San Francisco Muni Map

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Your SF Muni Map experience will be a more pleasant and successful one if you familiarize yourself with the following caveats....

The Trip Planner's itinerary-generating algorithm can be off sometimes.
Getting strange itinerary recommendations? The trip planner for the SF Muni Map uses an engine provided by the TakeTransit Trip Planner, a nifty little itinerary recommender. It's not perfect, though, and Muni readily concedes that it's a work-in-progress that may contain inaccurate data and bugs. (Here's their full page of caveats.) For example, you may discover that it doesn't recognize a seemingly obvious intersection (e.g., "powell & market"), or that it sometimes sends you to the numbered avenues instead of the numbered streets (surprise!). Our hope is that the visualizations we provide will help you identify issues and work through the confusion, so you can revise or re-route your trip plans as needed.

Your trip must start & end within the borders of San Francisco.
The original scope of the SF Muni Map prototype was strictly Muni-centric (as the name would suggest), although as of June 4, 2003, you may now view trips that involve BART segments as well (whoopeee!!). Having said that, your itinerary must start and end within the borders of San Francisco proper, which may cause problems for riders who wish to enter address points in Daly City, Marin, or Treasure Island. Portions of the following Muni lines are impacted by this limitation: 54, 28, 28L, 14, 14L, 14X, 9, 9AX, 108, and 76. (This also impacts many BART stations, including Daly City and all East Bay stations.) If your Muni trip ventures just outside the San Francisco city limits, and Plan a Trip returns an error, you may still find helpful information either using the Explore the Muni Map feature or reviewing Muni Line Info pages. Sorry, dear visitors -- we hate to limit your options, but there were only so many hours in the semester. Perhaps, one day, this will be a more extensive multi-system tool. (That's our dream, at least, but we digress....)

A high-speed Internet connection will vastly improve your experience.
The SF Muni Map prototype contains "movie" files created in Macromedia Flash MX that employ high-resolution map files. While we advocate strongly in our final report that this approach is not the ideal -- a better alternative would be to use maps optimized for the online (not print) medium, offering more flexibility to add or remove detail, etc. -- we used map files downloaded from the SF Muni website, in consideration of project scope and time. We apologize to dial-up users, who will experience particularly slow loads for "Explore the Muni Map" and the "Plan a Trip" itinerary results page. Having said this, we hope you agree it's well worth the wait!

Some Muni OWL line overlays are still not fully implemented.
In your SF Muni Map explorations, you may notice the occasional map with a missing line overlay. The main challenge is untangling some confusing information about OWL line service, but we've got the team of hamsters working overtime to drop those in ASAP. They shold be there shortly -- and we thank you for your patience.

Are you using Internet Explorer 5.5?
Due to time constraints, this site was developed for IE5.5. It may work on other browsers or other versions of IE (hey, stranger things have been known to happen), but if so it's by total freak accident.

Are cookies enabled in your browser?
We know, we hate them too. But this site uses browser "cookies" to remember information between pages and maintain consistent state while you navigate. If your browser does not accept cookies, you will experience performance issues. To enable cookies on IE5, go to your menu bar and choose Tools > Internet Options > Security tab and press the "Custom Level..." button. Under "Cookies" in the scrolling list, there is a catagory labeled "Allow per-session cookies (not stored)". Select the "Enable" option for this category. You may also choose to enable cookies stored on your computer (previous section), but that's your call.

Is Javascript enabled in your browser?
We know, we hate it too. But this site uses Javascript, so you must enable it in IE5. To do this, go to your menu bar and choose Tools > Internet Options > Security tab and press the "Custom Level..." button. Under "Scripting" in the scrolling list, there is a catagory labeled "Active scripting". Select the "Enable" option for this catagory.

Do you have the latest Flash Player installed on your browser?
Most or all of the functionality in our Flash movies may work in earlier versions, but why not upgrade anyway? You'll be especially glad you did if all you see are curious grey boxes where the "Interactive Route Map" and "Explore the SF Muni Map" movie files should be. Last we checked, version 6 is the latest and greatest, and can be downloaded and installed from Macromedia's Flash Player download center.

Is your Interactive Route Map showing the most up-to-date itinerary?
Occasionally, we've witnessed caching problems with the .swf files on this site. If you suspect this is a problem you're experiencing, go to Tools > Internet Options > General tab, and press the "Settings..." button in the "Temporary Internet files" section of this dialog box. At the very top, click the radio button marked "Every visit to the page."

Were you aware that this is an academic project prototype?
Sometimes it breaks. D'OHH! We hate when that happens.