Starting next week, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will implement additional service changes during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place order. In response to changing ridership, these service adjustments will help us to focus resources on routes outside of the downtown area that are connecting people to essential jobs and services.

Beginning Monday, March 30, all Muni Metro and light rail routes will be replaced by buses (J/KT/L/M/N). Metro subway stations will be closed, except for downtown stations which will remain open for Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) service during their operating hours. Customers can use the same bus stops as the early morning Metro bus service.

Closing the Muni Metro underground system will allow us to redirect custodial resources to other, higher-use facilities and minimizes risk to our station agents. Based on our ridership data and observations, we do not expect these changes to impact the ability of our riders and operators to maintain social distance. And while the rail system is closed to passengers, we plan on doing important maintenance work to our vehicles and infrastructure. It’s a unique opportunity to improve the state of good repair of our system and come out of this shutdown stronger than ever.

We are so grateful to our operators and our customers during this challenging time. Minimizing the risk of transmission for our operators and our riders is our top priority—in addition to the extra cleaning protocols we’ve implemented in recent weeks, we are requiring operators to always use their security partitions to minimize the risk of transmission to staff and the public. Similarly, we replaced cable car and historic streetcars with buses, so that every operator has access to a protective barrier. Operators can skip stops if their vehicles become too crowded to maintain social distancing.

—SFMTA Service Bulletin