Travel time on the J Church line’s surface route is less variable than the subway and didn’t change much during the pandemic.
Now, reliability has improved so that nearly nine out of 10 trains arrive without delay. Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, poor reliability on the J Church meant that only about three out of four trains were showing up within five minutes of the expected time. Nearly four out of five people (78 percent) said they would walk farther to a stop for more reliable service or a shorter trip overall, including 52 percent of people with disabilities and 58 percent of seniors. When SFMTA surveyed J Church customers in 2019, 63 percent said the wait for a train was too long. Additionally, J Church (and N Judah) trains heading into the tunnel at Duboce Avenue must cross the path of all outbound subway traffic, which can cause system-wide delays. When the J line did go in the subway, those trains used the Embarcadero switch back to turn around, which limited its availability for other trains. The shorter trains are necessary due to the limited length of platforms along portions of the surface route. Once in the subway, the J’s lower-capacity one-car trains are unable to ease crowding at peak hours. In addition to delays, there are other drawbacks to having the J Church Line in the subway. In addition, to enable the pilot, SFMTA provided temporary accessibility and pedestrian safety upgrades at an intersection that is on the city’s High-Injury Network - those San Francisco streets that have the highest severe and fatal collisions.
Keeping it as a surface-only route should improve the J Church’s reliability and frequency, increase Muni Metro subway performance and reduce crowding. The J Church has historically had the lowest ridership of any Muni Metro line. This routing also allows SFMTA to address crowding and delays in the Muni Metro subway that plagued the system for decades. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) J Church returned in December 2020 as a surface-only route, much like its earliest predecessor, which opened in 1917.Īlthough the J Church travelled as far as the Embarcadero for more than 100 years, establishing Duboce Avenue as the terminal for this route as a test case was the result of careful analysis undertaken to improve the line’s poor reliability.
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