A Decade of Rolling out the Red Carpet for Riders

A Decade of Rolling out the Red Carpet for Riders
By Cassie Halls

An animated map showing the expansion of red transit lanes in San Francisco. View as a PDF. Accessible version of the expansion of red transit lanes:

Red Transit Lanes Over Time in San Francisco from 2013 to 2023 

There is nothing quite like looking out the window at gridlock traffic while your bus coasts down a red transit lane. This may feel like an “only in San Francisco” pleasure – after all, San Francisco was one of the first U.S. cities to “roll out the red carpet” by painting bus lanes red. But red transit lanes have now become a popular way to keep buses out of traffic in more than 25 cities across the country.

The SFMTA is celebrating a decade since the installation of San Francisco’s first red transit lane on Church Street on March 23, 2013. You can help us celebrate by riding that first red transit lane between Duboce and 16th Streets on Muni’s 22 Fillmore and J Church along with thousands of other weekday riders. As you whiz past traffic, you may feel the estimated 14% time savings afforded by the red color.

If you drive, help us celebrate by keeping transit lanes clear. Remember, double parking in transit lanes is camera enforced. Transit lanes are an essential tool to keep Muni moving on San Francisco’s busy streets.

Dedicated transit lanes started popping up in the city as early as the 1970s following the adoption of the city’s Transit-First Policy (which happens to be turning 50 this month). As of 2023, over 20 lane miles of transit lanes now also have the red treatment, in addition to 55 miles of transit and bus/HOV lanes without red paint.

J Church using red transit lanes and picking up passengers on a boarding island on Church at Market Street.

J Church train using red transit lanes on Church at Market Street.

Although often the most visible, transit lanes are one of more than 20 tools in our toolbox to improve transit reliability and reduce delays. With Muni Forward, we’ve built more than 80 miles of transit corridor reliability improvements to keep Muni moving — with upgrades like bus bulbs for faster boarding and traffic signals that stay green for transit.

As an early adopter of red transit lanes, the SFMTA helped lay the groundwork to change federal guidelines to make it easier to paint lanes red. This is because red colorization has led to a 55% improvement in motorist compliance and is a cost-effective way to reduce delays. We have to say they’re looking great for their age!

We know that despite our best efforts, Muni buses and trains are sometimes stuck in traffic and transit lanes are occasionally blocked. That is why we continue to innovate to bring improvements to our riders. Last year we colorized six miles of transit lanes in the Van Ness Improvement Project, Geary Boulevard Improvement Project, and along Mission Street in SoMa, 4th Street and Stockton Street. We also continue to install Muni Forward transit priority projects across the city and push for further compliance improvements through an education campaign for motorists. The SFMTA was also recently awarded a state grant to deploy new next-generation camera technology as a part of the transit lane enforcement program.

Stay tuned for more red transit lanes and other reliability improvements in the year ahead.

Published March 22, 2023 at 02:05AM
https://ift.tt/lvaPJp4

Comments

Muni Drivers Prove the Perfect Muse for this San Francisco Artist

Muni Drivers Prove the Perfect Muse for this San Francisco Artist By Jonathan Streeter Muni has long been an enjoyable part of artist Kurt Schwartzmann's life, riding the bus to work, to school and as a sightseer. Kurt — utilizing his monthly pass — has ridden countless trains and buses and befriended several operators. Taking the time to learn their names and stories, Kurt envisions both the reality and the dream of navigating a bus through San Francisco streets. Pointing to an image he created (see above photo far right), Kurt noted, "I drew an escape hatch for this driver, so he could get away when he needed a break." In fact, Kurt’s website " Yellow Line Art ," is named in honor of the demarcation at vehicle entrances behind which passengers are asked to stand. "Conversation welcome but cannot interfere with safe operation of the bus," has real meaning for Kurt, who sees the yellow line not a...

New top story from Time: These Moms Work as Doctors and Scientists. But They’ve Also Taken On Another Job: Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation Online

https://ift.tt/3tT3UwO Last March, friends and neighbors began stopping Emily Smith in her town outside of Waco, Texas, with questions about the coronavirus. An epidemiologist at Baylor University, Smith knows all too well how viruses are transmitted. But as the wife of a pastor and as a woman of faith, she also holds a trusted position in her community, and she would speak to those who asked about why she personally thought social distancing was a moral choice. As the weeks wore on, the questions kept coming: “What does flatten the curve mean?” “Is it safe for my child to kick a soccer ball outside with a friend?” So she started a Facebook page and called herself the Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist. She adopted “Love thy neighbor” as the page’s credo. Smith wrote from the perspective of a scientist but also a wife and mother. She recently explained, for example, why churches should still continue to refrain from holding in-person services even though Texas has lifted i...

New top story from Time: Watch TIME’s Exclusive Footage of NASA’s Most Powerful Rocket Ever Under Construction

https://ift.tt/3xqnVOf Rockets are built slowly—slowly and exceedingly carefully—which is in keeping with giant machines on which humans stake their lives and nations stake their prestige. In NASA’s cavernous Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral, America’s next great moon rocket—the Space Launch System (SLS)—is being constructed with all that in mind. It is here too that TIME set up half a dozen cameras over the course of two months, capturing 3 million images for a time-lapse video that makes it possible to compress those months of work into just a few kinetic minutes. Under the eyes of the cameras, the rocket’s twin solid-fuel boosters came together—each of them 177 feet tall, weighing 1.6 million pounds and generating 3.6 million pounds (1.6 million kg) of thrust. Twenty-five percent taller than the solid boosters on the space shuttle, the twin engines are made of five separate segments, compared to the shuttle’s four. When they are completed, they will be attached ...

New top story from Time: Dear Parents, It’s Not Just You. Raising a Teen Now Is Really Hard

https://ift.tt/3ae0nRK A version of this article appeared in this week’s It’s Not Just You newsletter. SUBSCRIBE HERE to have It’s Not Just You delivered to your inbox every Sunday. And send comments to Susanna@Time.com Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. This week: a letter to parents of teens, many of whom are struggling, a selection of expert pandemic parenting advice, plus some evidence of human kindness. DEAR PARENTS: IT’S NOT JUST YOU, THIS IS HARD. Over the last few months, I’ve gotten so many emails from parents of teens—both readers of this newsletter and friends. And while the details vary, I can hear the thrum of fear in each one as they describe a child who seems to be slowly crumbling, or is in crisis. So this is a letter for all of you: You’re not alone. You’re not the only one feeling lost or like you’re the worst parent you know. So many of us have been where you are now, especially in an unimaginably fractured and stressful year, one that has made...

New top story from Time: These Are the Best Fantasy TV Show Adaptations to Watch Now

https://ift.tt/3eQcVRN Netflix’s Shadow and Bone , which dropped on April 23, marks yet another hit fantasy book series getting inducted into the TV adaptation circuit—or rather, two series in one, as the new show creates one cohesive narrative out of storylines from Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy and the first book in her Six of Crows duology. The series, starring newcomers Jessie Mei Li, Archie Renaux and Freddy Carter, flies by over the course of eight episodes of magic, espionage, violence and romance—in other words, all of the necessary ingredients to satisfy a fantasy fan. The good news for fans is that TV adaptations of fantasy series have become essential television in recent years, with more en route. (Look out for Amazon’s future Lord of the Rings show.) While we wait for season two of Shadow and Bone , however, here are the best fantasy TV show adaptations you can watch right now. Game of Thrones It’s been 10 whole years since Game of Thrones p...

New top story from Time: Chris Paul on the Legacy of the NBA Strike, 1 Year Later

https://ift.tt/3jiooN4 Even before Aug. 26, 2020—the date, one year ago today, on which the sports world shut down in protest of violence against unarmed Black people—NBA players were having difficulty processing the shooting of Jacob Blake . The video of police in Kenosha, Wis. shooting and wounding Blake emerged during the NBA’s 2020 postseason while players were isolated at Walt Disney World in a COVID-19 “bubble.” The surreal August playoffs were taking place after the season had shut down in March because of the pandemic. “It was weighing heavy on a lot of guys,” says Chris Paul , who was the president of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) for eight years before he stepped aside this summer. Paul told TIME in an interview this week that when George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, he was home and could explain to his children Chris II and Camryn, then 11 and 8, what was unfolding on television. “Whereas when this situation happened, with Jacob Blake,...

New top story from Time: How Facebook’s Australia News Ban Could Hamper Vaccine Rollout to Aboriginal People

https://ift.tt/37E8rL1 The COVID-19 vaccine rollout was never going to be easy in Australia’s sparsely populated, desert-covered Northern Territory. With many small towns located hours apart by road, organizers even considered using drones and dry ice to make deliveries. But the vaccination campaign is facing an even greater uphill battle after Facebook removed news content across the country of 25 million on Feb. 18 following a battle over a bill that would force Big Tech companies to pay for the use of news stories. The ban also swept up Indigenous media organizations, meaning that Aboriginal people, who make up more than 25% of the region’s population may not have access to reliable information about vaccinations. Many Aboriginal people rely on Facebook as a portal to the Internet. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook has become “a primary vehicle for promoting health information to remote Aboriginal communities,” says Malarndirri McCarthy , a senator in the Northe...

New top story from Time: As Bannon Bucks Subpoena, Trump Fights Power of Jan. 6 Probe

https://ift.tt/3iMB2mS For months, the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection has waited to hear from the people closest to Donald Trump to shed light on what the former President was doing as hundreds of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. On Thursday at midnight, his longtime advisor Stephen Bannon blew past his subpoena deadline to submit documents to the probe, delivering a setback to the beleaguered committee and teeing up a potential long legal battle to come. On Sept. 23, the committee gave Bannon and Trump’s former deputy chief of staff Dan Scavino, former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Pentagon official Kash Patel an Oct. 7 deadline to respond to subpoena letters asking them to appear for depositions and provide materials relevant to its investigation. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Bannon has “indicated that he will try to hide behind vague references to privileges of the former President,” according to a joint statement issued on Fri...

New top story from Time: The United States vs. Billie Holiday Is a Messy But Passionate Tribute to an American Legend

https://ift.tt/3uDiuKn Almost everyone has feelings about Billie Holiday , many of them strong. But no one can own her, and if there’s any supreme conclusion to be drawn from Lee Daniels ’ disorganized but passionate drama The United States vs. Billie Holiday, it’s that. Daniels’ movie focuses on an underexplored angle of Holiday’s life, one that dovetails with all the things we know about her: Holiday had a traumatic childhood—she was raped at age 10. She was repeatedly attracted to controlling, abusive men. Her emotional vulnerability spurred a heroin habit she couldn’t kick. But her personal problems were intensified by a force determined to crush her, specifically the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which pursued her with an obsessive vengeance that surely hastened her death, in 1959 at age 44. Holiday’s drug use wasn’t even the agency’s main problem with her: what truly infuriated them was her refusal to stop performing one of her signature numbers, “Strange Fruit,” a pr...

New top story from Time: Vaccines Can’t End Pandemics Alone—And We’ve Known That Since We Eradicated Smallpox

https://ift.tt/2WJSQax President Thomas Jefferson in 1806 wrote a letter to English physician Edward Jenner. Ten years earlier, Jenner had intentionally infected a boy with cowpox, in order to protect him against the much more terrifying smallpox disease. It worked. Jenner gathered more evidence, and two years later he published his Inquiry into the Variolae vaccinae known as the Cow Pox . News traveled across the Atlantic, and Jefferson was among the first Americans to recognize the revolutionary potential of vaccination. He praised Jenner in lavish terms: “Medicine has never before produced any single improvement of such utility.” In fact, Jefferson foresaw an end to a disease that was then the most deadly and most feared affliction in much of the world. “Future nations will know by history only that the loathsome small-pox has existed and by you has been extirpated.” [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Jefferson was visionary—but too optimistic. Mortality from smallpox de...

My precise view

Search This Blog