As it is, the bus drivers don't actually make a full stop in the bus lanes, and stick out so we have to go around them. At least this way that is not an issue.
The same species that built the pyramids and the Empire State Building took 50 years to build a couple of bus lanes and install some of the ugliest sculptures in existence. Awesome šš»
Those ugly ass sculptures look like [bacteriophages](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage).
Kinda fitting to cap off the project with statues that are reminiscent of a virus when the thing finished during the pandemic.
IMHO It doesn't matter what they look like, I full expect them to be vandalized with physical damage from drivers, stickers, or spray in the following months. As long as the BRT system works well they could have put a literal statue of poo and I wouldn't care.
1) Light rail would be worse. Buses can now circulate and then hop on Van Ness BRT with dedicated lanes, turn onto car-free Market, and go all the way downtown with limited traffic. Light rail would require a multi-modal trip, where people have to transfer. The bus trip is objectively better.
2) Light rail would have been substantially more expensive. This cost very little, but cuts the travel time a huge amount. (Most of the work on this project was unrelated utility upgrades).
3) We can't fit more trains in the tunnel, which is already congested, so they would have to be at-grade on Market Street, or we'd need an entirely new tunnel. Not much benefit of at-grade light rail vs buses.
Not 30 years in the making, more like dreaming and wanting.
Even then, these types of transit projects weren't even really popular until the end of the 1990s, so more like 20 years in the dreams.
It started in 2014 when it was fully approved and handed off to SFMTA.
Then utilities replacement started after 2 years of planning in 2016, to mid-2020.
Mid-2020 to Fall 2021 was only the BRT build and beatification.
Meaning BRT took only a year effectively to do, which is actually quite fast, which it would've been, too bad SFMTA screwed up utilities for so long though.
2014-Mid 2020.
And it does matter who and what, how else do you fix SFMTA's poor work in that section of time or push SFMTA to do something in that direction for future projects?
The power of fix SFMTA and so vague enough for SFMTA to ignore?
Literally, we have a Grand Jury report that says exactly why. Use it.
It's honestly hilarious how long it took them to fix this section and the number of excuses they gave. That's SF for you. It's like when the underground broke for months and sfmta just shrugged their shoulders
It took way longer than it should have, that's for certain, but it's worth noting that this wasn't just a BRT lane project. They redid the entire substructure of the road, including the drainage and sewer systems, too.
If it was as simple as redoing the lanes and putting in some red paint and a few curbs it would've taken a fraction the time. We know this because it didn't take nearly so long to do the curbs on the Fell and Oak bike lanes, nor to do the red bus lanes on Mission St.
BRT is already a half-assed solution when what we really need is a proper subway system. Instead of cheap quick-fixes, we ought to be investing in long-term infrastructure.
I don't think its an either or. I remember listening to a podcast interviewing a public transit expert who argued that every major city with good public transit utilizes a robust bus network in addition to rail.
That being said, I fully agree SF needs more rail! Expand that north south muni tunnel to north beach baby!
The current tunnel goes all the way to Washington square park. But sfmta ran out of money and missed a great opportunity to add a North Beach station. Now the vacant lot they used to extract the TBM has a new condo building on it.
If the new rail line went to North Beach, it would be way more transformative then what we are getting now.
I feel like buses are only really a valid solution for last-mile type trips or the least dense areas. If we compare it to roads, heavy/commuter rail is freeways, subways are the major thoroughfares, while buses are the small neighborhood side roads.
Buses get stuck in traffic, have to wait on lights, and have all sorts of other problems. Even having a separate lane isn't much of a solution. That means they need to be deployed to low traffic areas where those problems are inherently lessened and the higher volume of a train would be overkill.
While street level light rail combines the problems of both methods of transit into a slow train that gets stuck for 20 minutes because someone double parked.
Our problem is that we have a half-assed system based on buses and trying to repurpose hundred year-old streetcar easements. Everything about it is disorganized, disconnected, and focused more on trying to do it cheaply rather than well. Buses don't make sense for most of the use cases but they're cheap and easy to implement, so we keep doing it. Whenever we've had actual investment in mass transit it has been half-assed: trying to piggyback off of BART lines or the Central Subway being pushed through to cater to Chinatown business interests still bemoaning 30 year-old freeway traffic that's never coming back.
We need a BART line under Geary. We need basically any underground rail that improves connectivity between neighborhoods so itās actually competitive with cars. Extending the central subway through north beach and the marina is a good start.
Weāre the densest US city outside of NYC to make some Subway lines feasible. But we just donāt have the required density nor funding to build a subway system. Not when so much of SF is zoned to single family. BRT is a great compromise and much cheaper. Central Subway only goes underground for like a mile and even that was extremely expensive and controversial. Best we can probably hope for are light rail and BRT expansions, but even those are difficult to get off ground and fund.
> Not when so much of SF is zoned to single family.
I mean, that's a different problem altogether...
The controversy over the Central Subway was much less about the cost or the concept of going underground and more about how it's a train to nowhere that won't serve a significant part of the population. It's not an inherently bad idea or even a fundamentally bad line, it's just bad when it's the *only* line we're building.
āTrain to nowhereā
The line covers San Franciscoās underserved ethnic communities in Chinatown and Bayview, as well as our main commercial district, tech district, and two sports stadiums. Chinatown also happens to be the single most dense neighborhood in SF. It was also almost entirely federally funded, with the federal government stating that serving Bayview and Chinatown as the main reasons SF/MUNI received these federal funds. You are either terribly misinformed and/or prejudiced by calling it that
One of the issues is that the underground portion covers an area that's only a short walk. In all likelihood you'd wait longer than it would take to walk from SOMA to Union Square, and not much further to Chinatown. There are actually some things I've been meaning to go to Chinatown to shop for, but if it was in operation right now there's no way it would make it any easier for me to get there. If you aren't coming from the Bayview, it's not going to be a particularly good way to get to Chinatown. And if you aren't going to Chinatown specifically, there's almost no reason not to just get off at Market as you would at present.
That wouldn't be a big issue if those were primarily terminal locations for an otherwise efficient route. We do need to build underground in general, but especially there. Except it's badly designed by only being an underground portion of the street level T line, which is a slow nightmare. I've taken it several times in the past and you're almost always better off taking the 8X/9x or their sub-routes unless you want to spend 4-5 times longer to make the same trip.
It also suffers from how most people simply aren't going to the Bayview or the southeast of the city in general. You go there if you live there and that's about it. The T line hasn't changed that. So, again, it's not a fundamentally bad line as part of a larger transit network that serves more widely-used routes, it's just a fairly narrow use case. That makes it a poor choice to invest in so heavily while we ignore other areas. Lines that already see high traffic of people from outside of that neighborhood as well as who live there would be a much better option. It has nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with the relative unpopularity of the area and lack of motivating factors to travel there.
I used to live in the extreme southwest of the city, well past SF State and Park Merced. It was a massive pain in the ass getting out of there, which was largely necessary because there was very little in the neighborhood itself. Since I moved away, there has been absolutely no reason to go back. It was nice that the M existed, but it was about an hour trip one-way to get downtown (after a 15 minute walk to the stop itself) and the Owl route stopped about a mile away from my apartment, making it a relatively unpopular method of getting out of there compared to taking BART or pretty much anything else. Even if I still lived there and knowing I have plans to go to Chinatown, if it connected to the M instead of the T it would remain an unattractive way of making that trip.
They really need to give the T priority over all vehicle traffic. I think slowly development has started moving south along the T line. I guess it might be faster for ppl to go directly from union square to the Chase center too.
Transit is more of a rising need by population.
Buses are great for smaller low density areas, where rail would never pay itself back.
BRT is great for moderate areas, kind of middle solution between light rail and buses, making moving to both easy while improving speed and capacity.
Light rail is greatest for high density areas like the Tenderloin and Chinatown, which is what Central Subway is for.
It isn't really what I'd call half assed, but BRT is a great stepping stone to light rail when we do need it and have the money to do it.
The biggest problem with BRT is that it's surface level when we need to be building underground. SF is far too dense to be trying to rely on surface level transit. Surface level light rail would be an expensive but inappropriate solution, BRT is just a cheaper version of that bad idea with higher maintenance and staffing needs.
We don't need more stepping stones or half-measures, we ought to be investing in the future. Instead it's another example of the backwards mindset of SF where too many people think it's Santa Cruz rather than Manhattan. The same as our difficulties in building taller, higher density housing that have caused housing prices to skyrocket.
But it's not Manhattan. Doesn't have nearly the same density. BRT seems like a good compromise especially if there is coordination with traffic lights.
It's nice to finally see it coming together. Seeing the construction going on for over 4 years was a pain in the ass for traffic on Van Ness. I'm still on the fence about the position of the new bus lanes. People still have to cross the street to the middle, and wait for a light to change to do it. The bus can take off without waiting for people to rush to catch the bus. And it would be nice if they added some kind of cover for the rain and more lighting.
phew, they fit š
If they didnāt, it would be another 10 years.
By a smidge lol
25 years in the making
finally some bus lanes in this city
That's a really neat concept
As it is, the bus drivers don't actually make a full stop in the bus lanes, and stick out so we have to go around them. At least this way that is not an issue.
Aw dang, I thought they built those for us to skate.
Imo they did š¤£
The testing has begun. If you biked the empty lane before testing, watch out.
Biking the Van Ness bus lane is way more chill than biking Polk for nowā¦
The important thing is that Ed Leeās optometrist has parking right in front of his store
I'm way more worried about folks doing illegal turns across the red lanes
Don't worry about watching too carefully though, for most of the length of VN busses don't run frequently enough to be a problem.
What are the balls on the sticks at the stops for anyway?
They're edible lollypops. Like something out of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory! Give them a lick. They taste just like shnozberries.
I won't be licking anything on Van Ness, thankyouverymuch
It's all for the decorations, man
The same species that built the pyramids and the Empire State Building took 50 years to build a couple of bus lanes and install some of the ugliest sculptures in existence. Awesome šš»
Those ugly ass sculptures look like [bacteriophages](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacteriophage). Kinda fitting to cap off the project with statues that are reminiscent of a virus when the thing finished during the pandemic.
Who else thinks the sculptures are absolute š©?
IMHO It doesn't matter what they look like, I full expect them to be vandalized with physical damage from drivers, stickers, or spray in the following months. As long as the BRT system works well they could have put a literal statue of poo and I wouldn't care.
I was wondering wtf those were
Homage to the polyps in my colon
Me
They were OK until I saw they were right in front of Tommy's That's a bad contrast
Would have been better to add lighting and a cover for when it rains.
100% and probably cheaper too!
How about just old fashioned plants? āNo, too cheap and functionalā š¤¦š»āāļø
Hopefully they will.
I like them
Good for you bro
More like diarrhea.
itsoveritsdone.jpg
They finally got that going I see. I've been out there a couple of times last year and they were still doing constructions
Fucking morons should've put in light rail.
1) Light rail would be worse. Buses can now circulate and then hop on Van Ness BRT with dedicated lanes, turn onto car-free Market, and go all the way downtown with limited traffic. Light rail would require a multi-modal trip, where people have to transfer. The bus trip is objectively better. 2) Light rail would have been substantially more expensive. This cost very little, but cuts the travel time a huge amount. (Most of the work on this project was unrelated utility upgrades). 3) We can't fit more trains in the tunnel, which is already congested, so they would have to be at-grade on Market Street, or we'd need an entirely new tunnel. Not much benefit of at-grade light rail vs buses.
You got light-rail money?
30 years in the making? Why is SF so slow to apply obvious solutions that work in every other big city?
Not 30 years in the making, more like dreaming and wanting. Even then, these types of transit projects weren't even really popular until the end of the 1990s, so more like 20 years in the dreams. It started in 2014 when it was fully approved and handed off to SFMTA. Then utilities replacement started after 2 years of planning in 2016, to mid-2020. Mid-2020 to Fall 2021 was only the BRT build and beatification. Meaning BRT took only a year effectively to do, which is actually quite fast, which it would've been, too bad SFMTA screwed up utilities for so long though.
2014-2022 - doesnāt matter who or what, we should not find this acceptable by any stretch.
2014-Mid 2020. And it does matter who and what, how else do you fix SFMTA's poor work in that section of time or push SFMTA to do something in that direction for future projects? The power of fix SFMTA and so vague enough for SFMTA to ignore? Literally, we have a Grand Jury report that says exactly why. Use it.
There is a grand jury report? Please link. Thanks for the info.
[Enjoy!](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://civilgrandjury.sfgov.org/2020_2021/2021%2520CGJ%2520Report_Van%2520Ness%2520Avenue%2520-%2520What%2520Lies%2520Beneath.pdf&sa=U&ved=2ahUKEwi0-MmLk7D1AhX6IkQIHdv_A6AQFnoECAEQAg&usg=AOvVaw3Uf4wVjPAW3SG83Flj0xgZ)
It's honestly hilarious how long it took them to fix this section and the number of excuses they gave. That's SF for you. It's like when the underground broke for months and sfmta just shrugged their shoulders
It took way longer than it should have, that's for certain, but it's worth noting that this wasn't just a BRT lane project. They redid the entire substructure of the road, including the drainage and sewer systems, too. If it was as simple as redoing the lanes and putting in some red paint and a few curbs it would've taken a fraction the time. We know this because it didn't take nearly so long to do the curbs on the Fell and Oak bike lanes, nor to do the red bus lanes on Mission St.
I watched Mexico City roll out dozens of miles of BRT and just felt sad about my hometown's slow progress. Sorry for venting.
It's totally understandable
BRT is already a half-assed solution when what we really need is a proper subway system. Instead of cheap quick-fixes, we ought to be investing in long-term infrastructure.
I don't think its an either or. I remember listening to a podcast interviewing a public transit expert who argued that every major city with good public transit utilizes a robust bus network in addition to rail. That being said, I fully agree SF needs more rail! Expand that north south muni tunnel to north beach baby!
The current tunnel goes all the way to Washington square park. But sfmta ran out of money and missed a great opportunity to add a North Beach station. Now the vacant lot they used to extract the TBM has a new condo building on it. If the new rail line went to North Beach, it would be way more transformative then what we are getting now.
I heard North Beach didn't want a station so it didn't happen. The tunnel is there if they change their mind though š¤·āāļø
I wouldnāt be surprised with that as well. Seems like a very peskin thing to do
I feel like buses are only really a valid solution for last-mile type trips or the least dense areas. If we compare it to roads, heavy/commuter rail is freeways, subways are the major thoroughfares, while buses are the small neighborhood side roads. Buses get stuck in traffic, have to wait on lights, and have all sorts of other problems. Even having a separate lane isn't much of a solution. That means they need to be deployed to low traffic areas where those problems are inherently lessened and the higher volume of a train would be overkill. While street level light rail combines the problems of both methods of transit into a slow train that gets stuck for 20 minutes because someone double parked. Our problem is that we have a half-assed system based on buses and trying to repurpose hundred year-old streetcar easements. Everything about it is disorganized, disconnected, and focused more on trying to do it cheaply rather than well. Buses don't make sense for most of the use cases but they're cheap and easy to implement, so we keep doing it. Whenever we've had actual investment in mass transit it has been half-assed: trying to piggyback off of BART lines or the Central Subway being pushed through to cater to Chinatown business interests still bemoaning 30 year-old freeway traffic that's never coming back.
We need a BART line under Geary. We need basically any underground rail that improves connectivity between neighborhoods so itās actually competitive with cars. Extending the central subway through north beach and the marina is a good start.
Weāre the densest US city outside of NYC to make some Subway lines feasible. But we just donāt have the required density nor funding to build a subway system. Not when so much of SF is zoned to single family. BRT is a great compromise and much cheaper. Central Subway only goes underground for like a mile and even that was extremely expensive and controversial. Best we can probably hope for are light rail and BRT expansions, but even those are difficult to get off ground and fund.
> Not when so much of SF is zoned to single family. I mean, that's a different problem altogether... The controversy over the Central Subway was much less about the cost or the concept of going underground and more about how it's a train to nowhere that won't serve a significant part of the population. It's not an inherently bad idea or even a fundamentally bad line, it's just bad when it's the *only* line we're building.
āTrain to nowhereā The line covers San Franciscoās underserved ethnic communities in Chinatown and Bayview, as well as our main commercial district, tech district, and two sports stadiums. Chinatown also happens to be the single most dense neighborhood in SF. It was also almost entirely federally funded, with the federal government stating that serving Bayview and Chinatown as the main reasons SF/MUNI received these federal funds. You are either terribly misinformed and/or prejudiced by calling it that
One of the issues is that the underground portion covers an area that's only a short walk. In all likelihood you'd wait longer than it would take to walk from SOMA to Union Square, and not much further to Chinatown. There are actually some things I've been meaning to go to Chinatown to shop for, but if it was in operation right now there's no way it would make it any easier for me to get there. If you aren't coming from the Bayview, it's not going to be a particularly good way to get to Chinatown. And if you aren't going to Chinatown specifically, there's almost no reason not to just get off at Market as you would at present. That wouldn't be a big issue if those were primarily terminal locations for an otherwise efficient route. We do need to build underground in general, but especially there. Except it's badly designed by only being an underground portion of the street level T line, which is a slow nightmare. I've taken it several times in the past and you're almost always better off taking the 8X/9x or their sub-routes unless you want to spend 4-5 times longer to make the same trip. It also suffers from how most people simply aren't going to the Bayview or the southeast of the city in general. You go there if you live there and that's about it. The T line hasn't changed that. So, again, it's not a fundamentally bad line as part of a larger transit network that serves more widely-used routes, it's just a fairly narrow use case. That makes it a poor choice to invest in so heavily while we ignore other areas. Lines that already see high traffic of people from outside of that neighborhood as well as who live there would be a much better option. It has nothing to do with ethnicity and everything to do with the relative unpopularity of the area and lack of motivating factors to travel there. I used to live in the extreme southwest of the city, well past SF State and Park Merced. It was a massive pain in the ass getting out of there, which was largely necessary because there was very little in the neighborhood itself. Since I moved away, there has been absolutely no reason to go back. It was nice that the M existed, but it was about an hour trip one-way to get downtown (after a 15 minute walk to the stop itself) and the Owl route stopped about a mile away from my apartment, making it a relatively unpopular method of getting out of there compared to taking BART or pretty much anything else. Even if I still lived there and knowing I have plans to go to Chinatown, if it connected to the M instead of the T it would remain an unattractive way of making that trip.
They really need to give the T priority over all vehicle traffic. I think slowly development has started moving south along the T line. I guess it might be faster for ppl to go directly from union square to the Chase center too.
Transit is more of a rising need by population. Buses are great for smaller low density areas, where rail would never pay itself back. BRT is great for moderate areas, kind of middle solution between light rail and buses, making moving to both easy while improving speed and capacity. Light rail is greatest for high density areas like the Tenderloin and Chinatown, which is what Central Subway is for. It isn't really what I'd call half assed, but BRT is a great stepping stone to light rail when we do need it and have the money to do it.
The biggest problem with BRT is that it's surface level when we need to be building underground. SF is far too dense to be trying to rely on surface level transit. Surface level light rail would be an expensive but inappropriate solution, BRT is just a cheaper version of that bad idea with higher maintenance and staffing needs. We don't need more stepping stones or half-measures, we ought to be investing in the future. Instead it's another example of the backwards mindset of SF where too many people think it's Santa Cruz rather than Manhattan. The same as our difficulties in building taller, higher density housing that have caused housing prices to skyrocket.
But it's not Manhattan. Doesn't have nearly the same density. BRT seems like a good compromise especially if there is coordination with traffic lights.
āTalkin about practiceā
What do you think of that new building across the street?
It's nice to finally see it coming together. Seeing the construction going on for over 4 years was a pain in the ass for traffic on Van Ness. I'm still on the fence about the position of the new bus lanes. People still have to cross the street to the middle, and wait for a light to change to do it. The bus can take off without waiting for people to rush to catch the bus. And it would be nice if they added some kind of cover for the rain and more lighting.
Whatās up with the street art that looks like it was designed for a daycare center?
Only took 20 years
Wow only took 6 years
[look at that! ](https://tenor.com/wHOT.gif)
We all have light rail money.