Streetsblog San Francisco

Photo: bhautik joshi/Flickr

For what’s intended to be a relatively quick, cost-effective transportation solution, San Francisco’s first Bus Rapid Transit route on Van Ness Avenue has been a long time coming. Planners first conceived the project in 2004, and as late as two years ago, it was scheduled to open in 2012. Since then, construction has been pushed back to 2016.

The agonizing wait has left many frustrated transit advocates asking, “What’s the hold up?”

Tilly Chang, the deputy director for planning at the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) leading the planning effort, says answering that question opens “a huge can of worms.”

“We understand the frustration,” she said, citing a slew of factors contributing to the delay of the massive project.

Van Ness BRT is in many ways the first of its kind in the United States, and its scope has grown to include a complete overhaul of the street. The project’s environmental impact report/statement, released last month in compliance with state and federal requirements, also included a burdensome level of analysis.

“Trust me, for those of us going through this process, we would love to have it move as fast as possible,” said Michael Schwartz, the SFCTA’s project manager.

“The fact that there really isn’t an example in the city, and in North America, of full-featured BRT in a dense urban environment like San Francisco is part of what makes the project really exciting, but also means there are significant policy decisions to work out,” he said. “I think there’s a trade-off where there’s a really good process that happens in California and San Francisco to involve stakeholders and do good coordination, but that does take time.”

One major impediment, said Chang, has been the extensive impact analysis required under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) using the automobile-centric transportation metric known as Level of Service.

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A new video from the Valley Transportation Authority (VTA) lays out the vision for transforming El Camino Real into a Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridor connecting the Palo Alto Transit Center and Downtown San Jose.

It’s part of VTA’s Valley Rapid project, a set of three BRT routes planned in Santa Clara County. The El Camino project will speed up the 522 bus line with transit-priority features as the Grand Boulevard Initiative revamps the corridor into a more walkable environment.

The project is expected to begin service in July 2016, the same year San Francisco’s first BRT route is set to open on Van Ness Avenue.

Check out the website for more details.

Three years ago Streetfilms brought you a comprehensive look at Bogotá, Colombia’s TransMilenio, the world’s most advanced Bus Rapid Transit system. TransMilenio changed the way Bogotá residents think about public transportation, becoming indispensable to the 1.7 million people who use the system daily. If anything, the bus network became a victim of its own success, handling more passengers and crowding than its planners anticipated. Today, ten years after TransMilenio launched, we revisit this groundbreaking transit system and examine how it must improve as it matures.

Last month the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released its report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], which proposed a LEED-like rating system for bus rapid transit projects and laid out a strategy for American cities to build systems as good as the world’s best BRT. While more than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle at various times, the ITDP report named just five American cities with bus corridors that made the grade and earned the title “True BRT.” Streetsblog is pleased to publish a series of case studies from ITDP examining these innovative transit projects. We started with Pittsburgh and Cleveland, and today, we look at Sin City — Las Vegas.

The Strip Express helps make Las Vegas's BRT system one of the country's best. Photo courtesy of ITDP

When you think of Las Vegas, the first thing that pops into your head is efficient transit, right? Well, maybe not the first thing. But according to ITDP’s report, Las Vegas has one of the top five BRT systems in the country.

Las Vegas is one of the few U.S. cities with a whole network of BRT, as opposed to just a single corridor. And while the Strip Downtown Express (SDX) is the most advanced BRT route in the network, the fact that the city is creating a network elevates its status among U.S. BRT systems.

The network presently includes two BRT routes (with another two under construction), along with two express bus routes that incorporate some BRT elements. The network serves both the city and nearby suburbs, and is good news for a metropolitan area that was especially hard hit by the recession.

In a sprawling region where the recession and rising gas prices hit many commuters hard, growing numbers of people are opting for fast, reliable, and affordable bus service. The BRT network, built at a fraction of the cost of other alternatives like light rail or the city’s problem-plagued monorail, also appeals to savvy politicians looking to deliver both quality and value for their constituents.

Las Vegas’s Bus Rapid Transit program began with the Metropolitan Area Express (MAX), which opened in 2004. The MAX offers many standard BRT features including off-board fare collection, special buses, and stations with at-level boarding at most stops. It has 4.5 miles of dedicated lanes (out of a total route of 7.5 miles), which are aligned by the curb and shared with right-turning traffic. The MAX corridor is also shared by the Route 113 buses, which essentially serve as a “local” to the MAX’s more express service.

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Cleveland's HealthLine. Photo courtesy of ITDP.

Last month the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released its report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], which proposed a LEED-like rating system for bus rapid transit projects and laid out a strategy for American cities to build systems as good as the world’s best BRT. While more than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle at various times, the ITDP report named just five American cities with bus corridors that made the grade and earned the title “True BRT.” Streetsblog is pleased to publish a series of case studies from ITDP examining these innovative transit projects. We started with Pittsburgh and today, we focus on Cleveland.

Cleveland doesn’t often get recognition for being a leader in innovative transportation – but maybe it should. A recent report from the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) awarded Cleveland the highest rating of any American BRT system.

Cleveland’s first BRT line opened in 2008. The HealthLine stretches 6.8 miles along Euclid Avenue, connecting the city’s main employment centers, including downtown Cleveland, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospital, coming within a half mile of more than 200,000 employees and 58,000 households. In just three years, ridership has increased more than 60 percent over the bus routes that formerly ran along the corridor. This promotional video shows how the HealthLine mimics light rail for a better passenger experience.

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Pittsburgh's East Busway serves 15 bus routes and more than 25,000 riders daily. Photo: ITDP

Last month the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy released its report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], which proposed a LEED-like rating system for bus rapid transit projects and laid out a strategy for American cities to build systems as good as the world’s best BRT. While more than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle at various times, the ITDP report named just five American cities with bus corridors that made the grade and earned the title “True BRT.” Streetsblog is pleased to publish a series of case studies from ITDP examining these innovative transit projects, starting with the country’s first BRT routes, in Pittsburgh.

In recent years, Pittsburgh’s reputation has been rejuvenated. The former industrial hub is becoming an innovative model for urban re-development, and an attractive place to live and work.

Pittsburgh’s leadership on the urban sustainability front is not a recent phenomenon – in fact, it was the first city in the United States to implement elements of bus rapid transit, and it paved the way for more robust U.S. BRT systems.

In 1977, only three years after Curitiba, Brazil implemented the world’s first BRT system, Pittsburgh opened the South Busway, 4.3 miles of exclusive bus lanes, running though previously underserved areas of the city, from the western suburbs to the downtown. The city was concerned about worsening traffic congestion, and, lacking the funds to rehabilitate the city’s streetcar lines, took inspiration from Curitiba and created the South Busway. Funding for the system came from U.S. DOT, the state of Pennsylvania and Allegheny County. The Port Authority of Allegheny County, a county-owned, state-funded agency, operates the system.

The success of the South Busway helped the city leverage funding for the expansion of the network, and in 1983, the Martin Luther King, Jr. East Busway opened. The East Busway began as a 6.8 mile network, with an additional 2.3 miles added in 2003, connecting the eastern suburbs with downtown. Fifteen bus routes run along its corridor. Its current weekday ridership is 25,600, with annual ridership close to 7 million.

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In ITDP's BRT rating system, the SDX route in Las Vegas eked out a bronze-standard rating, one of only five American routes to pass the threshold of "true BRT." Image: ITDP

Attempts by U.S. cities to build Bus Rapid Transit systems tend to get stymied by a Catch-22: Most Americans have no experience riding great BRT, so mustering the political will to build full-fledged systems — and reallocate the necessary street space from cars to buses — is often fiendishly difficult. The results — incremental bus improvements sold to the public as BRT — are too watered down to showcase the full extent to which bus-based systems can attract riders and get people to switch from driving to transit.

In Boston, for instance, bus speeds for one route on the Silver Line Waterfront corridor actually decreased despite the project’s $619 million pricetag. Meanwhile, cities in Latin America, Asia, and Africa are rolling out new, high-capacity BRT systems at a rapid clip, leaving American transit networks behind.

Cities can get away with calling half-measures “BRT” in part because there are no standards in place to define what truly qualifies as BRT. If all it takes is pre-paid boarding and longer spacing between stops, then the term loses meaning. In a new report, “Recapturing Global Leadership in Bus Rapid Transit” [PDF], the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy sets out to fill this void with BRT standards that American cities can shoot for.

ITDP is proposing a scoring system to grade bus-based transit corridors, which would work much like the LEED certification system for green buildings. The authors say their scorecard has yet to be perfected, but it already spits out results that make intuitive sense — like the fact that no U.S. city has ever built a first-rate BRT corridor. While American attempts to build bus rapid transit systems have shaved travel times and attracted new riders to transit, ITDP concludes that every single one has failed to meet the highest standards for BRT design.

“Based on what we’ve seen in our work in cities around the world, we think there’s still more that could be done,” ITDP director Walter Hook said in a statement accompanying the report. “Getting at least one truly world-class BRT system built in the U.S. could inspire cities around the country to rethink the way they use buses in the fight against increasing traffic congestion and rising fuel prices.”

More than 20 American bus projects have claimed the BRT mantle, the authors report, but only five even qualify as true Bus Rapid Transit: Cleveland’s HealthLine, Los Angeles’s Orange Line, Pittsburgh’s East Busway, Eugene’s EmX, and Las Vegas’s SDX. Those corridors all distinguished themselves by running buses in the center of the roadbed and physically separating them from regular traffic — two characteristics that factor heavily in ITDP’s 100-point scale.

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Guangzhou is one of the fastest growing cities in the world. The economic hub of China’s southern coast, it has undergone three decades of rapid modernization, and until recently the city’s streets were on a trajectory to get completely overrun by traffic congestion and pollution. But Guangzhou has started to change course. Last year the city made major strides to cut carbon emissions and reclaim space for people, launching new bus rapid transit and public bike sharing systems.

The Guangzhou BRT system opened in February 2010. It now carries 800,000 passengers a day, seamlessly connecting riders to both the metro system and the city’s new bike-share network. For these innovations, Guangzhou won the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy’s 2011 Sustainable Transport Award. Watch this Streetfilm and see how one of the world’s most dynamic cities is, to borrow a phrase from President Obama, “winning the future” on its streets.

Image: AC Transit

Bus Rapid Transit in the East Bay cleared an important hurdle yesterday as the Oakland City Council cast a unanimous vote in support of adopting a "locally preferred alternative" route.

The route through Oakland would travel primarily on International Boulevard and Telegraph Avenue as part of a future AC Transit BRT corridor through Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro. As a full-featured BRT line, it would include dedicated travel lanes for buses, level boarding, and fare machines at stations for pre-paying.

Compared to the existing 1R Rapid bus line that runs along the same corridor in Oakland, the proposed BRT line would offer more rider amenities and much faster travel times. Traveling southeast on International Boulevard from downtown Oakland, for instance, riders could make it to Seminary Avenue in 20 minutes, a 5-mile journey. On the 1R today, a 20-minute ride from downtown only reaches Fruitvale Avenue, a 3.2-mile trip. Overall, travel speeds are expected to increase by 18 percent compared to AC Transit Rapid buses.

Click to enlarge: Bus Rapid Transit would mean big travel time savings in Oakland.

"Last night's vote at the Oakland City Council meeting shows that AC Transit has effectively listened to the community and come up with a plan that really works for Oakland," said AC Transit spokesperson Clarence Johnson. "Oakland's community leaders understand that BRT is good for local traffic concerns, businesses and the environment."

The vote yesterday was to endorse a locally preferred alternative route for further study, which allows the project to move towards the Final Environmental Impact Report stage. Bruce Williams of Oakland's Transportation Services Division said the vote was "critical," but not final.