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The San Francisco County Transportation Authority issued a new report concluding that two dedicated bus lanes running down the center of Geary Boulevard (also known as bus rapid transit or BRT) would be the most efficient and cost-effective solution for decongesting the thoroughfare. The BRT would eliminate bus and auto conflicts by physically separating the BRT lanes from mixed-traffic lanes, pedestrian safety would be improved, and bicycle and pedestrian access would be enhanced.
The cost is estimated to be between $157 million and $212 million, which is significantly less than the surface lightrail ($2.5 billion) or [update] surface-to-subway ($5 billion) options. Additonally, the city would receive federal funds for the BRT, and the BRT would lay some of the groundwork for a future lightrail system. The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to vote May 19 on which proposals should be studied further to determine their specific impacts, designs and costs. A final environmental impact report is expected by mid-2010 and project completion in 2013.
We hope this satisfies the naysaysers, once and for all.
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This could be sweet, but it'll be 2015 before it's done.
But depending on how it's phased, some sections of it could be opened as their completed with the busses just moving back to the side lanes when they run out of dedicated busway (which is what will happen east of Van Ness anyway).
You must be new in town, pal. This would be the fifth big project I've seen Muni tackle in 20+ years (counting the J-extension, the F-line, MMX, and T-Third), and the track record -- pun intended -- hasn't been terribly encouraging. Or have you forgotten the construction problems that put the T-Third's opening years behind schedule?
You may have faith in Muni's engineering department and its contractors. I know better.
Actually, this isn't a Muni (SFMTA) project. It's being run by the TA. The Transportation Authority is a funding agency separate from the SFMTA, who they will turn it over to run once it's completed. I suspect that may be part of the reason they've been so dead-set on BRT (both on Geary and Van Ness) because they have an opportunity to prove themselves successful at building something distinctly different than what Muni has already (though as has been mentioned, BRT has been proven successful around the world and here in the US).
We have yet to see if TA engineers and contractors deserve more faith than you have in Muni's.
I would like to see an environmental study of environmental studies. Has one of these ever changed the outcome of a proposed plan? It's frustrating to know this can even be started for some time now...this should have been happening from day 1 of Newsom's 1st day in office...but i guess him never being west of Fillmore was the issue.
Why are you blaming Newsom? The glacial pace on everything has far more to do with the burdensome laws in place that require just about everyone to have input, every decision to have 20 rounds of review, and allow anyone to file a lawsuit no matter how tangentially related. This is the system San Francisans put in place. Remove some of those requirements and things would get done faster, for both good and ill.
"Has one of these ever changed the outcome of a proposed plan? "
Not if the engineers did their homework, because you take the future environmental review into consideration when you work on the design. Having to make big modifications to something after review is expensive and isn't going to incline the client to want to hire you again. Doing it right the first time is better.
There's always small changes though because the client won't feel like they got their money's worth if the review comes back saying that everything is perfect.
Reviews are basically a big job security measure for engineers. :-)
well, it would be the year 2525 for light rail ....
"but i guess him never being west of Fillmore was the issue."
Did you mean West of Sacramento?
Sacramento doesn't runs parallel to Geary, going eastwest. Look at a map sometime fool
Comic genius!
Or ... wait, are you serious?
So, this gives the bus its own lane. Can it run bigger buses? Will it have fewer stops? Will the bus now go faster?
How can it cost $5 billion to do a cut and cover subway? They built the entire Boston Big Dig for $15 billion, and that included a bridge, two tunnels, and digging a freeway under an existing freeway without moving the existing freeway, and tons of other work.
We have this freakin bond we vote to fund muni and all we get are half-ass brt concepts and fare increases!
I agree, what slows buses are cars, peds and lights on street level. A cut & cover underground would be much more efficient. Its hard to imagine it costing $5 Billion. (Isn't that about the same as the Central Subway with its difficult engineering issues?)
It's faster because it theoretically makes buses not subject to the whims of traffic, and you can sync green lights to approaching buses to speed things up more. You can also theoretically have some system by which everyone pays their fares at the platform and avoid having to make 100 people wait while one asshole counts nickels into the fare box.
A subway has a lot more details per mile which makes them more expensive than a similar freeway, not to mention that there would be a lot of seismic requirements that Boston wouldn't have had to worry about. I don't know if the $5 billion figure is actually reasonable or not, but you can't really compare it to the big dig.
The main thing is the bus goes faster, both because it has its own lane (no merging back into traffic after stops), and because it will have transponders to turn red lights to green lights. Speed increase should be 25-35%.
As for the cost, I bet Geary west of Masonic is pretty much all pavement over sand, so a cut and cover subway would not be as easy as it sounds, because the walls would want to collapse.
As for fare increases, the T-third light rail cost ~1.3 billion including the train cars; we'll be paying for that for many many years, and light rail isn't really any different from bus rapid transit other than being totally inflexible if something is blocking the tracks.
Last, the Big Dig has huge ongoing repairs and such because it was built substandard and didn't even last 6 months before it started falling apart.
Also, the subway option would actually be "surface-to-subway," which I just updated in the post.
This seems like a reasonable idea. Every time I show the plans for this to my foreign friends, they're always shocked that I've never heard of this idea before.
If it works everywhere else, why not here?
Subway would be better, a lot better. Though dedicated bus lane does beat Muni metro above ground.
I wonder how this will impact bike lanes.
Roads big enough for BRT don't make very good bike routes. You are better off riding a block over in either direction.
Any chance a similar study was done regarding the Central Subway? Anybody else see all sorts of problems/lawsuits/unforseen costs if the Central Subway proceeds as planned? BRT baby - that's the way to do it.
Word on the street is they did a preliminary study, but it was never publicized.
You need a big wide road for BRT (which is why lots of transit people don't like it); I doubt there is room along the central subway route. It needs suburbs-style roads, not downtown streets.
We are far too dense and with too much traffic not to have a subway network. The buses and light rail really don't cut it as they always end up stuck in traffic and contributing to more traffic.
In a city where a large number of people rely heavily on public transit we have a subway network that is equal to or worse than LA's subway which is, supposedly, largely ignored.
It might cost more to put in a subway, but it is the solution we need to have for the future. By continuing to cut costs and think only of the present we end up with the problems we currently have.
This is an excellent plan! Of course it'll be open season on pedestrians with pink shopping bags skittering across lanes of auto traffic to get on what many of them seem to think is; the last bus, ever. Add to that, the oblivious jaywalking cellphone chatterers, and it will be interesting to watch the debacle.
Oh! Good God. You're so right. Someone should take into account the culture of the surrounding neighborhood. In my book that's another justification for an underground line.
And how's that any different than today aside from there being fewer traffic lanes for the pink bag ladies to cross? The busses will be in the center meaning you only have to cross 2-3 lanes to get to it instead of crossing the entire street and with them in the center it will be easier to see the next bus coming.
Not to mention that the platforms should have a barrier to prevent you from entering/exiting except at the end where the crossing light is.
Yes, except that the urban designers who care more about pictures on PowerPoints and the "public realm," whatever that is, will veto it because it's not pretty like Octavia and The Embarcadero, and then blame everyone but the idiots who crossed against the light for the inevitable accidents.
Why not a suspended monorail line; it would be less invasive to build it, and it would take less space, because it could run above the already existing median strip. Perhaps something similar to Vancouver's.
The Las Vegas monorail cost only $65M to build, but it doesn't go through the kind of congested area that an elevated Geary monorail would. (http://www.railway-technology.com/projects/lasvegas/) Also, imagine selling THAT to the cranky neighbors...