Saturday, September 23

Have You Checked Out the Blue Club Lights on SF Muni Yet?

They’re *totally* giving off major Virgin America energy, indeed.

SF’s fleet of public transit vehicles is getting updated (and, in many cases, electrified). Last month, the first of SFMTA’s 30 new, air-conditioned, and far more reliable buses entered service on Saturday, September 10th.

“You can expect to see [these updated buses] roll out on routes like the 35, 36, 37, 39, 66, and 67 over the coming months,” Alexander Hirji, one of the members of SFMTA’s Youth Transportation Advisory Board, wrote in a tweet.

But what wasn’t overtly clear at that time was that these new buses also feature blue lighting that wouldn’t look out of place at a Castro bar.

Axios San Francisco was the first to publish the hat tip from Chris Arvin — SF’s beloved non-binary transit enthusiast who has their pulse on the public transportation Zeitgeist. According to the outlet, the lights are unable to change colors, per an SFMTA spokesperson; they do, however, change to a more familiar white glow at stops when riders are exiting and entering.

Arvin was riding the 37 Corbett line — which features one of SFMTA’s new, smaller buses that are significantly more modern than the slightly larger iterations they replace on its “mini Muni fleet”— when they took the picture. They were also quick to note in the comments that this vibrant photograph was unedited.

In the tweets response, user [at]macsquirelera noted that some of Pittsburgh Regional Transit’s buses shine a similar vibe: “Pittsburgh has the same color on some of their buses .”

Currently, eight of the thirty of these smol buses are running in San Francisco; the rest of these buses will be released into the wild by the end of 2023.

Arvin wrote in his now-viral tweet that these buses give us the “closest you can get to the Virgin America vibe in 2022.” No lies detected. No notes.

Feature Image: Courtesy of Twitter via [at]chrisarvinsf

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