San Francisco’s transit system continues to see success in the way transit planners manage Muni buses and trains through headway management, which officials said has given riders greater predictability regarding the arrival times of vehicles on Muni routes that operate more frequently.
Brent Jones, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) director of transit, said last week during a quarterly update on Muni service that the transit system historically ran on a “time point base service,” where buses and trains would arrive at a stop at a specific time.
That changed during the pandemic when the SFMTA was rebuilding Muni for a post-pandemic world, and it’s paying off, transit officials said.
“For decades, our primary goal was to chase the schedule, Jones said. “Now our goal is to create perfect headways.”
He told directors on the SFMTA board that the headway management has allowed the agency to be more “nimble and flexible” in delivering Muni service. He added that the change in delivering Muni service had been a key component in the agency’s highest customer rating in the past 20 years.
In the past, a rider could be waiting for a bus that arrives at a specific time at the bus stop and had already planned the rest of the day based on the schedule. But the bus arrives several minutes late, and now the rider is late too.
The agency is now telling riders that when they wait at a bus stop or station, they can expect a bus or train to arrive at a consistent interval. For example, riders on the 38R-Geary Rapid should expect the bus to arrive every six minutes, according to the SFMTA. Over 70 percent of the Muni system is under headway management, Jones said.
High-volume bus and train lines operate by frequency instead of arrival at a specific time.
“That makes it a lot easier for you to plan your trips, and your expectations are tempered, understanding that your ride will be there and not tied to a specific time point,” he said.
In May, several Muni routes are seeing above 90 percent schedule adherence based on headway management, including the 38R (93 percent) L-Taraval (90 percent) and 14R-Mission Rapid (90 percent).
There are specific criteria for a Muni route to be under headway management, including being a route with a high volume of riders. Jones said connector routes or routes with one or two buses would not fall under headway management. Muni’s Owl service is also not part of headway management, though said transit planners are “reimaging” the late-night network.
While there has been success, Jones told the board that staff are finding limitations with the current technology being used to manage the schedule, adding that “we are beginning to hit a ceiling of how good we can be.”
Jones told the board that he believes his team could reach its goals, including a higher customer satisfaction rating with more investment in upgrading the current technology, but the agency is facing a budget crisis next year of upwards of a $322 million deficit.
“There are a lot of different systems that are available now that can really change our service and really complement headway-based service, alignment of our managers and alignment of our operational teams, it just requires investment,” Jones said.