Paul Kozakiewicz: Creating a Win-Win Transit Plan

The SF Transportation Authority (TA) is looking at ways to improve the Muni #38 bus line to better serve the residents in the Richmond District.

After initial outrage over the way the matter was handled, sliding a single paragraph calling for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) on Geary Boulevard into a 10-page sales tax increase, merchants and neighborhood leaders are looking at the best ways to improve mass transit.

The TA held workshops in November, and will conduct a meeting in the Richmond District Dec. 9, to get feedback from the public. There are three major proposals on the table: two options would go in the middle of the boulevard and one would dedicate the outside lanes to mass transit.

Clearly, the outside lanes concept would be the best for the Richmond and would create a win-win situation for all of the major stakeholders. Merchants are concerned that if the center lane options are chosen, the resulting years of construction and change in consumer shopping habits could put many of them out of business.

Some surveys show that businesses located the farthest away from the "transit villages" the TA intends to install suffer and many go out of business. The transit villages will be at the designated intersections where there could be a small plaza, with vendors, and areas protected from the elements for passenger loading and unloading.

Smaller businesses will be located a block or two away from the intersections with the transit villages, while the stores that can afford prime real estate, like Walgreens, will occupy the best intersections.

The years of construction, particularly in the re-routing of Geary Boulevard around the "tunnels" at Masonic Avenue and Fillmore Street, will be devastating.

One proprietor, Jack Reill, said his "Big O" tire store couldn't survive because he is at ground zero for the city's version of the Big Dig. He said he barely survived the last time the intersection was revamped, in the late '70s.

Recently, the merchants started passing around a petition, calling for an economic impact study, and that the outside lanes concept be pursued. As of presstime, more than 500 people had signed it in the grassroots effort and more were rolling in.

The benefits of the outer lane BRT plan are many, including:
• Most of the estimated $200 million cost for the center lane BRT can be saved and used in other transit projects;
• Muni service can be greatly improved with dedicated "diamond" lanes, the ability to control traffic lights, using global positioning systems to prevent bunching, and other technological innovations;
• Expensive new buses that board from the left side would not be required, as they would be in one of the center lane options;
• Buses would be able to pass broken down vehicles if the need arose, unlike one of the center lane options being studied, which would restrict buses in their lanes and crash the whole system due to one breakdown;
• Traffic patterns would not be nearly as disruptive to other areas of the neighborhood, such as Clement Street and Anza Street, because of the loss of traffic lanes and the limiting of left-hand turns off of Geary;
• Any potential loss of parking due to an outside lane plan can be mitigated by putting some diagonal parking on the side streets next to Geary, like there is now on 11th Avenue near the Lamps Plus store.

The outside lane plan currently being studied by the TA will still allow most of the positive ideas for improving service to be implemented.

But we should not forget, no matter what plan is chosen or how much is spent to build it, there will not be an increase in capacity of one person. The biggest problem, getting people a seat on a clean bus, remains the real goal for improving mass transit. Perhaps some of the $200 million could be used for doing that.

Editor's note: The next open house to discuss improving Muni will be held at Self Help for the Elderly, located at 5757 Geary Blvd., on Saturday, Dec. 9, from 9 a.m. to noon.

School Board Abdicates Responsibility
The SF School Board, in its infinite wisdom, sacrificed an important program on its altar of progressive politics.

The board voted 4-2 in November to eliminate the JROTC program in the city's high schools. The program serves more than 1,600 students and offers a program that cannot be matched as a conduit for helping high school students, particularly those who benefit from a program mandating discipline, respect and team effort.

The "gang of four," school board members Sarah Lipset, Mark Sanchez, Eric Mar and Dan Kelly, wanted to send a message to Washington D.C. that the U.S. military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy is discriminatory, so they voted to eliminate the program.

Dan Kelly, one of the gang, lost his re-election bid in November, and I know of more than a few people who voted against him for his position on the JROTC. Sara Lipset, a Richmond District resident and member of the Green Party, decided not to run for re-election so she will be off the board in January. But her vote still counts.

Eric Mar and Mark Sanchez will be coming up for re-election. At that time, we'll be able to purge the last two members of our school board who would sacrifice the futures of some of our kids just to make a small political point in Washington. These school board members showed what they were made of: pushing their own political agendas at the expense of our school children.

Paul Kozakiewicz is editor of the Richmond Review.