San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) launched the N Judah Transit & Safety Project in fall of 2025 to improve the N Judah route’s safety, speed and reliability. The project will move some of the N Judah’s Municipal Railway (Muni) stops between Church and Duboce and Ocean Beach. 

The project is part of SFMTA’s Muni Forward initiative, which has upgraded other Muni routes including the L Taraval, 5 Fulton, 14 Mission and 19 Polk. The project will be completed by 2030, and is currently in its community outreach phase, meaning that the project outreach team is collecting feedback from passengers.

Steve Boland is a transportation planner for Muni who is managing the N Judah project. “The N is something we’ve been looking at off and on for years and years,” he said in an interview with The Urban Legend. “It’s the busiest train line we have. … We’re just now finally getting around to really doing kind of a deep dive [on it].” According to a survey of 52 students conducted by the Urban Legend, 73% have ridden the N Judah. 

The project will reconsider the locations of the stops along the route. Project organizers are taking into account both the line’s speed and accessibility for elderly passengers and passengers with disabilities. 

“The N is kind of funny … because the stops are far apart when you’re on the subway, but then when you get up on the surface, then they’re pretty close together,” Boland said. “We’re trying to find that balance between far enough apart that you know the train is not constantly stopping, … [but not] so far apart that they feel inaccessible.” 

SFMTA’s project committee will look at street steepness surrounding individual stops in order to determine how far apart they should be. The SFMTA developed these guidelines in 2017 with Senior and Disability Action, a non-profit organization located in San Francisco.

For all Muni Forward projects, SFMTA implements “listening phases,” where project outreach teams ask communities along the route for feedback. “Given the N Judah’s high ridership — about 35,000 riders daily — we’re prioritizing an extensive listening phase,” said Nia Evans, an SFMTA public relations officer who is working on the N Judah project, in an interview with The Urban Legend. “We’re currently meeting with different community groups … from now until the end of the summer … to better understand the needs of the diverse communities along the route.”

Some of the past community outreach events for the N Judah project include tabling at Sunset Recreation Center’s Emergency Preparedness Fair on April 11 and at the Inner Sunset Farmers Market on April 19. SFMTA also has an open survey for passengers to fill out. “They’re actually taking the time to survey the people in the communities that the train serves,” said Naomi Kaplan ’28, who rides the N Judah. “And I think that’s going to be very helpful, because when they do update the route, it’ll be more helpful to the community, because they will have had a say.”

After receiving feedback about the N Judah project, the transportation planning team will work to implement community needs into the project. “We take everything that we heard from people, we take the thinking we’ve been doing so far, and we put that together,” Boland said. “Then, we have some proposals … [and] share them with the public. It’s a lot of back and forth.” 

The Muni Forward outreach team may visit Urban later this year. “We [typically] come during [students’] lunch period and talk more with students and get your feedback,” Evans said. “We usually have post-it notes and then a map of the route [where] students can … leave the post it note … [and] can comment.”

Community outreach events for the N Judah project will continue until the fall of 2026. “Our board of directors ultimately have to approve these things around the summer of 2027,” Boland said. “And then we could actually start making some improvements, so hopefully you could start seeing some meaningful changes in June and within the next couple years.”