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MUNI service changes meeting 2/12; give feedback on commuter shuttle stops


Photo by Thomas Hawk

SFMTA is looking for feedback from the community on two transportation issues facing the city – changes in MUNI service lines including the 2, 28, 28L, and 38L lines, and which MUNI stops residents think would be best for the Silicon Valley commuter shuttles to use.

PROPOSED CHANGES TO MUNI LINES; MEETING FEB. 12
On Wednesday, February 12 from 6-8pm, the SFMTA will hold a public meeting at the Richmond District police station (461 6th Avenue) about proposed changes to the 2, 28, 28L, and 38L lines.

Muni is considering proposed service and route changes as part of the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP):

The proposed changes will modernize Muni and make it more efficient, reliable, safe and comfortable for its existing 700,000 daily passengers. Developed over several years of data collection, intensive planning and public outreach efforts, the TEP will restructure transit service on certain lines to improve efficiency and connectivity and implement transit priority changes on the most heavily used lines to give buses and trains more priority on our City streets.

The addition of a 5L Fulton line last Fall was part of the TEP. The SFMTA is proposing the following additional changes which will be discussed at Wednesday’s meeting:

2 Clement: Supplemental trolley coach service between downtown and Presidio Avenue to boost service lost by shutdown of 3 Jackson route. 2 Clement Service Variant proposes an alternative alignment that would use existing overhead wires for trolley coach service on the entire Sutter Street corridor. Instead of operating on Clement Street from Arguello Boulevard to Park Presidio Boulevard, the alignment would continue on California Street to Eighth Avenue south to Clement Street to Sixth Avenue. This service variant would include a terminal loop at Sansome Street in the Downtown area. See project document

38L Geary: Expand limited stop service to Sundays. Coordinate with Geary Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) Study currently underway, which aims to achieve significant travel time and reliability improvements. See project document

Changes are also being proposed to the 28 and 28L 19th Avenue routes, which run through the neighborhood on Park Presidio.

WHICH MUNI STOPS SHOULD THE COMMUTER SHUTTLES USE?
Late last month, the SFMTA Board approved an 18-month pilot program that will test sharing a limited number of Muni stops with commuter shuttles, many of which carry employees between the city and tech companies in the South Bay. Shuttles that pay for a permit and commit to complying with permit terms (following operating guidelines, sharing data, paying permit fees, etc.) will be authorized to use the shared stops.

The pilot program is set to start in July 2014 and the SFMTA is hosting an interactive map where residents can suggest locations for shared stops and provide information on conditions that they think should be considered in developing the network.

Click on an existing pointer in the map to add your feedback about a location, or create your own marker with feedback at additional stops.

The deadline to provide information via the interactive map is February 23. From that collected data, SFMTA engineers and planners will develop a proposed network as well as Muni operations and engineering needs.

Sarah B.

15 Comments

  1. February 22, 2014 is a Saturday, not a Wednesday. Is the date correct? Do any of those “office” Muni people work on a Saturday?

  2. Gee, do you think the Muni people will TAKE Muni to the meeting? THAT would be an interesting first question for them!

  3. I’m getting an error trying to follow the link to the commuter bus survey – I’ve tried in both explorer and firefox…. any suggestions?

    PS – I take one of the commuter shuttles from Geary/Park Presidio a couple days a week. It’s pretty interesting that there are 4 shuttles in about 6 minutes – and one muni bus in the middle that the corporate shuttles build their schedule around. Yet the muni bus isn’t always there (at 7:15am, already off schedule for the day) vs the corporate shuttles who are on time. The corporate busses also pull forward to allow room for a 2nd bus, where the Muni busses often just pull up to the back of the stop.

  4. I miss the 31L. Rode it every day in the early 1970s. I even waited until after 6PM to leave my after school job so I didn’t have to pay full adult fare during peak commute hours. Muni could significantly speed up by simply having far more limited stop service than local stop service at all hours and the cost would be negligible.

  5. In the photo it shows the 2 going to 32nd & Balboa. Is that one of the changes they are making to the 2 route or is that from years ago?

  6. Leanne, the 2 Clement will more closely resemble the old 55 Sacramento line (which was a cable car in its original incarnation) west of Scott (ending on 6th Avenue but unfortunately not connecting with the 21 Hayes) and take up the 3 Jackson route in Pacific Heights. I suppose this means no more electric wires on Jackson, which must be nice for the developers who bought Scott Elementary school that had a playground on the roof.

    Amy, the 31 used to be a diesel bus and the Limited stopped only at transfer points or midway between transfer points when they were more than 8 blocks apart. Back in the old days Muni had timed transfer points so one could go from Limited to Limited as operators were instructed and scheduled to wait at the intersection until all passengers had successfully transferred. A couple of caveats, new fares had to be purchased if going on a parallel line or in the reverse direction and there were no discount fares for seniors and youth (disabled did not exist yet) between 6-9AM and 3-6PM east of Van Ness or north of Howard. Likewise, the only fare on Express lines was full adult fare, This reduced commute congestion.

    Also back then, there was only one express in the Richmond, which ran on Clement and stopped every 4 blocks inbound until Arguello. Other lines were set to stop outbound (toward the beach) at odd numbered Avenues and inbound (toward downtown) on even numbered Avenues, except where lines intersected.

    The 28 used to run on 25th Avenue and was moved to Park Presidio in the 1980s. To get south across the Park other than on the 28 back then one could take the 10 Monterey on 10th Avenue or the 21 Hayes on 6th Avenue. That changed when Kaiser took over the French Hospital Medical Building.

    Speaking of hospitals, Sutter Health now operates the old German, Presbyterian and Childrens Hospitals as well as St. Lukes while UC has its claws in Mt. Zion (the Jewish hospital), VA and SF General in addition to their original Parnassus Heights campus and new SOMA digs. The only hospitals that haven’t been acquired are Chinese and St. Mary’s. Do remember that UCSF spent billions on a failed merger with Stanford back in the 90s and is the nations largest recipient in tobacco tax funds which are spent on research they choose, usually having nothing to do with tobacco and now they want sugar money as the tobacco windfall is drying out. They don’t appear to be sharing their patent income with the City.

  7. 4thGen, thanks for that amazing history lesson! Always fascinating to her about things that used to be in this city.

  8. You’re welcome Richmond Dweller.

    I unintentionally omitted Marshall Hale Hospital, it’s now where Sutter Health operates the CPMC women’s center.

    With all the hospital consolidations, emergency rooms are going farther away from our neighborhood unless you’re a Kaiser member. As the population ages, I do not see this as a good thing especially since traffic is constant. The volume of vehicles on Park Presidio at around 3AM is about equal to what it was like during rush hour in the early 1960s.

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