The next 12 months could be somewhat transformation for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) as the department works to do a better job of providing service and communicating with customers about the availability of ground transportation.
The agency of the consolidated city-county of San Francisco is about to enter its 20th year. It was created in 1999 by amendment to the city charter, merging the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) with the Department of Parking and Traffic; and slightly later, the Taxi Commission. But a September 2017 survey of Muni users found that roughly one-third of those surveyed called scheduled service too infrequent and suggested that customers be able to better time their own arrivals at transit stops; that Muni rides took too long and called on SFMTA to suggest quicker alternative transportation and shorten waits; and that Muni did not arrive when predicted, suggesting improving predictions and eliminating so-called “ghost” buses.
Leo Levenson, the agency’s new director of finance and information technology, told Techwire that SFMTA will confront that issue in earnest early next year. Among the takeaways:
• SFMTA has extended the proposal due date two weeks to Jan. 18 in its RFP for a Next Generation Customer Information System — a new real-time vehicle arrival and service update system aimed at leveraging “the many innovations in technology and transportation that have occurred in the past 15 years.” It targets issues including developing a “more sophisticated and accurate” way to predict vehicle arrivals and generate customer information; implement “alternatively-powered signage” to expand information access; and reduce travel time by displaying nearby alternative routes with shorter waits on digital signs.
Project goals include boosting ridership through discretionary travel for the system, which includes buses, cable cars, paratransit, bike sharing and parking; and driving sustainable transportation. The implementation also aims to use data from mobile tech to better understand customer preference and thereby improve services and planning.
Contract award will likely be for an initial six-year term, including equipment installation plus five years of operation, with two optional five-year contract extensions. SFMTA’s contract with its current vendor expires July 31, and while it’s currently at work on negotiating an extension, the agency asked in its RFP that respondents be open to working with the existing vendor to ensure that service is uninterrupted.
“I think you can see from this RFP that they looked at what was it that the public most cared about," Levenson said. "We want to make sure that the signage is understandable to people, so it’s just the clearest way to convey information. And what’s really new is to show alternate travel alternatives.”
• SFMTA has had so-called “electric trolley buses” for more than 75 years, but committed in May to an all-electric fleet by 2035, meaning vehicles that rely only on battery power — and is looking at doing a pilot in the not-too-distant future. The idea is “a lot more complicated” than rolling out a Tesla-sized vehicle, Levenson said — because an all-electric bus has to be able to carry a suitable charge and a full passenger load up and down the city’s legendarily hilly streets.
SFMTA, which fields 859 buses, has the largest national fleet of electric trolley buses, powered by electricity from 163 miles of wires overhead and deployed in two groups in 2001 and 2015.
• The exact timing for an all-electric bus pilot is unclear but the idea is to stimulate competition among several electric bus designs to determine whether they’ll “work in the real world in San Francisco,” Levenson said, describing it as “an exciting opportunity for the companies to prove what their buses can do.”
• SFMTA’s new five-year Capital Improvement Program, approved Dec. 18 with no changes, and covering fiscal years 2019-2023, includes a $43.8 million communications and IT infrastructure spend, for a project to update paratransit scheduling software, buy new Blue Light Phones in support of emergency response; and support a “more efficient Muni Metro network.” The agency is doing pre-planning to replace time clocks and improve operational efficiency; and replace outdated communications with a new radio and data communications system. That’s just a portion of the overall IT spend, Levenson pointed out.
