Streetsblog San Francisco

The new plan for California Pacific Medical Center’s Cathedral Hill campus at Van Ness Avenue and Geary Boulevard calls for a far less massive facility than originally planned, but the number of car parking spaces per bed will actually be higher.

Under the new agreement announced by city supervisors yesterday, the size of the hospital will be cut nearly in half, from 555 beds to 304 beds. But the number of parking spaces included in its garage won’t be downsized at the same ratio, shedding only 210 of its 1,200 original spaces — a 20 percent reduction, according to the SF Examiner. So while the facility may bring in less car traffic as a whole, it will actually be more car-centric compared to the original plan.

“There’ll be a lesser impact on transit from traffic, but it’s only because they made the hospital smaller, not because they got any smarter about transportation,” said Livable City Executive Director Tom Radulovich.

Of the location at Van Ness and Geary, Radulovich says, “If you were going to pick a spot that’s not on Market Street where you could do the most damage to transit, Van Ness and Geary is pretty much it.”

The $14 million that CPMC has agreed to pay the SF Municipal Transportation Agency to help fund Van Ness and Geary Bus Rapid Transit projects was also reduced from the $20 million included in the development agreement as late as November, according to the Chronicle (though it’s still more than the $10 million Mayor Ed Lee originally asked for in 2011).

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A preferred design for Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit was approved unanimously today by the Board of Supervisors, acting as the SF County Transportation Authority Board. Supervisor Mark Farrell, who delayed approval of the proposal a month ago after complaining that he “hadn’t been briefed” on it, said he now stands behind the project after SFCTA staff brought him up to speed.

The project proposal received broad praise from the board and transit advocates as an “elegant solution” to combine the best features of two design options.

“This project is an example of what is critical to the future of transportation in the city,” said Supervisor Scott Wiener. “We have a growing population… and if we don’t start beefing up our transit capacity, we’re going to have a big problem.”

SFCTA Executive Director José Luis Moscovitch pointed out that the project, along with Geary BRT, will go a long way toward reducing car trips as new development arrives along the Van Ness corridor — namely, California Pacific Medical Center’s Cathedral Hill project at Van Ness and Geary.

Brett Thomas of the SF Transit Riders Union emphasized the need to physically separate the bus lanes from car traffic to keep drivers from encroaching on them and delaying transit. Wiener echoed the sentiment, citing his experience on the J-Church this morning, in which “a delivery truck was parked a little too far from the curb, and literally shut down the entire J-Church inbound line.”

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A crucial step in advancing the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project was delayed for a month today after Supervisor Mark Farrell, a member of the SF County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) Plans and Programs Committee, complained that he wasn’t comfortable voting on the latest design proposal which he said he “hasn’t been briefed on.”

The committee was expected to approve recommendation of the proposal today, sending it to the full board for a vote next Tuesday. However, Farrell said that it was “absolutely inappropriate” for him vote on it today without feeling adequately informed, and that he still wouldn’t be ready in a week. Although the proposal received unanimous approval from the SFMTA Board of Directors today, the SFCTA committee decided to postpone its vote until its next meeting, in one month.

Staying updated on the project, said Farrell, “is a responsibility of mine, for sure, but it’s also a responsibility of the TA [staff].”

“In my opinion, it is very appropriate and, I think, necessary for all the supervisors and commissioners who get affected by this in their districts to be fully briefed on this before we’re asked to vote on any portion of this, even if it might be non-binding,” he said.

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Planners have settled on a design for San Francisco’s first Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) route on Van Ness Avenue. The result is a plan that combines the benefits of both proposed center-running options to keep construction costs relatively low while allowing Muni flexible use of its bus fleet to serve the line.

In this design, buses would run along either side of a center median, but converge near intersections to load at right-side boarding platforms. That should assuage concerns from Muni management about requiring special buses for the route with doors on both sides to load passengers on a left-side median. It would also forego the expense and disruption of removing the existing planted median while mitigating safety concerns about buses passing each other within a pair of enclosed lanes. The plan would also likely include slightly raised bus lanes and will ban all but one left turn along the corridor between Mission and Lombard Streets.

Some more analysis and planning needs to be done before the final environmental impact report is presented in September and approved by the end of the year, but SF County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) planner Michael Schwartz said the environmental impacts should “fall within the bookends of what’s already been analyzed.”

The line is expected to be up and running in 2016 (here’s why it’s taken so long).

Check out more details on the proposal from the SF Examiner, Transbay Blog, and in this SFCTA Powerpoint presentation [PDF].

Streetsblog readers had a lot to say about the two options presented last time around — what do you think of this hybrid design?

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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After years of delay, the 2016 target date for the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project seems more tangible than ever. The San Francisco County Transportation Authority recently released its draft environmental impact report and will select one of several proposed design alternatives in the spring.

The SFCTA is asking for public input on the different options and the draft report, which includes a trove of information for planners and transit advocates to consider when weighing each design.

Last week, the San Francisco Transit Riders Union’s Rapid Transit Working Group met to discuss the alternatives.

“Ultimately, we’re looking at what is going to create the best, 21st-century riding experience for transit riders on Van Ness Avenue,” said SFTRU board member Rob Boden. SFTRU members are considering which design to endorse, but the organization hasn’t taken a stance yet.

The group’s top priorities, said Boden, are improving transit reliability and passenger comfort. The EIR analyzes those factors along with everything from median widths and greenery to bus weaving.

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With the announcement of this year's $1.8 billion in Federal New Starts and Small Starts grants [PDF], two of the Bay Area's Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) projects are set to receive much-needed money to maintain their viability in the face of severe budget cuts. The vote of confidence in the Bay Area's first two BRT projects is an important step, particularly given the proposed changes of criteria at the federal level for these grants, proposals that could make it harder for San Francisco and Oakland to compete with other national projects, say planners.

In San Francisco, the Van Ness BRT project was awarded $15 million in Small Starts funds and in the East Bay, the Berkeley to San Leandro BRT project was awarded $15 million, which goes part of the way toward replenishing the $35 million AC Transit diverted from the project late last year to fill operating budget gaps.

While the diversion of funds from the $234 million East Bay BRT didn't kill the project, receipt of the federal funds was a significant lifeline. AC Transit Interim General Manager Mary King said the grant was a reinforcement to her agency and she hoped for similar grants in the future. "At this point, this is the only way that federal money in large amounts will be flowing to transportation projects," King said in a statement.

The East Bay BRT project is in its environmental review stage and all three cities where it will operate, Berkeley, Oakland, and San Leandro, are deciding the preferred route. Though there arenaysayers who are trying to kill the project, the project proponents have been an important ally to AC Transit, which the agency readily acknowledged.

"Certainly, all of the advocates, who have been so diligent about making the BRT project the best it can be, should be commended for their hard work to ensure that AC Transit stays at the forefront of the federal funding agenda," King said.

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With overwhelming approval for the Proposition K half-cent transportation sales tax in 2003, San Franciscans  signaled they not only wanted to maintain a state of good repair and operational solvency for their transit system, they were willing to dedicate more than 25 percent of the tax to expansion, including a network of transit preferential streets and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT).  The first two BRT corridors will be on Geary Boulevard and Van Ness Avenue, the latter with a target opening date by Muni's centennial at the end of 2012.

The two routes already carry one tenth of Muni's total ridership and proponents of the BRT treatments expect the improvements in reliability and convenience will attract many more riders.  Though Van Ness BRT still has significant hurdles to surmount, including environmental review and securing funding, the planned route has seen scant public resistance, unlike the Geary corridor, where business and community interests in the Richmond have made a bunch of noise about the fear of lost parking and construction impacts. Forty-six percent of people living on the two-mile Van Ness corridor don't own cars, though with transit travel times currently double auto travel times, current mode split only shows around 25 percent of those same people using transit (PDF).

The full-feature Van Ness BRT line is proposed to have physically separated bus lanes that run two miles, from Lombard Street to Mission Street, where the 47 and 49 lines will then re-enter mixed traffic and continue their routes.  Buses will be low-floor, with doors for entry on both sides in one proposed option, and signals will be prioritized similarly to light rail vehicles on the Townsend-3rd, and riders will buy tickets before boarding to prevent the significant delays associated with queueing and paying onboard.  Station stops would be spaced more than double current stop spacing, or an average of 900 feet, and the TA said its Citizens Advisory Committee (CAC) asked for even greater spacing in several locations at its last meeting.

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