Since I didn't edit it in time, I'll follow up with: There are entire areas of San Francisco you have to navigate bus transfers, bus transfers that were not

Since I didn't edit it in time, I'll follow up with: There are entire areas of San Francisco you have to navigate bus transfers, bus transfers that were not predictable, to get to. Bus transfers nearly always inflate trip time significantly and are subject to the unpredictable force of traffic. Oh come on. You've identified a great red herring. There are 9 Muni subway stations in San Francisco. The rest of the rail system operates in mixed traffic making it subject to the exact same delays and uncertainty that the buses deal with. In fact because there are no metro lines that run entirely underground (or are otherwise completely grade separated) delays on the street spill over into the subway service. The best example of this is the 4th and King intersection. SFMTA explicitly prioritizes automobile traffic. During peak hours it's often faster to walk to Market street than to wait in a crowded Muni train while automobile after automobile drives by. Every time you choose to drive you make things like this demonstrably worse. In fact if your only concept of the Muni Metro is the subway that means when you drive your car you're doing so in some of the most densely populated parts of San Francisco and creating the most negative impact. I can't speak to the NY MTA's standards but in San Francisco Muni's goal is that every resident lives within 1/4 mile of a Muni stop (see the SRTP I linked to in the sibling comment). What's not covered in that SRTP are the finer points. Stops are much closer together on steep grades, and specifically the stops are supposed to be served around 18 hours a day. The standards are a bit more relaxed after hours, but Muni does run 24x7. I lived within a stone's throw of an Owl (1-5AM bus routes) stop and it was great.