An extended outage on the Clipper card system that became a major point of frustration for BART riders last month appears to have been caused by an account being shut off due to an unpaid bill.

The rollout of the so-called "Clipper 2.0" system, which was meant to streamline fare-paying and allow transit riders to use their own credit cards to tap-to-pay, was called "a hot mess" by an executive board member of Clipper four months ago. And much of the blame for that may belong to the contractor, Cubic Corp., that has been managing the fare-paying platform under contract with the Metropolitan Transportation Commission since 2018.

The most recent of multiple major glitches was a 27-hour outage across the Clipper system on May 18. As the Chronicle reports, that outage was apparently caused by an unpaid AT&T bill — with Cubic relying on AT&T's wireless network for communications between fare gates, ticket machines, and the payment system.

Cubic Chief Operating Officer Lalit Singh explained the situation to the Clipper executive board at a Monday meeting, per the Chronicle, saying that the company had multiple accounts with AT&T, and the account associated with the fare gates was a secondary account that had apparently slipped through the cracks and its bills hadn't been paid.

It sounds like heads may roll over this gaffe, though this is hardly the first problem with the Clipper system in recent months. The rollout of "Clipper 2.0" has been rocky, with some 51 Muni fare-adding machines out of order due to their lack of updates to the new system — and in some Muni stations it's impossible to add fare to a Clipper card.

There have also reportedly been ongoing problems with reloading student passes.

Regarding the unpaid bill story, BART General Manager Robert Powers tells the Chronicle, "Cubic not paying their bill? Are you kidding me? That’s ridiculous. BART is so done with Cubic right now. You have zero credibility."

There are another two years on Cubic's 10-year, $461 million contract to update the Clipper system, and transit officials like Powers and Mulligan are decrying how the recent glitches are hurting reputation and credibility of transit writ large across the Bay Area.

Per the Chronicle piece, Cubic has also missed a May 30 deadline to address issues with the bulk migration of existing Clipper accounts to the new system — only 45% have been migrated despite the new system having rolled out six months ago.

BART and Muni would just like everyone to know, if they've had trouble with these systems, it's not their fault. And on the plus side, the tap-to-pay system with regular credit cards appears to be functioning.

Unfortunately, these glitches have also come at a time when both agencies are making efforts to decrease fare evasion and bolster fare revenue, but Clipper isn't doing them any favors there either.

Previously: Clipper Developer Says It Will Resolve Chaos From Disastrous 2.0 Rollout By May 30

Four people, including the driver of a car, were injured Monday afternoon when a Muni bus collided with a car in the Mission District.

The crash happened around 4:20 pm on Monday (4/20), in the area of 17th and Mission streets. The SFMTA posted an alert on X about the Muni-involved collision and consequent bus delays at 4:26 pm, noting that the inbound and outbound 14, 14R, and 49 buses were all impacted by the crash scene.

The scene was cleared as of 5:22 pm the agency said and the buses resumed regular service.

As the Chronicle reports, three bus passengers were injured and went to the hospital, along with the driver of the car, who was alone in the vehicle — and no cause for the crash has been publicized. None of the injuries were considered to be life-threatening.

The SFMTA has not commented on the incident.

This crash occurred just four days after another crash involving a vehicle and a Muni bus. In that Thursday incident, the driver of the car was allegedly fleeing from police in a stolen vehicle, and crashed head-on into the bus near Lake Merced.

Anyone with information about Monday's incident is asked to contact the SFPD tip line at 415-575-4444, or text a tip to TIP411 and begin the message with “SFPD.” Tipsters can remain anonymous.

As we've heard multiple times in recent years, Muni has a major fare-evasion problem even though ridership has rebounded somewhat since the pandemic. But the actual numbers are pretty startling.

Buried in a new report from SPUR, titled "Taking Muni's Vitals," and tucked behind the good news that Muni has largely been a nimble and efficient agency in recent years, is the bad news that Muni fare revenue remains way, way down. Fare revenue is actually less than half of what it was a decade ago — $97 million in 2024 compared to $283 million in 2015 — even though ridership is now above 70% of pre-pandemic levels.

What does that mean? In part, it means that most people are back to using Muni trains and buses, but a good chunk of them aren't paying their fares. While ridership was down about 27% in 2024 (it's reportedly improved in the last year), fare revenue was down by 66% that year.

"Stated another way, independent of changes in total ridership, Muni experienced a 53% drop in per-passenger fares between 2015 and 2024, resulting in a significant loss of revenue for the system," the report says — though it goes on to explain that this revenue drop can also be attributed to expanded discounted and free fare programs for the elderly, students, and the homeless.

Still, anecdotally, we have all seen scores of people hop on Muni buses without tagging a phone or card at the fare box, and the state has taken notice of the discrepancy. A 2023 bailout package from the state came with the stipulation that both BART and Muni had to address their fare evasion problems. And a June 2023 report from ABC 7 cited the drop in fare revenue and quoted a Muni bus driver saying that "on a good day" maybe 40% of passengers pay their fares. (Muni's official number of fare-evading passengers, as of 2024, was 20.8%.)

The uptick in fare evasion seems tied to the pandemic, when the SFMTA laid off or furloughed many fare inspectors, and issued almost no fines for two years. The agency has since beefed up its fare enforcement, but clearly there are still far too many scofflaws and opportunities for free rides, and a few dozen fare inspectors have not been enough of a deterrant.

The Chronicle picked up the story about the SPUR report, and got a statement from SFMTA spokesperson Parisa Safarzadeh, who said, "We appreciate how this deep analysis shows that Muni service performance compares favorably with our peers, but we also know there is more work to do. Operating Muni as efficiently as possible is essential as we face unprecedented budget challenges."

On the plus side, Muni is performing well compared to its peer transit agencies in other cities. The MARTA system in Atlanta, has seen a 51% drop in ridership since 2015 and it has barely rebounded since the pandemic. Meanwhile, the peer average drop is 31%, with Muni doing a few points better than that at 27%.

The report also cites the fact that Muni has increased efficiencies, with its cost per rider numbers well below the peer average.

"SFMTA, like all large transit agencies in the United States, has had a challenging last 10 years," writes Sebastian Petty in the SPUR report. "Despite difficult conditions across the industry, Muni has performed well, sustaining and recovering ridership and productivity faster than its peers, on average, while holding its aggregate service output constant."

Now if they could just start collecting more fares...

Previously: You May See More Muni Fare Inspectors on Buses This Year as SFMTA Vows Crackdown on Fare Evasion

A male pedestrian was struck and killed by a Muni bus early Tuesday morning near Union Square, after he reportedly fell from the sidewalk into the path of the bus.

The collision happened near the intersection of Geary and Kearny streets around 6:50 am Tuesday, according to a tweet from the SFMTA.

"We are deeply saddened to share that at approximately 6:50 a.m. this morning, a 38 Geary bus was travelling west (outbound) on Geary Boulevard near Keany [sic] Street, when a male pedestrian reportedly fell from the sidewalk and made contact with the Muni bus," the agency says.

They add, "Emergency personnel responded to the incident and transported the man to the hospital, where, tragically, he died. Our deepest condolences go out to his friends and family."

As per protocol, the bus driver involved is undergoing drug and alcohol testing and is being placed on non-driving leave.

The SFPD is reportedly investigating the crash, and the victim has not been publicly identified.

This adds to a string of a pedestrian deaths that have happened in the first three months of the year.

As Walk SF noted, as of mid-March, the city had just seen five pedestrian deaths in the span of five weeks, including the tragic death of a two-year-old girl in Mission Bay. Arrests were made last week in connection both with that death, and an early March collision in North Beach that killed a pedestrian and injured a scooter rider.

Photo via SFMTA

It's a bit less than what was promised last year, but Governor Gavin Newsom has signed off on a $590 million loan package for Bay Area transit agencies, which have been facing serious budget problems since the pandemic.

Ridership is not back nearly where it was, and BART continues to grapple with potential station closures and service cuts as a result of the revenue blow. But the state has come through with a $590 million loan fund that BART says it will tap into only if Bay Area voters approve a sales tax measure in June that is mean to help close BART's budget gap in the long term.

Governor Newsom announced the loan approval Thursday, saying, "California is stepping up to support Bay Area transit—this agreement will help protect transit service for more than three million monthly riders. The benefits of a strong transit system are clear: growing ridership, cleaner air, and less congested roads."

The funds, which will also be shared by Muni, AC Transit, and Caltrain, will be disbursed by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

The $590 million is $160 million shy of the $750 million loan number that was promised when the state legislature passed the budget last June, but officials say it will help stanch the bleeding, especially for BART. And, as state Senator Scott Wiener said in June, this funding was meant to complement SB 63, the senate bill that put the sales tax measure on the ballot.

In a statement, the BART agency said Thursday, "These loan funds will be used if a November transit funding ballot measure is successful or another reliable source of funding is provided to BART... If it fails, we would not use the loan money because we wouldn’t be able to pay it back."

BART officials have been issuing dire warnings since the start of the new year that seem aimed at scaring voters across all BART-serving counties into voting yes on the ballot measure. Among those warnings is a doomsday proposal to close 15 stations across the system, and to end service each night at 9 pm — both of which would likely result in further ridership and revenue declines.

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost tells KTVU that the agency has already made cuts to service to try to save money. "Service now is not where it was before the pandemic. We're running shorter trains, there's fewer trains running," Trost said.

The measure will appear on ballots in five counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, Santa Clara, and San Mateo.

Wiener, in his social media announcement about the loan approval Thursday, struck a somber note.

"If nothing happens — if inertia sets in — BART will collapse, Muni will reduce up to 50% of all service & AC Transit & Caltrain will enact massive service cuts," Wiener wrote. "This would be horrific for the entire region, including both transit riders & drivers. Everyone will lose."

But, he added, "Transit is essential for the Bay Area’s success... Here’s to a bright transit future."

Previously: As Chronicle Moves on From 'Doom Loop' Headlines, It's Now Calling BART a 'Dying Rail System'

Photo by Derek Zhang

A real cock-up in the annals of Muni advertising, as users noted what appeared to be a holographic penis on the side of a bus, though it’s just an AI company ad that may have been approved willy-nilly.

In San Francisco’s dawning new AI phase, we have certainly seen a lot of billboards that make little sense to a normal human being. But the latest AI advertisement to confuse and bewilder San Franciscans is a real package deal.

As seen above, the Chronicle reports that a holographic AI ad on the side of a Muni bus appears to be a giant penis. The above image was tweeted Wednesday, and Muni, not sure whether the dick-like appearance of the ad was intentional, has since pulled that bus from service.

In fact, Muni's parent agency SFMTA seems as puzzled by this prick-resembling ad as anyone. “By chance, did you happen to get the four-digit bus number?” the agency asked, before pounding out more follow-up questions.

The Chronicle has determined the ad is from an AI website-building tool called Framer, which is not SF-based, but headquartered in the Netherlands. SFist has determined the image is not meant to be a giant dick, and legitimately was an innocent ad that just displayed very poorly in the context it was seen here.

This Instagram post from Capitol Outdoor Advertising shows what is almost the exact same ad. It’s a Framer campaign called “Just publish it with Framer.” Notice the finger placed next to a chevron-shaped button, the same chevron-shaped button seen in the Muni ad. The ad has apparently run in San Francisco before, but in that context of the ad being fully visible on a billboard, people were not confusing the finger for a big ol’ wiener.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Capitol Outdoor (@capitoloutdoor)

Still, someone probably ought to have double-checked this before it went on the side of a Muni bus, which is a different type of canvas with tire wells and such cropping the advertisement. And this may not be great PR for Framer, whose business is to build public-facing marketing materials.

Not to be a dick, but that does not appear to be a dick in the now-pulled Muni ad. Though this was definitely a boner by someone in the ad sales chain, who got this advertisement campaign into a sticky situation.  

Related: Muni Fans Losing Their Lunch Over Lunchables Ad Blitz, Now Wrapped Around Buses All Over Town [SFist]

Image: @studio_daddy via Twitter

Supervisor Danny Sauter is trying to resurrect the old idea of extending the Central Subway out to North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf, but officials realize there’s no way this gets funded while Trump is still president.

Our headline above declares that Supervisor Danny Sauter’s new campaign to extend the Chinatown Central Subway out to North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf got its “first City Hall hearing” on Monday. That’s technically true, but the idea has been floating around for decades, and the SF Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) produced a serious amount of work on the proposal in 2014.

Since then, we instead got the Central Subway to Chinatown, which arrived a full five years behind schedule, and with insane cost overruns that sent its original $650 million price tag up to $2 billion. And right now Muni is running a $322 million deficit, so…  Why are we even talking about this pipe dream of a Muni mega-project? We absolutely can’t afford it right now!

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Supervisor Danny Sauter (@dannysauterd3)

But as Supervisor Sauter stressed at Monday’s Board of Supervisors Land Use and Transportation committee meeting, we’re doing the early planning now so that we can build the thing someday later — a day when Donald Trump is no longer in office, because the project would be very much reliant on federal funding (perhaps needing as much as 50% of the money from the federal government).

“I am under no illusion that there is a clear path to construction of the subway in the next few years, not with this administration in Washington,” Sauter said at Monday’s hearing. But after Trump's term ends, Sauter felt “we will have a good case ready to compete for the funds at a federal level.”

A Monday Chronicle article on the Central Subway extension pegged the estimated cost of this North Beach and Fisherman’s Wharf subway extension at $1.3 billion. But that number is from the outdated 2014 analysis. SFMTA senior manager of service planning Sean Kennedy gave some new and updated numbers (or he almost did).

“As of 2020, we were assuming this project was going to be $1.6 [billion]. Of course, construction has gone nothing but up since then.” Kennedy told the committee. “That $1.6 [billion] is a placeholder, a best guess at this point.”

The Central Subway is also derided as a little-used route with low ridership. But that has apparently changed. We got the surprising news Monday that the Central Subway’s T-Third line is now the second busiest Muni light-rail line.

“The fact that this is now the second-busiest rail line, that’s remarkable to me,” Sauter said Monday. “It gives me a lot of hope that if we were to extend it, or when we extend it, we would see that same boost in ridership."

But these books might be slightly cooked. The T-Third line’s ridership numbers are surely inflated by Chase Center events. And we also see the footnote above that the "busiest section (between Union Square and 4th and King) [is] rarely at more than 50% capacity.”

The T-Third also has other problems to worry about before it goes building expensive new North Beach and Fisherman's Wharf stations and tunnels. As Supervisor Myrna Melgar rather diplomatically put it, “The frequency of this line is really not what most of us hoped it would be.”

And Supervisor Chyanne Chen said of any Central Subway expansion project, “I am also very concerned about the construction impact to small businesses.” The Van Ness bus lane construction project certainly destroyed a few small businesses.

And maybe the ridership numbers are good, but the T-Third line still has some kinks to work out. As discussed Monday, it generally takes 45 minutes to get from Fourth and King streets to Sunnydale, with 68 (!) traffic stops, and 20% of its time stopped in traffic. These are the kinds of things that line needs to get worked out before even thinking of expanding to Fisherman’s Wharf.

Related: There’s Suddenly Talk of Extending the Central Subway to Fisherman’s Wharf, Despite Muni’s Gigantic Deficit [SFist]

Image: Baghdad By The Bay San Francisco via Facebook

As PG&E works to make repairs to the Mission substation that was damaged in December, causing a huge swath of the city to lose power, power was cut to the Civic Center area Sunday night into Monday.

The planned outage affected around 3,600 PG&E customers, and was said to potentially last 12 hours. But after the power was cut at 12 am Monday, impacting all Muni underground service between Van Ness and Embarcadero stations, it was restored around 8 am.

Muni service was fully restored around 10:30 am, after the SFMTA conducted "signal infrastructure checks." Residual delays are expected, the agency said.

Hybrid train and bus service was available to commuters during Monday morning's commute.

A second, shorter outage is set to begin at midnight tonight, and will affect a larger swath of the city, with around 14,000 PG&E customers impacted in the Richmond District, with some in a small section of the Sunset as well. This outage is expected to last around two hours.

Substation K, as its known, at Mission and Eighth streets, suffered a fire on December 20 that was partly responsible for a power outage that impacted around one-third of San Francisco.

"We recognize this outage was frustrating and had a large impact on the community," PG&E says in a statement. "To better serve you, our teams will be performing critical work to fix this substation issue and improve your electric service."

For updates, if you live in the outage area, you can visit PG&E's Outage Center.

Muni will be absolutely free on New Year's Eve for the 17th year in a row, and while BART will not be free, the BART system will let you catch trains almost up until (but not quite until) the 2 am last call at the bars.

We are slowly emerging from our “pajamas all day” holiday sloth state and thinking about putting on some real clothes, and maybe even a shower in the next day or two. So our thoughts turn to the glitz and glam of San Francisco New Year’s Eve, just three nights from now (though it is looking like a soggy one).

But do not even consider driving intoxicated Wednesday night and early Thursday morning, as Muni will be free on New Year’s Eve. Meanwhile, BART has extended its late-night New Year’s Eve service this year, so you can catch a BART train at almost (but not quite) 2 am.

For the 17th year in a row, Muni will be free on New Year’s Eve, starting at 8 pm on the night of December 31. That free service continues all the way until 5 am on the morning of Thursday, January 1, 2026. But do not tag your Clipper card or phone getting on the train or bus, or entering gates at a station, because you will be charged if you do that.

BART will not be free on New Year’s Eve, but that transit system will be running later, extended hours. The quick and simple explanation of when you can catch that final BART train of the night is to just look at the chart above and find the station you’ll be departing your party from. The chart shows when your last train is leaving.

East Bay riders needing to transfer lines (and that will be many East Bay riders) will want to be at MacArthur station for the big "grand meet” last train at 1:51 am, which will have timed transfers going every direction.

So you don’t get to enjoy last call at the bars if you’re taking BART, but you do get a train home option well after 1 am.

There will be no late-night service to either SFO or the Oakland Airport stations.

As the Chronicle notes, the last BART train coming before 2 am is pretty weak sauce. Pre-pandemic, the last BART train on New Year’s Eve was at 3 am! But you’ll appreciate spending the night in your own comfy bed after your New Year’ Eve revelry, instead of on a cot at County Jail facing a DUI charge, and unlikely to get a hearing for your release until the morning of Monday, January 5, 2026.  

Oh, and remember, your BART fares increase by 6.2% this Thursday, January 1.

Related: Muni Will Be Free on NYE (Don't Tag Your Clipper Card) [SFist]

Image: Bay bridge lighting and fireworks for championship game 50 in San Francisco, California, USA (Getty Images)

Muni, Caltrain, and all the public transit services that take Clipper will accept credit or debit card taps for rides in just a week, as paying with credit or debit won’t just be a BART thing anymore starting this Wednesday.

It was four months ago when BART started accepting debit cards and credit cards for fare payment instead of just Clipper Cards. They referred to this as “open payments,” and it seemed a glorious upgrade, but the upgrade did not apply to any other Bay Area public transit system that takes Clipper. The Bay Area’s Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC) Clipper Card program director Jason Weinstein explained at a July meeting that “After evaluating the benefits and considerations, it was decided that we’d try to roll out open payments at one operator, and that the most impactful rollout could be at BART.”

Yeah, but we were promised this capability way back in the summer of 2023! Well, the day is now upon us. Or rather, that day will be upon us this coming Wednesday December 10.

KQED has a nice article today on the Clipper Card 2.0 rollout, and yes there are a few lovely upgrades mentioned: your funds will be available instantly no matter how you add money to your card, there are some discounts when you switch transit systems on the same ride, and there's a new “family plan” where parents can manage their kids’ accounts. But the big enchilada is the fact that you’ll be able to use credit or debt cards on Muni, Caltrain, and any of the 24 transit agencies that take Clipper.

“Bay Area transit riders have been able to use a chip-enabled credit or debit card to pay for BART since August, but beginning on December 10, all Bay Area transit agencies that accept Clipper (Caltrain, Golden Gate Transit, VTA, the list goes on …) will now also accept chip-enabled credit or debit cards as a form of payment,” according to KQED.

We have seen no formal announcements from Muni, but an SFMTA representative confirmed to SFist that they would indeed be going live with this feature on December 10. Meanwhile, Caltrain announced the change in the tweet from this afternoon seen above, and also on their website.

That site says that effective December 10, you can “Use major contactless payment cards Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover — as well as Apple Pay and Google Pay directly.”

Be aware, however, that any student or senior discounts will not be applied if you’re using a credit or debit card to tap on. You will still need to use your Clipper Card to get those discounts.

Related: BART Will Finally Let You Tap to Enter With a Credit Card or Debit Card, Starting Wednesday [SFist]

Image: SFMTA

• There was a shooting this afternoon around 1:30 pm at Oakland's Skyline High School which left one student injured — the same school where a Graduation Day shooting happened last year. Two juvenile suspects were arrested at the scene, and the victim is expected to survive; school was not in session at the time, as classes let out early. [ABC 7]
• A former chief of staff to Governor Gavin Newsom, Dana Williamson, has been charged with stealing campaign account funds from former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra. Williamson has been charged alongside several others, including Becerra’s former chief of staff Sean McCluskie, of conspiring to steal $225,000 from Becerra's account. [Chronicle]
• A notorious Bay Area neo-Nazi, Jon Minadeo II, has resurfaced in Petaluma after being named in a federal lawsuit filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center over an alleged assault that occurred in Nashville during a multi-day neo-Nazi rally there. [Press Democrat]
• The last 90s-era Breda light-rail train took its final trips on the J-Church line today (there are still a few more chances to catch it as of this writing, and here's a live tracker), and there's a farewell toast event happening along its route, at Churchill (Church Street and 14th) for transit fans, which goes until 8 pm. [SFMTA]

National:

• The House is preparing to vote tonight to reopen the federal government after the longest shutdown in US history. Meanwhile, a bipartisan pair of California representatives, Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley and Democratic Rep. Sam Liccardo, have introduced a bill to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits for two years. [CNN]
• The jaw-dropping emails from the so-called Epstein Files keep dropping — and wow, Epstein really hated Trump and called him "insane" — and House Democrats, along with several Republicans, signed a petition today that resolves to vote on fully releasing the files, likely in the coming week. [New York Times]
• ICYMI, the teaser trailer for The Devil Wears Prada 2 dropped today. [Variety]

Video:

• A Deeper Love: The Story of Miss Peppermint, a documentary that premiered here at Frameline June about trans icon Peppermint, will be screening at the renovated Castro Theatre in the spring, as we learned today. Here's the trailer.

Top image via SFMTA

Video from a runaway Muni light-rail incident next to Duboce Park on September 24 shows that the train operator likely fell asleep at the wheel, and had been hunched over barely awake several minutes earlier.

The SFMTA has been less than forthcoming about what, exactly, happened during a frightening September 24 incident on an N-Judah train during the morning commute, in which a crowded train sped out of control out of the Sunset Tunnel at East Portal, past the Noe Street/Duboce Avenue stop, and into oncoming traffic on Duboce Avenue.

The train was in the operator's, not a computer's, control while above-ground, and failed to slow down in order to come to a stop at Noe Street — proceeding into a dangerous S-curve and onto Duboce Avenue at full speed before coming to a stop just shy of Sanchez Street.

As one passenger told SFist of the harrowing incident, "It was like 'This might be it!'"

A Redditor named Cheezball claims to have requested the onboard camera footage from the SFMTA, and they uploaded it to YouTube and shared it on Reddit Monday.

The video shows the N-Judah train as passengers are boarding at Carl and Cole streets, in Cole Valley, before entering the Sunset Tunnel. The operator is seen with her head resting on her arms, hunched over the dashboard as people board. When she sits up to again operate the train, she appears somewhat alert, and navigates the curve into the tunnel at an appropriate speed — the speed reading on the camera shows her entering the tunnel at 6 miles per hour.

In the tunnel, the train accelerates up to 50 miles per hour before it reaches the portal on the other side, and the operator can be seen for most of the tunnel ride with her eyes apparently closed and head nodding off, as if she briefly falls asleep.

As the train emerges into the light and is about to take that S-curve, the operator appears to awaken and immediately try to slow the train down. But it does not stop until nearly a block downhill — and it has a near-miss with a car driving up Duboce Avenue, which came within feet of being in the train's path.

The driver then stands up and addresses the shrieking, shaken passengers, saying, "Relax, relax! I'm sorry, relax. We didn't crash. Relax. Relax. It wouldn't stop."

SFMTA officials said at the time of the incident that they were investigating, and assured the public that the "vehicle is mechanically sound and operating properly."

Now, the SFMTA says that the employee has been placed on "non-driving status," but they've released little other information.

"We know this was a frightening experience for our riders, and we take that very seriously,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Julie Kirschbaum, in a statement. "Safety is always our top priority. We are committed to accountability in response to this specific incident, and we are taking all necessary steps to keep Muni safe and reliable for all riders and the public."

This is a developing story.

Previously: Passengers Describe Scary Runaway Muni Train Incident By Duboce Park

Look how freakin’ festive the 49-Van Ness bus will look for the holidays, with snowflakes, mittens, wrapped gifts, and more. But is that… a Christmas coyote near the front left wheel?

It was admittedly something of a cute cult-hit thing this summer when the SF Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) decided to roll out Grateful Dead/Summer of Love-themed Muni buses to get people all stoked for the Dead & Company shows in Golden Gate Park. They were like wraparound advertising, except they didn’t really advertise anything other than Muni itself.

Now as we head into the holiday season, the SFMTA is back at it with a more holly, jolly flair. Today the agency announced that buses on the 49-Van Ness route would have a wraparound decorative holiday design, as seen below.

“Starting today, one Merry Days of Muni bus will be picking up riders on the 49 Van Ness / Mission route,” the SFMTA says in their announcement. One of these holiday buses is seen above. But wait a minute… is that a coyote near that bus’ front left wheel? I bet some coyote haters in certain neighborhoods are going to be pissed off by that.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SFMTA (@sfmta_muni)

The “Merry Days of Muni bus” (that is what they are calling it) was designed by in-house SFMTA artist Anton Belov, the designer of the Muni ugly holiday sweater, which they prefer you call a “holiday pullover.”

“The patchwork idea came from thinking about how Muni connects different neighborhoods, people, communities – how it stitches the city together,” Belov said in an SFMTA press release. “I wanted people to get excited and surprised when they expected to see a regular bus in gray and red and then, all of a sudden, this bright wrap comes their way and makes them feel even happier going to work and school.”

Again, the SFMTA claims that these went into circulation today, though apparently only one bus on the 49-Van Ness line each day will be the holiday decorated bus. The agency’s announcement says these will remain in circulation “through the end of the year.”

Related: Muni Is Truckin’ Grateful Dead-Themed Buses for Next Weekend’s Big Dead & Co. Concerts [SFist]

Image: SFMTA

November 12 is the last day for any fans to take a final ride on one of the light-rail trains that have been running through the streets and tunnels of San Francisco since 1996, as the last of them is finally getting retired.

It's finally time to say arrivederci to the Italian-built light-rail trains that have defined Muni service for more than a generation, with their distinctive silver and red body paint, and vaguely European shape. The Chronicle reports on the swan song of the last Breda LRVs (light-rail vehicles), which have been gradually getting phased out over the last seven years as the completed fleet of newer, Siemens-built train cars were put into service.

We first reported on the arrival of those new trains in mid-2016, so this has been a long time coming. At the time, the Breda LRVs were just 20 years old, and they are about 30, having first arrived in pieces from Italy in 1995, getting final assembly at Pier 80.

Longtime San Franciscans may remember the debacle when the SFMTA learned that the assembled train cars exceeded their promised weight by about 10,000 pounds, which led to unanticipated vibration and maintenance issues. While the agency worked to lower the weight of the cars, their heftiness limited the length of trains and therefore the system's capacity, leading to delays early on.

The Chronicle piece, clearly culled from SFMTA sources, notes that the Breda cars were far more reliable than their predecessors, which had been made by Boeing — but many commuters would likely argue the system went from terrible to merely bad. And, as has been noted many times, Muni service has also suffered due to its antiquated computer train-control system — but we learned last year that the agency is undertaking a ten-year process to upgrade what remains a floppy disk-based system.

"We will miss the Bredas, and they will always be part of San Francisco’s history,” says Julie Kirschbaum, the newly elevated director of the SFMTA, speaking to the Chronicle. "They were there for a lot of firsts."

Those firsts include the first service on the T line and the first service to Oracle Park — then known as Pac Bell Park.

The new Siemens trains are reportedly three to four times more reliable than the Bredas were, and overall satisfaction with Muni is up year over year — with fewer of the sort of systemwide meltdowns that have been more the purview of BART lately.

The full fleet of 219 new Siemens LRV4s is expected to be in service by late 2026, with 164 already in service across the system.

The final Breda train will be out on the J-Church line next Wednesday, November 12, for one final day of service.

Previously: Muni Is Getting A New Fleet Of Train Cars, Starting This Year