Nighttime Muni underground service will return soon

Remember all those times when you tried to walk into an underground Muni station after a night of drinking, only to be reminded that there hasn’t been nighttime underground service since last July? Well, you soon won’t have to suffer that indignity any more, the SFMTA says.

For nearly six months, the underground service has closed nightly 9:30 p.m. to allow for the replacement of the Blue Light Emergency Telephone and Radio System. Surface bus shuttles have substituted for your beloved J, K, L, M, N, and T lines. The construction project is set to be completed on January 22, so you can go back to your underground transit-riding ways.

For reasons I find a little hard to explain, most riders I know find the underground trains more tolerable, even though the N at commute time is far from a civilized affair. So what were the constructions crews doing all this time? According to the SFMTA, “the contractor for the blue light telephone replacement is using multiple crews to install cable hangers at various locations in the subway. At the same time, the radio replacement crews are installing the infrastructure for the new telephone system including cable hangers, light fixtures and telephones between West Portal and Embarcadero.”

Great for riders to have a better emergency communications system, but SFist and Hoodline pointed out that the construction will be complete in time for another big headache: the Super Bowl. Yeah, remember that whole thing about the “ugly” Muni wires? Even though the wires are here to stay, construction for “Super Bowl Village” and other event sites will start January 23, the day after underground services go back online, and will close off areas downtown and reroute transit nearby. Ugh.

Photo by @callihigh1999