SFMTA to Paint the Transit Lanes Red on Mid-Market This Weekend

The SFMTA announced that red paint will be added this weekend to the transit- and taxi-only lanes on mid-Market Street, between Fifth and 12th Streets. The treatment, already rolled out recently on bus lanes on Third Street and the Geary-O'Farrell Street couplet, is intended to make it more obvious that private auto drivers shouldn't be in the heavily-abused Muni lanes.

"These lanes represent a low-cost, but high-impact measure to decrease travel time, by preventing cars from using transit-only lanes," SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin said in a statement.

The red paint is one of several short-term measures the SFMTA plans to take to help keep Muni moving on Market, along with re-timing traffic signals and adding cross-hatched markings in intersections to tell drivers not to "block the box."

The coloring should help -- it's appeared to be fairly effective at keeping drivers out of the way of Muni vehicles on Church Street. But it'll still be a while before the SFMTA takes stronger measures, like more car diversions and extending the transit-only lanes east of Fifth, and further into downtown. Those improvements aren't expected to come until next year at the earliest.

The SFMTA said construction on the Market transit lanes will happen at night.