San Francisco Has Some of the Most Impressive Street Transit Priority in the United States 

Love your channel btw! You rock!

Light rail is good. Subways are good. BRT is good. The light rail super-believers write the same thing about BRT in every single post I put up. Sometimes it is valid, sometimes it is not. Sometimes BRT is better. Sometimes light rail would be better. In this case after talking to many is that either would have been good, but the BRT was done much faster.

@@StreetfilmsCommunity Look, I don't care what is built as long as it's transit and it carries as many people as possible so that they aren't forced to drive. The problem comes from the fact that one mode is being sold as being "cheaper" and sometimes also as "faster to built." Neither of these are true with BRT. After that politician does their ribbon cutting this thing is supposed to carry riders for literal decades into the future. And BRT quickly overcomes light rail in terms of costs, like, even before it's refurbishment date. This is completely crazy. Who in their right mind would advocate for a mode that is supposed to be cheaper but that is actually more expensive. If you want a more expensive mode because it has X or Y rider benefits and will increase ridership by X%, that's fine. That's great! But with BRT it's literally just wrong. You are getting less transit for more money. Everybody loses, except the politicians who get to move to their next position before anyone realizes that they've actually hurt the riders. BRT, when it is actual BRT rather than a painted (hopefully!) express lane, costs only 20-30% less than a light rail line. This is not me saying this. This is what BRT is according to people like the "Institute for Transportation and Development Policy" - it's rubber tire light rail. Even our American "BRT" that approaches but usually falls far short of BRT levels of frequency and capacity is neither that much cheaper to build nor faster to build. I say this after watching the Van Ness "BRT" being built over the last 1.5 decades in my backyard. Please please look this up! Just take a few moments to do some some basic research on this topic. I don't want to crap all over transit channels, but it is ridiculous how few of the people doing advocacy have drunk the car-supremacy coolaid on this topic and how basically no one who actually studies this for a living agrees with them! [For some reason a lot of scholarship work on BRT comes from the Twin Cities area. Here's an example of an article from more than a decade ago outlining the advantages and disadvantages of their pretty extensive BRT system: "LRT or BRT? It depends on the potential of the corridor". And here is an example from two years ago: "Bus Rapid Transit: Not As Simple and Cheap As It Seems" It's worth noting that they have both extensive light rail _and_ BRT networks. Their BRT network is also pretty mature for a North American city and they've had it for a looooooong time. So they are in a very good postion to copare the two modes better than most places that have only one or neither of the modes.]

We have a federal government that is pushing BRT on cities even those as big and dense as New York City. The reason is construction cost escalation for both subway and light rail rapid transit. Of course BRT is not immune and so a lot of cities have joke standard BRT: the bus rapid transit provided is a sick joke! Eventually the Feds will say, "F it! We're not funding transit projects, period."

I think there is an important argument for this specific BRT. not applicable elseware. San Francisco is very hilly, which is something that rail based vehicles hate. Rubber is better here,, as this route does encounter a steep grade for prolonged portions. and on top of that a general argument for BRT is other bus services can use this transit priority infrastructure, even if only for a segment of the right of way.

San Francisco has lots of trams, both of the historical variety and modern light rail in subway, tunnels through the hills and separated right of way. They also run on streets in some areas. Trolley buses are usually used where part of the route is too steep for rail. Wikipedia has much to say about this: " The system includes the single steepest known grade on any existing trolley bus line in the world, specifically 22.8% in the block of Noe Street between Cesar Chavez Street and 26th Street on route 24-Divisadero, and several other sections of Muni trolley bus routes are among the world's steepest." As they say: Horses for courses. Before conversion to trolley bus, one line was so steep that passengers would have to get out and walk to allow the diesel to struggle up the hill.

This line was supposed to be a light rail line and was still built to light rail standards. Unfortunately, due to project creep we got "BRT" instead. In reality this was a "deal with the devil". BRT is 20-30% cheaper to build but 2-3x more expensive to operate for the same capacity. So this BRT line will come back to bite us in less than 10 years when the 20% savings from not mounting catenary and the rails on the already concrete guideway will be overcome by increased driver wages. Theoretically, this line is planned to be converted during the next refurbishment. So in 15-20 years, when the roadbed degrades sufficiently it _should_ be replaced with a light rail line instead of restoring the concrete roadbed. But this is contingent on if they have the Lombard segment ready to build by that point. And so far the local merchants and drivers are adamantly opposed to converting two lanes to light rail on Lombard.

​@@TohaBgood2 That's not why the plan was changed from light rail to BRT, nor is it a bad thing that it did. The reason is because Van Ness is too short to be practical as a light rail line. As a BRT corridor, it primarily serves the northern tail of the much longer 49 bus, which travels north/south along Mission Street and Van Ness. Unless the light rail line could continue all the way down Mission Street, then what we got was better, since a light rail line that just goes up and down Van Ness would have been of little use to anyone.

​@@topsnek4603 First of all, you can run busses on the light rail corridor just fine, so the 49 bus would not have been impacted in any way. This is what Muni does on Market street where the F streetcar runs with the busses and trolley busses (off the same catenary!) in the same transit only lanes. Second of all, the Van Ness section was always planned to be continued onto Lombard street and would have been automatically connected to the tracks on Market street. It's not like they would have just run that tiny section on Van Ness. The existing F or J could have been continued onto Van Ness to create new routes. And BTW, Muni agrees with this. The Van Ness BRT was deliberately built to be fully light rail ready. That's why they had to dig up the entire street. They've built a concrete guideway that can be easily converted to light rail by just adding the tracks. That was the whole plan all along. But they didn't want to do that before the Lombard part of the corridor was ready to be built. So in effect, the Van Ness BRT is just a temporary placeholder until the whole corridor including Lombard is ready for rail. This was always the plan.

You really want to go back and I live in society like North Korea and china, what that government says u must do

@@JoseMendoza-l8jhuh?????

You people need to make up your minds on which anti-SF propaganda you're pushing. It's either "no one can afford to live there" or "doom loop." Even Yogi Berra managed to choose one.