Editor’s Note: Many people are leaving messages in the Comments section below. If you want to tell readers of the Glen Park News how you feel, that’s the right thing to do.
But if you want to tell the SF Metropolitan Transportation Agency or District 8 Supervisor Rafael Mandelman, you need to email them directly.
Those emails are MTABoard@sfmta.com and mandelmanstaff@sfgov.org.
The Glen Park Association hasn’t been consulted by the City about this change and isn’t part of the decision-making process. MTA and Mandelman are. The deadline for comments is Monday, June 29.
The Metropolitan Transit Board will vote next Tuesday on whether to create two temporary transit-only lanes in Glen Park for the 44 O’Shaughnessy bus, on O’Shaughnessy Boulevard and on Bosworth Street. Public comment is being taken until then.
The lanes would be added to keep the 44 moving as the City reopens after the COVID-19 shutdown and the streets fill with traffic. The 44 is one of four bus routes for which temporary transit-only lanes have been proposed.
An expected deluge of cars is the reason. As people return to work, the transit agency expects “a crushing amount of traffic as people will likely be reluctant to take public transit in the near-term.”
The first Glen Park bus-only lane would run on O’Shaughnessy from Portola to the Ruth Asawa School of the Arts about 800 feet south of Portola.
The second would run along Bosworth Street from Elk to Arlington.
According to the MTA in a post on the bus lanes here, as a temporary measure, these lanes would be automatically removed 120 days after the emergency order is lifted, unless there is a public process to make a lane permanent.”
The routes and streets being considered are:
43 Masonic from Presidio, Geary to Sacramento
43 Masonic from Masonic, Geary to Haight
14/14R Mission from Mission, 1st to 11th
19 Polk from 7th Townsend to Market
19 Polk from 8th Townsend to Market
44 O’Shaughnessy from Woodside, Portola to Laguna Honda
44 O’Shaughnessy from Laguna Honda, Clarendon to Dewey
44 O’Shaughnessy from O’Shaughnessy, Portola to SOTA school driveway (~800 feet south of Portola)
44 O’Shaughnessy from Bosworth, Elk to Arlington
If a large number of people start driving rather than using public transit, San Francisco is in for serious gridlock because of our high usage of transit.
Nationally, just 5% of people use public transit to get to their jobs. In San Francisco in 2018, a full 34% used either Muni, BART or an employer-provided shuttle to get to work, according to MTA statistics.
In October of 2020, an average of 738,790 people a week rode on Muni, according to the MTA.
If many of them shift to private cars, traffic will be even worse than before, which will slow buses, light rail and street cars still further and potentially keep people from going back to public transit. That could create a downward spiral of traffic and congestion.
The public is encouraged to comment on the plan, either by phone or email.
To make public comment, you may call in: (888) 808-6929, Access Code: 9961164.
You can also submit your public comment by sending an email to: MTABoard@sfmta.com
The MTA Board will vote on these proposals on Tuesday, June 30 at 1:00 pm. The meeting will be broadcast online www.sfgovtv.org.