Op-Ed: Let's Make Muni's 49 Van Ness/Mission Bus Work for San Francisco - Streetsblog San Francisco

"The new pedestrian islands, trees, art installations, and fresh paint was a symbol of reinvestment in the city. Muni's 49 bus, which uses Van Ness, also became a lot more useful. Data showed that it was 36 percent faster than before and there were 54 percent fewer crashes. The 49 is one of the main leaders in ridership recovery among SFMTA routes and even broke its own prepandemic ridership numbers."

"I love the 49 and as a resident of the Mission, those red carpet lanes are magical. But the experience of being a rider during those crowds is not sustainable. People are anxious, they are squeezed into the areas between the seats, the doors close and open several times each stop as the buses get more crowded, and the bus driver is on edge, often yelling at folks trying to get on when it's no longer possible to fit another person."

"I decided to see if this was a known problem. SFMTA collects crowding statistics on all of it's public transit. But when I investigated the numbers for 49 Van Ness, the data didn't indicate nearly the magnitude I expected. This data shows that the 49 route doesn't often hit the "crowding" threshold, hovering around 1-3 percent of trips per month being overly crowded. The way they measure this is by calculating the "percentage of trips where vehicles are above capacity for 10 percent or more of the stops "."

The Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project delivered major streetscape improvements including pedestrian islands, trees, art, and new paint, and produced significant transit performance gains. Muni's 49 bus using Van Ness became 36 percent faster and saw 54 percent fewer crashes, with ridership surpassing prepandemic levels and leading recovery among SFMTA routes. However, rush-hour service now experiences severe crowding that makes riders and drivers anxious and uncomfortable. SFMTA crowding metrics report only about 1–3 percent of 49 trips per month exceed the defined crowding threshold, indicating a discrepancy between measured crowding and many riders' lived experience.

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