General Meeting 2/28 on Bus Rapid Transit Projects

February 11th, 2011

Wondering what’s happening with the bus rapid transit projects we’ve been advocating for a decade? Come to our General Meeting on Monday, February 28, at 6:30 pm to find out. Rachel Hiatt of the SF County Transportation Authority has been invited to present the latest on the Van Ness project, and we also expect to have a presentation on Geary.

Date/Time: Monday, February 28, 2011, 6:30 pm
Location: County Fair Building, at Ninth and Lincoln in Golden Gate Park
Transit: 6, 44, 71, N

Alioto-Pier blocks F-line to Fort Mason study

April 28th, 2010

bad F-Line instruction
You’d think expanded transit would be good for your neighborhood. Not Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, who yesterday moved to block a study of extending the popular historic streetcar to Fort Mason, a project that would provide much needed transit options to Marina residents and visitors alike.

This project, which Rescue Muni supports, would extend the streetcar through the Fort Mason tunnel and provide rail service to the Marina and the western half of Fisherman’s Wharf. It would also make possible a future extension of historic streetcar service to the Marina Green and possibly the Presidio, as recommended by our Service Expansion committee nine years ago.

If you disagree with Supervisor Alioto-Pier’s claim that this project is “a monster without a head” and would like to see it funded, and particularly if you live in District 2 (Marina and Pacific Heights), please write to her office!

Update: Market Street Railway has a detailed comment.

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Curbed SF on Geary BRT

August 12th, 2009

Go GearyThe always useful Curbed SF blog has a detailed discussion up today on the Geary Bus Rapid Transit project, which we have supported since time immemorial (well, almost). As the progress proceeds at a glacial pace, Matt of Curbed points out that the concerns about higher density and transit oriented development were much less of a problem when actual transit oriented development was happening, almost a century ago when the Municipal Railway first opened the A and B lines up Geary in 1912. So it really does not make sense to oppose restoring a small subset of the service that was available a century ago on the grounds that it will somehow make Geary less livable.

One concern, however – in the design of the BRT project, why are high quality shelters with NextBus proposed for “most” stops? The whole point of BRT is to upgrade the service at ALL stops.

NYT profiles bus rapid transit in Bogota

July 10th, 2009

Today’s New York Times profiles the Transmilenio system in Bogota, a center-running bus rapid transit system that has quickly become a very popular way to get around town. (This was modeled on the famous system in Curitiba, Brazil, and Mexico City and many others have similar systems now.)

We’ve long been advocates of a similar system in San Francisco, specifically on Geary and Van Ness boulevards. (Proposition K in 2003 – six years ago – identified these as top priorities.) Of course, projects in San Francisco take decades while projects in other cities only take a few years, but we are hoping that once the EIRs are done construction can begin soon on both.

SFCTA: Geary BRT Needs Center Bus Lanes

May 5th, 2009

Go GearySFist had an excellent blog post yesterday about the SFCTA’s study of the proposed Geary Bus Rapid Transit project. In brief, the project team agrees with us that the dedicated bus lanes should run down the center of the street, in dedicated right of way, as most of SF’s light rail lines do (e.g. T-Third). The SFCTA also backed our call for a “rail ready” project that can be easily upgraded to light rail in the future, as funds become available.