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Muni Presidio Division

Trolley yard

Muni Presidio Division (trolley yard, run by the Municipal Transportation Agency): $1.5B budgeted for its department in FY2025, 6,381 employees on the payroll, 7 city documents at the Internet Archive, every figure linked to its source. Muni's Presidio Division at 949 Presidio Avenue has faced the same question for half a century: expand it, or move it. A 1975 regional transit study proposed six new or rebuilt divisions at a capital cost of $17.3 million, with Presidio to get improved trolley-coach accommodation and modernised Muni general offices; the same study notes that the central radio control room here housed the railway's main supervisory control facilities. In 1978 the Public Utilities Commission heard that Muni staff had opted to enlarge Presidio for both bus maintenance and office space instead of acquiring the U.S. Steel property — and then that a third alternative had emerged within days, involving underground facilities leased back from the federal government at the beach. The Budget Analyst's 1996 management audit of Muni put the question flatly: should the Presidio Division trolley facility be expanded at 949 Presidio, or relocated to free the site for revenue-generating development? Meanwhile the yard kept working. The commission approved a $22,019 modification to the division's heating and ventilation contract in 1988 and put shop-door rehabilitation out to bid; in 2001 an assembly room was converted, at $614,000, into an electronics shop for testing the new ETI trolley buses; and recent permits cover bus lifts, roll-up doors and an accessible restroom. Source: SF Controller open data and the Internet Archive.

Muni Presidio DivisionWikimedia Commons · Pi.1415926535 · CC BY-SA 4.0
Grounded summary

Muni's Presidio Division at 949 Presidio Avenue has faced the same question for half a century: expand it, or move it. A 1975 regional transit study proposed six new or rebuilt divisions at a capital cost of $17.3 million, with Presidio to get improved trolley-coach accommodation and modernised Muni general offices; the same study notes that the central radio control room here housed the railway's main supervisory control facilities. In 1978 the Public Utilities Commission heard that Muni staff had opted to enlarge Presidio for both bus maintenance and office space instead of acquiring the U.S. Steel property — and then that a third alternative had emerged within days, involving underground facilities leased back from the federal government at the beach. The Budget Analyst's 1996 management audit of Muni put the question flatly: should the Presidio Division trolley facility be expanded at 949 Presidio, or relocated to free the site for revenue-generating development? Meanwhile the yard kept working. The commission approved a $22,019 modification to the division's heating and ventilation contract in 1988 and put shop-door rehabilitation out to bid; in 2001 an assembly room was converted, at $614,000, into an electronics shop for testing the new ETI trolley buses; and recent permits cover bus lifts, roll-up doors and an accessible restroom.

Built from: 7 archive documents, city budget data — no outside knowledge added.

949 Presidio Ave · City-owned · 158,381 sq ft · parcel 1072001 · District 2 · City Facilities registry

What public money did here

No city spending is recorded against this place by name. San Francisco publishes contracts, bond items and vendor payments at project level, and none of them names this site — so there is no figure to show, rather than a figure of zero.

Run by the Municipal Transportation Agency (Muni), whose whole-department budget is $1.5B across 6,381 staff (FY2025) — citywide, not this place’s own. The City does not publish a running cost per building.

In the archive

5 procedural records — minutes, agendas, calendars — not listed.

Same kind