Streetsblog San Francisco

See full flyer in this PDF. Image: SFMTA

New red-colored transit lanes are slated to be implemented on a section of Church Street in September in a SF Municipal Transportation Agency pilot project to speed up the J-Church and 22-Fillmore lines. Following the T-Third line, it would be the second time San Francisco has used colored paint on transit-only lanes to help clarify that they’re off-limits to drivers — one of the practices used in cities like New York and London in recent years to make transit faster and more reliable.

Staff from the SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project will hold a public meeting on Monday evening to explain the proposal, which would create red transit lanes on Church between Duboce Avenue and 16th Street — one of the “slowest portions of both the J Church and 22 Fillmore lines,” according to an SFMTA flyer [PDF]. As many Muni riders know, on streets like Church and Market, cars in front of transit vehicles – moving or parked – are a common cause of delay. Transit lane violations are rampant, especially on streets like Market, where drivers often prevent buses and streetcars from loading passengers at boarding islands, forcing them to wait until the next traffic light cycle.

“Separating public transit from private vehicles has been proven again and again to make trains and buses go faster,” said Ben Kaufman of the SF Transit Riders Union. “We hope that this pilot program proves to be a success and will lead to many more of these treatments. This is just one part of moving towards a rapid transit system in our city.”

At the hectic intersection of Church and Duboce, removing private autos from the center lanes could also help reduce confusion, as drivers approaching from the south currently merge from two traffic lanes into one lane on the north side of the intersection.

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See full PDF here. Image: SFMTA

To help speed rush hour trips on the 5-Fulton line, Muni is proposing a limited-stop service during the morning and afternoon peaks. SFMTA staff and D1 Supervisor Eric Mar will hold a meeting on Tuesday in the inner Richmond District for the public to weigh in on the proposed route.

Under the proposal [PDF], the 5-Limited would make local stops west of 8th Avenue and east of Van Ness Avenue, but only select stops in between those points. Some buses would only make a short run, turning back via a two-block loop between 6th and 8th Avenues towards downtown. The additional service is expected to provide a faster alternative for the bulk of commuters in the Richmond while lightening the passenger load on crowded local buses.

Limited-stop service on the 5 was one of the recommendations in the Transit Effectiveness Project, along with removing 16 regular stops on the line as a way to speed up service. The SFMTA said it ran a version of 5-Limited service to alleviate crowding during the Outside Lands music festival last weekend between 25th Avenue and the Civic Center BART station.

The meeting will be held on Tuesday, August 21 at 5:30 p.m. in the Community Room of the Richmond Police Station at 461 6th Avenue.

Photo: Confetti/Flickr

The San Francisco Civil Grand Jury released a report [PDF] today blasting Muni’s regular practice of dumping riders and turning vehicles around early.

Known as a “switchback,” the practice is used by Muni management as way to alleviate delays when buses and trains are bunched together by redirecting a vehicle to another point in the system where it’s more needed. The practice was scrutinized by the Board of Supervisors last spring, and SFMTA Transit Director John Haley says the agency has made progress in reducing them and warning riders of them in advance. Members of the SF Transit Riders Union say focusing on switchbacks distracts from the root of Muni’s problems, like getting stuck in traffic and poorly-maintained vehicles, which make the measure necessary in the first place.

The Grand Jury said Muni officials’ use of the practice “shows a callous disregard for the welfare of riders,” claiming that few other major transit systems practice it regularly except in cases of breakdowns and emergencies.

At a press conference called by the SFMTA today, officials presented a document (summary [PDF], detailed [PDF]) responding to the Grand Jury’s claims, saying that the report ignores evidence and defending the use of switchbacks when necessary to alleviate problems.

“They don’t suggest an alternative,” said Haley, adding that Muni intends to propose scheduled switchbacks on some lines within the next six months, similar to regular practices on many other systems, including BART. Still, he said he doesn’t think unscheduled switchbacks “will ever be at zero.”

“If you look at the unevenness of where the demand is,” said SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin, “and people getting on and off the buses, it just doesn’t make sense to run every bus to the end of every line on every run.”

Ben Kaufman of the SF Transit Riders Union said switchbacks are just one symptom of Muni’s greater structural problems, and that a holistic approach is needed to improve the system. “The only way to minimize the amount of switchbacks is through a network of lines that don’t have to deal with external factors, like traffic congestion, getting stopped at stop signs and red lights,” he said. “That’s what we should be focusing on, not condemning the MTA for making switchbacks.”

A preliminary report on the impact of all-door boarding on five Muni routes in July shows drops in dwell times -- the period buses spend at stops -- and a shift toward rear-door boarding. Image: SFMTA

One month after the SF Municipal Transportation Agency switched to system-wide all-door boarding, an early report from the agency shows some significant increases in bus speeds.

On five Muni lines, the time buses spent at stops dropped by as much as 16 percent in July compared to June, according to a presentation [PDF] prepared for the SFMTA Board’s Policy and Governance Committee meeting this week. The most drastic change in “dwell times” were reported on the 1-California line and its rush-hour express companion, the 1AX, which saw decreases of 14 and 16 percent, respectively. The 1AX also saw by far the largest shift in passengers using the back door instead of the front door, with a 1,200 percent increase.

With paid passengers now able to board through the back door, the amount of time the 1AX spends stopped has reportedly dropped by 16 percent. Photo: Tom Prete/Flickr

The other lines reviewed — the 49-Van Ness, the 14-Mission, and the 38-Geary — saw more modest drops in dwell time. The 49, at the low end of the spectrum, only saw a decrease of roughly 1 percent. One possible explanation is that back-door boarding was already common on those lines before the policy change, compared to the 1-California.

Reducing the amount of time that buses devote to passenger boarding was the main reason behind Muni’s switch to all-door boarding, as SF buses have historically spent as much as 30 percent of their runs at stops.

The change is also expected to reduce fare evasion by implementing a proof-of-payment system, which uses random fare inspections to enforce payment. The system has been successful on Muni’s light rail lines for more than a decade. However, it’s unclear if the ten additional fare inspectors hired by Muni (bringing the total up to 60) are enough to effectively eliminate the sense of security for fare evaders who make it onboard.

The SFMTA presentation says the agency is measuring changes in fare revenue, but the only data available yet are from passenger complaints. Of the 58 complaints “attributed to all-door boarding,” the presentation says, 9 percent were about a perceived increase in fare evasion.

The most common complaint category, at 64 percent, was regarding Muni operators not opening back doors to allow boarding. The other major categories were “operators closing doors on passengers” and “express rider complaints about the policy,” each comprising 10 percent of complaints.

More details may become available when the report is presented to the committee on Friday.

Carl and Cole Streets. Photo: SF Examiner

When the SF Municipal Transportation Agency proposed widening sidewalks at two stops on Carl Street in Cole Valley to improve conditions for nearly 6,000 daily passenger boardings on Muni’s N-Judah line, some vociferous merchants and residents complained about the loss of nine car parking spaces it would require. But with ongoing project construction detouring the N-Judah for several weekends this year, some merchants may be discovering the hard way what really brings business to the neighborhood: Muni.

Some business owners estimate their business has dropped 30 percent as a result of street closures on Carl for work on the rail replacement project, according to Juliet Pries, the owner of Ice Cream Bar on Cole Street. (Pries, who opened her shop after the project was planned, was not an opponent.) During the closures, the two N-Judah stops on Carl at Cole and Stanyan Streets are moved to Frederick Street, which runs one block to the north, just off the neighborhood’s commercial strip. Trains are also replaced with shuttle buses, which are slower and carry fewer people, and many riders who are aware of the construction may avoid using the line. On an average day, the stop at Carl and Cole serves over 4,300 boardings alone, according to Transit Effectiveness Project data collected in 2007.

“A lot of people get off that train and walk right past my business,” said Pries. “It’s definitely one of the reasons for choosing this location.”

Of course, the noise and visual impacts of the construction itself may contribute to the drop, and roughly a few dozen street parking spaces are also temporarily removed during the closures. But studies in other dense, transit-oriented neighborhoods have found that merchants frequently overestimate how many of their customers drive, fueling opposition to improvements for walking, biking, and transit that have been shown to benefit businesses time and time again.

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Central Subway construction on Stockon Street at the site of the planned Union Square Station. Photo: SFSU Xpress Magazine via Flickr

The Central Subway’s latest funding troubles with Congress have brought some burning questions to the surface: How far will the SFMTA go to prop up the project, and what will the price be for Muni riders?

The U.S. House of Representatives approved an amendment to an annual appropriations bill last week that would block $850 million in federal funds for the project. The amendment could be stripped in conference with the Senate, but as the Bay Citizen revealed, SFMTA management is concerned that Congress may not deliver the $942 million — the majority of the project’s funding –  in a timely manner (assuming it comes through at all). The SFMTA had expected the funds to be approved in December 2011. If the agency doesn’t get the funds by September, according to the Bay Citizen, it will waste $4 million in staffing costs every month until it does.

When asked what the SFMTA’s backup plan is, agency spokesperson Kristen Holland didn’t provide one, stating only that the funding probably won’t be blocked because the “amendment is not in the Senate version and should be eliminated in conference.”

“The bottom line is that this project will improve transit for the city, region and state and has been vetted by every level of government and given high marks every step of the way,” Holland told Streetsblog.

But the project’s cost has already risen from the original estimate of $995 million (in 2011 dollars) to $1.6 billion, according to the SFMTA’s Central Subway blog. Tom Radulovich, executive director of Livable City, said he’s worried the SFMTA may take funds from Muni’s existing service, its abysmally neglected maintenance department, or needed improvements like the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP), which he says should be a higher priority than the Central Subway.

Though the SFMTA insists that the Central Subway won’t take funds away from other projects, Radulovich said the agency has already been digging into discretionary funds — the money that could be used for any project. ”That’s part of their funding plan,” he said. ”The trajectory this project is on is to take more and more and more funding from the necessary and essential improvements to Muni.”

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Photo: torbakhopper/Flickr

Detailed plans for proposed improvements on eight Muni routes are now available for viewing on the SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) website. Head over for a block-by-block breakdown of proposed street changes like transit-only lanes, sidewalk extensions, boarding islands, relocated or consolidated stops, replacing stop signs with traffic signals or traffic-calming measures, and more to help keep Muni vehicles moving quickly and reliably.

To help ensure the SFMTA implements the most effective improvements as quickly as possible, it’s crucial for supporters to attend one of the five remaining TEP workshops and weigh in on the eight priority routes: the 28-19th Avenue, the N-Judah, the 30-Stockton, the 8x-Bayshore Express, the J-Church, the 14-Mission, the 5-Fulton, and the 22-Fillmore.

A recent workshop on the 14 and 22 lines in the Mission was derailed by a small but vocal group who dominated the discussion with unrelated complaints, according to reports from some who attended. To help provide a more balanced and constructive conversation at future workshops, riders eager to see more reliable Muni service on these corridors must be well represented.

The SFMTA will hold two more workshops this week. Tomorrow, the 28-19th Avenue‘s second workshop will take place at Lakeside Presbyterian Church (201 Eucalyptus Drive at 19th Ave.) at 6 p.m. The proposals for the route include extending sidewalks to ease boardings and shorten pedestrian crossings at over 20 intersections along 19th Avenue as well as removing excessive stops at seven intersections.

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Stockton Street. Photo: geekstinkbreath/Flickr

Before you head off to one of the SFMTA’s ten public workshops on how to make your Muni route faster and more reliable, first you can take a peek at the proposed plans on the agency’s website.

The SFMTA’s Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) web page now features a route-by-route summary of the proposals tailored to each of its eight priority “rapid” lines: the 28-19th Avenue, the N-Judah, the 30-Stockton, the 8x-Bayshore Express, the J-Church, the 14-Mission, the 5-Fulton, and the 22-Fillmore. Although the website doesn’t provide maps or detailed designs, it features a rough look at the street changes proposed for each line, including new transit-only lanes, extending transit bulbs and boarding islands, moving stops across intersections, removing stop signs or adding transit-priority traffic signals, increasing stop spacing, and widening narrow lanes to fit buses.

If you want to see Muni move more efficiently, it’s especially important to show up and support proposals to increase stop spacing to speed up trips (or, in other words, remove stops). At the first of these TEP workshops, which focused on the 28 and N-Judah lines, attendees generally voiced mixed feelings about removing stops, according to agency staff.

Overall, the idea of setting stops farther apart is popular: A 2010 survey found that 61 percent of riders would consider walking longer distances if it would speed up their trip. And once stop spacing is optimized and riders can experience the difference, the changes seem to be appreciated. SFMTA staff said the agency has received mostly positive feedback from riders on the 28-Limited line after the agency removed several stops last fall.

Seventy percent of Muni stops are closer than Muni’s own guidelines call for, according to the SFMTA. With stops as frequent as one (or more) per block, it’s a top complaint among riders. In a 2010 Streetfilm, SFMTA TEP Project Manager Julie Kirschbaum explained that “over time, bus stops have sort of creeped in for various reasons” in “places that aren’t necessarily optimal.”

The SFMTA also held a workshop last weekend on the 8x and 30 lines in Chinatown and will hold two more this week. Tonight’s workshop will focus on the J-Church and 14-Mission (south of Cesar Chavez), and tomorrow’s will look at the 22-Fillmore and 14-Mission (in the Inner Mission). The final workshop on May 5 will address all of the proposals.

See the entire schedule of workshops on the TEP website. You can also weigh in on an online poll.

Photo: torbakhopper/Flickr

Two years from now, Muni buses will have traffic signal priority at 600 intersections throughout the city, SFMTA Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP) Manager Julie Kirschbaum told the agency’s board of directors today.

The signals will speed buses along all of Muni’s priority “rapid” route network, which encompasses half of San Francisco’s roughly 1,200 signalized intersections, she said.

Transit-priority traffic signals would substantially speed up Muni trips by “allow[ing] us to extend greens and reduce the amount of time buses spend sitting at signals,” said Kirschbaum in an update on the TEP [PDF] presented to the board.

The signals, which would use GPS to hold green lights for buses and trains as they approach an intersection, will be installed using $20.3 million from the Prop B street improvements bond measure approved by voters last November. “It really is a substantial investment,” said Kirschbaum.

Although staff is currently performing environmental review and public outreach on physical street improvements recommended in the TEP, other improvements are moving ahead, like signal priority and system-wide all-door boarding, which is expected to begin on July 1.

When the rest of the TEP is implemented by 2017, said Kirschbaum, it will add other street improvements to facilitate signal priority, including colored bus-only lanes, right-turn lanes for other vehicles, and bus stops moved to the far side of intersections.

Some intersections already have transit-priority signals, but staff said they use outdated technology, and many have been poorly maintained. The new signals will also replace stop signs on some routes.

Streetfilms documented the benefits of all-door boarding in March 2010.

Starting July 1, feel free to board any Muni bus by the back door, as long as you pay.

The SFMTA says it will be the first transit agency in North America to implement all-door boarding on the entire Muni system, expanding the existing policy from light rail vehicles (and cable cars) as a simple, low-cost way to speed up boardings and reduce fare evasion on its buses.

“All-door boarding will have immediate positive impacts on the system, such as speeding up the boarding process, improving service reliability, and reducing travel time,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin. ”Additionally, faster service will result in savings that can be reinvested into the system through improved frequency and increased capacity, realizing long-term, sustainable benefits our customers deserve.”

To make the transition, the SFMTA plans to hire fare inspectors, launch a media campaign to inform riders, and potentially install ticket machines at bus stops. SFMTA spokesperson Paul Rose said the agency has installed Clipper Card readers on back doors in preparation for the change, and more details will be presented to the agency’s Board of Directors at a later meeting.

Making the switch could speed up Muni trips substantially. Muni buses currently spend an estimated 15 to 30 percent of their time letting customers get on and off the bus. On some of the most congested lines, many passengers already board on the back illegally, either to skip the long line or to avoid paying the fare.

An all-door boarding system, also known as proof-of-payment, decriminalizes that practice while using random fare inspections to eliminate the sense of security for fare evaders who’ve made it onto the bus, thereby encouraging them to pay.

“We want to have the right level of fare inspection so that we create an expectation for anybody riding on our system that any point, they may be asked to show proof that they’ve paid for their ride,” said Reiskin at a town hall meeting this week. “We don’t want to inadvertently send the signal that Muni’s free.”

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