The Geary Bus Rapid Transit project added
bus rapid transit
Bus rapid transit (BRT), also called a busway or transitway, is a bus-based public transport system designed to have much more capacity, reliability and other quality features than a conventional bus system. Typically, a BRT system includes ...
features to
San Francisco Municipal Railway lines along
Geary Boulevard. The corridor serves routes , , , which combined to serve 52,900 daily riders in 2019, the most of any corridor in the city. The project added transit-only lanes, painted red, along many sections of Geary between the
Transbay Transit Center
The Transbay Transit Center (officially the Salesforce Transit Center for sponsorship purposes) is a transit station in downtown San Francisco. It serves as the primary bus terminal — and potentially as a future rail terminal — for the San ...
and 33rd Avenue. After the project’s completion, over 75% of Geary corridor now has transit lanes.
The original plan called for consolidating some stops in a center-running configuration, as was done for the
Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project, but in early 2021, as part of emergency changes related to the
COVID-19 pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...
, SFMTA added side-running bus lanes along Geary. Based on the success of these "temporary emergency transit lanes" in increasing bus speeds with minimal impacts to car traffic, SFMTA made the side-running bus lanes permanent.
Project details
Geary BRT provides transit service improvements primarily through the use of
bus lanes
A bus lane or bus-only lane is a lane restricted to buses, often on certain days and times, and generally used to speed up public transport that would be otherwise held up by traffic congestion. The related term busway describes a roadway c ...
. The project plans for red-painted bus priority lanes on most of the route of the 38-Geary along Geary Boulevard. These lanes run along the side of the street adjacent to the
curb or parking spaces on the section of the corridor east of Stanyan Street, which includes neighborhoods such as the
Tenderloin and
Japantown. The bus lanes run in the center of the street west of Stanyan to around 27th Avenue in the
Richmond District and
Laurel Heights
Laurel Heights is a neighborhood of San Francisco, California, San Francisco, California. It is located to the south of the Presidio of San Francisco and east of the Richmond District, San Francisco, California, Richmond District. It is bordered ...
. The bus lanes then switch to side running from 27th Avenue to 34th Avenue.
The project will also implement transit improvements such as
bulb-outs for bus stops and traffic signal updates. The combination of bus lanes and other improvements is expected to reduce travel times on the 38-Geary by 10-20% when traveling the entire route from 48th Avenue to the
Transbay Transit Center
The Transbay Transit Center (officially the Salesforce Transit Center for sponsorship purposes) is a transit station in downtown San Francisco. It serves as the primary bus terminal — and potentially as a future rail terminal — for the San ...
.
This translates to roughly 10 minutes in travel time reduction on a trip that takes around one hour. The travel time reduction is expected to be 15-30% between Van Ness Avenue and 25th Avenue.
In addition to transit service upgrades, the project is intended to improve pedestrian safety on the corridor. For example, the project includes several upgraded pedestrian crossings adjacent to Japantown. Additionally, the project will narrow parts of Geary Boulevard to two lanes of automobile traffic down from three lanes.
History
Previous use as a streetcar corridor
In the early 1900s, the Geary Boulevard corridor was served by
streetcar routes such as the
A Geary-10th Avenue,
B Geary, and
C Geary-California lines. These streetcar lines were all eliminated by 1956 as buses replaced streetcars in San Francisco.
Subsequently, replacement rail service on Geary was proposed multiple times, such as in the original plans for the
Bay Area Rapid Transit
Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) is a rapid transit system serving the San Francisco Bay Area in California. BART serves 50 stations along six routes on of rapid transit lines, including a spur line in eastern Contra Costa County which uses ...
system.
Geary corridor planning
In 1989, the city of San Francisco approved Proposition B, a
ballot measure
A referendum (plural: referendums or less commonly referenda) is a direct vote by the electorate on a proposal, law, or political issue. This is in contrast to an issue being voted on by a representative. This may result in the adoption of a ...
that approved a half-cent sales tax for transportation. The expenditure plan that was included in the proposition prioritized the planning and implementation of transit expansion along four transit corridors including Geary Boulevard. Subsequently, the
San Francisco County Transportation Authority
The San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) is a state chartered sub-regional transportation planning and programming agency for San Francisco County. SFCTA is a separate legal entity from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation ...
(SFCTA) conducted a study, titled the Four Corridor Plan, to determine the details of the transportation improvements along the corridors included in the Proposition B plan. The study called for a
subway-surface rail line along Geary.
Refocused to bus rapid transit
![Curb reconstruction for Geary Rapid Project, October 2020](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/df/Curb_reconstruction_for_Geary_Rapid_Project%2C_October_2020.jpg)
With the Proposition B tax expiring in 2010, the voters of San Francisco approved Proposition K in 2003 that extended the tax and established a new expenditure plan. The new plan funded the Geary Bus Rapid Transit project and mandated the implementation of a bus rapid transit network, with the first two lines consisting of Geary BRT and
Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit. Proposition K mandates that Geary BRT be built to "rail-ready standards" to accommodate a planned future conversion to
light rail.
Subsequently, in 2007 the SFCTA published a feasibility report for the project. Starting in 2008, the SFCTA started an
environmental impact review process. In 2017, the SFCTA approved the final environmental impact report for the project after thirteen years of studying the feasibility and impacts for the proposed bus infrastructure.
With that milestone, the project was handed off to the
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA or San Francisco MTA) is an agency created by consolidation of the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni), the Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT), and the Taxicab Commission. The agen ...
for design and implementation.
Construction was broken up into two separate, complementary projects.
The first phase of work, called the Geary Rapid Project, would install red bus lanes, upgrade traffic signals, add new crosswalks, and build
bus bulbs from Market Street west to Stanyan Street. The
Environmental Impact Statement for the first phase was approved by the federal Department of Transportation on June 1, 2018. The final design of the first phase, after several revisions based on community input, was approved by the SFMTA board in August 2018.
Construction on the project started in early 2019 and concluded in fall 2021.
The second phase, called the Geary Boulevard Improvement Project picked up at the end of the first phase at Stanyan Street and would take the improvements further west to 34th Avenue. One of the major differences from the first phase would be the addition of “center-running” transit lanes (similar to those built for the
Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project) in the middle of the street between Arguello Boulevard and 28th Avenue.
At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the second phase was in the detailed design phase. That work was put on pause, as SFMTA focused on installing Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes (TETL) on several transit corridors. The TETL project installed side-running transit-only lanes on Geary over much of the footprint of the second phase: between Stanyan Street and 15th Avenue, and between 24th Avenue and 33rd Avenue. The project also installed several "transit head start" signals and wooden bus bulbs. SFMTA found that the temporary side-running lanes kept bus travel times from increasing as auto congestion returned. Because of the positive results, SFMTA has decided to retain the side-running transit lanes permanently. The second phase of the project will now focus on making the temporary improvements, permanent.
See also
*
Geary Subway The Geary Subway is a proposed rail tunnel underneath Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, California. Several plans have been put forward as early as the 1930s to add a grade separated route along the corridor for transit. San Francisco Municipal Rail ...
*
Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit
References
External links
SFMTA Geary Boulevard Improvement ProjectSFMTA Geary Bus Rapid TransitSFCTA Geary Corridor Bus Rapid Transit
{{USBRT
Bus rapid transit in California
Public transportation in San Francisco
San Francisco Municipal Railway