Benefits of Temporary Transit Lanes Made Permanent

Benefits of Temporary Transit Lanes Made Permanent
By Erin McMillan

Map of San Francisco showing permanent and temporarily approved transit lanes Map of nearly 10 miles of permanently approved and 13 miles of installed transit lanes as part of the Temporary Emergency Transit Lanes program.

The SFMTA Board of Directors voted to make most of the remaining Temporary Emergency Transit Lane (TETL) projects permanent at its January 18 meeting. This move is part of the SFMTA’s efforts to continue the successful temporary improvements in response to the pandemic to preserve those benefits longer term.

During the early months of the pandemic, with traffic at an all-time low, Muni routes saw a 15% reduction in travel time on average. This allowed us to provide more frequent and less crowded service at a time when resources were very limited. We launched the Temporary Emergency Transit Lane program to preserve this time savings even as traffic returned, so people making essential trips on Muni wouldn’t get stuck on slow and crowded buses.

The Temporary Emergency Transit Lane program used a quick-build approach to install nearly 13 miles of emergency-response transit lanes in about 18 months. This was the fastest expansion of transit lanes in the city’s history, benefiting routes that carry two-thirds of current Muni customers. Moreover, all these projects benefit lines that serve neighborhoods identified by the Muni Service Equity Strategy. The program has shown great results, and several corridors were made permanent in 2021.

The most recent round of temporary transit lanes that were permanently approved on January 18 benefit Muni’s 1 California, 19 Polk, 27 Bryant, 43 Masonic and 44 O’Shaughnessy, bringing the total to 10 miles that have been made permanent.

The 1 California’s transit lane was installed in summer 2021, benefitting one of Muni’s highest-ridership lines. The project evaluation showed up to 15% faster travel time for 1 California customers compared to pre-pandemic. Following evaluation and community input, we made some adjustments to the project, adding transit lanes to two additional blocks and removing afternoon towaway restrictions on one block of transit lanes in Chinatown. Although it was not part of the original project, three blocks of general traffic peak-hour towaway lanes will also be removed on Sacramento Street to help address merchant concerns about parking availability.

Between summer 2020 and fall 2021, transit lanes were installed on 7th and 8th streets in SoMa, critical corridors for the 19 Polk, a key north-south connector in San Francisco. The 27 Bryant’s route was modified last year so that it would also be able to use the lanes to travel through SoMa with less delay. The project evaluation found that the lanes helped preserve transit travel time savings as traffic returned. Transit travel time along 7th and 8th Streets decreased by up to 13% when the lanes were installed and remain up to 25% shorter than pre-COVID conditions, even as traffic volumes increase.

In April 2021, we installed temporary emergency transit improvements at six key locations where traffic bottlenecks occur on the 43 Masonic and 44 O’Shaughnessy. These spot improvements, which included transit lanes and left turn restrictions, helped buses navigate through these bottlenecks more quickly, providing a faster ride and better reliability for Muni customers. In addition to the transit improvements already made on Masonic, transit signal priority is being explored as an additional tool to further improve travel times.

The remaining project under the Temporary Emergency Transit Lane program is the Park Presidio Lombard Temporary HOV Lanes project which will finish implementation on the Park Presidio segment soon. Once implementation is complete, we’ll conduct a thorough evaluation in partnership with Caltrans, since this is on a state highway, before making a recommendation about whether to make these lanes permanent as well.

Published February 03, 2022 at 06:09AM
https://ift.tt/eRrcg6mhy

Comments

Bring back the 'old normal' says author Lionel Shriver The coronavirus pandemic has killed tens of thousands and forced people across the world to re-evaluate what they think is really important.

via Entertainment News - Latest Celebrity & Showbiz News | Sky News https://ift.tt/2YcZvHd

New top story from Time: President Trump’s Brother, Robert Trump, Dies at 71

https://ift.tt/3g1Evdc (NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump’s younger brother, Robert Trump, a businessman known for an even keel that seemed almost incompatible with the family name, died Saturday night after being hospitalized in New York, the president said in a statement. He was 71. The president visited his brother at a New York City hospital on Friday after White House officials said he had become seriously ill. Officials did not immediately release a cause of death. “It is with heavy heart I share that my wonderful brother, Robert, peacefully passed away tonight,” Donald Trump said in a statement. “He was not just my brother, he was my best friend. He will be greatly missed, but we will meet again. His memory will live on in my heart forever. Robert, I love you. Rest in peace.” The youngest of the Trump siblings had remained close to the 74-year-old president and, as recently as June, filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Trump family that unsuccessfully sought to stop ...

Six Generations of Pint-Sized Buses Serve Muni’s Toughest Routes

Six Generations of Pint-Sized Buses Serve Muni’s Toughest Routes By Jeremy Menzies For over 80 years, special fleets of shorter than usual buses have been reserved for some of the City’s toughest routes. Winding through tight bends and climbing up steep grades, these pint-sized coaches ensure access to transit in neighborhoods where standard-length buses cannot go. As the SFMTA phases in a brand-new batch of shorter buses, here’s a look at all six generations of Muni’s “mini” fleet. “Baby White” Buses: 1938-1975 The first generation of short-length buses was intended for regular use on all Muni bus routes. Made by the White Motor Company in Cleveland, Ohio, this fleet came to SF in 1938. The buses were nicknamed “Baby Whites” after a group of longer White Co. buses arrived in 1947. In the mid 1950s, all but three of these buses were retired. The three saved continued to run on the 39 Coit Tower route until 1975—in service longer than any other bus before or after. This bus ...

New top story from Time: Jasper Johns: “Dying While on Assignment Doesn’t Seem Like a Bad Idea”

https://ift.tt/39PD2WS Jasper Johns, possibly America’s most famous living artist and still plying his trade at 91, launches two retrospectives on Sept. 29; one at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City and the other at the Philadelphia Museum of Art . The exhibitions, known collectively as Mind/Mirror, illuminate the through lines of Johns’ large body of work: his fascination with such everyday symbols as numbers, targets, maps and flags; his sometime habit of limiting his color palette to red, blue, yellow and orange; and his exploration of such techniques as collage, hatching and scale. One section of the Whitney is dedicated to his variations on the motif of a Savarin coffee can crammed with brushes, which is widely believed to be the artist’s way of representing himself. Johns, who famously destroyed all his prior work before painting his first flag, lives in Connecticut and rarely gives interviews. He answered questions from TIME via email. [time-brightco...

New top story from Time: How Liberal White America Turned Its Back on James Baldwin in the 1960s

https://ift.tt/2QBsNzv In discussions about race relations today, the works of James Baldwin continue to speak to the present, even decades after they were written. So it is worth remembering that, at the very height of his influence, Baldwin experienced the same frustration that some Black activists, particularly on campus, feel about white liberals today: their refusal to acknowledge their complicity in the regime of white supremacy. In Baldwin’s case, the liberal backlash was widespread, and effectively marginalized him for a time. The very first piece on the front page of the very first issue of The New York Review of Books , Feb. 1, 1963, was a review of Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time by F. W. Dupee of the Columbia English department. Dupee (a former Communist Party organizer) took exception to Baldwin’s apocalyptic tone. “Do I really want to be integrated into a burning house?” Baldwin had written. The answer, Dupee wrote, is that “[s]ince you have no other, yes; and t...

New top story from Time: Britney Spears Asks to Address Court in Conservatorship Case

https://ift.tt/3xvaX1z (LOS ANGELES) — Britney Spears has asked to address the court to talk about the conservatorship that has controlled her life and finances for 13 years, her attorney said Tuesday, and a judge scheduled a June date to hear from her. Spears’ court-appointed attorney, Samuel Ingham III, said in a hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court that she had asked to speak to the court soon, and agreed with Judge Brenda Penny on a June 23 date. He did not say what she would specifically like to say. It would be the first known time in more than two years that the 39-year-old pop star has spoken in court. The last time, on May 10, 2019, the courtroom was sealed. None of what she said became public. The judge may also close the June hearing to the media and public. But Spears, through Ingham, has been pushing for more transparency in the court proceedings and documents of the conservatorship. Spears did not take part in Tuesday’s hearing, and she very rarely attend...

Govt offices in Bhubaneswar, Cuttack to function with 75 pc strength of employees in December https://ift.tt/2HQxXmI

All subordinate offices and departments in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack will function with 75 per cent strength of employees next month, the Odisha government said on Saturday. The directions cover entire staff including Group-A officers. The General Administration and Public Grievance Department on Saturday issued an official order in this regard and said that also said that all state government offices throughout the state will remain closed on Saturdays.

New top story from Time: ‘I Will Cry When I Deliver That Last Yogurt.’ Small Ranch Owners Are Selling Their Herds For Lack of Water

https://ift.tt/3l9IavO Gail Ansley delivered her final batch of homemade Picabo Desert Farms goat yogurt to Atkinson’s Market in Hailey, ID two weeks ago. As usual, each 16-oz unit of rich, creamy goat’s milk yogurt was packaged in a plain plastic container with a simple disclaimer stuck to the lid: “We know this label isn’t Chic, but the Yogurt inside is the best you’ll Eat!” it proudly proclaims . The ingredients: raw goat milk, culture, and sometimes gourmet vanilla bean paste sourced from nearby Boise, or fresh lemon curd, or peach jam. But this chapter is all over: she sold her last goat, a Nigerian dwarf named Kea, the weekend before. Kea was the final remaining animal in Ansley’s hundred-plus goat herd, which she grew and raised over the past six years on her small farm in Richfield, ID. “ And I will cry when I deliver that last yogurt tomorrow, ” Ansley says over the phone, audibly tearing up. “ When we started, my husband had a pickup truck and a camper, that’s wha...

BIG STORY: After ban on 59 Chinese Apps, 275 more apps including PubG, AliExpress on security agency radar https://ift.tt/39xDtUt

About 275 Chinese apps in India are on the government's radar for possible violations of national security and user privacy. A list of 275 apps have been drawn by the government which are being examined for national security violations and if found in breach, the apps are likely to be banned, Economic Times reports. The move comes after the government banned 59 Chinese apps last month including TikTok and WeChat. Government, report says was also looking closely at the apps which are not just Chinese but would also have investments from China. The move comes amid reports that even the United States was also mulling banning the Chinese Apps for sharing data with the state authorities in Beijing.

New top story from Time: The World’s First Malaria Vaccine—and What it Means for the Future of Pandemic Response

https://ift.tt/3uQFdD3 On Oct. 6, the World Health Organization recommended use of the first vaccine to fight malaria . The decision is momentous and highly anticipated for many reasons: among them is that this is the first vaccine to help reduce the risk of deadly severe malaria in young children in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease remains a leading killer. The vaccine offers hope that there can be a circle of learning from one pandemic to the next. Malaria, our oldest pandemic, may offer insights on how we can survive contemporary scourges like COVID-19. Malaria evolved at least 2.5 million years ago and first infected humans in rural parts of Africa. It then spread to all continents save Antarctica—notably, killing off armies ranging from those trying to conquer ancient Rome to those battling to control the Pacific in World War II. Malaria, according to historians, may have killed more people than any other pandemic. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Malaria changed ...

My precise view

Search This Blog