San Francisco Municipal Railway (SF Muni or Muni)

The San Francisco Municipal Railway (SF Muni or Muni) is the public transit system for the city and county of San Francisco, California. In 2006, it served 46.7 square miles (121 km²) with an operating budget of about $700 million. In ridership Muni is the seventh largest transit system in the United States, with 210,848,310 rides in 2006 and the second largest in California behind Metro in Los Angeles. With a fleet average speed of 8.1 mph (13.0 km/h), it is also the slowest major transit system in America.


Muni is an integral part of public transit in the city of San Francisco, operating 365 days a year and connecting with regional transportation services, such as Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), Caltrain, SamTrans, and AC Transit. Its network consists of 54 bus lines, 17 trolley bus lines, 7 light rail lines that operate above ground and in the City's lone subway tube (called Muni Metro), 3 cable car lines, and a heritage streetcar line known as the F Market & Wharves. Many weekday riders are commuters, as the daytime weekday population in San Francisco exceeds its normal residential population. Muni shares four metro stations with BART. Travelers can connect to San Francisco International Airport and Oakland International Airport via BART.

Muni routes operate on a schedule of sorts, with some routes operating 24 hours a day. The frequency of service may vary significantly from the schedule – a subject of frequent commentary by the systems' critics. Trip planning has been made easier, however, by the implementation of GPS monitoring for most routes through NextBus. Electronic signs on transit stops and information transmitted to mobile applications give users more accurate estimates of arrival times. December 28, 2012, marked the 100th anniversary of the system.

Operations

A cable car at California and Market Streets

A cable car being turned around at the end of the line, August, 1964

Most bus lines are scheduled to operate every five to fifteen minutes during peak hours, every five to twenty minutes middays, about every ten to twenty minutes from 9 pm to midnight, and roughly every half hour for the late night "owl" routes. On weekends, most Muni bus lines are scheduled to run every ten to twenty minutes. However, complaints of unreliability, especially on less-often-served lines and older (pre-battery backup) trolleybus lines, are a system-wide problem. Muni has had some difficulty meeting a stated goal of 85% voter-demanded on-time service.

All Muni lines run inside San Francisco city limits, with the exception of several lines serving locations in the northern part of neighboring Daly City, and the 76 Marin Headlands line to the Marin Headlands area on Sundays and holidays. Most intercity connections are provided by BART and Caltrain heavy rail, AC Transit buses at the Transbay Terminal, and Golden Gate Transit and SamTrans downtown.

Bus and car stops throughout the city vary from Metro stations with raised platforms in the subway and at the more heavily used surface stops, to small shelters to signposts to simply a yellow stripe on a utility pole or on the road surface. 70% of stops are spaced closer than recommended range of 800–1,000 feet (240–300 m) apart.

Name and logo

O'Shaughnessy logo (dated)

Muni is short for the "Municipal" in "San Francisco Municipal Railway" and is not an acronym; thus, when it is written in plain text, only Muni (not MUNI) is correct. However, many San Franciscans, including some of those who work for Muni, write it MUNI. The Muni metro is often called "the train" or "the streetcar". Most San Francisco natives use 'Muni' when speaking about the system (Metro & buses) in general.
The F Market & Wharves line is referred to by Muni as a "historic streetcar line" rather than as a "heritage railway".
Muni's logo is a stylized, trademarked "worm" version of the word "MUNI". This logo was designed by San Francisco-based graphic designer Walter Landor in the mid-1970s.