SAN FRANCISCO—After three days of being accessed, the light rail service will be shut down again due to an individual testing positive for COVID-19, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency announced on Tuesday, August 25. An immediate repair also needed to be completed for an overhead electrical line which gives power to the mini light rail vehicles.
Before the the three days of the light rail service being used, it was suspended for five months because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency sent San Francisco News their press release that stated:
“First, yesterday evening the SFMTA learned that one of the employees who works on the real- time deployment of Muni trains and buses has tested positive for COVID-19. The SFMTA’s contact tracing and human resources support team are coordinating with that employee and their colleagues.
Second, a critical component of the overhead infrastructure has failed twice in the last few days and a fix has been identified that we must implement before bringing the Metro back fully again.”
SFMTA is limited with their employees and after one of the workers tested positive for COVID-19, they were limited on staff who perform critical roles for the specialized mission.
Jeffery Tumlin, Director of Transportation, issued the following tweet, “Operations staff stayed up all night rebuilding the transit system, Understandably, NexBus isn’t yet working on several lines, and there are service gaps and headway problems as operators are reassigned this morning.”
Tumlin also apologized on Twitter for the unacceptable service over the weekend.
“Muni staff are working hard to minimize bus frequency impacts while allocating buses to all the former rail lines as follows:
- J Church: Balboa to Church and Market streets approximately every 12 minutes
- K Ingleside: Balboa to Embarcadero approximately every 15 minutes
- L Taraval (all buses): Zoo to Embarcadero approximately every 15 minutes
- N Judah: Ocean Beach to 4thand King approximately every 10 minutes
- T Third and M Ocean View (interlined): Sunnydale to Balboa Park approximately every 12 minutes.”
Muni has lost 30-40 percent of Muni service and 80 percent of its capacity which now puts Muni in $200 million hole based on the operating budget.
