MTA could have a two-way, two lane Hayes *without* the tow-away if they were smarter about managing traffic on the City’s street network. One of the problems with Hayes is that it has a massive, high capacity traffic sewer (9th Street) pouring cars onto it. Managing 9th Street better could create less congestion on Hayes.

As my transportation-planner friend often says, MTA is really bad at deciding where they want congestion. There are always bottlenecks in a system; MTA too often lets the traffic pile up where it does the most damage to transit, bicycles, and pedestrians. Think about how Caltrans manages the Bay Bridge; they meter cars coming on the bridge through the toll plaza to keep it moving at most times. MTA could do the same for our streets by modifying the progression of traffic signals to keep auto congestion away from the places where does the most damage to transit, pedestrians, and cyclists.

It would also be great to see the two-way Hayes go all the way back to Market; this would allow the 21-Hayes to run on Hayes in both directions, rather than make the time-consuming dogleg onto Grove. Making lower Hayes two-way, as well as lower Haight would also allow Hayes and Haight to become better transit streets, while allowing Grove and Page to become great bicycle boulevards.

Smart transportation planning allows us to decide how much congestion we want. Smart streets management lets us decide where we want that congestion, and where we don’t.

Any proposal to restrict traffic on transit streets will run into the same challenges. We need to think about how to shave 2-3 minutes (or more) from Muni travel times while gaining the benefits of 2-way conversions. Queue jump lanes (further back, e.g. at Van Ness) and transit signal priority would be possibilities.

So, why not ban cars from that towaway lane and make it an exclusive bus lane? And instruct the buses to go slowly enough that they wouldn’t make the retail environment too uncomfortable – which would still be much faster than they could go in mixed traffic.

Remember that this would only apply from 4-7 pm – and presumably only on weekdays.

Not the perfect solution, but perhaps better than any alternative.

I agree with David Baker (above) that the best solution would be to forget about LOS and stripe an exclusive bus lane – but I don’t know if that is politically possible.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this and similar mistakes of the past finally corrected.

There is so much that could be done by sacrificing auto capacity to allow MUNI to function better that creates unacceptable LOS levels under our current illogical carbon production maximizing environmental analysis standards, soon to change due to the new state level CEQUA guidelines. Go AB-32!