San Francisco Municipal Transit Agency (SFMTA) suspends light rail service, buses serve as replacement

Written by Press Release

After weeks of planning to restart our Muni Metro service, we unfortunately were forced to resume all bus service starting [Tuesday, August 25]. We apologize for the confusion and inconvenience this may cause.

Our need to temporarily suspend train service for several weeks is based on two problems that emerged yesterday:

  • An employee in our Transportation Management Center (TMC) – the nerve center of our rail system – tested positive for COVID-19. We wish them a speedy and full recovery. By doing thorough contract tracing, we now know that more of our vital team members need to be quarantined. This leaves us short-staffed in positions central to operating Muni Metro service safely and effectively.
  • A critical component of the overhead infrastructure that power our trains has failed twice in the last few days. After a problem with new equipment recently installed caused service disruptions twice in the past two days, staff worked quickly to provide a fix that we must implement before bringing the Metro back fully again. This is frustrating because our crews worked tirelessly over the last few months to address deferred maintenance in the tunnels.

For these reasons, we will be using our buses for all train service starting Tuesday, August 25, and working hard to get train back on track as soon as we can. Shutting down the subway for quarantine will also allow for the replacement of the critical equipment in the subway.

We will keep you informed about our efforts to bring rail back at SFMTA.com/RailRecovery and you can get more information about our response to COVID-19 at SFMTA.com/COVID. You can also find provides real-time alerts about Muni service disruptions at the SFMTA’s Twitter account, @sfmta_muni.

Muni carries about 150,000 essential workers every day. Despite the tragedies they’re facing, SFMTA staff are working hard to make the best, most efficient use of every available service hour in order to get them to work.

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