability
- Ongoing service adjustments are addressing crowding on routes to schools during peak times;
- For example, crowded trips on the 24 Divisadero line at 7:00 a.m. went from 53% to 0% after recent service changes
"The pandemic taught us how to work smarter and do more with our limited resources,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Jeff Tumlin. “Fix It! Weeks are a perfect example of how SFMTA staff are innovating and working more efficiently to stretch our dollars and deliver a better service.”
The goal of Fix-It Week is to make Muni metro subway operations more reliable, ensure safety, and improve the customer experience. Nine MOW teams (Track, Cable Car, Motive Power, Maintenance Engineering, Mechanical Systems, Overhead Lines, Underground, Paint Shop and Signal) are involved in the maintenance work.
SFMTA maintenance teams perform nearly a month of work within these seven nights during which subway service is substituted with bus service to provide crews the extended Fix It! Week work window. On most nights, maintenance crews have about two hours to get work done. The extended window allows crews to do complex work aimed at making subway operations more reliable and preventing future breakdowns.
"Shutting the subway a little early for a short amount of time allows our maintenance staff to improve our customer experience all year long,” said SFMTA Director of Transit Julie Kirschbaum. “The improvements we’re seeing are a direct result of our staff’s professionalism, creativity and commitment to our customers.”
"Fix It! Weeks allow us to do critical work we couldn’t do otherwise,” said SFMTA Chief Maintenance Officer Charles Drane. “The longer period of maintenance time also makes a huge difference for training staff, and lets our teams work more efficiently and effectively.”
Fix It! Week Muni Service
Friday, March 8 to Friday, March 15
- From 9:30 p.m. to the end of train service at 12 a.m., the subway between Embarcadero and West Portal will be closed and Muni-provided shuttle buses will serve all stops on Market Street at bus stops marked with “JKLMN Metro Bus Sub.”
- T Third train will provide regular service from Sunnydale to Chinatown until 12 a.m.
- Owl service will remain unchanged.
- All trains will start regular morning service each day.
More details at the SFMTA’s Muni Subway Maintenance Project webpage. (SFMTA.com/SubwayMaintenance).
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