Castro Muni Station’s New Four-Stop Elevator Opens, Adding Street-Level Access From Market Street

Castro Muni Station has a second elevator. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency marked its Castro Station Accessibility Improvement Project complete on Thursday, November 5, 2026, and its project page now reads “The new elevator is now open!” The Bay Area Reporter, which first reported the opening, described about three years of construction with delays tied to design changes, funding and replacement glass panels, according to SFist’s summary.

Four stops, from Market Street to the platform

The new elevator serves four levels, according to the SFMTA:

• Market Street level: a street-level entrance on Market Street, with connections to the 35 Eureka and 37 Corbett bus routes.
• Harvey Milk Plaza level: access to the plaza at Castro and Market streets, the sunken plaza under the neighborhood’s large rainbow flag.
• Concourse level: station agents, fare machines and station services.
• Muni Metro platform level: the underground platform, which the SFMTA says also gives the agency better maintenance and emergency access.

Until now, Castro Station had a single elevator to its fare gates. When that elevator broke down or was taken out of service, riders who rely on it could not enter the station at all. With two elevators, the SFMTA says the older one can be serviced without cutting off step-free access to the trains.

What else changed at Harvey Milk Plaza

The project also reworked the plaza and the Market Street frontage. The SFMTA lists:

• regraded and repaved plaza walkways
• wider sidewalks along Market Street
• upgraded plaza lighting
• new landscaping, benches and fencing
• improved connections between Market Street, Harvey Milk Plaza and the station

The SFMTA built the project with San Francisco Public Works, BART and the San Francisco Arts Commission, and says it worked with Public Works and the Friends of Harvey Milk Plaza during design. Its timeline shows design from 2016 to 2022 and construction from 2023 to 2026. The agency’s cost estimate range for the project is $15 million to $30 million.

What it means for riders and visitors

The Market Street stop is the practical change for most people. Riders coming off the 35 or 37 buses, or anyone arriving on foot along Market, can now take an elevator from the Market Street sidewalk down to the concourse. For wheelchair users, people with strollers or luggage, and older riders, the second elevator also means a single breakdown no longer closes the station to them.

Castro Station is the Muni Metro stop for the neighborhood, and Harvey Milk Plaza sits at its center, at Castro and Market. The GLBT Historical Society Museum is nearby, and our Castro LGBTQ History Walk explores the neighborhood’s history on foot.

For the most recent systemwide Muni changes, see our guide to the August 29 Muni service changes, and for the Muni parcel tax voters approved on November 3, see our report on Prop H and Measure RTM. More things to do this month are in our November 2026 guide.

The SFMTA lists Lolita Sweet as the contact for the project on its project page.

Photo: Pi.1415926535, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. The gate to the new elevator on the Castro Station platform, photographed early in 2026 before it opened.