As San Francisco continues its start-stop efforts to reopen, planners at Muni are trying to stave off what could be a devastating side effect: epic traffic jams.
More people are gravitating away from public transit, and into cars as a form of protective armor against COVID-19. Streets are already filling — a problem not only for drivers, but for those who rely on transit. In the months to come Muni may only be capable of providing 70% of the service it ran prior to the pandemic, officials wrote in a blog post Friday. They blamed plummeting revenue and widespread absences of workers, saying that on top of that, social distancing rules limit vehicles to a third of their capacity.
So the agency seeks to designate transit-only lanes in critical parts of downtown, on lines that serve hospitals and other essential workers, and in neighborhoods where more people depend on buses to get around.
At a Tuesday meeting of the county Transportation Authority, San Francisco transportation chief Jeffrey Tumlin warned of an impending crisis. He showed slides indicating that rush hour traffic has returned to bottlenecks in places like the Bay Bridge and SoMa.
“It’s the folks who don’t have the ability to telecommute and don’t have the wealth to buy their way out of congestion problems who will be most impacted,” Tumlin said.
If the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency board approves the plan on Tuesday, crews would delegate lanes for buses and taxis on Mission, 7th and 8th streets south of Market, as well as Presidio, Bosworth, Masonic and Woodside streets and Laguna Honda Boulevard. Marked with white paint and “Bus/Taxi Only” stencils,” the temporary lanes would speed up buses on the 14 Mission, 19 Polk, 43 Masonic and 44 O’Shaughnessy lines.
Crews would remove the lanes 120 days after the city lifts its emergency order, unless officials undertake a public process to make a lane permanent.
The board will also decide Tuesday whether to authorize the city traffic engineer to fast-track approvals for future emergency transit lanes with a simple public hearing, rather than a board vote.
Transit lanes have long met resistance in San Francisco because they consume parking spaces and limit the roadway for cars. Should the city move forward with the ones proposed, it would have to remove parking and extend the hours of tow-away zones, said SFMTA project manager Dan Howard. City Supervisor Dean Preston also wants to keep private shuttles out of the transit lanes — another ongoing point of contention in San Francisco.
But with Muni service severely diminished, city leaders seem to agree that at this moment the benefits outweigh the inconvenience to drivers. Howard said that the surge in traffic, reduction in buses and restrictions of social distancing would effectively cut Muni carrying capacity by 70 % this fall — “which is the same thing as losing the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay Bridge, and the Martinez Bridge combined.”
So, Tumlin said, the agency is doing its best to move as many people as possible on constricted road space, while prioritizing those with the fewest choices. He views temporary transit lanes as a solution.
Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
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