By Richard Ivanhoe, HANC Board
HANC’s April meeting will focus on MUNI: When will the 6 and 21 lines be restored? What are MUNI’s long range plans to address both its budget needs and the reduction in downtown activity? With the closure of JFK Drive, how can MUNI get people from other parts of the City out of their cars and into Golden Gate Park?
Approximately two years ago, MUNI shut down most of its bus and streetcar lines due to the Coronavirus pandemic, reducing service from approximately 70 routes to 17. Service restoration has been incremental.
In July, 2021, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution calling upon SFMTA to “reinstate all transit lines and restore pre-Covid service hours by December 31, 2021 and release by September 30, 2021, a written plan for the restoration of all lines and service.” (We wrote about this in the August 2021 Voice: https://www.hanc-sf.org/24-home/630-we-must-fight-to-save-the-6-and-21-muni-lines ).
In December, 2021, the SFMTA Board of Directors approved a plan for restoring most MUNI routes (https://www.sfmta.com/project-updates/2022-muni-service-network-approved-plan#Details ). But within a few weeks, SFMTA wrote about the service changes “We had hoped to implement them all in early 2022, but unfortunately, our operator staffing has not increased as quickly as we had estimated when we started the public outreach process for these changes.” The latest plan tentatively restores the 21 Hayes (to part of its former route) in June 2o22, and gives no projected date for restoring the 6 Parnassus (https://www.sfmta.com/projects/2022-muni-service-network ).
