Transit

Finding a highway map for a road trip is easy, but comprehensive transit maps for car-free travel in California have always been a little harder to come by.

Despite living in one of the city's densest residential neighborhoods with one of the lowest rates of car ownership, Tenderloin residents have endured some of San Francisco's most dangerous streets for walking since traffic engineers turned most of them into one-way, high-speed motorways in the 1960s.

Red-colored transit-only lanes on Church Street won't come until some time in January, according to SF Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson Paul Rose, who cited rainy weather as the reason for the delay. The project would be one of San Francisco's first to add transit-only lanes with colorful pavement to emphasize that they're off-limits to drivers. Implementation was originally expected in September, but was pushed back to November to coordinate with a construction closure. "We need 72 hours of guaranteed dry weather to get the work done," Rose said.

Muni's chronic delays and breakdowns may be slightly easier to swallow as the transit system notifies riders using NextBus digital displays and text message alerts.

Letting down their transit-riding constituents once again, the Board of Supervisors rejected a measure to increase Muni funding by ending a fee exemption for large non-profit developers, following an intense opposition campaign that sowed misconceptions about which organizations would have to pay the fee. The policy change, proposed as part of a regular update to the Transit Impact Development Fee, was opposed by all supervisors except Scott Wiener and Carmen Chu.

With any increase in the number of people living and working in San Francisco comes an added strain on the city's streets and transit system. To account for that, San Francisco collects fees on new development -- with an exception carved out for just about any non-profit organization. That means that even massive developments like hospitals, university campuses, or museums -- which generate thousands of daily trips -- may pay nothing to help the city's transportation agencies accommodate them.

With backing from the Board of Supervisors yesterday, free Muni for low-income youth may finally come to fruition if approved by the SF Municipal Transportation Agency Board of Directors on December 4.

The 76-Marin Headlands, a lightly-used route that has the lowest on-time performance of any Muni line, will be converted into a new route starting tomorrow that is expected to improve reliability, run more frequently, and better serve popular destinations. The revamped line, dubbed the 76x-Marin Headlands Express, will also run on Saturdays in addition to the old schedule of Sundays and holidays.

San Francisco's South of Market district will be crippled by gridlock within a generation unless the city makes major improvements to its transit, bicycle, and pedestrian infrastructure and implements policies that entice commuters to travel by means other than driving.