San Francisco’s oldest Muni bus yard is about to be temporarily closed for several years to make way for a new, modern yard that includes better bus maintenance facilities.
The over a century-old Potrero Yard, located in the Mission District, will shut down on Feb. 14, according to the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. The bus yard currently houses several bus lines, including 5-Fulton and its rapid route, 14-Mission, 22-Fillore, 30-Stockton, and 49-Van Ness. The bus yard serves an average of 96,000 weekday riders.
SFMTA spokeswoman Erica Kato said there would be no service impacts during the yard’s closure as routes at the yard will be served by other bus facilities.
Before construction can begin, the project team and the lead developer, Potrero Neighborhood Collective (PNC), are still in confidential pricing negotiations,” Kato said. In a presentation last month to the project’s working group, if the SFMTA and the developer agree on a price proposal, the project team would seek approvals from the SFMTA Board of Directors and the Board of Supervisors.
“We expect to seek approvals for the Project Agreement for the bus yard facility by mid-March”, Kato said. “PNC would have site control by midyear, with construction beginning shortly thereafter.”
To reduce costs, the SFMTA announced last year that the project no longer included approximately 365 affordable housing units atop the bus yard due to the elimination of a podium that would have allowed developers to build those housing units. The current project proposal still includes building approximately 100 affordable housing units on Bryant Street.
On Tuesday, SFMTA’s director of transit, Brent Jones, also briefed the agency’s board Tuesday on the Potrero Bus Yard closure. Jones said there will be some Muni service changes on Feb. 14 tied to the bus yard’s closure.
He said there will be frequency changes on the 5-Fulton and 5R-Fulton Rapid due to the mixed use of 40-foot and 60-foot buses on the route related to the closure of the bus yard. On the 5R, buses will arrive about every 8 minutes instead of every 12 minutes during peak times on weekdays.
The new bus yard is expected to open in 2030.
This article has been updated.