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.
Comment from Bill Elsbernd:
I have no problems with concept but there should be neighborhood review.
Some sort of notification posted.
They just happen.
Chenery between Roanoke and Randall is not a good idea. Heavily travelled and will be bus route for two busses again some day.
Why not consider Arlington?
Bill Elsbernd
I didn’t see any mention of Chenery in the post. Did I miss something? I am also hoping Arlington will become a Slow Street.
Traffic has always been a problem on Bosworth between Elk and Diamond during “rush” hours. And the part between Diamond and Arlington has always been a hazard due to folks coming down Arlington and trying to cross Bosworth onto 280 S. If this proposal prompted by concern about gridlock (“If a large number of people start driving rather than using public transit, San Francisco is in for serious gridlock”), then more common sense is needed here. This proposal will make gridlock worse along Bosworth. Even as the City begins to open up more, I do not think folks will want to use public transit for a while if they have the option of driving. Realistically, there is no way to stay 6′ from anyone on a bus or getting off and on a bus. Even if everyone is wearing a mask (and the bus drivers enforces that requirement), folks understandably will be weary of public transit for a while. Bus lanes only inevitably make gridlock along Bosworth worse, and the temperament of drivers worse than ever. -Karen on Lippard
You might not know these ‘folks,’ but many people are still riding buses, and they should have priority over those who decide to travel around alone in roughly 90 square feet of metal/plastic/glass ‘protection’
So you’re saying that there’s absolutely no reason to be concerned about riding in an enclosed vehicle for long periods of time with many other people whose mask-wearing abilities are questionable at best?
And anyway, these proposals won’t help the 44 because the bottleneck is intersection capacity, not lane capacity. So all it’s doing is reducing person-capacity along these segments while providing absolutely no benefit.
What they will do is force people onto neighborhood streets instead of Bosworth. Would you prefer having through traffic on those streets instead of those that were actually deigned for the volumes?
Gosh, it sure is interesting how you equate my statement ‘people still need to ride buses’ with ‘there’s absolutely no reason to be concerned about riding in an enclosed vehicle with [other people].’
First of all, nice dog-whistle prejudice against transit riders there. Second, if you think buses are so icky, nobody’s forcing you on one.
Then you go on with some pretty nonsensical blither blather about how a transit-priority lane can’t push more people through an intersection per light cycle. Why don’t you go ahead and write up your white paper for the SFMTA if you’re so sure about this. Be sure to cite your sources!
What dog whistle? Any shared resources, whether they be buses or rental cars, are going to come into contact with more people than privately-held resources. That’s not the point. In normal circumstances, that’s not generally something to be concerned with. And these are not normal circumstances.
Yes Tara I agree plus it’s not equitable to expect the workers and students who take the 44 to work and school to suffer in the same backed up lanes as people who are able to take any route they want any time they want to wherever they want in their tons of plastic and metal.
I agree entirely with what Ms. Peteros just stated, particularly on Bosworth between Elk and Arlington!
Agreeing with all of the above. The bottleneck will only worsen. While it is true that more people will be driving to work rather than taking public transit, it remains to be seen how many will remain working from home.
There are 2 four-way-stop intersections along Bosworth between Elk and Diamond, and they are needed for traffic access and pedestrian safety. So there will be little gain for the buses during this short leg of the route, and double the congestion for motorists.
This is great! Let’s do the bus lane! We’re in a climate emergency (100 in the Arctic this week) and burning fossil fuels is the culprit. We need to incentive public transit and e-bikes and disincentive car driving.
Um… except this will just increase idling.
There you go again, Chris. Some truly brilliant legal mind a number of years back stopped the city from building bike lanes arguing they increase idling and are therefore a CEQA violation. Oh wait, actually, no credible evidence ever actually substantiated that claim and the suit was eventually tossed.
So you’ve got your work cut out for you to prove red-carpet lanes fail to push more people through an intersection *and* they increase pollution overall. Get cracking!
I am a neighbor from uphill in Miraloma Park and this makes no sense to me (maybe I’m not seeing the map correctly).
Are the lanes going from Glen Park up towards Portola or the other way?
Two-way. And the ones on O’Shaughnessy extend onto Woodside to Laguna Honda, even though it’s not mentioned.
As someone who takes the bus and drives up and down O’Shaughnessy frequently, this will not work and will make traffic worse. There will be a back up, up the hill from Elk who knows how far up. If the city wants to fix the traffic nightmare they created with the redo of the Bosworth – Diamond intersection, they need to tear up the extra/unneeded concrete they added – especially on the north side of the bart station and return space for a dedicated bus stop. Who takes away bus parking at a major transit hub so that traffic behind is blocked? As soon as they did that, taking the bus became much worse and slower. Why would one do that? With the bus stop after the light, there is no problem for the buses to get back into the traffic. The bart pedestrian area is expansive – there was no need for extra space. MTA should be held accountable for the mess they made and fix that rather than create another one.
PLEASE BE SURE TO EMAIL THE MTA AND OUR SUPERVISOR DIRECTLY WITH YOUR THOUGHTS!!!! Sadly they probably won’t read these posts otherwise.
mandelmanstaff@sfgov.org
MTABoard@sfmta.com
I agree with you Lisa Murphy! Thanks for your input.
Bought my house on Joost forty years ago. Have been observing traffic in thIs neighborhood for years. This is a very bad idea.
Yes! If this goes through, expect even more cut-through traffic on Joost, Congo, Elk, and Diamond Height Blvd! This ridiculous idea is the opposite of Vision Zero because it will encourage people to use streets that weren’t intended to be used for through-traffic.
This is a comically bad idea. “Hey, let’s take the slowest, most lumbering vehicles we have and give them a head start up a 7% grade!”
That’s not transit priority, that’s just rudeness.
Also, just FYI for everyone: this proposal is for both directions, and extends onto Woodside Ave. past Portola. It’s not just the one-way segments mentioned above.
So you’re saying that nobody will be taking the bus, but you want to create bus only lanes? This makes zero sense. Also, people use these lames to either turn onto portala or to get onto 280. This will create more issues than solving them.
I truly do not understand why this bucolic backwater can not be left alone. just about everything City Hall has done to “improve” the area has resulted in more trouble.
I live at 59 Burnside Ave and when we did agree to asking for help in the “Fix-it group” for signs showing that Burnside Ave is a dead end and no sign taying this has ever appeared.
Now that Chenery is a “slow street” cars turn left from Chenery into Burniside come down Burnside, and seeing the basketball hoop at the end of the street turn into Paradise and when Paradise reaches Elk turns around and comes back aand goes up the street.Endless entertainment for Stay-at-home residents.
In another life I joined with 2 other ladies and we became known as the Gum Tree Girls and actually did beat City Hall because there is no freeway in Glen Canyon Park. It took a lot of doing but we did it.
How many are you benefiting, and how many are you hurting? What is your agenda, really?
Terrible idea.
Unfortunately there is a freeway entrance just past the BART station so we should expect a lot of traffic (both local and cross town) for travelers who need to get to the freeway. I wish we didn’t have a freeway running through our neighborhood but we do. I understand the need/desire to put in bus only lanes but there really aren’t parallel streets in this area to get to the freeway (or cross town) as there are in the areas where bus only lanes currently exist.
If MTA really desires to get us to take more public transit they should really look at lowering the cost to travel on MUNI and, ideally, make public transit free. It is particularly upsetting that those of us in the southeast who have both freeways and BART have such poor MUNI service (e.g. the J church) but have to pay a surcharge for a fast pass that includes Muni and BART – even though we often HAVE to take BART because service on MUNI is so inconsistent.