Mr. Heller,

there are a number of issues with Geary Boulevard that you fail to consider in the planning for a proposed BRT project. but these should be obvious by now; after all, you’ve participated in this debate from the beginning.

from the start, you’ve trotted out the same presuppositions — that BRT without a doubt would snarl traffic, change shoppers’ habits, decimate businesses, wreck the Richmond as you know it. you’ve boned up on your transportation expertise, and have decided that diamond lanes and GPS devices would do the trick, simple as that.

another criticism you’ve made over and over is that the SFMTA doesn’t listen or respond to the concerns of merchants and residents. City planners, bureaucrats and consultants are just going ahead and doing what they want anyway, spending and pocketing millions of dollars in the process.

it’s high time to say the following: probably no other party in this dynamic discussion has been as rigid and selfish as you. aside from noting some tweaks, your letter is but a big beef that says there are no gimmes for merchants in the project. your next one could come out with it and ask, “What’s in this thing for me?”

as i wrote in my comment above, merchants are essential to the boulevard, but investing in transit is a boon residents, visitors, students and even merchants *as a whole*. this blind spot, where you see only what you want or what you ought to get, may be your grandest failure in the entire Geary endeavor.

Just a reminder to keep your comments on topic and relevant to the Geary BRT project. Many thanks,

Sarah B.

Here’s the English-language wiki page (link).

And here’s a Streetsblog post from December 2007 that first tipped us off to this stellar piece of transit infrastructure (link).

And whether you prefer Geary have buses or trains, make sure to get the pedestrian and bicycle experience right — it increases the capacity/liveliness/livability/dynamism/business vitality of a street, and it does all that in part because cyclists help to make everyone safer — not just other cyclists, not just pedestrians, but even car drivers — we have the data.

Do what NYC wants to do with their BRT routes (link) — provide bicycle infrastructure — it’s the minimum that is required, so it’s the minimum that we should do.

and this morning we had just the latest in a long line of grisly auto-against-pedestrian killings in San Francisco — this one while the 70-year old victim was in the crosswalk on Geary, at Ninth Avenue (link). the driver hit her, knocked her 20 feet through the air, then slowly rolled over her again. horrific scene. people waiting for the bus are watching the whole thing play out. blood everywhere:

Kong was struck at about 8:15 a.m. by a white van that had been traveling south on Ninth Avenue and turned onto eastbound Geary Boulevard, according to police spokesman Officer Samson Chan. No one else was hurt.

what, exactly, is it going to take before people get indignant? do car drivers really believe they have the right to terrorize the city at will? we need to tame the auto traffic on Geary Boulevard, and make Geary Boulevard a place that people care about — a place that people want to be. right now, nobody wants to be on Geary except for the reason that it has the bus routes, and it provides the most direct route from Point A to Point B — there’s no reason we have to accept that it should be a horrifically dirty and dangerous place.

give people walkability and bikability, and give them dignified transit — then watch Geary Boulevard blossom. it’s a simple recipe — all it takes is a little bit decency. even if you hate your children and grandchildren, then do it for Ms. Kong, and all the other people who have been killed, and are yet to be killed, on Geary.