Meet Me Downtown

Downtown San Francisco is making a comeback after a slow recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. In this episode, we discuss what’s new in the downtown area and how Muni, the city’s public transit system, is an essential part of the area’s revitalization. We also talk about Muni ridership and the SFMTA’s Fix It! Week maintenance program, which keeps the ride to downtown fast, reliable, efficient and safe.
 
The episode features San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development Executive Director Anne Taupier, SFMTA Transit Performance and Technology Manager Simon Hochberg, SFMTA Chief Maintenance Officer Charles Drane, Into the Streets CEO and Founder Katy Birnbaum, Biederman Redevelopment Ventures Union Square Plaza Program Manager Mark Hennon and TMASF Connects Executive Director Darcy Brown.

Transcript

MELISSA CULROSS, HOST: There is a lot happening in downtown San Francisco these days, and the future of the area looks very bright…as long as people can get there.

ANNE TAUPIER, SAN FRANCISCO OFFICE OF ECONOMIC AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT: There is no revitalization or recovery to our downtown without our Muni system carrying people back and forth to our downtown destinations.

MELISSA: Welcome to Taken with Transportation, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s official podcast. I’m your host, Melissa Culross, and in this episode, we’re headed downtown. Muni ridership to the area is up, and maintenance work has made service through the Muni Metro more reliable. 

STATION TRAIN ANNOUNCEMENT: Arriving eastbound, one car, J to Embarcadero Station. Next J…

MELISSA: We’ll discuss all of that, but we begin on 2nd Street in the Financial District, where a monthly party brings out a crowd of all ages.

KATY BIRNBAUM, INTO THE STREETS CEO AND FOUNDER: We started Downtown First Thursdays in May of 2024, um, really just to help bring people back to downtown San Francisco. 

MELISSA: That is Katy Birnbaum, CEO and founder of Into the Streets, a civic organization that produces events in, as the name indicates, the city’s streets.

KATY: During the pandemic, folks hadn’t been downtown in years. And also, there’s a whole group of people that never did it. And so, I think it’s really important to incentivize behavior change and really just put downtown back on people’s mental map of the city. It was a pretty instantaneous, just, adoption of the event. You know, our first event, we had probably about 15-17,000 folks come out. And from that very first night, folks were just delighted to be able to see the streets of San Francisco full, right? It’s something to celebrate, and there is so much pride in this city. And through all of our work…you know, Downtown First Thursdays is one of our programs, but we do events all around the city. And what I see consistently over and over again is people want a reason to be proud and excited and to tout, like, how incredible their city is. And so, you really just need to give them that opportunity, and I think Downtown First Thursdays does that.

MELISSA: But Birnbaum says this is more than just a party.

KATY: The reality on the ground is that baseline, it’s real economic impact. You know, Downtown First Thursdays, as of the April 2026 event, we had generated 34 million dollars of economic activity downtown. Um, and that’s people shopping at the market. Like, so, on the street buying from small vendors and also going into the brick and mortars, getting a drink, getting dinner, going out to a show after or before. You know, people just having a good time. Not spending extravagantly but coming together and growing, uh, the economic activity of downtown San Francisco.

MELISSA: So, how are people getting to this economically beneficial celebration?

KATY: We have 80% of people either walk or take public transportation to Downtown First Thursdays. And that allows us to have 20,000 people come downtown for a very specific amount of time, five hours, and, actually, it not just, you know, bring the downtown to, uh, a halt. People can still do their commute. They can get out as they need to, and it allows just an incredible amount of gathering to happen without all of that traffic congestion. It also allows everybody to come out and be safe. Um, we have outdoor bars. People are, you know, maybe having a few cocktails, and so, they’re able to get home safely on public transportation. And I think that’s a really vital part of the event. It’s the best of San Francisco.

MELISSA: Just a few blocks away from 2nd Street is Union Square, where there is more going on than you might think. Mark Hennon with Biederman Redevelopment Ventures manages the Union Square Plaza program…featuring events and activities that now fill the square.

MARK HENNON, UNION SQUARE PLAZA PROGRAM MANAGER I feel that before this program took off, it was more just a empty plaza that people walked through. So, now we really give people something to pause and linger and to enjoy. We also try to appeal to a wide variety of audiences. So, we have children’s programing, which, at first there was a lot of doubt that we could even get kids out here. And that’s actually proven to be very successful. So, we have children’s programming, uh, different types of fitness programs, some geared towards seniors, others towards more active cardio dancing. We also have multiple arts and crafts class, live music performances, and they’re setting up behind me for our Friday night dance series, which features salsa, Bollywood, swing, country western and tango.

MELISSA: As we talk to Hennon, we see people playing ping pong and waiting for this evening’s salsa dancing to begin. And he says the events and activities are really popular.

MARK: We do a lot of surveying out here. So, of the surveying we did in our pilot year, which wrapped in October, over 99% of our survey respondents gave it a positive review, with 90% giving it the highest. So, that being five out of five stars, essentially. And one of the things that I really enjoy is hearing from locals when they walk into the plaza. The wow or, you know, like, how much this place has changed. We also hear a lot of feedback from people visiting about how much they enjoy the free activities from other cities and other countries. :31

MELISSA: And as is the case with Downtown First Thursdays, Muni makes getting to Union Square very easy.

MARK: We’re very fortunate to live in a very transit-friendly and transit-forward city. I can say all of our employees take Muni or BART to come here to work every single day. I would guess a lot of our visitors do, as well. Probably one of our top five most commonly asked questions is, “Where can I buy tickets to the cable car or board the cable car?” You know, it’s wonderful that we are on top of the T Station, that’s a huge boon, as well. And we’re just two blocks away from Powell Station. So, we consistently say the plaza is extremely transit accessible. So, we encourage people to take transit. We also do plug the garage a little bit as an option for those who need to drive. I’d say that’s another added perk is the fact that we’re sitting on top of a public garage.

MELISSA: Downtown First Thursdays and all the activity in Union Square are just a couple of things that might be new to you if you haven’t been downtown in a while. There is a lot going on in the area, as we hear from San Francisco Office of Economic and Workforce Development Executive Director Anne Taupier. She says the best way to get a sense of how downtown is doing is…to go there.

ANNE TAUPIER. SF OFFICE OF ECONOMIC AND WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Take a stroll down Market Street. Head into the financial district. Head into the South of Market District. There's so much more happening than there has been in the past few years. We see lots of new restaurants opening. We see new storefronts opening. We've had 44 new storefronts open in our Union Square. You know, we've got Dandelion Chocolate. So, one of our, like, homegrown chocolate companies, you know, finding a place, through our Vacant to Vibrant program in our Union Square, um, and having been previously skeptical about moving to, to Union Square. Opened a storefront, made their numbers in the first four days for their first month and is now looking to expand their footprint in Union Square, uh, and has signed a long term lease. So, we're definitely seeing an uptick in businesses. We're seeing a reduction in crime. We've got a, you know, a significant, return of conventions to our Moscone Center. It's gotten to the point where I don't even really think about what's happening in San Francisco as recovery anymore. I really do think we're transitioning out of what is a recovery mode, even though I have, you know, I will acknowledge, I think all of us acknowledge in government that we still have a lot of work to do. But what we're really seeing is sort of the transitioning into what is the future of downtown. What does work look like in the future of downtown? But also, what are the different types of retail activities? What are the different things that attract people to our downtown? You know, we've hosted lots of events. We've, we see things like First Thursdays happening. We have Bhangra and Beats happening. Where everything the city has done over the past few years has really been about turning downtown into a neighborhood. How do we make it more of a 24-7, environment? You know, I talk about diversifying the economy because I'm an economic development director. And the way I look at it is we have to have all kinds of activations. We want people down there living and going to school and working, but also just meeting friends, going to our parks. You know, we have a, a lot more civic, just, participation and coordination and engagement in our downtown. That really is about turning it into more of a neighborhood, rather than a place where people just go to work.

MELISSA: Taupier adds that the downtown buzz isn’t just about events, activities and new storefronts.

ANNE: We are starting to see a shift in back to work, as well. And I think that AI is certainly driving a different work schedule in our downtown. It's something we saw, sort of, during the last tech boom, as well. Which is in those early stages of a specific technology, there's an expectation that in order to be part of that, the growth of, of that emerging industry, you need to be in the office. And I think that's impacting other industries around it. It certainly helps our restaurants, our businesses, our small businesses, our bars, our nightlife in our downtown to have people coming back into the office more often. And of course, it impacts our transit as well.

MELISSA: Speaking of that, we ask Taupier how important public transportation is to downtown, and she answers very plainly.

ANNE: There is no revitalization or recovery to our downtown without our Muni system carrying people back and forth to our downtown destinations. It's critical. We have great downtown access through our public transit system. I love riding the third street, you know, if I'm coming from Mission Bay, riding that Third Street rail, to the, to the base of Market Street. I mean, there's just so many different ways to get to downtown. I love running out of City Hall. I try not to be late for meetings, but I love when I've got a meeting downtown that I can just run down to the Civic Center and hop on Muni and be at my destination within a few minutes. And it's, it's something that we were, we certainly worked with MTA to talk about how are we making sure that we're getting the message out across the city that you can come back into the, into the downtown by riding our transit. There’s no way to think about recovery, uh, there's no way to think about downtown without us having a super strong, uh, municipal transit system.

MELISSA: So, are people actually taking Muni to downtown? We pose that question to Simon Hochberg, the SFMTA’s transit performance and technology manager…as we are walking and riding an F Market streetcar through the Financial District.

SIMON HOCHBERG, SFMTA TRANSIT PERFORMANCE AND TECHNOLOGY MANAGER: Downtown ridership recovery, we’re seeing it start to catch up to the rest of the system. The areas outside of downtown have recovered much faster, but downtown’s coming back, and we’re starting to see ridership pick up in downtown. In the rest of the system, ridership’s around, let’s say, 87% recovered. Downtown is about 67%, but downtown’s rate of how quickly it’s catching up? It’s going much faster than the rest of the city. Muni was such an integral part of the city and part of people’s lives, and we’re just noticing different types of trips. And there’s been all sorts of reasons to come downtown, and we’re starting to see that reflected in the ridership data, as well. The rest of the city is doing really well, and so there isn’t a ton of room to grow in the rest of city, But when it comes to the rail system, and when it comes to the lines that feed it, that’s where we’re seeing that rapid growth in recent months. 

MELISSA: Hochberg adds that ridership data across the city as a whole is very promising.

SIMON On weekdays, we’re seeing recovery hovering around 80%, um, of what it was before the pandemic. And on weekends, and this is really exciting news, in May we actually saw more riders on an average weekend day than we did before the pandemic. So, that’s over a hundred percent of where we were in 2019. The route that’s running away with it is the 49 Van Ness/Mission that, you know, runs through the Mission, uh, which is the highest ridership neighborhood in the city, and provides excellent service along that BRT corridor. The 22 Fillmore is also very, very recovered. I think that’s closer to 120% of what it was carrying before the pandemic. You know, neither of those routes are downtown-serving. As far as the ones that do serve the downtown area, we see really high ridership recovery on the 7 Haight. We see really high ridership recover on the 14R Mission Rapid going through the Mission. But really, I think the story is that for a lot of these bus routes, they’re doing really, really well carrying a lot of passengers and even exceeding where they were before the pandemic. :53

MELISSA: So, in a nutshell, it’s safe to say that people are coming back to Muni, including when they want or need to head downtown.

SIMON: Downtown isn’t the whole story in terms of Muni recovery. But when you look at Muni compared to a lot of these other metrics that we’re tracking, you know, things look pretty good. I think it’s definitely fair to say that as San Francisco recovers so does the ridership. And as the ridership recovers, so does San Francisco. :06

MELISSA: Riders choosing Muni is good news, and it’s up to us to make sure they can get where they need to go, and yes, that includes downtown San Francisco.

CHARLES DRANE, SFMTA CHIEF MAINTENANCE OFFICER: To stay safe, fast, reliable, uh, we need to do our maintenance. We need to do our inspections. The idea that the Market Street subway has been operating since 1978 with some of the original equipment; it’s because we do our maintenance that we’re able to, kinda, achieve, you know, the performance that we have, over nearly 50 years. So, to keep equipment running well, to keep systems reliable, maintenance is absolutely critical. 

MELISSA: That’s SFMTA Chief Maintenance Officer Charles Drane. He has joined us at the Union Square Market Muni Street Station to talk specifically about Fix-It Week…our program for planned periods of extended maintenance hours over the course of a week or weekend.

CHARLES: We will shut down the Market Street subway, for instance, three hours early, and it gives, uh, opportunities for teams to focus on critical repair and, kind of, bring in other utilities, uh, other city departments in some cases. But definitely, the SFMTA’s teams, like, shifting them from day shift to swing shift and bringing them and focusing them the hours of, uh, when we’re shut down. You know, on any given night, say in the subway, we may only be shut down for three hours. 21 hours of operating, three hours of work, and some of that work is just getting to the location in a confined space to do that. Picking up a couple of extra hours a night, you know, one week of this maybe quarterly throughout the year, uh, we’re able to double the amount of hours in the week. We’re able to, you know, achieve anywhere from 2500 to 3000 employee hours when we schedule programs so that we can get as much and maximize, uh, the efficiency as possible when we’re, when we’re working.
 
MELISSA: What are some of, what are some examples of the kind of work you’re able to do by maximizing those employee hours and by doubling the amount of time our staff can be in the subway?
 
CHARLES: Yes, we’ve done some major, uh, overhead, overhead wire, uh, replacements, major track work, fastener replacements, expanded inspections that we couldn’t otherwise do, you know, unless we had, you know, beyond three hours, lighting, wayside repairs, some critical testing. We do a lot of training. You know, being able to bring in, uh, some teams…say, for instance, we’re working with other groups that need access, contractors, to take that opportunity that just needs more than three hours allotted.

MELISSA: Drane tells us the Fix-It Week program is about seven years old but really hit its stride in 2022 and is still going strong.

CHARLES: I’m really proud to work with a team of innovators, problem solvers. And, uh, our own mayor just visited the subway, uh, with us on a tour. It was fantastic. I think he’s taken notice. I know the city has taken notice. There are so many things that really have contributed to our on-time performance, uh, you know, and our approval ratings at the SFMTA. I’d like to think that Fix It Week is a big part of that. I know that just, you know, really refreshing the equipment, like having new, uh, light rail vehicles, even the chance to reconstruct the schedule after we came the COVID, uh, period all had a contributing factor to really improving our service and, uh, and the things we do. But we do know through data that Fix It Week, as we’ve done them, has really reduced, uh, long-time delays. And it really increased on-time performance. We will take, you know, six weeks to plan an actual Fix It Week, and we’re looking across the entire system. So, you probably already realize that we’ve come out of Market Street subway, and we’ve been, you know, in places like Cameron Beach Yard. We’ve been out on the J line. We’ll be doing two Fix It weekends on the T Third line targeting, uh, platforms and a lot of the things on the corridor that need maintenance. And there’ll be an alternative service plan for that.

MELISSA: And there is great value to being able to work so efficiently.

CHARLES: It’s building trust with the community and showing up when you’re supposed to show up. So, that’s a schedule. That’s having a clean station. That’s, you know, hopping onto the train you’re expecting and making that trip, A to B, uh, exactly how you expected and repeating that. And so, maintenance and inspections and processes that our teams do behind the scenes really ensure that that happens.

MELISSA: We leave Union Square Market Street and head to the Embarcadero to talk a little more about working and commuting downtown. We’re joined there by Darcy Brown, the executive director of TMASF Connects.

DARCY BROWN, TMASF CONNECTS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: We are a transit management organization for 77 very tall office buildings downtown. In San Francisco when the buildings started to go up, the mayor and supervisors got nervous that there was gonna be traffic jams downtown like New York City, So, they passed a couple of ordinances that forces the buildings to submit a transit management plan to the city of they’re going to get people in the building and how they’re going to get them back out. And so, instead of doing it on an individual building by building basis, they decided to create an association, which is what TMASF Connects is. And so, we do all of the required code paperwork and submissions to the city on behalf of the buildings who are our members.

MELISSA: TMASF Connects has been doing this work for decades. In addition to submitting transit management plans, Brown says her organization supports its members every day in real time.

DARCY: If there’s any disruptions in the Muni schedule. If there are festivals or events downtown that would change routes. We are the ones that send out all of those alerts. We also keep them up to date on any fare changes, on any updates. It’s like, when went from, you know, having your card to being able to pay by credit card anywhere, things like that, which people wanna know. And also, the building managers. If there’s going to be disruptions downtown for traffic, that is going to affect their building and access to and from that building. So, what we provide to them is critical so that everything continues to run smoothly, and they are an asset to their tenants. 

MELISSA: And she echoes a sentiment we heard earlier in this episode.

DARCY: Muni, in particular, is critical to the city. I mean, San Francisco, I grew up here. San Francisco has always had, you know, electric streetcars and electric buses. I mean, we’ve been way ahead of everything for a very long time. Cable cars. We were way ahead of everybody. 

MELISSA: To wrap up the episode, we check back in with OEWD Executive Director Anne Taupier for some final thoughts about downtown San Francisco.

ANNE: Something I always say is like downtowns are romantic. You know, they write songs about downtown, right? There was a while when we were calling it the economic core, and I was like, there's no romance in “the economic core.” It's our downtown. And I, I really do think there's something that just sparks. There's a youthfulness and a joy and romance in being in a downtown. And we're starting to feel that happen. Also, I talk to people from all over the country and all over the world who want to know what we're doing that is making a difference in San Francisco. We talk to people all the time who, uh, who maybe had written San Francisco off because they had, they had a different understanding of what was happening in our downtown. And now those people are coming back, really, in droves. The sort of inbound of, “How can I invest? Who can you connect me to? What’s, what are the networking opportunities? How do I get my company, my business, my restaurant into downtown San Francisco?” So, it is, it is a significant shift. And it doesn't take away from our neighborhoods. Our neighborhoods are still amazing. But we have a waterfront downtown, like a lot of downtowns are romantic. Ours has spectacular views. We've got the Bay bridge lights on again with, you know, putting on a light show every single night. There's restaurants along the waterfront. There's bars along the waterfront. Every time I go down there, you know, you see people walking back and forth along the Embarcadero. Our entire waterfront is where people exercise and meet people and have lunch meetings. And we are a world class city. And I think we're actually expanding into just a really sort of global mecca of what it really means to be a vibrant downtown location. 

MELISSA: Thank you for joining us on Taken with Transportation. We’re a production of the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, and you can find the latest episodes at SFMTA.com-slash-Podcast, as well as Apple, Spotify, our YouTube channel or wherever you listen. I’m Melissa Culross, be well and travel well.