Reload this Page Could someone please explain SF's public transportation? (San Francisco: transfer, neighborhood)

[LongNote]

Could someone please explain SF's public transportation system? Is it best to take the bus, train, subway (If SF has one), or a combination of all three? And by best I mean fastest. Thanks!

[Chuck5000]

Depends entirely on the neighborhood and how far you walk to get to transit. Too much variation to generalize. Any train is usually faster than any bus, but then there's the placement of stations, which can negate that. And then there is frequency. And then, there's crowding. Sorry, but without a specific point-to-point route, I don't think any advice can be given.

SF Muni in general, I can tell you, is over capacity, has too few routes, too little frequency, and is too slow due to all of the above. It needs a couple of billion dollars of serious investment throughout the city to build new lines, hire more drivers, enlarge stations, buy more equipment, etc. NY, DC, Boston, Chicago, all blow it away. For the areas their systems cover, Seattle and Portland also are better.

[Ruth4Truth]

It depends on what you're using it for. There is no train or subway, except BART, which only has one line through the city. During commute hours, MUNI runs buses every 5 minutes on some lines, and there are express buses that skip some of the stops, in addition to the ones that make all the stops. The rest of the day, some bus lines run every 10 minutes, others--every 15 or 20. It depends on where you live.

Do you actually live in SF, or are you planning a move there? If you live there, you can look up the MUNI map online, and see the routes and schedules.

[TiffaNYC]

As the other replies said above, it depends on where you're going.

SF Muni in general, I can tell you, is over capacity, has too few routes, too little frequency, and is too slow due to all of the above. It needs a couple of billion dollars of serious investment throughout the city to build new lines, hire more drivers, enlarge stations, buy more equipment, etc. NY, DC, Boston, Chicago, all blow it away. For the areas their systems cover, Seattle and Portland also are better.

All of this ^. In the city of SF, the public transportation seriously sucks compared to other big cities. It's pathetic.

[NoMoreSnowForMe]

If I could get to where I was going on the Caltrain, that would be my preferred mode of transportation, other than a taxi. I can't stand BART. Even the buses were super crowded and uncomfortable the last time I took a bus in SF, which was around 2006. I went with a friend from Santa Clara to UCSF, where she wanted to go check out the campus (young friend recently moved to the Bay Area from Atlanta).

We started out on Caltrain, which was really pleasant, then transferred to BART which was so loud with screeching noise that we couldn't talk to each other, then we got on a Muni bus that was so packed with people I felt like I was wearing their clothes, we were so close.

[LongNote]

Thanks for all the replies guys. Why does SF usually rank so well in national studies about public transit?

[Chuck5000]

SF ranks well because it merely has a transit system, and things like frequency and reliability of service don't factor into those ratings. Seriously, that's how bad it is in most US cities. Even a 3rd tier European city has much better transit than San Francisco.

I thought it was bad but tolerable 5 years ago, but with the additional growth in residents and people commuting into the city, Muni is really stretched much more now.

SF's public transit crowding is much better in non-rush times, but then the frequency really drops off. Crowding is also much better non-rush with BART and Caltrain.

BART will at least be getting new cars that are quieter over the next few years, that purchase is complete. Caltrain has also seen massive increases in use, but most trains aren't terrible, though certain trains are standing room only during rush hour.

[2sleepy]

You might play around with this

511.org

[ttocs99]

I took BART for 7 years (1999-2006), and enjoyed it much more than any transit I used to take when I lived in NYC or NJ. There are more breakdowns and cancellations in one week in NY/NJ than there are all year on BART. At least that was my experience. I took BART again last week while on vacation. To Walnut Creek from SF, and had no issues.

[Chuck5000]

Originally Posted by ttocs99

I took BART for 7 years (1999-2006), and enjoyed it much more than any transit I used to take when I lived in NYC or NJ. There are more breakdowns and cancellations in one week in NY/NJ than there are all year on BART. At least that was my experience. I took BART again last week while on vacation. To Walnut Creek from SF, and had no issues.

Re: NY and SF - you may enjoy BART more, but there are a lot of facts here. 2006 is a long time ago given today's crowding, which is atrocious on the Pittsburg and Fremont lines at peak. So frequency in the East Bay is lacking, and track capacity and number of trains BART owns are the bottlenecks. BART needs a new tunnel = billions. New cars are on the way.

No commuter railroads in the Northeast are as jammed and overloaded as BART, because they're older and were built for much bigger populations. There is more frequency everywhere, even in Mass, I think.

Caltrain and Muni are not extensive enough, or frequent enough, or reliable enough compared to NY. I've used all systems for multi year periods, and you can also check public records for ontime performance. It's just not a comparison. Muni buses are especially bad. NYC bus system is vastly better. More buses, more frequency, more reliable.

Long Island Railroad and Metro North (Westchester and north) not only have much more frequent service, but they perform much more reliably than Caltrain because they're nearly all electric. Diesel is antiquated and Caltrain is working on getting to electrification, but that's scheduled for early 2020s)

Regardless, if a train breaks down in NY, if it's a subway, there's another one in a few minutes.

The NYC subways do have crowding issues, especially the east side IRT, the 4,5, and 6. It's very bad at peak. But, you have much better buses in NY, and you can take alternate rail lines if you want to go 10 minutes out of your way. Obviously, it's not truly a fair comparison, since NYC is so big.