SAN FRANCISCO (KGO) — SFMTA announced the new 14 Mission Customer Experience pilot program on Monday.
The agency’s transit director Brent Jones says it’s possible thanks to a partnership with the charity Bloomberg Philanthropies.
“This pilot is geared towards meeting our customers where they’re at,” Jones said.
As a part of the program, SFMTA will expand their popular ambassador program to have more staff riding on the 14 Mission line, which runs from the Ferry Building and through the Mission to the city’s southern border.
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There will also be more cleaning crews stationed on the route – including some on buses to try and make them as spotless as possible for passengers.
Those changes and more are popular among people like Dylan Fabris of the San Francisco Transit Riders advocacy group.
“This is a great way to show transit riders that the agency is looking out for them and going the distance to try and make things better,” Fabris said.
The pilot also proving to be a popular idea with many bus drivers on that route, too.
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Mel Sanders tells us he thinks the extra ambassadors will help him do his job better.
“Because they can do the crowd control and everything, while we concentrate on making sure we move in a safe manner,” he said.
The pilot program is set to end on October 10, but SFMTA says after that date passes, they plan on taking all of the feedback they get and possibly implementing permanent changes.
Like other Bay Area transit agencies, SFMTA is facing financial crisis with a budget deficit in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
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To close that gap, SFMTA is hoping voters will pass two transportation funding measures during next year’s elections.
Fabris says he thinks pilot programs like this one, along with other improvements, make voters more likely to say yes to those desperately needed measures.
“People might not do that if they don’t see a reason to. And for the agency to be proactively, even before that money comes in, to be putting in improvements, I think that’s a good sign of things to come,” Fabris said.
SFMTA says 14 Mission remains one of their busiest routes in the city.
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