The Geary Bus Rapid Transit project is designed to deliver bus rapid transit features to the San Francisco Municipal Railway's 38 Geary line, the busiest bus line in the city with about 54,000 daily riders. The scheme plans to add red transit-only lanes to several sections of Geary Boulevard, as well as consolidate some stops in a center-lane running configuration. The project is split into phases. The first, dubbed Geary Rapid, encompasses the route from Market Street to Stanyan Street. The second phase, the Geary Boulevard Improvements Project, will see improvements to the rest of the line. Construction for the project began on October 1, 2018 with full implementation of the two phases expected by 2022.
Project details
Geary BRT provides transit service improvements primarily through the use of bus lanes. The project plans for red-painted bus priority lanes on most of the route of the 38-Geary along Geary Boulevard. These lanes would 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 would run in the center of the street west of Stanyan to around 27th Avenue in the Richmond District and Laurel Heights. 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. 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.
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 system.
Geary corridor planning
In 1989, the city of San Francisco approved Proposition B, a ballot measure 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 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
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 for design and implementation. The federal Department of Transportation approved the project Environmental Impact Statement 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 and is expected to begin implementation in late 2018.
