Here's something you don't hear every day: good news about Muni.

Rail transit ridership in San Francisco posted strong gains in the first quarter of 2026, with Muni Metro averaging roughly 121,000 weekday riders in March — a nearly 25% jump from the same month last year, when the system was still limping along at about 97,000 daily riders. Saturday ridership actually exceeded pre-pandemic levels, averaging around 102,000 — slightly above where things stood in March 2019.

Let that sink in. Weekend Muni ridership is back to where it was before COVID turned San Francisco into a ghost town of Zoom calls and sweatpants.

Now, before anyone breaks out the champagne, weekday numbers are still about 26% below their 2019 peak of 163,000. The hybrid work era hasn't fully unwound, and it probably never will. But the trendline is undeniably moving in the right direction, and it's moving fast.

As one local put it: "Took Muni four times today for work and errands. It's awesome." That's the kind of endorsement the SFMTA should frame and hang in their offices — an actual rider who doesn't hate the experience.

What's driving the comeback? Some of it is probably organic — more people returning to offices, more tourists, more economic activity downtown. One SF resident speculated the recovery is "correlating with the rent pressure from people moving back to the city," which tracks. When more people live here, more people ride transit. Econ 101.

Here's where The Dissent perspective kicks in: ridership recovery is great, but it needs to translate into fiscal sustainability. Muni has burned through enormous amounts of federal pandemic relief money. The question isn't whether people are riding again — they clearly are. The question is whether the SFMTA can run a system that doesn't perpetually need a bailout.

More riders means more fare revenue. It also means the agency has less excuse to defer maintenance, skip accountability metrics, or cry poverty when budget season rolls around. Ridership is a gift. The question is whether City Hall treats it like one — or squanders the momentum with the same bloated bureaucracy that got us here.