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Posted Apr 13, 2023, 9:17 PM
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你的媽媽
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Join Date: Jan 2012
Location: The Bay
Posts: 8,745
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Quote:
As SF Schools Fuel Muni’s Rebound, Students Want to Speed Up Their Favorite Bus Route
The 29 Sunset rumbles past more than two dozen schools. But making it ‘rapid’ will require money only voters can provide.
Last week, city transit officials offered yet another indicator of an ailing San Francisco. On the Muni routes that move people to the downtown core, ridership remains low.
But for routes that don’t rely on downtown commuters, there was a different story altogether. Buses are full, or nearly so. Routes like the 14R Mission and 22 Fillmore are back to at least 90 percent of 2019 ridership, and others like the 9 San Bruno and 49 Van Ness/Mission have surpassed pre-pandemic levels.
The 10 routes with the highest recovery all have something in common: They take students to school.
As Muni faces dire budget shortfalls — and the prospect of quiet downtown rides for the long-term future — the agency is considering big changes to the so-called “neighborhood” routes, and how they can serve their riders better. But students are not waiting for the agency to act; they want a say.
Of all the lines serving the city’s schools, the 29 Sunset hasn’t rebounded quite as much; it’s at 70 percent of pre-COVID ridership. Its lack of speed and reliability is keeping ridership down, transit officials say, and they have pledged to make changes.
Along its nearly 14-mile L-shaped journey, the bus rumbles within shouting — or at least walking — distance of more than two dozen elementary, middle, and high schools, plus SF State and City College.
It can take a while to get somewhere on the 29 Sunset. Average wait for a bus is nine minutes, but packed buses might bypass a stop. En route, many factors slow each trip. For example, on the southern stretch, the bus navigates several narrow, winding streets; on the west side, it stops at every block along Sunset Blvd., an alphabetical snail’s pace. Just the western half of the route can take up to 100 minutes round trip, according to Muni project manager Steve Boland, who is in charge of the 29 Sunset changes.
The 29 Sunset is chockablock throughout the day, with student riders trying to make their first period bell between 8 and 9:30 am, then piling on again when schools let out in the afternoon.
This combination of route length and serving many schools contributes to longer wait times at the bus stop, reports Hayden Miller, a Lowell High School junior, public transit aficionado, and regular 29 rider. “Even with the bus running every nine minutes, each one is just packed, and then bus after bus passes already full,” he tells The Frisc.
Lowell students have been leading the charge for 29 Sunset improvements for more than five years. SFMTA, the agency that runs Muni, has added “school trippers” — more buses during peak school hours — but the bus route needs other changes, say students, including rapid service similar to the Geary, Van Ness, and Mission corridors. (The Frisc reached out to students and representatives of other schools along the route, including Balboa High, June Jordan School for Equity, and City College, but has not received replies yet.)
There was momentum before the pandemic, with a a social media campaign to gather rider experiences via photos and posts sent to #FixOur29. But COVID hit, schools closed, and Muni service was cut.
Now that students are a big part of Muni’s recovery, transit planners have returned to the 29 Sunset improvement project, and street-level adjustments could come this year. But an overhaul, similar to the “rapid” lines elsewhere in the city, could run into a fiscal wall.
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For now, planners can speed up the bus with changes around the margins that could cut travel time on the western half of the route by 15 percent, said Boland.
They include sidewalk bulb-outs along Sunset Blvd. and Lincoln Way to let buses stop without having to pull back out into traffic. Another subtle change: moving stops to the far side of intersections with traffic signals, so that buses can make the light before picking up passengers.
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Before any improvements happen, SFMTA will conduct more outreach, including among seniors and persons with disabilities. A proposal for a first phase of improvements focused on the west side is slated to go before the full SFMTA board around Memorial Day, according to Boland.
While the southern part of the route runs through several lower-income neighborhoods, which Muni has pledged to prioritize for better service, the western route will see changes first because the agency wants to coordinate with a big repaving project along Sunset, said Borland.
In the meantime, everyone — students, seniors, and everyone in between — will just have to wait.
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https://thefrisc.com/as-sf-schools-f...e-8e641e3fde03
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