Muni Metro is a semi-metro system[8][9] (form of light rail) serving San Francisco, California, United States. Operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), a part of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA), Muni's light rail lines[A] saw an average of 87,000 boardings per day as of the third quarter of 2024 and a total of 24,324,600 boardings in 2023, making it the sixth-busiest light rail system in the United States.
Five services – J Church, K Ingleside, L Taraval, M Ocean View, and N Judah run on separate surface alignments and merge into a single east–west tunnel, the Market Street subway. The T Third Street uses a north–south tunnel downtown, the Central Subway. The supplementary S Shuttle service operates within the Market Street subway and Twin Peaks Tunnel. Muni Metro operates a fleet of 151 Breda high-floor light rail vehicles (LRVs), which are currently being replaced by a fleet of 249 Siemens S200 LRVs. The system has 117 stations, of which 63 (54%) are accessible.
Muni Metro is one of the surviving first-generation streetcar systems in North America. The San Francisco Municipal Railway was created in 1909 and opened its first streetcar lines in 1912. Five of the current lines were added in the following decades: the J in 1917, the K (including the Twin Peaks Tunnel) in 1918, the L in 1919, the M in 1925, and the N in 1928. The other Municipal Railway streetcar lines, and those of the privately owned Market Street Railway, were converted to buses in the 1920s to 1950s, but these five lines were retained as streetcars because of their private rights of way. The system was converted to light rail, with larger US Standard Light Rail Vehicles, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. This included the opening of the Market Street subway as well as an extension of three lines to Balboa Park station. An extension along The Embarcadero to the Caltrain terminal at 4th and King Street opened in 1998. The T Third Street line opened in 2007, serving the southeastern portion of the city. The Central Subway, with three new subway stations and one new surface station opened on November 19, 2022.
- ^ "Transit Ridership Report Third Quarter 2024" (PDF). American Public Transportation Association. November 20, 2024. Retrieved November 23, 2024.
- ^ "Transit Ridership Report Fourth Quarter 2023" (PDF). American Public Transportation Association. March 4, 2024. Retrieved September 5, 2024.
- ^ "2010 SFMTA Transit Fleet Management Plan" (PDF). San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. Retrieved March 3, 2013.[permanent dead link]
- ^ a b c "San Francisco LRV Specifications" (PDF). Ansaldobreda. Archived from the original (PDF) on September 23, 2015. Retrieved March 3, 2013.
- ^ Demery, Leroy W. Jr. (November 2011). "U.S. Urban Rail Transit Lines Opened From 1980" (PDF). publictransit.us. Archived from the original (PDF) on November 4, 2013. Retrieved November 2, 2013.
- ^ "San Francisco Muni: Unique Cost/Operating Environment" (PDF). San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. July 26, 2007. Archived from the original (PDF) on February 5, 2009. Retrieved February 14, 2009.
- ^ Reisman, Will (December 14, 2010). "Muni Metro trackway trouble unresolved". San Francisco Examiner. Retrieved January 21, 2011.
- ^ Ian Yearsley (December 21, 1972). "Trams are coming back". New Scientist. Reed Business Information Ltd. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
... San Francisco and Boston, both with semi-metros and independent plans for new tramcars.
- ^ De Leuw, Cather & Company (1976). "Light Rail Transit: A State of the Art Review": 9. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
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