@m, I think we agree – especially after reading your last post. I get a little scared, however, when I hear proposals to increase service by reducing what I see as a truly valuable aspect of our current service. I agree that the underserved niche in Muni’s network is rapid crosstown service. My preferred solution, however, would not be to remove bus stops, but to add new rapid lines and routes to our existing service.

This resembles the type of BRT I can imagine in places around the Bay Area but if the T-third is a guide to stop spacing in SF, nothing like we will get in the city

We’re talking about BRT in San Francisco along streets with topologies like Geary and Van Ness.

The North of Market blocks are ~200′ long. That means that a BRT setup which had to deal with 2 stops per mile on the Orange BRT Line would have to deal with potentially 26 intersections per mile along Van Ness or Geary. Block lengths along the avenues are even shorter. Each block adds another moving part to an already complex system.

Shaving 10 minutes off of a 45 minute trip on a best case is good, but we can do better if we divorce ourselves from the notion that a congested dense urban street grid can be effectively and reliably tamed with BRT and start digging tunnels for the rapid rail transit system we need.

-marc

Subways don’t stop every block, bu millions of people in places like NYC and Paris and London live completely happy car-free lives relying on a subway system, and those do not stop on every, or every other, block. But they zip you around town, and the massive time savings of a reliable, fast way to zip around makes up for the fact that you have walk a few extra blocks on each end. Because we don’t have a subway system, we need a core bus network that functions like a subway system, and the plodding stop-every-block local buses should be a small part of the system that connects the gaps.

No, not every bus needs to be super speedy, but the vast majority of them do, and all of the most heavily travelled corridors do — Mission, Geary, Van Ness, Potrero, Fulton/Hayes, Fillmore, Divis, etc.

And the #33? I take it all the time. But I’m sorry, on 18th Street it doesn’t need to stop at Church, Dolores, Guerrero, Valencia, AND Mission. It’s pathetic and as a transit rider, it’s infuriating.

I’m not saying we should stop there, but we really haven’t even started with the most basic things which can do done right here and now to start improving service. I bring it up because someone reminded me last week of a 5 year old TA study saying this and from my doctor’s office downtown this afternoon I watched three private cars in the bus only lane of market cause one bus to unload near the back of the platform, while the articulated bus behind it had to wait an entire cycle because it had been pushed far enough back that it wasn’t on the platform.

I’d clarify that a bus is not a bus is not a bus. There are buses that are meant to speed people across town (14-L, 38-L, 9x), which sounds like what you are thinking of. But there are also buses that provide slower, more local service along less heavily-traveled routes (48, 33, etc). These buses shouldn’t sacrifice accessibility for speed, their niche is best served by having frequent stops and fewer buses per hour.

Muni would be a worse system if it completely lost its attention to trips outside the busiest routes. Those lines that let people catch a movie or go shopping across town have fostered a population of San Franciscans who are completely car-free (rather than just commuting by bus or rail), and this population is a larger percent of our city than it is in many cities of similar size as a result.

Suppose we put an BRT on this kind of street. Using the 1 stop per mile density as in LA there will be just 3 three stops on this route. One on each end and one in the middle. It shouldn’t be difficult for a BRT to complete this trip in 6 minutes. Even if we slash the distance between stops in half, there is still only going to be 5 stops.

If only we can give the bus a lane it deserves and a signal priorty that works, I don’t see how it won’t beat the existing crawler bus by 50% or more.

A 25-33% of time savings is MASSIVE! It may not seem like much on an absolute individual trip, but addeed up that’s a tremendous gain in efficiency. That means you can provide the same level of service with 33% fewer buses, drivers, etc., or on the flip side, you could provide service that is 33% better with the same amount of resources. Those percentages are huge. A 10 minute deduction from a 45-minute trip is a very large improvement. It also means the transit shed for individuals increases significantly.

SF has to navigate the dense grid and there is no way that you can configure traffic signals to obviate delays..

What does the MTA expect BRT to deliver? If memory serves, and I’m too hungry to look it up, 25-33% reduction in trip time, ten minutes on a 45 min trip, which is 20 min per day on that segment of the route.

Its better than nothing, but if SF wants to see improvements in transit experience proportionate to what LA is seeing, then it needs to confront the fact that we are already built out and don’t have a suburban layout with spare rail ROW capacity lying around.

BRT is a technology that works really well in long distance suburban to urban routes but faces significant challenges in the city as the projected deltas in trip time indicate.

What we need is 4 track subways with express service to obviate the grid and all potential conflicts with surface modalities and draw more riders than any bus line ever would.

-marc

Though it may hit 30,40,50 mph it is the fact that there are no other impediments (double parkers, other cars, delivery vehicles, police cruisers) and quick loading which is the true focus which makes the bus fast.

As SF and NYC residents know it is infuriating to get on a bus and just watch cars clog up the lanes. How the right of one person in a car is treated as the same right as 50 on a bus is so wrong. As Spock said, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few – or the one – surely applies (oops, went geekout there!) If you are willing to get on transit and save your city money and congestion you certainly deserve to get where you are going without those selfish folks in SOV blocking or obstructing your way.

The speed at which this bus moved was incredible. While riding I closed my eyes and tried to imagine what a speed like that going up 2nd Avenue in Manhattan would feel like. Years ago I would think it was just a pipe dream, but NYC is changing so fast I can actually see it happening. Maybe SF too – if enough people rally?

As long as you have too many stops, it’ll kill you. Until SF realizes that the bus should not stop every block, it’ll never have reasonable transit. There’s some lines that have four stops in two blocks, when there should be one stop total.

-marc

Note that in the 14 miles of bus route they have 14 stops, implying a stop spacing of 1 per mile. Here in SF, we have 8-9 stops per mile. They have transit priority signaling while our buses stop and stop and stop some more. They have 35-55 mph hour buses, we have some buses that travel at 3mph, slower than walking. They have a 14 mile dedicated bikeway to go with their bus system. We have…

Congratulations to LA for creating this line. It really is fantastic. How can a place that has a car culture as strong as LA’s do something like this while we in SF with a seemingly progressive culture are still fighting about the Geary BRT and other improvements?