SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA: Transit/Transportation News

[squid games]

J Church returning to subway. Let's make service worse for 99% of people because 1% are too lazy to transfer!

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by squid games

J Church returning to subway. Let's make service worse for 99% of people because 1% are too lazy to transfer!

How does returning the J Church to its pre-covid route make service worse?

[AndrewK]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

How does returning the J Church to its pre-covid route make service worse?

The J has been highly reliable since it became a streetlevel-only route (I take it almost daily). Pre-pandemic when it went into the subway it had constant delays due to having to fight for space underground with the N, K, L, and M, and sharing a subway entry/exit tunnel with the N. Not only has service improved on the J significantly in its current truncated form, it has also aided all other lines which use the subway (subway delays are down 75% versus pre-pandemic, due to both the J and L staying above ground).

[Pedestrian]

2022 will be a big year for Muni: Central Subway and Van Ness bus route are coming
By Benjamin Schneider • December 22, 2021 3:30 pm - Updated December 22, 2021 4:41 pm

For San Francisco transit riders, there is finally a light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. After years of delays, both the Van Ness bus rapid transit line (known as BRT) and the Central Subway — which will connect Chinatown and Union Square to SoMa and Mission Bay — are slated to open in 2022.

Central Subway

The Central Subway will extend the T Third Muni Metro line into downtown along 4th and Stockton streets, adding new stations at 4th and Brannan streets, the Moscone Center, Union Square and Chinatown. The Union Square station will include an underground transfer to the Powell Street Muni and BART station.

Fully approved in 2008, the Central Subway has been under construction since 2012. Its opening has been pushed back several times, and the project is more than $300 million over budget. Construction is now “substantially complete” and testing is underway for a projected opening in October, according to San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency spokesperson Stephen Chun.

Cost overruns for the Central Subway and Van Ness BRT have been paid through SFMTA reserve funds, Chun said.

While the extension is short, just 1.7 miles, it will be transformative for riders on the T Third and 30 Stockton — one of Muni’s slowest and most crowded lines. The project is designed to travel from Chinatown-Rose Pak station, at the corner of Washington and Stockton streets, to the Caltrain station at 4th and King Street in just seven minutes.

With the line open, Chinatown will be more easily accessible to the growing Chinese American community in Bayview. Residents of the southeastern part of The City will have a quicker route to jobs, entertainment and BART downtown.

Union Square hotel guests and downtown office workers will find it easier to reach Oracle Park, Chase Center and Caltrain. The line is also expected to catalyze development in the Central SoMa neighborhood, where several large office and housing projects are approved to begin construction.

The Central Subway is designed to offer four-minute frequencies, with a short line extending to Dogpatch and a longer line going the length of the T tracks to Sunnydale. However, it’s unclear whether these frequencies will be possible when the project opens, as SFMTA continues to grapple with labor, budget and service challenges.

Van Ness BRT

The Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit project is adding center-running, bus-only lanes and bus priority traffic signals along nearly the entire length of Van Ness Avenue, from Mission to Lombard streets.

The project was approved in 2013 and broke ground at the end of 2016. Its opening has been delayed about three years and the project has come in about $37 million over budget.

But now it’s essentially complete, with workers currently installing public art and drought-resistant median plants. The start of passenger service is slated for the end of March or beginning of April, Chun said.

Van Ness BRT is expected to improve trip times by 32%, or about six minutes, along the corridor, and will provide a more seamless connection between the Mission and northern neighborhoods such as the Marina and Polk Gulch, via Muni’s 49 Van Ness-Mission bus line. The project, which also makes the boulevard safer and more inviting for pedestrians, will provide access to the new California Pacific Medical Center hospital as well as several planned and recently completed apartment buildings.

No matter the benefits, construction was a slog for Van Ness merchants and residents. A San Francisco Civil Grand Jury Report found the perennially delayed project suffered from a lack of coordination among agencies, inadequate study of sewer conditions and poor contractor selection. SFMTA says it has applied those lessons to subsequent projects. The agency recently abandoned a plan for center-running BRT on Geary Boulevard in favor of side-running transit-only lanes that can be installed more quickly and with less disruption.

“We have to do all of our trial and error in public,” Johnson said. “It’s not to say we shouldn’t be striving to be perfect. It’s just to say, we need to ask for the public’s patience.”

Bigger Plans

Next year may also see more detailed plans revealed for future transit mega-projects. The ConnectSF Transit Strategy, released earlier this month, calls for building a subway line down Geary Boulevard and 19th Avenue, a new Caltrain station in Bayview and an extension of the Central Subway. In addition, planners are continuing to work on the Downtown Extension of Caltrain into the Salesforce Transit Center, and a long-term plan for a second transbay train tunnel known as Link21.

Still, progress will be incremental. The Central Subway Extension alternatives study, a key step in advancing that project originally slated for release next year, is on hold as SFTMA focuses on other priorities, Chun said. The subway tunnel already extends to Washington Square Park in North Beach — which SFMTA determined to be the easiest place to begin excavation — marking a logical first step for an extension. A 2015 analysis estimated that adding track and building a station would cost $340 to $500 million, a range that has surely increased since. From there, the line could travel to Fisherman’s Wharf, the Marina and the Presidio.

“I don’t think we should be afraid to be bold,” said Johnson, who’s leading ConnectSF. “It might be messy and it might be hard, but it’s my hope that in the future, these projects and these changes will be worth it.”

https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/mun...lated-to-open/

The original plans showed COVERED bus shelters on the boarding islands:


https://www.sfmta.com/projects/van-n...vement-project

"Value engineered" away I guess.

[TWAK]

The other areas where there are busses on wires, do those count as BRT or just regular busses (for SF)?

[Pedestrian]

Originally Posted by TWAK

The other areas where there are busses on wires, do those count as BRT or just regular busses (for SF)?

About half the SF Muni rubber-tired system is electrified (rough estimate) and counts as "trolley busses". What qualifies the line as "BRT" is dedicated lanes, which SF chose to make clear by using red-tinted concrete and some physical barriers to access from other lanes, center boarding islands and transit preference for stop lights along the route. The Van Ness project got the full treatment. Cars should never be in the bus lanes (the ones you see in the photo above are actually parked cars belonging to workers on the project) though they may have to cross them to turn left where permitted (and at least while construction was ongoing, at many intersections where you could formerly make a left turn, it was now banned).

The same was planned for Geary Blvd but when the Van Ness project went so badly (3 YEARS behind schedule etc) they opted for something of an intermediate system where boarding is still at the curb but transit gets dedicated red-painted lanes which have no access barriers and cars must use to turn right. I think they are still going to give transit preference for the stop lights but I'm not sure about that. IMHO this isn't really BRT which was promised.

[black beatle]

Originally Posted by Pedestrian

https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/mun...lated-to-open/

The original plans showed COVERED bus shelters on the boarding islands:


https://www.sfmta.com/projects/van-n...vement-project

"Value engineered" away I guess.

There are covered bus shelters all up and down Van Ness. Don't let a single pic mislead you.

[Pedestrian]

No joke: After years of delays Muni’s Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit will open on April Fool’s Day
Ricardo Cano
Feb. 15, 2022

Bus rapid transit on San Francisco’s Van Ness Avenue will finally open for service April 1, and it’s not a joke.

The Van Ness project, which has become notorious for its years of construction delays, will transport transit riders down one of the city’s busiest roadways using red concrete center lanes that officials say will move buses up and down the historic corridor faster.

At the end of January, the project was almost 100% complete. Last year, Muni and Golden Gate Transit operators, which will also benefit from the Van Ness BRT, began testing buses on the center lanes.

The agency and the project’s general contractor, Walsh Construction, are working on punch-list items — the final list of tasks that need to be finished before the project’s completion. SFMTA is also waiting on securing roofs for its newly installed bus shelters along Van Ness. Agency staff said at a Jan. 31 community meeting that supply-chain disruptions could mean that service will begin without those bus shelters fully built.

Bus rapid transit on Van Ness will run from Bay to Market streets and serve nine bus stops and are expected to speed up transit on the corridor by about 32%, according to the agency.

The Van Ness project was initially scheduled to be completed in 2019 but problems emerged from the start of construction — from challenges working underneath a 110-year-old roadway with dilapidated infrastructure. A grand jury report published last summer faulted SFMTA for not adequately preparing for the project’s “foreseeable and avoidable” risks before starting construction in late 2016.

SFMTA officials have said that the contractor, Walsh, was responsible for several of the project’s setbacks and that the agency has learned from the project’s mistakes to deliver on future capital projects more effectively . . . .

The festivities for the debut of Van Ness BRT will start the evening of March 31 when agency staff will light the public art sculptures that were installed between Geary and O’Farrell streets. At 11 a.m. on April 1, a Friday, the SFMTA will hold the project’s ribbon-cutting ceremony in front of the War Memorial near Van Ness and Market streets.

The fact that the project’s launch date falls on April Fool’s Day was not lost on some of the agency’s board directors, who asked why the agency settled on the April 1 date. “It does strike me that opening Van Ness on April Fool’s Day is sort of like putting on a ‘kick me’ sign,” board director Steve Heminger said.

Tumlin told the board Tuesday that April 1 was the date that the agency settled on in hopes of attracting “some very important public officials” to attend the event.

It’s unclear which officials Tumlin was referring to, though the agency has extended invites to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Gov. Gavin Newsom, who was San Francisco mayor when the Van Ness project got its initial approval.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sf/artic...s-16921648.php

[homebucket]

Nice shot of Salesforce looming over the Muni Presidio Bus Yard.



https://www.reddit.com/r/sanfrancisc...ents/swdo5m/_/

[OhioGuy]

It's April Fools' Day and that means the Van Ness bus lane is actually finally open! (not a joke on this day)

CBS San Francisco: San Francisco Van Ness Avenue’s Bus Rapid Transit Lanes Open After Years Of Construction

ABC7: Bus Rapid Transit finally coming to San Francisco's Van Ness after 5 1/2 years of construction

A couple photos I took early last week.

[M II A II R II K]

Towards a Seamless Bay Area

https://transitcenter.org/towards-a-seamless-bay-area/

.....

- The introduction of the Clipper Card in 2002 was intended to help. For the first time, riders could use the same payment card for rides across the region. But the technology alone wasn’t enough to solve the problem. To this day, riders whose trips require them to use multiple agencies still face a penalty – interagency transfers are only sparingly accepted, and most agencies don’t coordinate their schedules, creating long waits between transfers. And each system uses its own maps, intimidating all but the most intrepid commuters. — The advocacy group Seamless Bay Area has been working diligently to change this. In 2019, it released a Vision Map, which depicted what a fully integrated system could look like. In this dream scenario, a rider could pay one fare to zip all the way from San Jose to San Francisco to Santa Rosa, never needing to think about which “brand” of transit they were using.

- After several years of advocacy from Seamless and their allies, that vision is inching closer to reality. A bill now moving through the California State Legislature, SB917 (2022) aka the “Seamless Transit Transformation Act,” directs the Bay Area transit agencies to develop an integrated transit fare structure by 2024, create a plan to coordinate schedule and service standards, and develop a single regional transit map and standardized way-finding system. ​​SB917 stipulates that these policies would become mandatory in order for agencies to receive state transit funds. — By presenting integrated transit as something both irresistible and achievable, and building a broad coalition in support of the vision, Seamless was able to break through a longstanding bureaucratic morass. With the Bay Area’s infamous housing costs continuing to push people further from employment centers and ridership slow to recover from the pandemic, the initiative could be the key to bringing back riders, and making transit a viable option for tens of thousands more people.

- “Our goal is a world-class, integrated, higher ridership, public transit network that expands people’s access to opportunity, and makes transit the most convenient and competitive way of getting around and that brings many more people to our region,” says Ian Griffiths, Seamless Bay Area’s policy director and co-founder. --- Seamless developed a multi-pronged strategy that involved building a broad, diverse, grasstops and grassroots coalition. “What we’ve tried to do is bridge the worlds of research and thought leadership and like action [with] community groups. And I think there’s a need for that type of advocacy,” said Griffiths. — Seamless worked with organizations like LUNA, Latinos United for a New America and Bayview-Hunters Point Community Advocates to learn about barriers to transit access in the region. They found that the lack of coordination between agencies and costly fares for multi-agency trips were a barrier to transit for many Bay Area residents.

.....

[M II A II R II K]

BART Disruption Highlights Need for Second Transbay Tube

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2022/04/1...transbay-tube/

.....

- It may have been temporarily forgotten, but before the pandemic, the entire economy of the Bay Area–not to mention hundreds of thousands of daily commuters–were regularly held hostage to BART service disruptions. Many of those are the result of being forced to rely on a single set of tubes to cross between San Francisco and Oakland. --- The region is currently planning for a second set of tubes that, ideally, would have four tracks, as seen in the diagrams above: two to carry conventional trains and a second pair in BART’s wide gauge to build in redundancy and increased capacity. As this editor has experienced firsthand, medical emergencies and people entering the trackway are not situations unique to the Bay Area. Travel to Paris, New York, London, or other cities with robust transit systems, and these kinds of problems cause delays, yes, but trains can be rerouted so the entire system doesn’t come to a screeching halt. And major breakdowns can be handled and repairs made without stranding the whole city. Until the Bay Area gets some redundancy, its entire economy is skating on proverbial thin ice.

.....

[homebucket]

• Video Link

• Video Link

[Busy Bee]

Originally Posted by M II A II R II K

BART Disruption Highlights Need for Second Transbay Tube

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2022/04/1...transbay-tube/

Immersed tube is the way to go just like the original crossing. It's likely more seismically stable, has fewer clearance concerns and constraints and can be prefabricated close by at Alameda.



___

[homebucket]

Some Central Subway updated photos:









https://www.bizjournals.com/sanfranc...y-project.html
https://www.rtands.com/passenger/sfm...ervice-update/

[homebucket]

First Caltrain Electrics Arrive
The Peninsula's railroad just got its first modern railway equipment... its old belchy diesels will not be missed
By Roger Rudick
Mar 23, 2022



Caltrain took a major step forward with its $2.4 billion electrification project last weekend, with the delivery of the first electric train set, spotted above on Caltrain’s yard tracks between College Park and San Jose Diridon stations.

...

The new trains may look familiar to anyone who has spent time in Europe. Although these units were constructed in Utah, the design is a derivative of the KISS family of electric multiple unit commuter trains by Stadler Rail of Switzerland. The European version has been running since 2008 (Streetsblog has ridden them in Switzerland and France and found them to be fast, smooth and comfortable–as unlike Caltrain’s current fleet of museum-piece diesel trains as one can imagine).


]

...

That said, the agency will start doing the first live tests of its overhead electrification wire in a few months. “We expect to have Segment 4 energized by June, after which the AEM-7 will be used for testing purposes,” said Lieberman.

...

Either way, once the testing is completed with the AEM-7, Caltrain will be ready to start running its new Stadler trains under the new wires. The Stadlers have already been tested under their own power at the federal testing center in Colorado, so they should be fine.

...

Electrifying a major commuter rail system in California is a major step towards eliminating emissions from the transportation sector. Caltrain’s electrification project is partially funded by the overall state rail modernization project, also known as California High-Speed Rail.

Unfortunately, Southern California is still not on board. Around the same time Caltrain was getting its first electric trains, its sister commuter rail agency in Los Angeles–Metrolink–was boasting about buying yet another generation of polluting diesel locomotives (sorry, “biodiesel”/renewable diesels). But just like “clean coal” and other green-washing monikers, the truth is renewable diesel’s biggest selling point is probably that it allows entrenched fossil fuel interests to continue refining fuel, resulting in negligible reductions in emissions when the entire fuel production process is factored in. Meanwhile, Southern California politicians, including Assembly leadership Anthony Rendon and Laura Friedman, are still actively blocking California train electrification funds. As previously reported, Rendon and many Democrats take money from oil companies.

https://sf.streetsblog.org/2022/03/2...ctrics-arrive/

[M II A II R II K]

Planning begins for a subway to the west side of The City—but is it a distant dream?

https://www.sfexaminer.com/fixes/pla...setand-beyond/

.....

- Imagine hopping on a subway downtown and arriving in Japantown, Golden Gate Park or the Sunset District in as little time as it takes to ride BART from the FiDi to the Mission District. That fever dream took one tiny step closer to reality on Tuesday morning when the San Francisco County Transportation Authority (SFCTA) board directed planners to begin working on a “strategic case” for a Geary-19th Avenue subway. --- It’s the first official move in what would likely be a multi-decade quest to provide underground rapid transit to the northern and western parts of The City. The proposal could also dovetail with more regional transit moonshots, like a second train tube under the Bay and the fully approved extension of Caltrain and high-speed rail tracks into the Salesforce Transit Center. In a presentation to the SFCTA board, which consists of the 11 members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, planners provided the most detailed map yet of where this new subway line might go.

.....

[Busy Bee]

I could have saved them a bunch of time and just given them the same map I drew 15 years ago.

[M II A II R II K]

One month after its debut, this is how S.F.'s Van Ness BRT is performing

https://www.masstransitmag.com/bus/n...-is-performing

.....

- One month after its long-awaited debut, Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit has led to notable travel time savings and attracted more riders, according to performance figures from the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency.

.....

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by AndrewK

The J has been highly reliable since it became a streetlevel-only route (I take it almost daily). Pre-pandemic when it went into the subway it had constant delays due to having to fight for space underground with the N, K, L, and M, and sharing a subway entry/exit tunnel with the N. Not only has service improved on the J significantly in its current truncated form, it has also aided all other lines which use the subway (subway delays are down 75% versus pre-pandemic, due to both the J and L staying above ground).

Yeah, I wish it terminated at Market permanently and those who want to continue downtown get on at Church and Market. One transfer is not bad. Too many lines come down Market. Same for the L Line at West Portal once that starts up again.

Also, good news about the Van Ness Bus Rapid Transit actually improving things and it will get better as the signal preemption improves. This still should have been a subway IMO.