The city's metrics look better. The city doesn't feel better.
The city's metrics look better. The city doesn't feel better.
San Francisco is having a good quarter — if you only read the press releases. Muni satisfaction is at record highs. Emergency response times are improving. The numbers are real.
The complaints are also real. Drug 911 calls have doubled. The most violent week in three months just happened. And Muni riders are filing pass-up complaints 34% faster than last month.
This week's data is a study in the gap between what the city measures and what residents actually experience.
Muni Says Riders Love It. Bayview and North Beach Riders Are Filing Pass-Up Complaints.
Muni's grades are up. Buses still skip stops.
Muni is celebrating record satisfaction scores. Meanwhile, 323 pass-up complaints hit the 311 system in just the first 8 days of April. That's a 34% jump from the same stretch in March.
Pass-ups — when a bus skips your stop entirely — are the kind of thing that makes you late to work and furious at the city. They don't always show up in satisfaction surveys. They show up in 311.
Bayview and North Beach riders are filing the most. Both neighborhoods have limited transit alternatives.
Drug 911 Calls Have More Than Doubled Since 2024. The Tenderloin Isn't the Only Story.
Drug 911 calls have doubled since last year.
San Francisco logged 2,937 drug-related 911 calls through April 9 — up 37% from 2,144 in the same period last year. Monthly data shows calls have roughly doubled from around 400 per month.
This isn't just a Tenderloin story. The calls are spreading into neighborhoods that haven't historically driven this number. That matters for how the city deploys resources.
More 911 calls means more strain on dispatch, more pressure on paramedics, and more competition for emergency response time citywide.
The Mission Had 39 Violent Incidents in One Week This March
SF's most violent week in three months just happened.
The week of March 16–22 logged 191 violent incidents citywide — up 34% from the 12-week average. It was the worst week for violence in three months.
The Mission led all neighborhoods with 39 incidents. The Tenderloin followed with 34. These aren't abstract statistics — they're the blocks where people walk to BART, pick up kids, and run errands.
A single bad week doesn't make a trend. But a 34% spike above a 12-week average is worth watching closely.
SF's Emergency System Had Its Best March in Two Years. Here's the Catch.
Emergency response actually improved. Here's the catch.
Priority A 911 calls — the life-threatening ones — hit 4,564 in March 2026. That's the lowest monthly total in 27 months of data. Paramedic response times improved to 4.95 minutes.
This is genuinely good news. Faster response times save lives, and fewer Priority A calls could mean prevention is working somewhere in the system.
The catch: drug 911 calls are doubling at the same time. The emergency system is performing better under pressure that's still growing.
The Compliment Hotline Nobody Knew About
There's a Muni compliment hotline. Almost nobody uses it.
Buried in San Francisco's 311 system is a category called "Muni Employee Feedback: praise_employee." It is, functionally, a compliment hotline for bus drivers. It exists. People can use it.
Almost nobody does. In a system that logs thousands of complaints a month, the praise queue is a ghost town. That asymmetry tells you something about how residents relate to city services right now.
It's also just a genuinely strange thing to discover in a municipal database at 11pm.
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