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.

There are a number of alternatives the City has failed to adequately consider in its preliminary planning for a proposed Geary Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) plan – several of whose considerations would tear up Geary Boulevard, eliminating traffic lanes, snarling traffic and potentially hurting neighborhood merchants, the lifeblood of the community.

Add “Low-Cost” Alternative to Environmental Impact Report

The SF Transportation Authority should add an alternative to its EIR for the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system that considers a low-cost option for Muni bus service, such as dedicated bus-only lanes along Geary Boulevard for sidewalk passenger pick up and drop off.

The lanes could be reserved for buses just during commute hours: 6 a.m. to 9 a.m. eastbound and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. westbound. This option would minimize the impact on merchants.

Consider Other Available Options to Improve Bus Travel

From the beginning, the Transportation Authority has focused on extraordinary measures to improve transit times, with little or no consideration being given to less invasive remedies already available. These remedies include giving buses the power to change traffic signals and using GPS technology to avoid the bunching of buses.

Another option is to eliminate some stops along Geary. Certainly the last suggestion comes with its own set of issues, but the fact is that the buses are slowed considerably by having to stop at almost every block of the boulevard.

Conduct an Economic Impact Study

There are numerous merchants on Geary Boulevard and other nearby commercial corridors who remember the construction of BART along Market Street and the disruption and loss of business it brought. Muni’s construction of the Third Street light rail has also been challenging for local merchants and residents.
It is for these reasons that we have been urging the City to include a study of the economic impact of both the construction and the implementation of the system. Merchants fear negative impacts due to years of construction or a change in shopping patterns along our successful commercial corridor.

An economic impact analysis examining these issues is necessary for the Transportation Authority to anticipate the impact and lessen the damage caused by any potential project.

thank you for your comments, though i haven’t parsed through everything you’ve written here.

i made the point that a BRT project built in stages along a road surface and a subway excavation are not comparable in cost, scale or neighborhood impact. i believe your point was that merchants opposing BRT are in such dire straits that they must resist any disruption whatsoever.

i appreciate and am alarmed by this; Geary needs its businesses to thrive. at the same time, i would beseech to you and others that the Richmond *as a whole* needs better transit, along with other improvements along its main commercial corridor. When i say as a whole, i mean merchants and residents and riders and students and visitors.

Whether we like it or not, we are all in this together. preservation for a few does not justify mediocrity for everyone, which is what we have on Geary today.

Wow. Missed this paragraph before. You’re going to use the absolute disaster known as the T as an example of a successful LRT system? Wow.

You’re given BRT examples that work and you cry foul. I can give you LRT examples that have failed (some of the best failures are VERY close to you). The T, here in SF, has lower ridership than the bus that it replaced – and guess what – the 9x bus that was introduced at the same time as the T has had continually increasing ridership because it gets people where they want to go and works better than the T. Or…if we want to look at a complete failed system, you can travel down to San Jose and take a look at the worst LRT system in the world – VTA light rail. Ridership has never met expectations, the vehicles are painfully slow, and system cost (both initial buildout and operations) has always been higher than projected.

I’m in favor of rail as much as the next guy, but there are failed systems all over the place, just as there are failed and successful BRT systems all over the place. As with anything, successful implementation depends on many things, not simply the mode of transit chosen.

i know not to argue with true believers — evidence is not important to them.

Is that why you dismiss any successful BRT system, as well as any failed LRT system? Success depends on the details, not the mode.

and for those who claim SF is broke and can’t afford anything but a few more buses, i point you to the Central Subway. it’ll cost about $2 billion for 2 miles. all i want for the people of Geary is $1 billion for six miles

Any data showing that a rail system of any use could be built on Geary for a billion would be nice. The T-Third ended up being close to that (and you’re right that the CS will likely hit two billion), so how can we expect Muni to handle a corridor like Geary for less than $5 billion for LRT? If you’re talking about some other agency doing it, or some drastic restructuring of Muni in order to lower costs, I’d be interested in how you’re going to accomplish this – politically.

thank you — please tell that to your BRT comrades. i thought my previous comments would have made that clear, but you BRT fans persisted. (see my comments about ’shantytowns’, ‘median incomes’, etc.)

i give you US examples of failed BRT systems and you cry foul. Give you THE worldwide leading example of failed BRT and you cry foul. give you middling examples of BRT systems and you cry foul. they’re all the same to me — they all fail. none offers dignified transit, and none have delivered on their promises.

Why are the French willing and excited to try something that is “undignified” for San Franciscans?

i suspect the French were as willing and excited to try BRT as they were to be invaded and occupied by the German army. but that’s neither here nor there, as San Francisco is well on its way to BRT-dom, too.

i will admit that the Lyon buses are funny-looking (link). BRT proponents think we’re so stupid that if they just drape some wheel covers over the tires we’ll think it’s not a bus but a train.

all the marketing materials i can find on the Lyon BRT lines — and that’s about all BRT proponents are good for in the way of documentation — marketing — are very typical — talking points about how ‘rail-like’ BRT/BHNS buses are.

the very first time i read about BRT, i thought, “Huh??” without knowing a thing about transit, it just struck me as very very odd. it took me 2-3 days of research to figure out BRT was a fraud. it took me another 3-6 months to figure out that it was a religion — that it was based on faith — a believe that these few transit visionaries, the brave BRT proponents, were going to have their disciples justly rewarded, for the first time in the history of the world, with something for nothing.

instead, i always knew that you get what you pay for.

i know not to argue with true believers — evidence is not important to them.

“a man who, beyond the age of 26, finds himself on a bus can count himself as a failure”

whether or not the great Margaret Thatcher, destroyer of civilizations, actually said this or not is besides the point. we all know that is the general sentiment about ‘the loser cruiser’ — the bus. i think people deserve dignified transit, which is why BRT is not acceptable.

i’m not the first to call BRT a fraud (link), and i won’t be the last.

when i went to an industry conference, Railvolution, a couple of years ago, one of the Cleveland BRT reps was there. she bragged about how she and her other managers finally managed to force BRT on the people of Cleveland after years of struggling to convince them that it was a worthwhile project. the people never gave up, and in the end they lost — they got stuck with BRT. but this lady was proud of having jammed it down the throats of Cleveland transit riders and taxpayers. it was a pretty incredible statement.

The relevant comparative data on transit use does not seem to support this

i’m happy to be wrong — i just need a little data — studies, anecdotes, whatever.

and for those who claim SF is broke and can’t afford anything but a few more buses, i point you to the Central Subway. it’ll cost about $2 billion for 2 miles. all i want for the people of Geary is $1 billion for six miles.

for a little fun, check out this special section in an Indian newspaper on their latest BRT debacle — i’ve translated a bit:

“3 dreaded letters: BRT. The letters spell horror for squeezed-in motorists on [a road] in south Delhi” (link)

it’s pretty clear that light rail on Geary is the most sensible compromise solution. the T-Third line is roughly the same size as Geary, and was done for less than a billion dollars. the addition of the T-Third line to the SF Transit network has made the city immeasurably more livable. more people are riding every day. revitalization is booming all along the line. seniors now have access to real transit. the poor communities of southern SF now have access to real transit. everybody deserves access to real transit, even the people who ride the 38.

We want BOTH. We want improvements.
But, how realistic for this light rail thing and bart thing??
Yeah, if we can have bart under the Richmond district or “cool” light rail, that’s awesome!!
But that doesn’t mean we need to abandon improving muni system. We need muni, We need muni improvements.

Is this BRT plan evil or bad or failure??? NO!!
This BRT plan was like gift for us who rides muni every single day unlike some “rich” folks who only believe some statics and numbers from some article, and believe only poor people would ride bus when the reality is,,,,in San Francisco, every kind of people ride bus not only because that’s the only choice they have, but also they ride because they chose to do so, they ride because they are tired of driving/looking for parking/getting ticket, and some people,they just simply care about environment.

They can’t take away this BRT plan just because this is not “perfect” enough as light rail/ bart to richmond plan.
But bart won’t stop as often as 38 does and it’ll cost much more for the ride.
We will have Bart, light rail in the future, but that idea shouldn’t be getting in the BRT’s way because it’s not the same thing,I think……cost wise, time wise.
This BRT, we need this little improvement and we know it’s gonna be great because we ride 38Geary every. single. day. and we need it so bad.

The reasons why not are important political questions– I encourage anyone who would like to see a really great transit system here in SF to get more involved politically pushing for more transit funding– which often means deprioritizing highway expansions, easy parking and other car-oriented solutions, which are (still!!) the dominant transportation paradigm. And yes, some transit solutions have huge outlay costs, but save significantly in the long run.

However frustrating it is, then, the options currently under consideration for the Richmond are:
1) a BRT
2) the status quo, which will mean increased car traffic.

The first is definitely better than the second for the reasons well-explained above.

Among the anti-BRT voices, Mr. Smith seems to hate buses in general and is convinced that huge numbers of people agree are like him and find buses generally uncomfortable. The relevant compartive data on transit use does not seem to support this, though I’d be interested to know if there have been studys thereabout. In any case, let’s keep the debate here respectful and dignified.

Thanks,
jeff g