Both Muni and Caltrain will offer free service on New Year's Eve, and while BART will not be free, they’re running an extra 1 a.m. train.
For better or worse, the city of San Francisco is barrelling forward with the giant, public New Year's Eve fireworks show at the Embarcadero this year. (UPDATE: No, they're not!) But pretty much every large, traditional New Year’s Eve party is currently on again for the 2022 New Year’s celebrations, Omicron be damned. And for all you Babies New Year who are choosing to go out and revel at public gatherings with the return of a semi-normal New Year's Eve, an old San Francisco tradition is back. KPIX reports that Muni and Caltrain will offer free rides on New Year’s Eve, and BART will run extended (though still full price) late-night service.
Moving SF - Free Muni for New Year’s Eve
— SFMTA (@sfmta_muni) December 27, 2021
2021 marks the 22nd consecutive year that we will offer free rides on New Year’s Eve. Starting at 8 p.m. on Friday, December 31 and going through 5 a.m. on Saturday, January 1, all trips on Muni will be free. https://t.co/gDgneQNFJ1
The big one here is Muni, so we’ll start with them. “2021 marks the 22nd consecutive year that we will offer free rides on New Year’s Eve,” SFMTA said in a Monday announcement. “Starting at 8 p.m. on Friday, December 31 and going through 5 a.m. on Saturday, January 1, all trips on Muni will be free.”
“Please do not tag your Clipper card. If you tag it, you will be charged,” the service adds. “Please do not activate a Muni Mobile ticket. Metro fare gates will be open.”
So, the boss emailed talking about "Did you tell folks about our Free New Year's Eve rides?"
— Caltrain (@Caltrain) December 28, 2021
And we were all, "Free from 8 PM until the final AM train?"
"Yes," she said.
And then we said, "Yeah, just tweeted about it."
Get home safe, Caltrain is FREE. https://t.co/Q9gmmRSAUa pic.twitter.com/QbVzPGULFK
Caltrain is also offering free rides, though their 'How do you do, fellow kids' announcement above is a little more cryptic. The official announcement puts it in plain English, that Caltrain will “provide free rides starting at 8 p.m. on Friday, December 31, until the end of special late night service.” For that late-night service, the “first special train will depart at 12:30 a.m. or when full and the last train of the night will depart no later than 1:30 a.m. These special trains will make all weekday local stops from San Francisco to San Jose Diridon Station.”
BART, meanwhile, will not be free, but they’re running a couple extra late-night trains, basically at midnight New Year’s Eve and 1 a.m. New Year’s Day morning. BART says in their New Year’s Eve service announcement that “The regular last trains of evening (Yellow, Blue, and Orange lines) will be dispatched from the end of their lines at midnight and then at 1:00 am, we will run another set of last trains of the evening to serve 48 out of our 50 stations. The 1 am dispatched trains will not serve the airport stations (OAK and SFO) but will stop at all other stations. These last trains will be timed to easily transfer to other lines to get home.”
BART riders in San Francisco for midnight, take note. “For those celebrating in downtown San Francisco, the last East Bay bound train running through downtown San Francisco will be at around 1:30 a.m. and the last southbound train heading toward Millbrae will run through downtown San Francisco at 2:10 a.m.,” BART says.
If you’re playing it that late, we would highly recommend checking the BART.gov mobile site on your smartphone to make sure you don’t miss the train.
Related: Five Reasons Why SF Has Never Been A Good New Year's Town [SFist]
Image: SFMTA
