Muni Trips with Service Gaps

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San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency

Muni customers expect predictable and reliable service on their trips. For most Muni routes, that means making sure vehicles arrive frequently so customer do not have to wait long.

Regular vehicle arrivals are important indicators of customer experience. For example, buses might arrive at a Muni stop every 10 minutes during peak hours, but they may not arrive at fixed times. The time between one arrival and the next is called "headway".

A gap in service occurs when headway between vehicles is longer than scheduled for that route. This causes customers to wait longer between arrivals. During peak hours, this can also cause crowding when more passengers try to board the next arriving vehicle.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) monitors vehicles in real time and adjusts service to reduce these gaps between arrivals. Data about where service gaps occur also helps the SFMTA plan and prioritize transit projects to make service more reliable.

The following chart shows the percent of all Muni vehicle trips with a gap in service, summarized by month. 

PERCENTAGE OF MUNI TRIPS WITH SERVICE GAPS

Data note: In January 2019 there was a change in calculation methodology. The transition was from bunching and gaps of the Rapid Network (a subset of 11 Muni line) to service gaps of all Muni lines. Historical data is currently available from August 2017 on. 

How Performance is Measured

The SFMTA monitors the regularity of vehicle departures by measuring the actual departure times at designated points along transit routes and comparing them to the average hourly scheduled headways (time between vehicles). Percentage of Muni service gaps is determined by dividing the number of gaps in headways by the total number observed departures and is reported system-wide. A gap occurs if a vehicle arrives more than 5 minutes later than the scheduled headway.

View the Rapid Network and non-Rapid Network service gaps on the SFMTA's website.

The number displayed on the scorecard page represents a fiscal year average of the values in the charts above.

Additional Information

Data

Please visit DataSF for the scorecard data.