Muni just hit a ridership milestone that San Francisco's downtown has been waiting for

How remarkable? According to staff at the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, the 357,00 riders who swarmed Muni on an average weekend in May slightly exceeded the 355,000 average in May 2019, suggesting that more people are using transit outside commute hours than before the pandemic. The Metro system is also bustling during rush hour, with 126,000 weekday rail trips in May - a new post-pandemic record - and 538,000 weekday trips across rail and buses.

Much of the rebound was concentrated in SoMa, the Financial District, Western Addition, Civic Center, Castro and Upper Market, suggesting that workers have opted to take transit to offices. This observation jibes with a recent trend at BART, where trains are also filling up with frazzled 9-to-5ers.

Whether the pattern will continue is an open question. Surveys and badge swipe data indicate that hybrid work is here to stay, which will limit the number of people pouring into cities. But other factors are contributing to the success of transit. Thousands of soccer fans flooded trains and buses to get to the World Cup matches at Levi's Stadium this month. Others took public transportation to pop concerts and Valkyries home games at Chase Center or the Pride Parade last weekend.

Muni is likely anticipating another ridership windfall during Wednesday's World Cup knockout round, with people packing buses bound for Mission District sports bars, or transferring to Caltrain to zip down the Peninsula.

To Laura Tolkoff, transportation policy director at the nonprofit think tank SPUR, the numbers seem promising, and may even signal that San Francisco "is blossoming again." And the more reasons people have to come, she said, "the more people ride Muni."

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