550,000 Muni trips this Tuesday
Muni operators are some of San Francisco’s most publicly visible service workers, but it can take a while to build up a rapport. As the sign by the bus driver’s seat goes — “Information gladly given, but safety requires avoiding unnecessary conversation.”
That’s partly why Mc Allen, a Muni bus operator, cherishes every shoutout he gets via the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s relatively obscure, not-exactly-easy-to-find commendation form.
“Driver was super nice,” he read, from some feedback he got back in 2023. “Greeted every passenger. He was passionate about his job as a Muni operator. He should get a raise!” He paused. “I like that.”
Allen doesn’t want to be a stranger.
On March 18, on an equally obscure holiday known as “Transit Operator Day,” Allen is encouraging as many people as humanly possible to ride Muni (his goal is to increase the number of trips that day by 10 percent, to 550,000) and to submit a commendation for a Muni driver of their choice (his goal = 500 commendations).
Some of his colleagues have never even gotten commendations, says Allen. Muni can be a strenuous and thankless job, he says, and when he gets one, it makes his entire week.
Many of the commendations praising Allen tout his signature style of announcing upcoming stops and connections. “Theeee next stop will beee Tea Garden Drive, Gooolden Gate Park!” Allen shouted on a recent afternoon run of the 44 O’Shaugnessy. He then announced all 19 nearby attractions, including the Shakespeare Garden, AIDS Memorial Grove, and Blue Heron Lake.
The morale boost is important, says Allen, because the life of the average Muni operator and Muni passenger is likely to get a whole lot worse in a few short months. The SFMTA’s deficit for the upcoming budget cycle is $50 million and will balloon to over $300 million the following year without corrective action. The agency is eyeing cutting service partially or entirely along some 20 lines this summer.
As a passenger, Allen is bracing for these cuts. “My kids ride the bus to school every day,” he said — and he does too. Buses are going to get more crowded. Passengers are going to get more irritable.
Allen’s love for Muni stems from another transit crisis — 2018’s “Muni meltdown summer” when the Twin Peaks tunnel closed for maintenance and Muni management tried to make up for transit delays on the lines affected by the construction by “backfilling” or surreptitiously poaching buses from other transit routes across the city. This induced de-facto massive service cuts, but bewildered riders were never told it was happening.
He became inspired by the “Total Muni” challenge that Heather Knight and Peter Hartlaub of the San Francisco Chronicle undertook that same year, in which they rode every single Muni line in one day. Allen, at the time working for an education nonprofit called Parents for Public Schools, did the same thing with his two children, but at a slower pace — they spent all summer trying every line.
At times, it was frustrating. Buses and pick-up times rarely converged. There was a lot of waiting. “I started to think about, ‘Well, if I wanted to make this system better, if I wanted to contribute to it, how would I do it?’” Allen said. “I sort of fell in love with the idea of being an operator.”
Four years into the job, Allen still loves it. He enjoys seeing the city (currently along the 44 O’Shaughnessy and 37 Corbett lines) across many viewpoints, moving residents around efficiently. “I have one of the greatest corner offices in the world.”
He’s gotten to know the regulars on his route, especially the kids who take the 44 from Willie Brown Middle School in Silver Terrace every afternoon. “I look out for them. I feel like they’re my kids and I look forward to seeing them every day,” Allen said.
With the agency facing another crisis, Allen knows what’s at stake. More fare-paying regulars might not fix all Muni’s problems, but they will go a long way. “If you don’t normally ride Muni or if you rarely ride Muni — or if you’ve never ridden Muni before, choose March 18th as the day to try,” Allen said.
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