Five Muni Lines We Want Reinstated

You know how they say, ‘You don’t know what you got, til it’s gone?’ Light a votive and hold your loved ones close tonight, for the 76X was once among us. 

The 76X-Marin Headlands Express was a jewel of a route, chronically late and underappreciated throughout its life. Before SFMTA revamped the route, the bus reportedly ran only once every 90 minutes. Born during America’s bicentennial year, the original line ran from 1976 to 2012. The 76 adopted the express moniker that November. 

Prior to COVID, this legend carted SF’s commonfolk over the Golden Gate Bridge and back for ⅓ of bridge toll. It provided handy access to Marin in those colder months, when the bridge closes to pedestrians after sunset. The 76X allowed one to play tourist from the safety of public transit into the unspoilt hinterlands of southern Marin County. Though Golden Gate Transit, which takes Clipper cards, can ferry you across via route 130, its reach is comparatively limited. 

I remember boarding it believing it was the 49 (the amount of pot I smoked in 2012 is obscene). The 47-Van Ness was rare in its orientation. Its C-shaped route originated at Fisherman’s Wharf, twinning the 49 until after Van Ness crosses Market. It zig-zagged through Soma, passing what became my favorite gay bars on its way to the CalTrain depot. In 2012, I didn’t realize something was off until the “49” went hopping down 11th Street. 

Costco shoppers up and down the Van Ness corridor would be delighted to see the return of the 47-Van Ness. However, with radio silence from Muni about the reinstatement of lines like the 47 and 76X, it seems unlikely. San Francisco’s bygone Muni routes, mostly those lost during COVID lockdown, exist in a state of limbo if they exist at all. 

The 2-Clement was one of San Francisco’s oldest Muni routes. Today, it hardly resembles itself, a shell of its former glory like a lame ballerina or botched circumcision. Real ones know it as a locals-only ride, for FiDi suits and their techie successors, cart-pushing Asian grandmas, chatty high-schoolers. The 2-Clement cut expertly between the busier 1-California and 38-Geary lines, acting as a sort of relief valve for both. 

The bus once ran from Ferry Plaza to 33rd & Balboa, spanning Clement, Sutter, and Post Streets, and California where “necessary.” But it used to travel even further, reaching Ocean Beach where Playland once stood. A reroute in the fifties pushed the terminus more inland, and in 2008, Muni cut service to the Outer Richmond. The 2, for its short life thereafter, turned its back on residents of outer Clement at Park Presidio Boulevard. 

Do you understand I once had direct access to not-overpriced dim sum? Now I have to squeeze onto the 38, put up with that, then walk up from Geary Avenue & 6th. Oh Muni route 2, I do miss you. At one of Muni’s few remaining benches, I’ll eat shrimp dumplings and remember those old motorcoaches, their lightning bug-green destination signs looming through the fog. 

Though I never rode the 3-Jackson myself, it appears to be the footprint of today’s 2-Sutter line. This was one of Muni’s shorter routes, a sickle-shaped line from Pacific Heights to the Financial District. I probably didn't ride it because it connected two neighborhoods my scrubby art-school ass had no business being in. It used to be the only reason I came to San Francisco was to hook up with my then-boyfriend. The 3-Jackson wouldn’t have gotten me laid, stoned, and cuddly, not necessarily in that order (thank you, 1 and 38). But some residents (don’t ask me who, I’ve never seen ‘em) apparently want this line reinstated enough to pester SFMTA.

A bus I always saw around but never took, the 10-Townsend would’ve gotten me to CCA-SF from Montgomery BART. I rode the more-frequent 22-Fillmore from 16th St. BART instead. Apparently, I made the right call. The 10 wasn’t very reliable. "Ah, the wonderful 10," Muni rider Sarah Duggan told SFGATE in 2012. “When it shows up, it is great—it gets me right to work. When it shows up."

The 10-Townsend’s purported patchy service sounds a lot like my mistrust of the 27-Bryant. My own maxim says, “Ah, the 27-Bryant. Never there when you need it, always there when you don’t.” I relied on it for two years to get me to work. It’s the reason I got a warning about my consistent tardiness. The 27 was either late or it didn’t show up at all.

Reading complaints about Muni’s “bad” service in 2012, it makes me laugh. If only we knew how good we had it. Now, more than a decade after the fact, 2012-level public transportation sounds awesome. Wait times felt shorter, transfers quicker, blocks between your stop and destination a couple less than what they are now. 

Maybe it’s the minute-to-minuteness of youth, the immediacy of now this and what next? Or what if smoother, less fragmented, better public transit equates to feeling plugged in? We want to turn our inertia into movement. Movement generates momentum. It makes good days great and bad ones tolerable. In 2012, I wasn’t just younger. I wasn’t inconvenienced by shitty scheduling and staccato bus transfers. I felt delivered from one lively moment to the next. 

Gaps in today’s Muni routes cost precious momentum. SFMTA, restore the city’s momentum by reviving some dearly-missed Muni lines.