How to Navigate Public Transportation in San Francisco Like a Pro!

hey guys it's alana and welcome back to my channel are you planning on visiting san francisco soon or maybe you're moving to san francisco and you don't have a car and you have no idea how to get around this city without a car well you're in luck because this video is all about how to take public transportation here in san francisco i originally wanted to do this video outside of a bart station or a muni station but the air quality has been horrible in the bay area lately so unfortunately i kind of have to resort to my bedroom without further ado if you want to learn more about how to take public transportation and navigate sf without a car then let's go ahead and get started [Music] so there are nine different methods of public transportation that you can take in san francisco and i'm going to briefly cover them all and how to use them before we get into that i want to share one important thing that you must have with you in order to use all of the wonderful public transportation alawal the public transportation isn't always that wonderful but you get what i mean in order to ride on any kind of vehicle or method of public transportation in san francisco or any other form of public transportation the bay area is a clipper card which is this beautiful blue card right here it's an all-in-one transit card for any form of bay area public transportation even if you're not in san francisco you could use your clipper card for the bus system in oakland if you wanted to so in order to get your hands on a clipper card you can go to any kiosk in any of the bartram uni stations it will cost you about three dollars just to get this piece of plastic and then you can start adding funds on it or even passes what's great about the clipper card is that it is reusable you can save it for the next time that you want to come back and visit it never expires so if you plan on going back to san francisco hang on to this because you never know when you may need it again so as i mentioned you can get these in uh bart station and muni station i believe you can get them in walgreens as well and basically this is your golden ticket to accessing all of the public transportation in the bay area now that you have your golden ticket ready to go let's talk about some of the forms of public transportation that san francisco has to offer starting off with muni so muni owns the bus system the streetcar system and the metro system and the cable car system all in san francisco i'm going to talk about the cable car separately so let's group the buses the streetcars and the metro rail all together in one in order to take the boss streetcar or metro it costs 250 if you use a clipper card and that's why i recommend you use a clipper card because sometimes you can save a little bit of money if you use it but if you only have cash and you want to pay with cash to take the bus or the metrorail it's going to cost three dollars and it has to be exact change so if you were to ride the bus one way you would need to have cash on you and be prepared to put it in the money slot and then the bus operator will hand you a transfer ticket make sure you hang on to that because you can use that to transfer to the next muni line that you want to get on if you have to take two different kinds of public transportation to get to your destination that transfer ticket does last 90 minutes and if you do decide to use cash value with your clipper card that 90 minute time limit also applies as well but if you don't want to add cash value onto your card there are a couple different passes that you can purchase so you can get unlimited tags and if you live in san francisco i really recommend you get a muni pass when you are trying to commute to work and you heavily rely on muni most people do rely on muni to get to work before covet happened i relied on uni to get to work and i would pay for the m pass which is 81. it gives you unlimited tags for any muni transportation whether it's the bus the light rail the streetcars or the cable car if you take any of those on a daily basis i highly recommend you get that pass the other muni pass that you can get is the a pass this not only will give you unlimited rides in san francisco with muni but it'll also give you unlimited bart rides within san francisco only let's say you live in san francisco and you commute to work because you live in the mission or balboa park area and you have to take it to montgomery station from balboa park to montgomery station instead of paying bart fare or cash value you will have an unlimited tab and you can take bart as many times as you want in san francisco which is pretty cool i highly recommend that you purchase one of those if you take muni often if you are visiting san francisco there's another fun option for you so san francisco has a one day a three day and a seven day muni pass that you can purchase depending on how long you are staying in san francisco for and you will get unlimited muni access within those days you can get a paper card but it's just gonna be easier if you have a clipper card and you can basically buy those passes at a muni kiosk so let's talk about the muni kiosk if you remember my video where i was showing you how much i spend in a week in san francisco you will see how i was navigating the muni kiosk in church station it's really easy to use you tap your clipper card where it has this clipper card topper and then you will determine if you want to put cash value on it or if you want to reload a new pass so i show you how i reload the pass for the next month and then you tap the card again so the funds go on to the card it's very simple to navigate and all the fare and pass options are onto the kiosk and it does give you pretty good instructions on this screen oh and one other thing that i want to know before we wrap up the muni thing is when you are taking a bus or the streetcar whatever it is make sure you tap your clipper card on the little tracker thing and then your ride will be counted for you can also purchase muni on your phone and have your pass on your phone i choose not to do that i think that's more complicated but another great resource that you can use in order to keep track of when muni buses and streetcars are coming is to download the muni watch app it will give you a time tracker of when the next bus is coming make sure that you have that on your phone because it is a life-saving app that will help you not waste time standing around wondering when the next bus is going to come so that's a really great thing to download the last thing is if you want to know how to get to point a to point b google maps does a really good job of showing you different bus lines to take and where the stops are and then it'll tell you where you need to transfer if you have to take more than one form of public transportation so use the google maps app to kind of help you understand which buses you need to take to get to each destination and then download the muni watch app so you know when the next bus is coming to see if it's even worth it but i hope that gives you a better understanding on how to use muni because it is the most common method of public transportation that is used in san francisco so let's talk about the cable car this is also operated by muni now i will say because of kobit 19 the cable car has temporarily suspended operations but let's say you're watching this video and kovit is done and over with and you want to take the cable car this is what you need to know if you're gonna take the cable car just know that it's very expensive it cost eight dollars one way to ride the cable car if you have a clipper card and you had that muni pass then you're fine but if you don't have that make sure you have the cash value on your clipper card or be prepared to pay upfront with cash or have a pre-purchase ticket at a cable car kiosk so you can ride the cable car i will say that the cable car is really just a tourist thing it's not really a reliable form of public transportation to begin with i think the only thing that makes a cable car useful for is if you're trying to get from downtown to the war but other than that i don't really recommend using it as a way to get around this city because it's really not that reliable and it takes forever to get on because there's always long lines to ride the cable car because it is a big tourist thing but it is something you should experience at least once in your lifetime if you are living in san francisco if you are visiting san francisco it is a really cool thing to do and it is fun to ride it and another thing is if you want to ride the cable car i do not recommend that you wait at the beginning and end stops because you'll be standing in that line forever so i absolutely do not recommend waiting for the cable car powell and marker or at any of the stops at the wharf because it's going to be such a really long line i really recommend that you wait at intersections such as sacramento and pal i think that is a cross intersection i could be wrong that's a really great way to hop on the cable car without waiting in a long line so keep that in mind before you get on a cable car so now that you know a little bit more about the cable car let's talk about another commonly used method of public transportation in san francisco and that is bart ah good old bart i got a love hate relationship with bart bart stands for bay area rapid transit this is pretty much the bay area subway system the lines are a lot smaller than new york subway system but it is a good way to get around the bay area especially if you need to get to the east bay and you don't have a car so there are no specific bart passes that you can purchase unless if you have that a pass just remember that only lets you use bart within san francisco it will not work if you want to get to the east bay or the airport which means that you will need to have cash value on your card at all the bart stations there are many kiosks that you can use to reload cash on to your clipper card you're wondering how much money you need to put on your card you're in luck because every single kiosk will show you a fair chart from every stop and how much it's going to cost so let's say you need to go to the san francisco airport from embarcadero station i don't know the exact fare off the top of my head one way but it will tell you from the starting point to the end point so if you're currently in embarcadero station look at the fair for what it says it's going to be for the san francisco airport and that will tell you how much money you need to load on your car for either a one-way or a round trip it's incredibly useful and it will save you so much time and trying to calculate how much money you need so once you've loaded your money up onto your clipper card all you need to do is basically walk towards the little what is the little roller gate things to allow you to go down onto the platform you just tag your clipper card and the little gates will open up and then you can walk through it's pretty easy to get on and off bart and then when you get off our you'll tag your card again and then it will do the full charge of that trip next form of public transportation in san francisco is very underrated and one that most people that feel like don't really know about it really only applies to a small group of people and that is the presidio go shuttle so what's great about this is that it is free so if you live in the presidio and you work downtown there's a free shuttle that departs every 30 minutes from all the different stops and it will run through the presidio through the marina all the way to downtown san francisco to help you get to work or wherever you need to do people in the presidio love this because they save money on their daily commute and it's just a very convenient thing to have because the presidio is way out there and while there are a couple bus lines that go through the presidio there aren't really many bus lines that will take you from the presidio to downtown so this is an excellent excellent form of public transportation that you can take if you want to get from the presidio to the marina to downtown it's free it departs every 30 minutes from all the stops and it's still running under coven i've only taken the presidio go shuttle once in my life but i can tell you that it's worth it so this is my favorite form of public transportation and those are the fairies there are a couple of different fairies that you can use in the bay area but let's say you don't have a car and you want to get to sausalito you can take a ferry from the fairy building and i believe it costs 12 dollars one way so the ferry is pretty expensive but it's a 15 minute ride across the bay it's very relaxing they serve food and drinks on board so that's kind of cool it's just a very peaceful method of transportation so i rarely go to moraine in sausalito but when i do i take the ferry and it's a great trip to enjoy so just know that it does count as public transportation a lot of people from the east bay and vallejo and deep marin like larksburg there are ferry stations over there where they can commute to the city by theory i wouldn't mind that commute it's very relaxing and peaceful so keep that in mind if you ever want another form of public transportation to use so this next form of public transportation isn't one that i've actually used before but it's very useful if you don't have a car and you also want to get to marin but just know that your commute is going to be very long and that is the golden gate transit there are a couple stops around downtown and nob hill area that you can hop on and off to use this i don't really recommend using the ggt if you're trying to commute within san francisco this is really meant for the people who commute from marin to san francisco or from san francisco to marin again i haven't really done much research on the gg team and i've also never written it before but i will at least look up the fair for you on how much each trip is one way and put it here so you have an idea on how much it costs and then the last form of public transportation that people use in san francisco is the cal train so basically the cal train is a commuter train that runs from san francisco all the way into the deep south bay area such as san jose and gilroy there's been some talk that they may shut down cal train i don't know if that's still planning on happening or not since ridership has decreased due to covet i hope it doesn't go away just because that's just gonna bring even more traffic on to the roads of san francisco which doesn't need to happen i really like how a train i think caltrain is very nice and it's really relaxing to ride i only take caltrain every now and then if i have to go to the south bay because i don't have a car and that is honestly the best way to use caltrain is if you need to go to the south bay caltrain is very expensive so when you take caltrain each stop is paid by a zone and the more zones that you cross on your ride the more money you have to pay there is a fair chart listed online and i'll have it up here on the screen so you can kind of get an idea of what that looks like just know it is really expensive but it is reliable for public transportation if you are trying to commute from san francisco to the south bay and vice versa if you do decide to use your clipper card for the keller train be very careful because it's so easy to forget to tap on and off so before you hop on the train make sure you tap at a station before you hop on the train because the conductor will be scanning your clipper card and if their little scanner thing gives you a very negative sounding buzzing they're gonna make you get off the train quickly run into a little tapper thing and you're gonna have to run right back on and you gotta be quick because if you don't run then you're gonna miss the train and you're gonna have to wait for the next one and that could take who knows how long make sure you do not forget to tap on before you get on the train and then also when you get off the train make sure you tap again because if you forget to tap you're gonna get charged up until the trains last stop and you're gonna end up paying more money than you'd like so you got to be very mindful of your tapping on and off when taking the cal train if you're using your clipper card so just a little fun fact for you those are all the nine methods of public transportation in san francisco that you can take you live in the bay area now which one do you commonly take let me know down below or i'd like to know if you use public transportation in your own city is it really good is it really bad comment down below and let me know guys if you enjoyed this video and you thought it was helpful make sure you give it a thumbs up and i will see you in my next video bye you

Channel: Ilana Pinsky

Views: 74,096

Keywords: Ilana Pinsky, How to Navigate Public Transportation in San Francisco Like a Pro!, san francisco public transportation, public transportation in san francisco, BART, MUNI, San francisco cable car, san francisco public transit, bay area public transportation, getting around san francisco without a car

Id: oQM3kvBiQd4

Length: 16min 38sec (998 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 14 2020