 | ||
The San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) is the public transit system for San Francisco, California. A part of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, it served 47.35 square miles (123 km2) with an operating budget of $659.5 million in 2013. Muni is the eighth-largest transit system in the United States, with 219,993,600 riders in 2012.
Contents
Muni began service on December 28, 1912, when the A Geary-Park line was inaugurated, running between the Financial District and the Richmond District on the western side of the city. Expansion of the system and consolidation with other transit companies eventually made Muni the city's sole public transit operator in 1952, when it acquired the bankrupt California Street Cable Railroad. Subsequent changes and adjustments to the system gave rise to the lines in use today.
The system consists of 84 routes serving the city and some parts of Daly City and Marin County. The names of all Muni routes, except those of cable car lines, have two parts: a number or letter and a street, neighborhood, or landmark, for example, the "1 California" line. The bus and trolleybus lines have number designations, the rail lines have letters, and the cable car lines are typically referred to only by name (Powell-Mason, Powell-Hyde, and California). However, Muni maps abbreviate the cable car route names to PM, PH and C, and they are given route numbers 59, 60, and 61, respectively, for use in Muni internal operations.
Rapid bus lines
Rapid bus lines run through six major transit corridors through the city. These lines more or less follow the corresponding local bus line, but make only a few limited stops on their routes via bus only lanes.
Express bus lines
Express lines run between the outskirts of the city and downtown or between major rail stations and other points in the city. These lines typically run only during peak hours, going inbound in the morning and outbound in the evening, except the 76X Marin Headlands Express, which runs on Sundays and holidays; and the 83X Mid-Market Express, which runs in both directions during peak hours. Asterisked (*) lines indicate that they run only during morning peak hours.
Owl bus lines
Owl lines provide night bus service from 1am to 5am daily (including holidays).
The 90 Owl route is a combination of the daytime 47 Van Ness and 9 San Bruno routes, while the 91 Owl route is a combination of the daytime K Ingleside, 8 Bayshore, T Third, 30 Stockton, and 28 19th Avenue routes. The 5 Fulton, 24 Divisadero, 44 O'Shaughnessy, and 48 Quintara-24th Street Owl routes are truncated from their daytime counterparts. The L and N Owl motor coaches replace daytime light rail service and run on surface streets, making local stops, rather than in the Market Street Subway, Twin Peaks Tunnel, and Sunset Tunnel.
In addition to the regular nightly Owl service, Muni provides irregular bus substitutions along the K Ingleside, L Taraval, M Ocean View, N Judah, and T Third lines on weekend and holiday mornings between 5am and the opening of the Market Street Subway (7am on Saturdays, 8am on Sundays and holidays). The L and N Owl weekend morning routes differ slightly from the nightly L and N Owl routes and do not make local stops along their surface street detours, instead stopping only at stops used by the normal L and N daytime light rail routes.